He delivered it dead-on. “You want to know what it was like, the first time she shifted?”
I nodded because I did.
He thought about it, then said, “It wasn’t scary. It was just… new. I spent the first thirty seconds waiting to see if she’d bite. She didn’t. I was ready to google ‘baby wolf care’ before I remembered she was a baby again twenty seconds before.”
He laughed, but it wasn’t at himself. It was at the absurdity of the whole project.
I said, “Did you ever think about running?”
“Why?” he said, honest confusion. “She needed me. You needed her not to die. Problem, solution. I was more worried about getting formula out of the sheets.”
“You weren’t afraid.”
He shook his head. “I don’t do afraid. I do next move.” He looked at me, eyes almost lazy. “Most humans would have run.”
“Most humans haven’t cleared buildings in Kandahar,” I said. It was the highest compliment I knew how to give.
He shrugged. “Most humans don’t know what they’re capable of until they’re in it.”
I let my eyes close, just for a second, then opened them. “What did you want, growing up?”
He caught the swerve in topic but rolled with it. “I wanted to be left alone,” he said. “Then I wanted to make a difference. Turns out you can’t do both.”
He waited for me to ask the next thing, but I didn’t. I could feel the conversation circling something important.
He asked, “You ever wish you could turn it off?”
“What?”
“The wolf thing. The extra sense. The knowing when people are scared or lying or pissed at you.”
I didn’t have to think about it. “No. It’s the only way I can tell if people are worth the time.”
He nodded, like that made sense. “Is it ever exhausting?”
“Less than the alternative,” I said. “Navigating the world without it is like flying blind. I don’t know how you do it.”
He let that land. “Maybe we don’t. Maybe we just get good at pretending.” He set the lollipop down, unwrapped now, the surface shiny and wet. He watched me, waiting for a cue.
I gave it to him. “Go ahead, ask.”
“Are ruts real?”
“They are,” I replied.
Jai didn’t say anything, but I could see the wheels turning in his head. They were practically leaving tire marks.
“You want to know about the rut, don’t you?”
He grinned, wide and wolfish. “You don’t have to answer.”
“I will,” I said.
He listened, intent.
“It’s manageable,” I started, then stopped. “That’s the company line. What it is, is a fever. It starts in the back of the head and works its way into your spine. You get hot, and then you get restless. Judgment goes. Patience goes. You get so wound up in your own skin that everything else becomes secondary.”
He nodded. “How do you manage it?”
