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12
Several days later…
I am napping when something wakes me up. The house is empty, so I know it’s not Order that has woken me. It’s something else. Or maybe not a thing at all. A person? A feeling?
I feel a pull. A call. Something primal. Something that sets my feet in motion before I really have a chance to think about it. Four paws hit the carpet beside the bed. I barely notice that I’m not human anymore. Being a wolf just feels right. Feels familiar.
I slip out of a window and into the secluded garden. Night is falling, and that means I am growing more powerful with every bounding step I take out of the outskirts of the town in which we are living, and out through the countryside away from prying human eyes.
I know instinctively to stay away from people. People are dangerous and I am not a creature they will enjoy encountering. If I am seen, the likelihood of being summarily murdered is pretty high. Fortunately, the call, whatever it is, is coming from a nearby rural area and a forest within it.
I slow down as I get into the woods. When I was merely a person, I would have seen this place as a collection of trees. It’s so much more than that. This is the most climaxed place around this area. The grassy fields are open and new and tame, and somewhat broken, but the forest is where nature has been allowed to be what it is for itself. The feeling I get when I am enveloped by it is one of calm and safety. I am home. I am covered by bushes and trees. I am able to hide if I like, hunt and stalk if I like. I am breathing in the scents of animal, plant, and fungi and feeling the connections between all those things.
“There you are.”
A rough voice startles me out of my reverie. I look up and see that I have come to the edge of a small clearing. In that clearing, Chief Connor is standing. The shock and fright I felt at being spotted immediately turns to something else. A warm feeling, like coming home.
I have a faint feeling of guilt, knowing that my master will not like me being here with this man. But he is not a man. He is an alpha wolf, and he made me. I have always felt a kind of basic attraction to Connor, not sexually, but more like a resonance that makes us just make sense.
I stop moving and instead I stare at him, waiting to see what he has to say. He has called me here, and I have followed his call.
A truck is parked beside him. He reaches into the cab and tosses me a jacket and some pants, both garments landing over my wolf snout.
“Get changed,” he says. “We need to talk.”
I’m not sure I know how to shift forms, but there’s something about his command that just… makes it happen. Fortunately, I am still covered by bushes when it does, and I scramble into clothing before he sees anything indelicate. I hope. As a human, being naked in front of my boss does not feel great. I suddenly feel like I’m doing something very wrong. God. Why does being a person come with so very much guilt all the time?
“Put these on too, junkies leave needles out here.”
A couple of snow boots come flying into the bushes as well. Aw. He got them in my size. That could be sweet, or it could be a coincidence. I get them on my feet right away.
I take a second to compose myself and step into the clearing with Chief Connor. It’s cold out, so he’s wearing a thick jacket, snow pants. Basically what I’m wearing.
“Boss?”
I don’t know why I’m saying his title like that. We both know he’s my boss.
“Tess,” he says. “We need to talk.”
There’s a long pause following that statement in which neither one of us talk. I don’t know what he called me here for. Was it just to see if he could? My human mind has way too many thoughts whirling around it to be clear about any of them.
“You bit me.”
I break the ice with that simple statement of fact.
“Yeah,” he says. “You deserved it.”
“I can’t tell if that’s a compliment or a….”
Connor growls. “You should have told me about the mutants. They’re dangerous.”
“You’re dangerous,” I point out in turn.
He snorts, like that amused him. I guess it was a bit of a joke, but not really. With one bite, he changed me and my world forever. He made me something more than human. And he fixed me. I’m grateful, but also kind of angry. These are complicated feelings to work through.
“They’ve got Sally as a brood queen,” he says. “I smelled it.”
Brood queen. That’s one super gross, very accurate way of putting it.
