“I can’t believe your friend Remington is the rumored werewolf,” Nishiki murmured. “Mother was right after all.”
Sage chuckled. “Yup. She’s right about a lot of things. He’s actually the one who introduced us to her, so it’s because of Remington that we know Dr. Pine at all.”
“I’ll have to thank him for that later,” Nishiki said with a smile.
As if on cue, a heavily breathing Remington caught up with us. He’d obviously run back as fast as he could.
“Nero’s scent trail stopped at the river behind the manor,” Remington told us, panting. “It’s a clean loop, there and back.”
“The river was a dead end, huh?” Sage stopped suddenly. “Wait. I smell…something.”
We paused in silence as Sage scented the air. The air was cool and the humans were huddled in their dens for the night, with only a few streetlamps lighting the path.
Sage abruptly darted to the left. We followed closely, trying to keep quiet as Sage led us around the back of a small human home. There was a large tree in the yard with a large pond at its base. I narrowed my eyes. There was an odd metal grate on top of the pond.
I quickly glanced to the home. All the lights were off, indicating the household was asleep. The only light was the stars and moon above us.
“Here!” Sage called quietly.
The four of us gathered around the grated pond. As soon as I gazed into the water, I gasped.
Swimming below the metal grate was a small gray shark.
“What the hell?” I muttered.
“This is where the scent trail leads,” Sage said in confusion. “Does that mean…?”
“That can’t be Nero,” Nishiki said, shaking his head.
Starry, who had been placed on the ground, watched with great interest as the shark swim in angry circles. While the rest of us weren’t paying attention, she reached her paw down to touch the surface of the water.
Sage gasped. “Starry, no—”
Our daughter, ever the curious kitten, slapped the water with her paw. The sudden disruption startled the shark and it leapt into the air, hitting the grate.
“Ow!”
All of us froze. That was definitely a man’s voice coming from the shark.
“Nero?” Nishiki demanded. He grabbed the grate but wasn’t strong enough to remove it himself. I shifted to help him, and with both our strength, the grate flew off.
The shark—Nero—raised his head above the surface, just enough that his gills were still inside the water.
“Nishiki!” Nero gasped. I couldn’t read his fishy expression, but from the sound of his voice, he sounded deeply relieved. “You changed back!”
“And you—became a shark? For some reason?” His brother sighed. “Why is this happening to us?”
“I can’t change back!” Nero exclaimed.
I looked at Remington. It wasn’t fun, but maybe we could help Nero the same way we helped Nishiki.
“We know how to change you back to human form,” I said. “But it might be uncomfortable. We’re going to take you out of the water.”
“I don’t care, do anything, please!” Nero cried.
“Nishiki, can you help me?” I asked.
Together we reached down to pull Nero from the water. He wriggled a bit on land, his skin rough on my hands, then his gills began to flare. He made a wet gasping sound before—
