“By the way, I’m adding best man at your wedding to the list of my demands,” Dominic said while settling into bed. “Just so you know.”

Shawn smiled and crawled deeper into the covers, nestled on the other side of Dominic’s bed with his heavy, down comforter lying on top of him. The central air blasted with the impunity of a rich kid in a condo his parents were paying for, but Shawn convinced himself to take advantage of that, slipping into a deep sleep he already relished only moments into drifting away. He didn’t wake until late in the afternoon, but even when he did, he laid in bed, staring at the opposite wall and thinking of what he, Rob, and Dominic had stayed up all night discussing.

‘The closer you get to him,’ Rob had said, ‘The clearer his location will be. We’ll start close to the café, but once you get a feel for his location, we’ll trust you to lead the way.’

It had felt like a lot of trust to place on his shoulders, even with Rob there to provide the muscle and Dominic, the distraction. He’d repeated Joseph’s directive not to burst in with both guns blazing if they were outmanned, but Rob only smirked in response. “That’s where your friend comes into play,” he’d said and even though Dominic had paled, he’d nodded his assent and offered, in words, his agreement that he’d distract as many of the Laurents as he could. It took several drinks for Shawn to shake off the rush of nerves taking flight within him and even after a full day’s rest, he still couldn’t slough it off entirely.

Instead of trying, he felt for Edwin’s presence and smiled as a soothing rush of the familiar raced over him, with his lover no longer in pain. Dominic had since left, he realized, and so had Rob, but being alone proved to be more relieving than it was unsettling. Sitting up in bed, he reached onto the side table for his phone and unplugged it while glancing at his messages.

They agreed to the meeting, Joseph said, which also answered the question of where Rob had gone. They’ll be arriving tonight at 9PM.

Glancing first at the time, and relieved to see it well before then, a quick look at the second message provided him a response from Dominic. Dom says the café owner gave us an all-clear, Shawn texted. Here’s the address. After giving him the name and location of the coffeeshop, Shawn read the remainder of what his best friend had said.

Get showered. Steal an outfit from my closet. I’m grabbing dinner.

Shawn sighed and tossed his phone aside. Padding into the bathroom, he stepped into the shower and, after getting clean, put on a black shirt and a pair of blue jeans. Dominic’s clothing fit snug, and for a moment, Shawn considered running over to his apartment for a change. Paranoia got the better of him, however. Whatever reason they had to rough Edwin up, he couldn’t discount the idea that Edwin might have said something he’d regret.

Like the name of the person he’d mated with.

“This’ll have to do,” Shawn said, walking out from the bedroom.

Dominic stood in the kitchen and as Shawn padded toward the aroma of food, he felt his eyes glaze over and mouth begin to water. His friend chuckled while extracting Chinese food from a paper bag. “You need to keep that outfit,” he said. “It’s going to get you laid.”

“I don’t usually have a problem in that department,” Shawn said. “Not seeing that change.” He accepted a warm container of food as Dominic handed it to him, and while walking toward a counter lined with bar stools, he fought the urge to tear into the box with his teeth. Instead, he slid onto the chair, nodding thanks when Dominic passed chopsticks to him. After a few silent minutes spent devouring dinner and drinking his weight in water, Shawn came up for air and focused on his friend again.

“Did you see Rob before he left?” he asked.

Dominic nodded. “Briefly. He was going to check in with the Chambers clan and make sure everyone knew their parts for tonight.” Raising an eyebrow, he bit into an eggroll and waited until he’d finished chewing before adding, “Do you really think they’re going to bring Edwin down?”

“What makes you think they wouldn’t?”

“I don’t know. They seem all about the dirty pool. Trusting them to do the right thing seems outside their current repertoire.” He took another bite. “How’s your Loverboy GPS?”

Shawn paused in thought, focusing on that wave of connection he sensed between him and Edwin. “He’s okay,” he said. “Closer, but I don’t know where yet without putting more effort into it. I’m trying to reserve my energy for tonight.” He toyed with the last remaining bites of food in his container. “I’ll know what to do when it’s necessary. I swear, that line’s still haunting me.”

Without saying a word, Dominic still communicated his sympathy through the look in his eyes. Shawn flashed a wan smile, finishing up his food and expressing gratitude when Dominic fired up his Keurig and made them coffee. It took only another half hour for them to ready themselves for the night, though Rob didn’t return to the apartment until another twenty minutes had passed.

When he arrived, however, he looked at the duo expectantly, a severe expression on his face.

“Are you ready?” he asked. “We have a wolfen to rescue.”

