“Yeah, just thinking.” He hadn’t been lying about wanting to learn about Logan. Blind trust wasn’t something he was overly comfortable with, although there was little choice if he wanted to escape life as a pack member, but he wanted to learn as much about Logan as he could in the meantime.
But if he had to leave his parents behind, could he actually go through with it?
“What do you want?” Logan asked as they stood at the bar.
“Um...” Cole glanced around the half-full pub. He recognised a couple of people, regulars, but the others could be anyone. Who’d overheard him last time? Were they here now? He turned back to the bar and cast a glance over the lager on tap. “I’ll have a Heineken please.” He’d planned on having a Coke or something, but now that they were here, and after the morning he’d had, a cold beer in the sun sounded about the best thing ever.
They took their drinks out into the beer garden and found a table near the back. As Cole sat, he caught Logan’s attention and raised an eyebrow, hoping Logan got what he meant.Can we talk?
Logan gave the slightest shake of his head and threw a pointed glance at a table to his left. Logan had his back to them, but Cole had a clear view. Three people sat at the table, two women and a man. They weren’t paying him and Logan any attention, or it didn’t look like they were, but they could still hear their conversation if they wanted to.
He sighed.
Any questions he asked would need to be carefully worded. It wasn’t against any rules to ask shifter stuff, especially if he was expected to join a pack soon, but he’d have to ask them in such a way that it didn’t raise any red flags. Taking a sip of his pint, Cole pondered where to start.
There was one thing that had always fascinated him about shifters, in a weird kind of way. “Can I ask you a question about shifting?”
Logan shrugged, not seeming bothered by it, so Logan figured it was a safe topic. “When we studied shifter anatomy at school, the main focus was how your body transformed from human into your wolf form. I remember asking if you could do that half-shift thing like you see in some films.” He made claw hands and bared his teeth. Logan laughed. “I think the reply was it was physically possible, but not something that was widely done, and she refused to talk about it in any greater depth. Is that true? Can you do it?”
Logan took a long drink of his pint before answering. “She wasn’t wrong, but it’s not as hard as she made it sound.” He met Cole’s gaze, grey-blue eyes boring into Cole’s. “It’s easy enough to force just my fangs and teeth out, but we tend not to do it because it’s incredibly painful to keep your body in that state.”
Cole set his glass down and leaned forward, fascinated. “More so than turning your whole body into a wolf?”
Logan pulled a face. “Well, no, but when we shift, although the pain is excruciating, it’s over before your body has fully registered it. And as my wolf, everything is where it’s supposed to be.If I force my claws and teeth to come out while still in human form, then I’m making my body do something it’s not made for. My fangs split my gums and my jaw isn’t really equipped to handle teeth that large.” He lifted his hands. “And my fingers aren’t made to have claws. They need to come out somewhere, and my body is constantly trying to heal itself around everything.” Clasping his hands, he set them back on the table. “All in all, it’s not a very pleasant experience and takes too much focus to maintain. We’d be useless trying to fight anyone in that state, so it’s kind of pointless.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Despite everything Logan had just explained, of course Cole couldn’t think about anything else but what it would look like. He tried to picture Logan with huge fangs and claws but struggled to imagine it. Seeing it on TV was one thing, but sat across from Logan in the pub and attempting to visualise it happening was totally different.
Logan sighed, smile wry. “You want to see it, don’t you?”
“Nope.” Cole shook his head, all the while thinking,Yes, that would be awesome.
“Mhmm.” Logan tapped his nose. “I can smell the excitement on you.”
“Can you?” Cole frowned. “Is that a thing?”
“No, but your eyes keep darting between my mouth and my hands with sort of an excited gleam to them. You’re trying to picture it now, aren’t you?”
Now Logan had mentioned his mouth and his hands, Cole was having a few other thoughts that were totally unwelcome. “Yes,” he said, wanting to derail that before it gathered speed. “I won’t lie. It’s hard to picture you being allgrrr. But I don’t expect you to hurt yourself just to sate my curiosity.”
Logan didn’t say anything in reply for a good few minutes, and Cole figured that was the end of the conversation. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the three shifters get up and leave. A minute or so later, Logan rolled his shoulders.
“Right.” He looked over at the other patrons in the beer garden—none of whom were paying them any attention—then back at Cole. “Sorry, had to wait until they left. It’s not against the rules or anything, it’s just odd, and I’d rather not attract any more attention if I can help it.”
“You don’t have to,” Cole said, even as his heart raced. “I’m really not that bothered.”
Logan barked out a laugh. “You didn’t mean a single word of that.”
Grinning, Cole sat back in his seat to get a better view. “No, I didn’t.”
“I can only do it for a few seconds, so watch carefully.”
“Okay.” Cole wouldn’t look away even if the whole place erupted into fighting around them. He licked his lips, the anticipation killing him.
Logan cracked his neck from side to side and flexed his hands, then closed his eyes.
Cole held his breath.
His face blurred for a second. One moment Logan looked totally normal, the next he had huge fucking fangs, smeared with blood, that looked way too big for his mouth. Cole shot back in his seat, gaze dropping to where long, sharp-looking claws protruded from the bloodied ends of Logan’s fingers.
