Chapter 3. Aspen
I shrieked and threw my bushel of firewood at him.
"Who are you and what are you doing in my camp!" I yelled at him as I covered my eyes. Oh no, now he could attack me! I quickly opened my eyes again, was met with —for the lack of better words — ding dong that burned my corneas and decided that covering up was still the better choice. If I died now, that was probably for the best. Then I wouldn't have to see him in all his “male glory”. In fact, just kill me now.
"Relax, it is just me," he called, his voice low and hoarse and oddly sexy.
With one hand covering my face, I felt around for my bag. Without really looking at anything, I threw it in his general direction. "Cover yourself up!"
"Alrighty, if you don't want a peek at the goods, your loss." I could just hear the smirk in his voice. After some ruffling, I decided to slowly peek through my fingers and was happy to report that at least he was somewhat covered up. But damn, that was one smooth chest.
Focus! Don’t go crushing on strangers, Akira!
Especially not naked, wolf-stealing strangers that were obviously trying too hard to look cool.
"Who are you and what did you do with my wolf!" I yelled at him as I pointed one of my longer sticks at him. As long as he didn't point his stick at me, I was good.
"Pumpkin, I told you to relax."
"I will not relax!" I bellowed, my concern for my wolf growing with the minute. He was hurt and wounded and couldn't defend himself. I needed to protect my wolf.
I inhaled deeply. "1... 2...3...4..." I softly muttered under my breath as I calmed myself down. I let out a sharp sigh and turned myself back to the naked Adonis. "I will ask you one more time. Where. Is. My. Wolf..." I spit out, my whole body tense as I prepared to attack him any moment.
"Princess, relax. I’m the wolf," he grinned, the smirk appearing on his face oddly wolfish and familiar.
I squinted my eyes and looked at his leg. His calf was heavily muscled, but I could make out the wound that I had been dressing for the past day. But then again, that could've been any kind of wound, for all I knew, he inflicted it on himself.
"Okayyy..." I muttered as I looked from his leg to his face and back again. So he was obviously crazy and Akira, if you know one thing, never mess with crazy. "Well, that is settled then. Oh, and my name is not baby, it's Akira." I dropped my firewood and strutted towards the fire, poking it up a little more.
"What do you mean: 'it is settled then'?" he incredulously asked.
"If you’re the wolf, you owe me at least a week worth of dried meat," I sweetly smiled at him as I broke some sticks for the fire.
"That's what you took from this conversation? You’re worried about food?" he asked, confused by how unimpressed I was.
"Baby, relax," I repeated his words from earlier as I threw him a bored look. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of riling me up again.
No, don't poke the crazy.
"Why doesn't this freak you out?"
"I've seen weirder things." I actually had.
"Oh, I see... Let me just get a good whiff of you," he mumbled as he sniffed the air surrounding me. "It is because you’re one of those people."
"Excuse me?"
"I know your tribe, you occupy the West," he added, his face lighting up as he saw he had uncovered my little secret.
"So that is why you smell so familiar. I knew something was up."
"Yeah, sure, whatever makes you sleep at night," I scoffed, not liking how he kept turning the tables on me.
"No, no, no, honey, now I get it. You helped me cause your tribe idolises anything Wolf related. In your eyes, I’m a direct descendant of your God, but you can just call me Aspen," he grinned, his smirk so sexy I wanted to slap it off his face.
"Don't mistake yourself, you’re nothing special."
He flashed his eyes. "Oh, but I’m. If I recall correctly, you aren't regular shifters. No, your tribe is the one with the chained wolves. None of you can shift at will."
I ground my teeth on each other as hearing him say it made it even worse. He was right, our tribe couldn't shift. We hadn't been able for centuries now. We were cursed. The reason why went way back to the beginning of history, where the Twelve Spirits had just begun distributing the Earth.
The Swan had chosen the coasts, while the Black Bear had taken the great forests for himself. The Puma had settled for the desert, while the Coyote and Wolf quarrelled over the great Wastelands. Eventually, the Coyote settled for the East, while the Wolf had taken the West. It had taken them seven nights and seven days to make a fair trade-off, and while they thought the hardest was over, the worst was yet to come.
