Chapter Twenty-One
Danny could feel in his own body that something was changing. As the days went by, his pain continued to lessen, until they were able to do without the needle in his arm while he took a small handful of tablets a day. Heidi seemed happy with his progress. And Doctor Hollis reported higher shifter protein levels in his blood than he’d ever seen.
Kneeling on the gym mats one morning, Chris crouched opposite him.
“So.”
“So?” Danny asked.
“Biologically, I think you’re ready to change.”
“Then why haven’t I?”
“Because psychologically, I think you’re still terrified. It’s understandable. Think about it.”
Danny did, dropping his gaze to the mat he knelt on. “A wolf killed my family, stalked me, hunted me.”
“Exactly. Your only experiences of shifters in wolf form range from scary to downright terrifying. If we’re going to change your mindset, you need good experiences to override the bad.”
“How would we do that?”
Chris gestured to himself. “You watch me shift and interact with me as a wolf. You know me, you’ve learned to trust me.”
“What if I can’t handle it?”
“That’s where the rules and boundaries come in. We’ll do it out here in the gym, you closest to the door. If it becomes too much, you can leave, go downstairs, lock yourself in your bedroom. I won’t follow you until I’ve changed back.”
“And if I stay?”
“I’ll let you set the pace. I’ll stay where I am and let you come to me. Okay?”
“Okay,” Danny replied. It all sounded sensible, except for the fact he’d be in the room with a wolf.
When Chris stood and began to walk across the room, shedding his shirt as he did, Danny balked. “We’re doing this now?”
Chris paused, turning around with his shirt held loosely in his hands.
“No time like the present. If it’s too soon…”
“No. Now is okay. Now is fine.” It wasn’t Chris he was trying to convince. Memories of running through the forest, hearing low growls, seeing a flash of yellow eyes in the dark. Knowing it was him, the monster who’d stalked him, who savaged his family, who—
“Hey.”
Chris was suddenly only a few feet away, crouched on the ground, watching him intently.
“I’m okay,” Danny assured him.
“You’re crying,” he said softly.
Danny put a hand to his face, surprised to feel wet tears across his skin.
“It’s nothing.” He tried to brush it off, push away the fears that plagued him.
“It’s not nothing. It’s a sign we need to slow things down.”
Danny shook his head, scrubbing at his face with his hand. “I can do this. I want to do this.”
Chris caught his hand in a gentle grip, pulling it away from his face. “And you will, in your own time.”
“But there’s another part of me that just wants everything to go back to the way it was. I want to work in a boring bookstore and come home and help Cindy with the dinner and listen to Becky talk about her boyfriend and Mike worry about his SATs. But when I think about them, all I see is the bodies and the blood. I can’t remember what they looked like, or even the sound of Cindy’s voice.”
He was losing his battle with the tears as his chest heaved and he let out a sob. Chris moved closer, settling him down onto his side and lying against him, his chest to Danny’s back.
“That’s it, Danny. Let it out. You can’t hold it in forever, you can’t keep it bottled up.”
He gave in, to the warm touch of Chris’ arms around him, his gentle voice, and the terrible sorrow that had been building up inside him since that night.
He woke in the early afternoon, back in his own bed, covered with a blanket. He felt better, lighter. As if getting some of those tears out had eased the pressure on his soul. Did shifters have souls? The woman at the Sunday school he’d gone to when he was a kid had said they didn’t. He remembered telling Cindy and wondering why it made her so unhappy. He hadn’t gone back to Sunday school after that and they eventually moved to the church on the other side of town. Only now, looking back on it, did he see his aunt’s actions in a new light. It must have been hard for her to hear, knowing her brother was a shifter, knowing Danny had been born one, too.
Rolling onto his back, he stretched out his arms to touch the headboard. Chris was right about him having a sort of mental block to shifting. And it was more than just the wolf who killed his family. He’d grown up knowing that lycanthropy had touched his life and not in a good way. He’d been raised knowing to hide any mention of his childhood affliction. Having shifter blood was shameful, something to keep secret. And now he was being asked to embrace it, to own it, to change who he was. It was a lot. Maybe too much. But what was the alternative? A short life of pain and suffering.
He got up and went to find Chris, joining him for lunch in the kitchen.
As they ate, Chris talked about this and that, not mentioning the events of the morning. Danny let the words wash over him, trying to get to the heart of his feelings on what needed to be done.
As Chris was clearing the plates, he blurted out, “I’m ready now.”
Chris turned to him, a question on his lips.
“For what we were going to do this morning. I’m ready to try it now.”
The Alpha was less than convinced.
“You need more time.”
“We don’t have time. You said it yourself, Mitch only gave me a limited reprieve to stay here in Eden. I don’t just need to prove I can shift, I need to prove I can control myself as a wolf.”
He was determined now, more than he had ever been. He had to do this, and he had to do it right.
Chris turned back to the dishes. “Okay, meet me upstairs in the gym in ten minutes.”
They arranged it the same way as before. Danny sat on the floor near the door, watching while Chris crossed the room and undressed.
“It’s not the most pleasant thing to watch,” he called over his shoulder. “But it’s quick.”
Danny couldn’t take his eyes off Chris, watching the rippling muscles of his back and shoulders that had nothing to do with him being a werewolf and everything to do with him being the kind of man… Danny shook his head, pushing the distracting thoughts from his mind. Chris had said it was normal, for an Omega to feel a kind of automatic attraction to an Alpha. He had made it clear that it was one-sided, to be expected, but that there were boundaries between them to be kept in place. It was as much under his control as shifting was, which was to say not very much right then.
