She gaped at him, then finding no gentleness, towed her eyelashes low. “How? Why?” Mere whispers.
Darren cracked his neck from side to side. “Maybe because that’s the only food you’ve ingested?”
That made sense. Sort of.
Bea turned wide eyes toward Lori, as though the brown wolf with the anomalous venom possessed some furtive insight on what she’d become.
My brother took a step forward, and although he didn’t shrug me off, my fingers fell away from his arm. “So, can you shift?”
“I don’t know, Nate. I’m not sure how to do it.”
“Close your eyes. That always helps me.” Darren approached the cell. “Now, do you feel something stirring inside of you? Beneath your skin?”
Bea stood very still, lids closed, chest barely quivering. “My blood. I can feel my blood. And yours. I can hear it swishing through your veins.” She inhaled slowly. “I can smell it.”
“That’s normal,” Darren reassured her. “All your senses are heightened.”
“Normal?” Nolan’s eyebrows dipped over his blue eyes. “I can’t smell blood if it’s inside someone’s body.”
Bea’s eyes flipped open, and he flinched. Her brow scrunched at the fear dappling my brother’s face.
“Eyes on me, Bea,” Nate whispered, getting so close to the silver bars that Niall grabbed his shoulder.
Nate shrugged Niall’s hand off. “Keep your eyes on me and try to shift.”
Scarlet irises fixed on Nate, Bea concentrated on locating the supple cord that bound us to our other form. One pull, and our animal slid out. Sure, Bea wasn’t a teenager anymore, but at twenty-seven, the cord had yet to begin fraying.
“The moon’s high. Her wolf should be impossible to contain,” I heard Lucas whisper to Liam.
“Maybe if some of us shifted, it’d help her?” Nash offered.
Liam nodded. “Good idea.”
“Ads?” Nash raised a brow.
They walked toward the shelves, kicked off their shoes, and tossed off their clothes. Once transformed, they trotted back toward us. Adalyn’s cream coat glistened white under the clinical strips of neon lights, contrasting sharply to my ebony brother. They stopped beside Lori and exchanged words with her that were impossible to comprehend. Then Nash howled, and the sound echoed inside my bones. The fine hairs on my arms thickened in response, my skin tightened. I needed to shift.
Oh, how I needed to shift.
I gritted my teeth and breathed, in a desperate attempt to hang on a while longer, because once in fur, I would no longer be able to speak with Bea or with my brother. Incapable of resisting the pull, my parents shuffled backward, slid off their clothes, and slipped into their other selves. Like Nash and Adalyn, they padded back toward us. Mom glided her cheek against Lori’s in a show of gratitude and affection.
“Does your skin feel uncomfortably tight, your blood abnormally hot?” I asked.
Bea’s forehead puckered. “No.”
Nate’s mouth thinned until it was a pink slash on his face.
I rounded the silver bars, stopping beside Liam. “Could Lori have returned her to her original form?”
Her irises are red. She cries blood. Not to mention she can hear and smell ours.
“So, what?” I craned my neck to look at him. “You think she made her a vampire?” I hadn’t realized how loudly I’d spoken until every set of eyes locked on me.
“Vampires don’t exist, Knickknack,” Lucas said.
“Maybe now they do.” I approached Bea’s cell.
A growled,Not too close, stayed my feet.