There weren't just lands they needed to distribute, every Spirit was given the honour of picking out a gift for their people. While the Snake picked youth for his people, the Swan chose beauty for his folk. The Boar chose to grant his people abnormal strength in times of distress, while the Eagle gave his tribes the gift of foresight. The Monkey from the Mountains picked for his descendants, configuration, and the Black Bear oddly enough asked for the Eternal Sleep. The Puma took invisibility, a feature the rest would later envy him for, while the Turtle chained his people in an endless circle of rebirth. The Rabbit was granted eternal peace and as the last of the Ten, the Porcupine chose forbidden blood magic. But the Wolf and the Coyote, they couldn't stop fighting. They both had their eyes set on the ancient magic of the Shifters so they could live on eternally in their own descendants. But as it was, both couldn't get this power.
So they had a face off, one that lasted for many years. And in the end, the Wolf came out in as the ultimate victor. So we were given the rare power of transformation, something the Coyote loathed. As the last of the twelve Spirits, instead of choosing a gift for his people, he chose only for himself. A curse.
He cursed the Wolf and every single one of his descendants. And so, instead of us becoming a race of shifters, we were now a pained folk with wolves stuck inside us.
So this bag of muscles couldn't have been able to shift. So either he was crazy or he was lying. Maybe he was a dirty coyote and was just pretending to be my companion so he could lure me into a false sense of security.
Yes, that must be it. Crazy Coyote, the worst of their kind. And it didn't seem like he was about to leave, no, he was still hanging around.
I jumped back as I pointed the stick at him again. Better sort this out now before he became even crazier. "Tell me who you are. Or get the hell out of my camp!"
He rolled his eyes. "This again? I told you, I am the wolf."
"Impossible. Wolves can't shift. None of us can."
"Well then, today is your lucky day, pumpkin." He flashed me another smile and to my annoyance, he had perfectly white teeth. That bastard.
"Don't call me pumpkin. And if you’re a wolf, just prove it," I challenged him, crossing my arms as I dared him to make a fool out of himself.
"Alright. But you asked for it."
If you ever thought the transformation from man to wolf was painless and smooth, you were horribly mistaken.
In front of my very eyes, Aspen's skin split open as all his limbs twisted in a way they weren't supposed to bend. He writhed and groaned in pain as I heard all his sockets loudly pop, his bones one by one realigning from a human skeleton to that of a wolf. He fell to the cold ground as he screamed in agony until he no longer possessed a human face or mouth to scream with. Instead, the forest was filled with a howl that sent a twinge of shivers down my spine as I found myself in the company of a grey wolf.
He stared at me with his dark amber-coloured eyes, the pain of his transformation still lingering in his eyes.
Guilt washed over me and I immediately fell to my knees as I hugged the beautiful animal. "I’m sorry I made you go through that," I softly sobbed in his fur, not believing he actually did this for me.
Aspen the wolf gently licked the back of my hand as he rubbed his soft head against my shoulder. The pain slowly faded from his eyes and he didn't seem to blame me for it. Maybe he was used to it.
I didn't want him to be used to it. It was never okay to get used to pain.
He gently nudged against my knee as he dribbled around my seated figure. He wagged his tail playfully against my leg as he ran circles around me.
"You want to play?" I smiled as I wiped the tears away from my cheeks.
He happily barked, resembling a tame dog rather than a wild wolf. Then again, he wasn't exactly a wild wolf.
I grinned as I stood back up. "I guess you won't be able to transform back for a while, huh?"
He softly whined as he tilted his head at me, his dark eyes sad again. So that was no.
"Sorry..."
Aspen nipped at my ankles as he bumped against my hip. I let out a yelp as I swatted him away. "Alright, alright. I'll run with you."
And so, I ran into the night with my wolf by my side. Having a companion wasn't such a bad thing after all.
Apparently, it took Aspen the whole night to refill his reserves before he could turn human again.
Somehow, it didn't seem nearly as painful for him to shift into his human form. Yes, sure, there was some whining and whimpering, but the transformation went much more smoothly.