Dominic’s watch read the time as 8:50, and though the sky still retained some light, the sun had since disappeared on the other side of the horizon. Shawn frowned at the sight of the moon, feeling a cool breeze blow past that did nothing to ease his troubled mind. “We have ten minutes before the meeting should be starting,” Rob said, speaking beside him. “Twenty before I’d consider it safe enough for us to rescue Edwin, but I think we can work on locating him before then.”

When his gaze settled on Shawn, he looked at Rob and nodded. “You ready?” Rob asked.

“As ready as I’m ever going to be. Does this work the same way it did before?”

“I don’t know how you got it to work before. I’ve never been mated, I just know it’s a thing.”

“Great.” Shawn breathed in deep and exhaled the air slowly. “There’s an itch that tells me he isn’t too far away.” Taking his first steps closer to the edge of the sidewalk, he worked on replicating what had come over him in the café, taking the itch and centering all his thought on it. This is what you are now, he told himself, in a voice that had become stronger and louder with each passing day. As Shawn yielded to that burgeoning, second self taking shape inside him, he peered northwest and squinted at the neighboring buildings.

“A couple of blocks,” he said. “Give or take.”

“That way?” Dominic asked, pointing in the direction Shawn faced. When he nodded, Dominic scratched his head. “What’s in that direction besides a bunch of shops and overpriced apartments?”

“Says the man who lives in a condo in Rittenhouse.” Shawn took a few tentative steps toward where he was being pulled, hands balling in fists. Resisting the urge to run toward its source became palpable, something about the aroma in the air and the sensation of the night coaxing him forward another step. “No, not a shop. Any place where they’d be holed up waiting?”

“There’s a church in that direction. Maybe there?”

“Follow me, then. We’ll see if that’s where it leads.”

Before Dominic could ask, Shawn started a measured jog toward an intersecting alleyway. Rob followed, and as they rounded the corner into the narrow side-street, Shawn picked up the pace. Reaching the next major road meant crossing through light traffic, though while they did it, Shawn felt the inclination to head more northward. The trio ran parallel to the flow of cars. When they reached another alley, Shawn led them through it and continued the pace until an old church came into view.

When he saw it, Shawn stopped altogether.

Dominic nodded when he looked at him, bent over with his hands resting on his knees. “Yes, that one,” he said, struggling to catch his breath. “Is that where your Spidey sense is leading you?”

“Yeah. Which makes sense, I guess. Sitting in a pew, waiting for a text message, is as private as you get this time of night.”

Shawn took another step, but Dominic freed a hand, clutching onto Shawn’s wrist while standing upright again. “No,” he said, slowing his breaths and releasing his hold on Shawn. “You and Cousin Rob here are going to case the area while I walk inside. Remember our plan.”

“I still don’t know if I want you to stick your neck out like this.”

“Cousin Rob?” Rob interjected, raising an eyebrow.

Waving a hand dismissively, Shawn focused on Dominic. “What are you going to do when you walk in?”

Dominic shrugged. “Pretend to be homeless? Try to shoo out anyone else in there by asking for spare change or directions or something like that.” He slapped Shawn’s arm. “C’mon, this’ll be like my senior year improv class. I can handle myself. The important thing is you having a non-wolfy diversion and, no offense, I gather you’ve become tainted goods.”

Shawn looked at Rob, who nodded. “You’re changing,” Rob said. “They’d smell that.”

“Things I’m going to have to get used to. I have a smell,” Shawn said. He sighed, then nodded. “Alright, but you hide or get out of the way if something goes down.”

“Scout’s honor. And before you say I wasn’t a Scout, I’ll remind you that I’ve…” Without finishing the sentence, Dominic ran off, leaving Rob and Shawn behind. The two men exchanged a look, but as Dominic disappeared down the street, Shawn shrugged and jogged toward the church with Rob. Neither exchanged a word, and when they reached the outside of the church, Shawn took a sharp breath inward, something about his burgeoning new instincts flaring up immediately.

“This is it,” he muttered. “This is where they’re keeping Edwin.”

It had a side entrance, though as Shawn tried to open the door, he discovered it had been locked. A chained gate blocked entrance into the back, though as he debated whether to risk scaling it, the sound of something crashing inside the church prompted him and Rob into urgency. Rob nodded to the silent question, jumping up and climbing the links until he could vault to the other side. Shawn followed suit, though by the time his feet hit the ground, he was almost certain someone inside had heard them.

“Maybe not,” Rob said. “Your friend is making a ruckus in there.”

