“O-kay. Sorry to keep you.” Before I was able to scramble away, she tugged the pen from my hand.
Her words as I rushed out of the area, disappearing into the shadows, were a reminder I was a complete idiot.
“Oh, by the way. The cut under your eye. It’s almost healed.”
CHAPTER 16
Steven
Shifting.
Shifters were creatures of habit. We’d learned to control our primal needs, yet just like hunger for food, we also had a spiritual hunger that manifested itself in times of stress. That’s why two decades before, parks had been developed to feed our canine needs where we could run free from fear of discovery and persecution.
I’d heard other shifters had similar recreational facilities, but we certainly didn’t offer cross use of our environment. We were predators and couldn’t promise full control once in our natural forms.
But the growth of parks had been discontinued after our existence had been outed. I’d need to head to upstate Georgia or over to Alabama if I wanted to run freely. That just wasn’t going to happen. However, after the day’s practice and the level of rage I’d felt, sex wasn’t going to prevent me from losing both control and my freaking mind.
Even with Christine.
Maybe that’s why I was still sitting in my car in the tiny parking lot beside the Wolf Bar. I’d left Tony’s house because several of the guys were coming over for a few beers and to play some darts.
Not only did I want nothing to do with the evening, but I had a feeling they didn’t want me involved either.
Something just wasn’t right. I could feel it.
While my time spent with Christine had manifested in a surge in the darkest of my hungers, the truth was I’d been experiencing restless nights, a desire to spend copious amounts of time deep within forests, and had a hankering for rare steaks over the last few months.
That wasn’t normal.
With the events of the last couple of days, I was concerned that I was losing all sense of control. There were legendary stories about some shifters who abandoned their human side completely, falling prey to a psychosis that eventually turned them mad. When that happened, they became dangerous.
If the stories told to us as children were true, the only way to control their carnal urges was death. Evidently, our ancestors had tried locking them away, but that hadn’t tempered either their anger or their raging hungers.
What if I was turning into a vicious beast?
There was only one man who could provide answers.
My father.
So I dialed his number.
If we were in the same city, I’d head to his favorite place in the whole world, the location where he ran his corporate ventures and led the pack, which was growing larger every day. His study.
I’d loved being in the room as a kid because it smelled of cigar smoke and first edition leather books. He’d always thought he was hiding his smoking habit from my mom, which was ridiculous. She knew everything that happened with and around our family.
“I need your advice, Dad.”
“I thought you might give me a call.” My dad’s voice was gruffer than usual, which meant I’d interrupted him while doing big business. I’d known he had his hands full with some coalition presented by the mayor, not as the leader of the Chicago but as the king of the pride, also large in numbers.
A new trend had emerged since shifters no longer hid in the shadows. The various species had realized there was strength in numbers, combining various packs or in the case of lions, different prides. It wasn’t always an amicable alliance, but given our behavior no longer mirrored that of our ancestors, all in all it worked.
Why was it necessary?
Because of the humans determined to erase us from this earth.
“Why is that?” I asked, uncertain I wanted to hear the answer.
“You’re living in Florida, not Italy. We get the news here, son. You’re a household name in Chicago, so as soon as your name dropped as almost beating a man to death, my phone started ringing off the hook.”
