It had taken some doing, but Micah had convinced Zeke to stick around until George woke up. They had questions, and George would have answers. For some reason, Zeke seemed a lot twitchier about hanging out at Micah’s parents’ house than he ever had before. Micah had to wonder if it was because he knew now that George was a werewolf, and that Brandy had been keeping this huge, illegal secret for so long, but that didn’t compute properly. Zeke was a werewolf himself, and unless he hadn’t accepted that, there was no rational reason for him to feel uncomfortable around other werewolves and their allies. But the more Micah tried to talk to him about it, the more Zeke shut down. Finally, Micah just pulled out the game console and threw a controller at Zeke. No need for conversation when there were CGI enemy soldiers to take down.

“Got him!” Zeke crowed triumphantly as an opponent sniper plummeted from the top of an oil drill. “Die, spawn camper.”

“Great,” Micah said, panicking slightly. “Now you want to do something about this guy with the missiles?”

“I got you,” Zeke said, crouching like a panther on the couch. His hazel eyes flicked over the screen. He lined up his shot, took a breath, and blew the guy away.

“You should have done that professionally,” Micah said appreciatively.

“Big difference between a gun and a controller,” Zeke said. “For one thing, pixel head will respawn in thirty seconds. There’s no respawning in the real world, and I don’t know if I’m capable of walking around with that kind of burden.”

“That’s fair,” Micah acknowledged. “You still would have been one kick-ass sniper.”

“Who’s a kick-ass sniper?” George asked, stepping around the corner. He scratched his large, hairy belly and yawned. “Coffee?”

“Fresh pot in the kitchen,” Micah said without looking up. “I made it though, so drink at your own risk.”

“Oh thank God,” George mumbled as he shuffled to the kitchen. “I love your mother, but she doesn’t make coffee. She makes lightly-tinted bean water.”

Zeke and Micah both laughed at that, and the distraction got Micah’s avatar blown up. Cursing under his breath (it was still his parents’ house, after all) Micah turned his attention back on the game.

“So how often do you warn your students about the evils of video games?” Zeke asked.

“Oh, a couple times a year, more when their grades start slipping. Doesn’t do me much good though, because...you see that guy over there? StormGodFangFist?”

“The one who keeps killing me, and everybody else?” Zeke clarified bitterly.

“That’s the one. He was in my class last year. I don’t know how, but he figured out my tag, and he’s been killing me every chance he gets.”

“What did you do, fail him?”

“Worse,” Micah said morosely. “I called a parent-teacher conference, and his parents took his console away for three months.”

“Oh, dude,” Zeke said. “That’s terrible. No wonder he wants you dead.”

“Over and over and...damn it...over again.” Micah tossed the controller to one side in disgust. “Eventually he’s going to have to get sick of killing me. Doesn’t he?”

“Not necessarily,” Zeke said. “It might not even be about the conference anymore. He might just like killing you.”

“I guess,” Micah sighed. “Freaking kids. Oh, I’m alive!”

“Me too,” George said, smiling sleepily into his over-sized coffee cup as he shuffled back into the room. “What are we playing?”

“Oil Raid Three,” Micah said. “Tongue-in-cheek war games.”

“Fighting in the desert over oil. God, you kids have a dark sense of humor.”

“Gallows humor is back in style again,” Micah grinned. “Besides, this is fun. When I don’t die! Damn it, Carlos!”

“You’re Zeke, right?” George blinked.

“Yes, sir,” Zeke said with an amused smile. George had met him close to a thousand times, but George without coffee was George unsure of anything and very, very muddled.

“So who’s Carlos?” George asked.

“One of Micah’s old students,” Zeke said as he shot the offending avatar. “Has a vendetta to settle against Micah for daring to be a responsible caretaker.”

“Ah, rebellious teenagers,” George said with a twinge of nostalgia. “I remember those days.”

“I didn’t rebel,” Micah argued.

“First, bullshit, and second, I was talking about my childhood. Which was a lot more interesting than yours, kid. I actually had strict parents, and things to rebel against.”

“I had things....”

“Like?” George asked with an amused twinkle.

“Chores,” Zeke interjected. “I definitely remember the grand chore rebellion. Left the pile of leaves in the yard and just started walking. What a bad ass, Micah, what a bad ass. I looked at you that day and just knew I would never be that hard.”

“Oh shut up,” Micah said, rolling his eyes. “They didn’t give me much to work with, you know.”

“Aw, poor thing, too much freedom,” Zeke teased.

There was a hint of bitterness in his tone that kept Micah from pushing it any further. Zeke’s childhood and teen years had been fraught with uncertainty and a parade of unfit parents, from the too strict to the entirely too lenient. He’d made Micah’s house a second home for a long time, staying because it never seemed to change much. Back then, he’d sworn Micah to secrecy about his situation, because he was afraid that Brandy would want to foster him. Micah never understood why that would have been a problem, and Zeke had never seen fit to elaborate. He would ask him about it one of these days, Micah decided. Unravel the mysteries of the past.

“What happened to your leg?” George asked suddenly.

“Oh...you haven’t talked to mom yet?” Micah asked.

“She’s sleeping.”

“Ah. Well....” Micah got blown up again, and he set his controller to the side. He turned to look at his dad, who seemed to be about halfway through his coffee. Close enough. “Zeke and I went out hiking a couple days ago, and ran into a bit of a problem.”

“What problem?” George asked mildly.

“I forgot to check the moon,” Micah admitted, leading George to the conclusion gently. “And we camped outside, and managed to capture the attention of a large canine person.”

“A large canine...person,” George repeated. “A werewolf?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So your leg....”

“Was just about torn off by the thing’s teeth. Zeke’s arm, too. We obviously survived, but....”

“But now you’re like me,” George sighed. “What did your mother say?”