Shawn furrowed his brow and listened, walking with Rob while homing in on the calamity inside. Dominic’s voice wafted outside, his words muffled by the church’s walls, but bearing enough volume to make Shawn wince. He glanced around the grounds, looking for any sign of workers or on-site clergy members, and when nobody left the neighboring buildings, he and Rob pressed on to the back entrance. This one, mercifully, had been left open.

“Ready when you are,” Shawn said.

Rob nodded, pulling open the door and allowing Shawn to walk ahead of him. Shawn paused, and while assessing the hallway they walked inside, allowed Rob to once again assert the lead. They slipped carefully up a half-flight of stairs and toward a door which led into the sanctuary. A small window permitted a view of Dominic’s follies, which at that point had Dominic leaning against one of the Laurent kin, an arm draped around his shoulders.

“Your friend is going to get punched if he tries to kiss him, you know,” Rob said.

“There wouldn’t be anything behind it, but I imagine that doesn’t matter.” Shawn took a deep breath and as he did, he shut his eyes and focused on the presence in the other room. His instincts screamed at him to break down the door, and as they did, a voice entered his head, its message a contradiction to the amount of anxious energy coursing through him.

‘I can feel you. It’s okay. Your friend’s creating enough of a distraction that I can up the ante a little.’

Shawn’s eyes opened and as he focused on Edwin, he nodded, thinking at him as loudly as he could. ‘What should we do?’

‘I’ve been talking to Rob. Wait for my signal. While he goes for them, head to where I am.’

Nodding, Shawn sighed when he realized Edwin probably couldn’t see him and rounded things off by thinking, ‘Okay,’ instead. Rob exchanged a glance with him, and as Dominic got pushed from the Laurent he’d been hanging from, one of the others walked in his direction, reaching for him as if to escort him out. Edwin finally looked up and turned his head to weigh the situation, standing enough to reveal his hands bound behind his back.

As he surged forward, however, he aimed a shoulder for the Laurent closest to Dominic.

“Now,” Rob said. Pushing open the door, he sprang forward and removed his shirt, shifting into wolf form so quickly that Shawn barely had a chance to blink. Shawn ran toward Edwin while the Rob wolf pounced for the first Laurent, and as he and the other who had come to escort Dominic watched, a third member of their family stood from a nearby pew. Three in all, Shawn thought while running to one side of the sanctuary, seeing Edwin headed in that direction now that self-defense had taken precedence for his captors.

Shawn met Edwin within seconds. “They’re going to shift, too,” Shawn said, untying Edwin’s binds.

“It’s okay. I’m going to help him,” he said, his back pointed toward Shawn at first. When the ropes slackened, Edwin spun first to face Shawn, surprising him with a quick, but heated kiss. Shawn blinked at how abruptly it ended, tingles racing through him and his head fuzzy while he watched Edwin throw off his shirt like Rob had and undo his pants quickly enough to shift. The sight of a brown-and-grey wolf leaping toward the fracas startled both him and Dominic.

The speed and the ferocity of the onslaught had the Laurents at a loss, however. While one had started the effort to disrobe, he found himself caught up in an attack by Rob, who sank his teeth into his arm. Shawn winced, and Dominic scurried to run over toward him, but by the time he did, one Laurent had been thrown into an adjacent pew and another, against a support beam in the middle of the row. When the third turned and ran away, the two wolves calmed themselves, both shifting back into human form and unapologetically strolling naked through the vestibule to collect their clothing.

Dominic blinked, and Shawn eyed the carnage nervously. “So, if I make any other jokes about dog biscuits, you can just tell me to shut up,” Dominic said, his voice faint and laden with disbelief.

Shawn patted him on the shoulder, but didn’t answer, to mask his own unease. After securing his pants into place, Edwin walked toward them with Rob keeping watch near where the unconscious men lay. “Where is my family?” he asked, putting on his shirt en route to where they stood.

“The coffeeshop,” Shawn said. “Dom arranged for them to have the place to themselves.”

“It’s not going to be long until they find out what happened here.” Edwin frowned, stealing the moment to reach for Shawn’s hands. Grasping them in his, a conciliatory look overshadowed his expression. “I’m so sorry for this, Shawn. I promised myself it wouldn’t be like this, I –”

“– You are not out of the woods by a long stretch, but we can talk about that later.” Shawn gave Edwin’s hands a squeeze. “Let’s go and save your parents.”

Edwin nodded. He squeezed back, then released his hold on Shawn, walking with him and Rob toward the exit. Dominic scurried to make up the distance and as they approached the back of the church, a priest tentatively peeked out from a confessional booth, where he seemed to have taken refuge. Shawn flashed an apologetic grin at him.

The priest scurried back into safety without saying a thing.