The clearing he took me to was somewhat at the midway point of the campgrounds, which made sense considering that everyone liked to keep their kids close by, enhanced senses or not. While it was highly improbable that anyone would beset our event to abscond with a kid while surrounded by shifters, it wasn’t impossible, so it was best to take at least some precautions.
“Here we are,” Benny said, hands on his hips as he gave the scene a nod. A dozen or so kids were running around, as well as two wolves, a bear, and two tiny foxes.
I frowned. From what I knew,kitsunewere nearly the same size as wolf shifters, had many tails, and often glowed slightly even during the day. But then I belatedly remembered that theyearned their size and tails as they aged, and that kids could shift as early as five.
Huh, so I was quite literally looking at baby shifters. How fascinating that their biology and shifting process varied so much from wolf shifters. As far as I knew, horse and bear shifters also didn’t get their animal forms until puberty, so maybe it was influenced by environment.
Who knew? Certainly not me. But that was fine because I had plenty of other important things to occupy my mind. Like playing frisbee with my son, for example.
“You ready to shift?” Benny asked, still sounding a bit cautious. While I loved that he was trying to help me be comfortable in my wolf form again, I hated that he felt like he had to walk on eggshells about it.
“That I am,” I said, trying to sound like a hip and happy dad. “Hope you’re ready to throw.”
“I wasbornready.”
“That’s funny, I thought you were born Benny.”
“Boo, cringe!”
“You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means,” I shot back, then wondered if I’d ever showed him the movie that quote was from. If not, I needed to get on that. Maybe between episodes of the mini-series Giselle’s father had given him.
“Oh yeah?” my son countered, and I had a pretty good idea about what he was going to do. “Well, I thinkyoushould think fast!”
And then he threw the frisbee. Pretty far for his size and age, I might add. But I was already falling forward into a shift.
It wasn’t a rapid one, as those tended to hurt—especially when one was as rusty as I was—but it was fairly quick. My joints groaned and my bones snapped as fur settled over my body in a cooling blanket, the layers of my coat designed to dispel heat.I managed to land on the ground on all fours without face-planting and took off after the flying disc.
It wasn’t a challenge to catch up with it and grab it in my teeth before it hit the ground, but I had to be careful so my large canines didn’t sink through it completely. But when I landed on the ground and turned to my son, his excited cheer was worth any discomfort that came from shifting.
“Yeah! Good catch, Dad!”
I was all set to trot to him so we could play a very different game of catch than a human son and father might, when I heard a whistle to my side. Craning my head, I saw a young man, maybe a couple of years older than Benny, trot up.
“Here, I can throw it for you,” he said. “My mama had to take a break!”
I followed his pointed finger to see a smaller, gray wolf flopped over at the edge of the clearing, two small children running in circles around her. Yeah, that tracked. If I had three little ones, I’d be exhausted too.
I dropped the frisbee at his feet in response and he happily took it, not even commenting on the wolf spittle. With a whoop, he threw it in the general direction of my son.
So naturally, I ran after it.
Bit by bit, more kids began to join us. And while my lungs were burning at the sudden spike in exercise, my wolf waslovingit.
Although I was kind of taking a back seat to his natural instincts, I could feel how much he’d missed having a community, and how much he desired being surrounded by other shifters. Other wolf pups. It was his job as an alpha to nurture them. Protect them. So, although it wasn’t the same as having our pack and all the souls he’d sworn himself to, it was still a lovely respite.
Time got away from me, and I didn’t realize how long I’d pushed myself until Natalie appeared at the edge of the clearing with Veronica on her hip.
“She wants Daddy,” she called. “I can take over this disc game from here.”
“It’s called frisbee!” Benny panted as I trotted over to her, a bit embarrassed that I needed to catch my breath in order to shift back to human.
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“No, you didn’t!”
“Dabbah!” Veronica squealed as I approached, and that pretty much stopped me dead in my tracks. Did she recognize me as a wolf?How? The only time she could have possibly seen me in my wolf form was when her original parents were alive, so she would have been younger than nine months. Surely that wasn’t possible!
I returned to my human form a bit faster than I should have, already reaching for Veronica as I straightened. Veronica reached for me too, not even blinking that I’d suddenly changed from an animal to a man.