And at the end, instead of having a beautiful wolf as my companion, there was a sweaty ball of male lying next to my feet. He was slowly panting as if he ran a marathon, but I wasn't complaining. In the position he was in, I couldn't see his "crown jewels" and I was fine with that. Well...
No! I was fine with not seeing them.
"You okay?"
"Never been better, pumpkin," he grinned, flashing me his signature smirk.
I huffed. I liked wolf Aspen much better than man Aspen. "Get up, you sweaty hairball."
"I'm glad to see you too."
Why were his teeth so white? "Whatever," I scoffed, turning on my heels as I walked away from him. I didn't plan on waiting for him to get up and do his naked dance again. I was already scarred for life.
"Oh come on, princess. Don't pout because you didn't get a peek at the goods!"
Yes, I definitely liked wolf Aspen better. I heard his bare feet hit the snowy ground and briefly wondered how he wasn't hurting himself.
"Tell me I’m not the man of your dreams!"
Ugh. What did I care about his feet. His ego probably protected him from any harm. But then again, he was kind of dreamy... In a messed up, gross way. Yuck, what was I thinking?
I stomped towards our camp and planted my ass down on the stupid hard log. Why did I leave the comfort of home again?
Aspen was right behind me as he casually strolled into our camp sight, like he was out camping for fun. Why didn't he seem affected by the maggoty logs or the freezing wind? It wasn't fair!
Stupid wolf. Stupid sexy wolf. With his sexy smirk. And his sexy voice. Arggh, I should just kill him right now.
But then I would never find out how he shifted. I'd been so amazed by the whole transformation, that I forgot we weren't supposed to be able to shift. Now, if he would just tell me how he did it, I could kill him after.
"So how did you shift?" I nonchalantly asked Aspen as I threw him one of my smaller bags, hoping he would cover himself up.
"Wouldn't you like to know, darling."
"Really? More pet names?" I sighed in exasperation. "Just tell me how you did it."
"N to the ope."
Why was he so freaking annoying? N to the ope? Who even says that?
Being nice to him obviously didn't make him respect me. I groaned as I banged my fists against my forehead. Ouch.
"Tell me how you shifted," I ordered the practically naked man standing in front of the campfire. The only thing that apparently survived his shift was a small amulet on a piece of string. Apart from that, he was as naked as the day he was born. Luckily, he was now holding a small leather bag in front of his... Well, you can imagine what he was trying to hide. Frankly, he wasn't doing a very good job. The bag was too small. Or his... Thing... Too big. It didn't really matter.
I directed my eyes towards his waxy chest and immediately regretted that decision. With the dancing fire, the shadows cast on him just made him look even more sexy. I wondered if biting him would be as satisfying as biting in a roasted leg of lamb.
Focus!
"I want to know how you’re able to shift. Tell me." I repeated myself sternly. At least, I tried to be. His pulled up eyebrow and the smirk told me I might not have succeeded.
"Ain't going to tell you my secret, princess. Now, be a dear and throw me one of your furs, will you? I’m kind of on display here." he grinned, the bag falling with a dull thud on the ground I cleared.
"The furs are in the bag!" I groaned as I couldn't believe him. "Oh, and I’m only going to tell you one more, my name is Akira!" I exclaimed as I covered my eyes hastily. I had already seen enough of his... Thing... Now I understood why some people called it "junk" though. Ugh.
Aspen casually threw our last log on the fire and as he did, I saw his muscles flex under his shirt. He was just so damn sexy and I couldn't understand why. Almost so sexy I didn't worry about it being our last log, but I did. The rain from last night had really screwed us over.
I threw another look at the golden boy. Okay, he was sexy enough to make me forget. If our fire went out, maybe he could warm me up. I didn't understand why I was so attracted to him, I mean, he was just a regular guy. With incredible hair. And freakishly handsome features. And muscles that made me swoon. Okay, he was just attractive as hell, but I had been around hot guys before and they never made me feel like this. Well, hot guys might be a little overstatement. I had been around guys before, but they, well, they were no Aspen, that was for sure.
Mine.
I jumped up as I heard my wolf's voice clearer than ever. I felt her stir inside me and I instantly knew what this meant.
Mate.