“Lots of very loud things,” Zeke said with a wince.

“And she told us to be here next month and take up residence in the cell until we could figure out some other way to manage it,” Micah added.

George nodded slowly. “Did she tell you about the other monthly problem that goes along with this?”

“Yes,” Micah said, looking away quickly and blushing. “The whole menstruation issue.”

“And with menstruation comes fertility,” George said gravely. “It’s not a problem for me, I only sleep with your mother. But you, Micah and Zeke...I’m not dumb. One of you could get pregnant, so just...keep that in mind.”

Micah’s face heated further. His parents had assumed that he and Zeke were sleeping together since their senior year, and no argument he made had any effect. They always answered with some kind of nonsense about how they support him no matter what, and that he was entitled to his secrets but they wanted him to know that it was unnecessary to keep those secrets. It was as if they had decided, all on their own, that Zeke was the one for Micah, and little details like reality and facts couldn’t possibly change their minds. Zeke was giving him a hard, disbelieving glare. Micah was going to have to smooth this over later, out of earshot, he decided.

“What days do the next full moons cover?” he asked suddenly, realizing that this could impact his career.

“Let’s find out,” George said, pulling his phone from the pocket of his cartoon-printed pajama pants. “Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. September thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth.”

“Great,” Micah sighed. “Gonna get a reputation as a hungover teacher right out of the gate.”

“Why?” George asked.

“Because dawn happens at five, and school starts at seven fifteen,” Micah said. “That gives me time for a shower and coffee, but no time to sleep it off. I mean, it’s three in the afternoon and you just got up. How bad does the transformation wear you out?”

George pondered the question thoughtfully for a moment. “The transformation itself is tiring,” he admitted. “But it’s what you do during...and immediately after...that really wipes you out.”

“What do you mean?”

Zeke had put his controller down now, and was listening intently to the conversation.

“Well,” George said, steepling his fingers. “During, you’re going to want to hunt. You’re going to be full of this insatiable wanderlust, and it’s going to make you rage against the walls of your cage. You’ll waste a lot of energy trying to gnaw your way out. Those cells look big when you’re a human, but as an over-grown wolf, they’re like coffins. That stress alone is exhausting. But then once it’s all over...when you turn human again...all of that power is still coursing through your body, all of that unreleased tension. You have to get it out somehow, or you won’t sleep at all. You could run on it for days. It makes you powerfully hungry, but...not for food.” He gave Micah and Zeke meaningful looks, but Micah wasn’t understanding what he meant.

“If not for food, then what? A fight?”

“Mm, a fight is one way to handle it,” George said vaguely. “It’s not as satisfying or as healing as the other way, though.”

“What other way?” Micah asked, getting exasperated.

George shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“He’s talking about sex,” Zeke said.

George looked relieved, and he smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Exactly. It’s all you can think about immediately afterward. It’s the only thing that makes any sense at all. Nothing does, after something like that. You can’t read, you can’t recognize numbers, you can’t think straight at all until you do something about all that chaos in your blood. Best you’ll ever have, too,” he finished with a private smile at his coffee.

Micah cringed. He wasn’t a child, he knew his parents had an active sex life, but that didn’t mean he wanted to think about it. Zeke saw his reaction and smirked. Suddenly, Micah realized that they would be in a cage together after their transformation. If sex was the only thing a werewolf wanted afterward...he watched Zeke come to the same conclusion, watched him flush red and then go pale. His mother was completely right. They were going to have to clear the air a lot over the next twenty-eight days if they were going to have any chance at all of getting through this with their friendship intact.

“What is it like?” Zeke asked, tearing his eyes away from Micah as though looking at him was painful. “The transformation, I mean.”

George’s face sobered gravely. “It’s hell,” he said quietly. “The first time is the worst, but it never really gets much better. The best advice I have for you is to try to relax. That sounds stupid, and it isn’t nearly enough, but the more relaxed you are going into it, the less it will hurt. It’s...it’s still going to hurt, though.”

“Well shit,” Zeke said disgustedly, pushing his fingers through his curly black hair. “Is there any upside to this at all?”

“Sure,” George said with a little laugh. “That super-fast healing isn’t just for the first bite, you know. That’s permanent. You won’t get sick much, if at all. You’ll be stronger, faster, have more endurance, heightened senses... you’ll be super heroes. You can’t flaunt all of that without getting investigated, but it’s good to have those things in your back pocket if you ever need them.”

“There’s no way to control when you shift, is there?” Micah asked hopefully. If he could just keep his wolf business to the weekends, then....

“Nope,” George crushed his hopes with a syllable. “You’re tethered to the moon, I’m afraid.”

“Oh. Makes sense.”

“None of this makes sense,” Zeke argued.

“That’s the nature of life,” George told him with a sympathetic smile. “Nothing ever really makes sense. But eventually, like gravity or algebra, transforming becomes just another fact of life that you get used to.”

Brandy appeared then, looking well-rested and a lot saner. She smiled brightly at them, and gave George a sound kiss on the mouth. He slapped her ass and she giggled, forcing an eye roll from Micah. She turned back to him and Zeke.

“I couldn’t make you breakfast, but will you let me make you dinner? You both look too skinny.”

Micah turned the question over to Zeke with his eyes. “Sure,” Zeke said with a smile. “I think that would be great, thanks Brandy.”

“Anything for my boys,” she said. She squeezed George’s arm and disappeared into the kitchen. Micah, though he was looking forward to his mother’s cooking, was mildly disappointed. The sooner he and Zeke could get away and talk, the better, he thought. They had to figure out what to do about the post-transformation situation, if nothing else. Even aside from that, Micah was just craving time alone with him; three days in the wilderness didn’t feel like enough. He was beginning to wonder if any amount of time ever would feel like enough.