His skin darkens first — the gray going toward slate-black at the shoulders, at the back, at the line of his spine, the color spreading like ink in water. His body expands. Not just taller — denser. His shoulders thicken until they would not fit through a doorframe even ducking. His chest deepens. The scars on him stand up in raised ridges, white against the slate-dark, the marks of every blade and bullet his body has eaten reading like topography.
His tusks come up.
Full tusks — old-bone, curving up past his lower lip and reaching toward his cheekbones.
He is eight feet tall.
His knuckles crack like wood when he closes his hands into fists.
He looks at me.
The amber of his eyes is the same — deeper, darker, the pupils blown wide, but the amber holds. He lifts one massive hand and curls it into a slow fist over his heart. I feel my body respond, he is still mine.
Harek is last off the porch.
He steps out of his pants without ceremony. The shimmer is under the whole surface of his skin. I have only seen it at his shoulders and his collarbones. It is everywhere now — along his ribs, across his stomach, down the line of his hips, the green-gold moving in slow patterns I cannot follow. He is moss-green and gold light moving under moss-green and he is the most beautiful thing I have ever stood three feet away from.
He walks down off the boards.
He does not stop at a place. He keeps walking until he is at the edge of the clearing where the trees start, and there he changes.
He gets taller and thinner.
His proportions stretch — torso lengthening, arms lengthening, fingers going to a length that should not work and somehow does. The shimmer comes up brighter, light coming out of him now, a slow bioluminescence under the surface of his skin. His skin darkens — the deep moss-green going darker, into the color of wet bark — and the bones of him stand out as ridges along his jaw and his clavicle and the long lines of his arms.
His tusks lengthen — smaller than Crull's, sharper, more like blades — and two more come up beside the first two, twin curves of ivory along his upper jaw.
His eyes blow full luminous green. No black. No pupil. Just green light where his eyes were.
When he moves he does not walk, it looks like he flows.
He turns the luminous eyes on me. The third thread pulls tight in my chest. He moves around the perimeter of the clearing in one long fluid loop and ends up at Crull's flank.
Three monsters in the clearing.
Daron goes last.
He has been on the porch the whole time. He has not slept. The rifle has been across his back all night. He pulls the strap over his head now and holds the rifle out to one side. Dean steps forward and takes it without a word. The two of them stand there for a moment with the gun between them. Then Dean goes back to the doorframe with two rifles instead of one, and Daron sits down on the porch boards to unlace his boots.
He starts with the right boot.
He has not looked at me yet.
I have not seen Daron without clothes.
He pulls the second boot off. He stands up. He undoes his belt. He steps out of his tactical pants and drops them next to the boots.
I look.
He is wolf-shifter lean. The muscles defined. The skin pale where his clothes have been. There is a scar at the side of his ribs that has the shape of a knife.
He reaches for the hem of his shirt and pulls it over his head.
That is when he catches me looking.
He grins. Quick. Then his ice-blue eye drops in a slow deliberate wink.
My face goes hot.
