“Okay, I’ll be right back.”
“Please,” Gabe said, suddenly looking up at me with an expression that could only be described as puppy dog. “Don’t run away. Please. I know this is all fucked-up, but I’m not a monster.”
I shook my head, my eyebrows knitting together. “That wasn’t even a thought in my mind.” Then, as if to prove it, Ileaned down and grabbed Gabe’s face in my hands and kissed him. “I’ll be quick.”
Maybe I truly had lost it? Every warning sign blared, every red flag thrown on the field. This man had the ability to transform into a wolf and end my life with one snap of his jaws. He was something out of this world. A storybook character that had escaped from the confines of his pages. Ishouldn’ttrust him. There were so many questions that needed to be answered before I could feel like I even had a slight grasp of the situation.
And yet…
I fully believed him.
Gabe smiled up at me, his bright blue eyes gleaming with the threat of tears spilling over. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” I said, returning his smile. “I’ve always been an advocate for animals. I donate to the ASPCA yearly.”
“Fuck you,” he said with a laugh.
I winked at him and took off down the path, hoping against all hope I didn’t bump into a hiker with my shirtless and bloody self.
Gabe really likedthe color blue.
I knew this—not only since he had told me that first time we hung out in the coffee shop—because I was currently sitting on his navy blue couch, my feet planted firmly in his baby blue and white striped rug, a dark blue pillow on my lap. I reached for the (navy blue) cup on the coffee table and took a long sip of the vodka soda Dylan had poured me.
“So,” I said, leaning forward and placing the cup back down with a loud clunk against the wood. I still didn’t quite have control over my fine motor skills. Apparently, finding out that magical beings lived hidden among us wasn’t really conducive to having a steady hand. “You all are part of the same pack?” I looked around the room, seeing familiar faces but unable to reconcile them with the people I knew they belonged to.
Dylan, Emmy, Chris, Soren.
Gabriel.
All of them shifters. And not just them, either. Two others had arrived at Gabe’s house roughly around the same time we had. There was Yuni, a stern-faced woman with a gentle touch, who immediately went to check on Gabe’s no-longer-existent wound and gave him some pills for the lingering pain. The other addition to the group was Raquel, who came in wearing a leather biker jacket, holding an energy drink in one hand and a perfectly rolled and fragrant blunt in the other.
“I think you could use this,” she had said, offering me a hit.
I vigorously shook my head. “The last time I smoked, I thought my lips had been permanently sealed by the Nutella I was shoveling into my mouth. I don’t need to get paranoid tonight.”
“Fair enough,” she said
“But thank you.”
She smiled, and instead of walking away to go light up her blunt, she had set it down and grabbed both of my elbows. I tensed for a moment, but the kind smile that crinkled her auburn-brown eyes made me relax. “You’re safe here.”
And after a brief moment to catch my breath and collectmy thoughts, the group gathered in the living room to explain what was going on.
“Yes,” Emmy answered. He still had on our team jersey from filming. The baby blue stripes fit in perfectly with Gabe’s furnishings. “We are all part of the Burlington pack. I’m the alpha, so I take on most of the leadership duties. Make decisions on engaging with other packs, ultimately make the decision on accepting anyone new into ours.” His tone became oddly pointed in that moment. I straightened in my seat as he continued. “Not every shifter belongs to a pack or even has them. Hawk shifters, for example, are largely solitary people, scattered all throughout. Then you have the horse shifters, who have herds with a different hierarchy and territory system than us.”
I rubbed at the bridge of my nose. “And this is all real, right? I’m not being pranked? This isn’t some crazy hazing thing?”
“It’s not,” Dylan said, lips pursed. He scratched the back of his head. The streak of white across his eyebrow dipped with his apologetic expression.
“Holy shit,” I said. I covered my mouth with my hands and stared straight ahead at the drooping white orchid on Gabe’s bookshelf. Waves of realization were hitting me, and that brought with them the tug and pull of an anxiety attack. My brain had trouble connecting the dots here. As if they were speaking a language I only had the thinnest grasp of. I simultaneously wanted to bust out in stomach-tightening laughter or bolt through the front door and run out into the street, shouting for help.
Gabe, who’d been standing by the window, moved across the living room and sat down next to me. He squeezed my shoulder before rubbing the center of my back. “Do you need some time?” It was as if he read mymind. Or maybe my impending panic attack was that obvious?
Chris stood from the armchair. “This is a lot. We don’t all have to be here.”
“It is true,” Soren said. Dried blood streaked across the Bobcats logo on his jersey from when he helped get Gabe back to his car. “We can go.”
This was all so fucking insane. It didn’t make absolutely any sense, and yet I had seen it happen with my own eyes. I watched Gabe transform from a wounded wolf to a wounded man. And I saw that gruesome injury heal to a tiny crescent-shaped patch of discoloration against his tan skin within minutes.
