This morning, I had woken up in one world, and tonight, I would be going to sleep in another.
I just had to accept that as fact.
And yet… I was the only non-supernatural in this room.
“No,” I said, forcing myself to say something. “Stay. Please.” My voice was shaky. I could hardly look around at the gathered group. Gabe didn’t scare me, but I wasn’t entirely comfortable with everyone else.
Not yet.
Gabe continued to rub my back. It was a soothing, grounding touch. He looked over at Emmy, who was already grabbing his coat. “You guys go. We’ll be okay. I’ll give him a crash course in shifters.”
“Call us if you need anything,” Emmy said. I lifted my gaze from the floor. Emmy smiled at me as he opened the door. “And Eli, welcome to the pack.”
Before I could refute anything—Pack? Welcome? I’m not one of you—he had left, the rest of the group following behind him.
The door closed with a quiet click. Gabe and I were alone.
“So,” he said. “What do you want to do now?”
I gave him a deadpan stare. He chuckled and bumped me with his shoulder.
“Let me refill your drink.” Gabe grabbed my glass and stood. “Tonight’s probably going to be a long one.”
I rubbed my face again and stretched, already feeling the stress of the day catching up to me. “You mentioned something about a hot tub?”
Chapter Nineteen
Vocabulary Lesson
GABE
Steam rosein thick plumes from the bubbling water. Eli propped his elbows on the rim of the hot tub, sipping his fourth vodka soda of the night. He set it back down on the edge and tilted his head back, looking up at the stars.
He looked pretty chill for someone who’d just had their entire lives turned upside down only a couple of hours before.
“What are you thinking?” I asked. There was still so much to explain to him, so many questions he likely wanted answered. I had barely scratched the surface about shifters and hadn’t even broached the topic of druids yet. What was Eli going to do when he found out there were people out there who could manipulate plants with their minds and control the natural energies that flow over the earth like invisible currents?
Yeah, no, that would have to be a topic for another day.
“What am I thinking? That maybe I wasn’t actually cross-faded and hallucinating that one time I thought I saw an alien run down my dorm hallway.”
“You were definitely hallucinating. Aliens don’t exist.”
Eli scoffed at that. “You’re telling me werewolves are real, but aliens aren’t?”
I narrowed my gaze at him. “We don’t use the term ‘werewolf.’ We go with were.”
“Why’s that?”
“Were is more all-encompassing. There aren’t just wolf shifters, and every shifter has a were form. It sounds weird when there’s a weresloth or a weresquirrel. Just a little clunky.”
Eli rubbed circles into the sides of his temple. “Is there a shifter for every type of animal?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “There are definitely some that are more common, though: hawks, horses, bears, wolves, panthers, and squirrels. There’s a huge squirrel shifter population on the West Coast, actually.”
“Is there, like, I don’t know, a secret online forum you guys congregate on or something?”
A jet of bubbles massaged my lower back. Eli sat directly across from me, his feet occasionally brushing against mine. My entire body thrummed and throbbed every time our feet touched. I may have been calm and cool above the water, but my throbbing, hard cock was telling a different story under the surface. “There’s ways to keep in touch and spread news, yes.”
