He put his head down and gritted his teeth, his bones continuing to snap. Either he couldn’t stop…or he didn’t want to.
“Stop!” I cried again. “This is stupid! You’re hurting yourself!”
Boone snarled as his face elongated, and his teeth grew, then he turned on me, his jaws snapping. I stumbled back a step, my heart racing. The beast was rising to the surface. It had frightened me the night of the ritual, but now it was beginning to terrify me.
He was half man, half something else, struggling with his change. He’d always been so fluid when he’d morphed into his familiars. The fox and the gyrfalcon. Even when he’d told me about how he’d made an affinity with Mark Ashlyn’s stallion, it had seemed easy for him, so why was the wolf shape so difficult? Maybe it was the block in his mind, and the only thing that had broken through that night was his link with me.
“Boone!” I cried. “Stop! You’ll get stuck! You’ll get stuck and won’t be able to come back!”
His jaws snapped at me, but I pushed past the fear and threw myself at him. I collided against his chest, and his arms wrapped around me, and his claws dug into my back.
My magic pulsed through me and into him. The impact sent a soundless shockwave out through the clearing and into the forest, the force rattling the trees and dislodging leaves from their ancient boughs. I didn’t know what else to do, what words to chant or intent to put behind it. I just asked him to come back.
He disappeared from my grasp, and I fell forward onto the ground, jarring my wrists. A muffled yelp echoed from beneath me, and my eyes widened as I saw the familiar shape of a fox pinned under my startled body. He wasn’t the russet color I was used to seeing—with his white chest and belly and black-tipped ears—but a sparkling silver and gray. His feet were black, and so were his nose and ears, but the rest of him… It was like someone had taken all the color from his coat.
Boone rose to his paws and shook, his silver tail flicking back and forth as he wriggled out from underneath me. He glanced at me, his black eyes full of questions I didn’t have any answers to.
“I’d make a joke about being a silver fox, but…” I shrugged and stroked his fur. “Don’t stay like that too long.”
He blinked, then padded away from me. His change back to human seemed to go easier on his body, and before long, he was a butt-naked Irishman once more.
“You scared me half to death!” I exclaimed, throwing my arms around his neck.
“Careful,” he said, wincing at my touch.
Pulling back, I poked and prodded at his limbs until he pulled away and sat his bare ass in the dirt.
“I can feel it in there,” he said, fisting his hands into his wild hair. “But it’s locked away like me memories. I can’t get to it.”
“You don’t have an affinity with it,” I said. When he glared at me, I added, “Maybe you did before, but you’ve forgotten it. Something allowed you to tap into it the other night, but now it’s gone again. We’ve gotta figure out what that something was.”
Boone glanced away and shivered. The cold was starting get to him, and the heat his shapeshifter body usually radiated wasn’t helping the closer winter came.
“Somethin’ is changin’,” he murmured. “I can feel it.”
I picked up his shirt and draped it over his shoulders. His fox shape had been silver this time. I wondered if it was going to be a permanent thing and if tonight had triggered a change in his abilities he couldn’t stop.
“The wolf is leechin’ into me other forms… I was afraid it might happen.”
“So?” I asked, rubbing his shoulders. “A healing tongue and the ability to negate magical barriers sounds like a useful ability, right?”
Boone nodded but didn’t look comforted. He was too wrapped up in the why. Hopefully, that part would come, but I knew it wouldn’t all at once. Sometimes, things had to reveal themselves over time and forcing the issue caused more harm than good. Tonight was a prime example of that. He could’ve become stuck between shapes, and then where would we be?
“I know you want answers, Boone, and I want them for you too, but…” I sighed and kissed his cheek. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself finding them. Not like this. It’s selfish as hell, but I need you.”
“And I need you, Skye, but… But…” He was struggling. The failure to change into the elusive wolf troubled him more than I would ever understand.
“You have to be satisfied for now,” I murmured. “Patience… You can’t force it.”
He nodded, trying to hide the pain from his expression. His attempt had hurt him more than he was admitting.
“Let’s go home, okay?” I reached for his clothes. “How about a hot bath? Doesn’t that sound good? You’re freezing.”
“Skye.” His big hand cupped my cheek, silencing me mid-babble.
I sighed and rested my forehead against his.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “We always do.”
I hoped he was right.
Chapter 5
The weeks began to pass, and nothing changed in Derrydun. Nothing out of the unordinary, anyway.
Mary Donnelly was still planning a spring wedding for Boone and me, Sean McKinnon was still drunk and pining after his dead wife, Mrs. Boyle had upgraded her broom to a shovel to see her through winter, and the tourist buses had stopped altogether. Apart from an odd group of backpackers or a lone rental car day-tripping from the big cities, the quiet village life had simmered down to a faint blip on the ol’ heart monitor. It seemed hibernation was a thing when the sky threatened ice and snow.
As he’d predicted, Boone’s various animal shapes had all turned silver,
