Dad nodded and leaned forward. “There’s only one thing you can do, and that is to have patience. I remember when you hit puberty. We already knew you were an alpha, so we had a bit of warning.” Dad grinned ruefully. “You? Oh man, you were a handful, though. Pissy attitude, angry outbursts. It was all your mother and I could do to handle you. I’ll tell you, that first night when you finally shifted, I’d never been so relieved in my life. It was exhausting, but we loved you. We supported you through it. That’s what you’ll have to do with Maddy. That’s the only advice I can give you. Until she’s comfortable and the wolf settles into the fact that it will never shift, you’ll have to be understanding.”
I walked back home and saw Felipe sitting outside. He was on the steps of the porch. When he saw me he sighed and stood.“Thank God, bro. I don’t know how much longer I could handle her,” Felipe said as he stood.
“What’s wrong?”
Felipe rolled his eyes and nodded toward the house. “Maddy just about killed a lady.” My eyes bulged, and Felipe patted the air in front of me, motioning me to calm down. “Not literally. Some chick in the grocery store pissed her off. To be fair, the lady was an entitled bitch. Just yanked a pack of hamburger out of Maddy’s hands. Like, big as shit, ballsy as hell. Took it out of her hand. Even my jaw dropped at the audacity of it. Maddy gets in the bitch’s face and more or less tells her to back up and get out before she beats the shit out of her. I’ve never seen a person look so scared. Lady beat feet and got the hell out of there. Left her cart and didn’t look back.
“So, then the whole rest of the time we were shopping, Maddy was raging about the chick. I couldn’t calm her down. Then the whole drive home?” Felipe shook his head in exhaustion. “I’m tired, bro. I’m gonna go home and take a nap.”
“Great,” I said and walked inside.
I found Maddy pacing in the kitchen. She kept going back and forth, not even noticing me until almost a full minute had gone by. She jolted to a stop and looked at me. “My period started,” she grumbled.
Oh good, I thought. Late-onset wolf pubertyandPMS. Secretly, I wondered who I’d pissed off in a past life to deserve so much stress in this life.
I stepped over, and before I got close, Maddy released a growl. I stopped dead in my tracks. The sound had been exactly like a shifter growl.
“Something’s wrong, Nico,” she hissed. “It’s not just stress. Something is wronginsideme.”
“I know,” I said, taking a seat on a stool. “I think I know why.”
The anger on Maddy’s face gave way to surprise. “What? What’s wrong with me? Tell me.” She sounded so desperate that it made my heart ache.
“I called Kenneth. I wanted to get his opinion on how you’ve been acting. He is almost a hundred percent sure that you’re a female alpha. The first one in almost three hundred years. It means your wolf is stronger, more powerful than usual. It’s why things have been so rough for you.”
Maddy put a hand to her chest. It took her a few seconds to respond, and I could almost see the questions forming inside her head. She took a seat beside me, and she already looked more relaxed. “So, you guys are sure?” she asked.
I nodded. “It’s really the only explanation for what you’ve been feeling. I can’t say it’s a hundred percent because no one has dealt with this before. You’re kind of like a unicorn. We’re learning as we go.”
Maddy groaned and flopped her arms onto the kitchen island. “Why is my life so fucked?” She gave me a sideways glance. “So, I’m basically going through puberty a second time?”
I shrugged. “Kinda.”
“Well, the first time wasn’t very fun. I remember screaming at my parents for stupid stuff. I’d break down, crying for literally no reason. And, oh God, so much masturbation. Like…so much.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. A grin spread on Maddy’s face, and it delighted me to see it. At least she was a little more relaxed. Sometimes the most stressful thing in the world was to not know. Once a name had been given to something, it became less scary and easier to deal with.
She turned to me and wrapped her arms around me. “Thanks for not hating me. I’m sorry for being such a moody bitch lately.”
“Hey, at least you didn’t threaten to kill me like that lady at the store.”
“Fuck.” She put a hand to her face, covering her eyes. “Felipe told you?”
“He did. Pretty cool story.”
She sank into me. “How long does shifter puberty last anyway?”
I grimaced. “It, uh, it could be months.”
“God almighty,” she muttered and put her face into my shoulder.
I rubbed her back. “It’ll be okay. We’ll get through it. I survived, and so will you. We’ll just take it one day at a time.”
“Can you promise me that you won’t hate me? Like, if it gets worse? I don’t want you to get so frustrated with me that you start to despise me.”
“That’s impossible,” I said, lifting her chin to meet her gaze. “How could I hate you when I love you so much?”
Maddy’s face went pale and her mouth dropped open. “What did you just say?”
