Besides, I was on an AHL salary, not an NHL contract. Not like I was going penthouse shopping in the first place. Thankfully the AHL union had fought tooth and nail over the last decade to up our salaries and make it so we didn’t need second jobs or off-season gigs, and there were a good number of sponsorship opportunities I’d taken part in, but I still drove my Toyota and wore my beat-up Nikes and flew coach like most everyone else.
I got out of my car, sneakers crunching on gravel and dirt. My breath rose in wispy puffs of steam. I stretched my hands over my head and yawned, the exhaustion from today creeping up on me. More gravel crunched.
Except.
I hadn’t moved.
My body turned rigid as I looked around. It was a residential street with rows of similar homes up and down the road, although there were large spaces between them. And in those spaces were hedges and flower beds and…
Holy fucking shit.
There was a wolf. An actual goddamned wolf standing just to the side of one of the hedges, half its body cloaked by shadow. Still, I could tell it was big, had to be the size of a Rottweiler, with snowy white fur and tawny brown markings. It had amber-gold eyes that were fixated on me, but it wasn’t in a posture that made it seem like it was going to lunge at me. The wolf seemed almost relaxed.
Unlike me. Very fucking much unlike me. I was as faraway from relaxed as I could get. On a scale from lounging on a beach in Fiji to being forced to tap-dance on the edge of an active volcano, I was definitely tap-dancing, and I didn’t even know how.
A dozen different survival strategies hit me at once, most of them provided by TV shows and movies. Did I make myself bigger by shouting and puffing my chest? Did I slowly move backward and get in my car? Did I make a run for it toward the house?
Did I move closer to it?
That last thought hit out of nowhere, with no basis on any kind of Discovery Channel show I’d seen in my life. But for some reason I couldn’t explain, it was also the loudest. It was a thought that felt correct in that moment. Like an instinct tugging a newly hatched sea turtle toward the light of the moon, toward the ocean.
That Ihadseen on a Discovery Channel show.
I stepped forward. The wolf didn’t move. It didn’t snarl, didn’t twitch, just continued to stand there, eyes pinned on mine. Its ears were up and its tail down, all signs that it was seemingly not going to attack.
Another step. What the hell was I doing? This wasn’t a stray puppy; this was a wild animal. I should just leave it alone.
One more step.
The wolf reacted at that. It took a step forward, raising its lips and showing a sinister set of teeth. Before I could even consider the fatal mistake I’d just made, the wolf turned around and bolted. It ran with the swiftness and grace of a shooting star. It disappeared into the dense wall of trees behind my house.
I dropped my head and let out a relieved breath. Thatwas dumb on my part, but thankfully, my lack of survival instincts didn’t get me mauled.
I would have to research what to do around wolves, though. They weren’t exactly an issue in Florida, but maybe they were a bigger problem up here in Vermont.
Chapter Three
Fated What??
GABE
I was huntinghim like he was prey.
Why the fuck was I hunting him?
It had all started earlier in the evening. I had just arrived home when I suddenly got an uncontrollable urge to shift. It was like an insanely frustrating itch right square in the center of your back, where you could never properly scratch it yourself.
I stepped out into the yard. Shifting was second nature at this point. Like taking a deep breath of air, filling my lungs with oxygen and holding it there for a moment before letting it whoosh out. Took about the same amount of time too.
I pulled at the threads of my other form, wrapping them around myself, falling down to my hands and knees. A haze encompassed me, both inside and out. If anyone stumbled on the scene, they’d see something like the shifting image of a mirage. Something they couldn’t quite make out. That was by design, nature’s way to keep my identity a secret.
Moments later, I was in my wolf form. The world wasbrighter, the scents stronger, the sounds like individual symphonies in my highly tuned ears. For first-time shifters, this sensory overload sometimes led to seizures and migraines, at least until they became accustomed to the vibrant tapestry of life that humans could never fully appreciate.
For shifters like me? It washeaven.
I loved being in tune with the world around me, in ways I couldn’t be when I was slumming it in my human form. Some nights, I’d just run through the forest, soaking it all in, following a particular scent I found interesting. Maybe that of a rutting deer or of a secret field of wildflowers or someone’s missing purse.
Tonight, though, there had been a single trail I became determined to follow. It was a new scent in the air. I couldn’t tell what it was, only that it was calling to something deep inside me. So I ran. Followed my nose. Leaves and twigs crunched under my paws. I kept to the woods, weaving through the trees with a speed that rivaled that of when I was on the ice. I hadn’t even realized the scent was drawing me closer and closer to the Bobcats Ice Arena until I spotted the bright lights of the parking lot.