Chris turned to the side and knelt on all fours on the ground. Danny had seen people naked before but not people like Chris. He tried to keep his focus on what it was supposed to be on, namely the change Chris was about to undergo, and away from Chris’ body which held such fascination. It didn’t help that Chris’ cock hung heavily between his legs, unmistakable in the tantalizing glimpses Danny was getting. Swallowing hard, he did his best to ignore his own body’s responses, feeling the flush that spread across his cheeks.
“Ready?” Chris called.
“Ready when you are,” he called back.
Then it started. At first, it just looked like Chris was doing yoga, his body bending, but it quickly became more than this, the angles wrong, the joints in positions they shouldn’t be in. Each snapshot he saw lasted only a moment, before thick gray and white fur sprouted up, covering Chris’ skin in the blink of an eye. Then he was back on all fours, but he no longer rested on hands and feet but four paws, with powerful legs, a huge body, a long tail, two triangular shaped ears, perked up high, and a powerful jaw. Danny was transfixed on that jaw, on the teeth he knew lay within.
Wolf. Monster.
His mind whispered frantic warnings as he sat there, staring in horrified fascination at what had moments before been Chris, the man he trusted with his life.
The wolf’s head turned towards him and Danny froze. Run, he should run. Get away, barricade himself into a room until it went away. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t move.
The wolf let out a soft whine, then crouched, lying on the ground, and hiding its head between its front paws. It didn’t stir, didn’t make another sound, though now and then its tail twitched.
Gradually, Danny’s fear began to ease. Yes, it was a wolf, huge and terrifying, but it hadn’t made any attempt to come near him, hadn’t moved from that spot on the floor.
Danny, starting to get sore from holding the same tense position, wiggled around a little, watching carefully for any sign the wolf was changing his mind about ignoring him. But all the wolf did was whine again, his tail flicking once in the air.
This was Chris. The Alpha had told him he’d understand him, even as a wolf. That Danny could talk to him. So he gave it a go.
“Chris?”
The wolf’s head turned his way, and he jumped. But all Chris did was settle his head down so they were eye to eye.
“Can—can you flick your tail again?” He wanted to know just how well Chris could understand him.
The wolves tailed flicked into the air before settling again.
“Could you stand up?”
The wolf did.
“And lie back down again.”
The wolf settled down with a low whine. Was Danny annoying him? He wasn’t a dog so Danny supposed being treated like one was probably irritating.
He wasn’t as scared as when Chris had first changed, confident now that Chris knew who he was and could hear him. Should they leave it there for today? Or was Danny prepared to take another step forward?
Getting his feet under him proved tricky, given how shaky his knees felt. But he did it, standing slowly to as not to alarm the passive wolf.
“I’m going to come closer,” he called. The wolf didn’t move but his tail flicked again.
It was probably the hardest few steps he’d taken in his life, trying to swallow down his fear at bringing himself closer and closer to an animal that could kill him with a snap of its jaws. Only it wasn’t ‘an animal’, it was Chris. He knew Chris, had spent a lot of time with him, and he was intimately familiar with Chris’ scent. Which was why it was both confusing and enlightening to have that scent fill him as he crept closer, the same, but different, the heavier scent of wolf stronger now. There was no mistaking that the wolf and Chris were one. He’d seen the transformation with his own eyes.
He slowed as he got closer. What next? They hadn’t talked about what to do if he got over his abject terror and managed to approach. Chris still hadn’t moved, his bright eyes watching Danny’s progress.
“Maybe… maybe I could touch you?”
It was stupid to ask such a question with no way to evaluate a response, but Chris’ tail flicked very decidedly before settling again.
“Is that a yes?”
His tail flicked again.
“And two flicks for no?” he queried, surprised he’d managed a joke amid all the tension. Chris’ tail flicked twice.
He was trembling as he got close enough to do what he needed to do, a fine shaking that seemed to spread from his fingers right to his toes. Kneeling on the mat next to Chris, he kept his eyes on Chris’ face, on his eyes, on his mouth, unable to erase the worry of those jaws closing over him. Reaching out a hand, he tentatively brushed Chris’ fur before pulling back, surprised to find it softer than he’d expected.
The wolf didn’t react, so Danny felt brave enough to try again, letting his hand settle on Chris’ flank, feeling the soft fur and the warm body underneath, rising and falling with Chris’ even breaths.
Growing bolder, he stroked his hand along Chris’ body, mesmerized by how solid he felt, how real. How could it be, that what had mere minutes before been a man, standing tall beside him, was now a large, powerful animal?
Chris moved, flopping onto his side, exposing his belly to Danny. Dogs did that, too, didn’t they? He’d never been a dog person, they hadn’t liked him. Maybe that had something to do with his scent? His hand ranged further, finding the fur on Chris’ underbelly even softer. A rush of heat flooded his face when he realized he wasn’t petting a dog, but a person, someone who understood every word he said, every action he took. He retreated, getting to his feet, and pulling back a few steps. Chris rolled over, getting his paws under him, and pushing upwards in one sleek movement as if to follow him. Danny panicked, and stumbled backward, almost tripping over his feet.
“I… I need… I’m going to go downstairs,” he managed to say, before turning and fleeing.