Page 5 of Legacy Elite

Jon, from the kitchen, does not look up from the kettle.

"Okay." Sophia plants her feet and spreads her arms wide. "That's your shoulder. That's where your shoulder was. On me. Standing up."

"That's not true," Renzo says.

"It's true."

"Sophia, that would make her longer than that couch."

"She was longer than that couch."

"She was not.”

I look at Declan, who is the only one of us who measures anything in real units.

"You want it honest?" he says.

"I do."

"Draft horse." He rubs the back of his neck. "Not a regular horse. I've walked search horses through country like that, and you'd have looked one of them in the eye. Heavier through the front than that, even."

The room goes quiet.

"Your proportions were wrong," Freya says from the fireplace.

Everybody turns.

"Not wrong," she amends. "Different. The wolves here, when they shift, the shoulder and the hip sit about level. Yours didn't. Your shoulders were higher. Your chest was deeper, and your legs were longer for your body than they should be." She tips her head. "And your head was broader. That's what I noticed first."

"Great," I say. "So I was a big-headed horse."

"You were magnificent," Sophia says fiercely.

"You were terrifying," Renzo says, "and I say that with love."

"Did I at least have a tail?"

"You had a tremendous tail," Sophia says.

"Obviously you had a tail," Declan says. "What would you have instead?"

"I don't know! It's my first time!"

Renzo throws a cushion at me. I catch it one-handed. Then I throw it back hard enough that it takes out the lamp shade.

"Sorry," I call toward the kitchen.

"Mmhm," says Jon.

Then Torres says, "Jess."

He's sat down on the arm of my chair, and he isn't laughing.

"I've seen a lot of shifted wolves," he says. "Feral, Frosthaven, all of it. Maybe hundreds." He shakes his head. "You weren't a big wolf, Jess. You weren't the same kind of thing. Put you next to Voss shifted and nobody says she's bigger. They say what is that."

That's when I finally believe Jon wasn't being coy.

"Okay," I say. "Then somebody explain the other part. Why did everyone look like that? They wouldn't come near me. I took one step and half the faculty backed up."