The baby needs to be changed.
Theo chuckled.He’ll figure it out. I have no doubt. He’s a good uncle.
Outside, it was as if the world had exploded— not into a million colors, but into a billion scents.
He was sensing things he’d never thought he could smell. He could smell beetles crawling, smell every single different tree and all of the birds. They each had different scents.
And the squirrels.
I hate squirrels.He bared his teeth and sniffed.Are there going to be squirrels?
Theo chuffed, tossed his head, and that sent another rush of scent at him, which made his knees tremble.Yes, but what you’re smelling, that strong one, that’s a porcupine.
His eyes went wide and he caught himself dancing a bit.There’s a porcupine? Where?
No. Bad dog.Theo stared at him, very stern, and a low soft rumble sounded.No porcupines, they hurt. And that porcupine’s name is Dave. He’s nice, but you’re new, and you might scare him.
The porcupine has a name?He hadn’t expected that.
Theo tilted his head as if he’d blown a whistle, paws stilling in the mass of pine needles.Do you have a name?
Things that you want to eat don’t have names, don’t they?
The fact that things you want to eat might have a name should make it important when you need to eat it.
Lesson number one of being a wolf.
Okay, I won’t eat Dave. But we can run.
We can absolutely run.The grin Theo gave him was wide and happy, his tail wagging like a flag in the air when he turned and made a run for it.
Liam gave chase, his bark ringing out through the woods. God, this was fun. He felt as if he was flying over the ground, and the sights and smells, the feel of hard-packed earth and the occasional mossy rock under his feet was stunning. He’d never realized how disconnected his human form was from the earth, but now he knew better.
At one point, he stopped, sniffing around for whatever it was that had caught his nose, and then he dropped to his side, kicking to his back so that he could roll in it.
Oh, Liam. Theo’s laughter carried through across their bond.Now you’re gonna have to have a bath.
I’ll go run in the stream. Liam popped up, shaking out his fur to do exactly that, heading down toward where the stream mapped the edge of the property, closer to Loyal’s part of the pack than his.
His. His path, his family, his land.
Theo nipped at his tail, and he turned around to bounce on his mate, play fighting, and soon Theo would smell just as bad as he did, but it was perfect and wonderful and huge, and Liam couldn’t believe this was his life. He was a wolf, and it wasn’t like Rory. It hadn’t been hard; it had just happened.
Well now, the hard part might be changing back to human.Theo told him.Sometimes, on the first or second shift that’s a little challenging.
But that’s with kids, right?Liam paused, tilting his head, then lifted his muzzle, sniffing the air, distracted.
Sometimes it’s that way with teenagers, too. It’s all about hormones, and this is your first time, so it could be that your wolf doesn’t want to let go.Theo walked up beside him and rubbed their bodies all along one another, before nuzzling his cheek.
I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. He nipped Theo’s nose and then took off running, his paws beating on the ground.
They ran for what seemed like hours, hitting the stream, splashing through it to wash off the scent with a bath, and then stopping for long drink of the cold water. Theo showed him the best place to hunt for small creatures like rabbits. They had to go below the tree line for that, way down the mountain from where their underground home lay. That was all right. They had his brothers and cousins to bring up supplies, and they would be able to hunt on Loyal and Jameson and Keegan’s land and pack it back up if they needed meat.
Or they could just do what they were doing now and hunt in wolf form, though that would be tough for Gael and the baby to begin with, of course.
Finally, when his tail and ears were drooping because he was exhausted, Theo pressed up against him, turning him, herding him back up toward their house.
We need to get back before you drop and just sleep where you are.
