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All three of them nodded.
“But it does take practice to get a handle on it,” said Laird. “We almost attacked a person once.”
“You did?” she whispered.
“Should we talk about this?” said Leo.
“Well, nothing happened,” said Lucian.
“Maybe it could have,” said Leo.
“No way,” said Lucian.
“I’m curious,” she admitted. “I… when I change form, I go kind of crazy. I want to feed on people’s hearts. I haven’t… I mean, I could hurt someone, but thus far, I’ve never…” She trailed off.
This seemed to encourage them. They turned on the bar, leaning closer to her. They each had a bottle of beer, and this made her wonder about how many stomachs they had and how they were affected by alcohol. But before she could puzzle this out too much, Laird was talking.
“She was camping. She was, um…” He blushed. He ducked his head down.
“She was changing a tampon behind a tree and we smelled the blood,” said Lucian. “We didn’t register all that, though, because we were shifted, and in that form, everything’s different. We just sniffed and ran, because that’s how it is when you’re hunting. You don’t think, you do.”
“Anyway, when we got up on her, we could see the tent, and she was pulling up her pants, and we—all of us—wanted it,” said Leo. “It was a done deal, even. I wasn’t thinking. None of us were thinking. It was just—meat, you know? Blood.”
“But you stopped,” said Dahlia, concerned.
“Well, the guy in her tent, the guy she was camping with, he called out to her,” said Laird. “He called her, um, something stupid, what was it?”
“Like ‘honeypie’ or something?” said Leo.
All three of them erupted in identical chortles, and they each reached for their drinks and took a swing.
“Yeah, so it was dumb,” said Leo.
“And maybe that helped, that we thought it was funny,” said Laird.
“It was just… they were people,” said Lucian. “They were in love, and they had connections to each other, and it triggered emotional stuff within us, and it was just—not a question anymore.”
“We stopped, nothing happened,” said Leo. “Is it like that for you at all?”
She furrowed her brow. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
“I think it helped us connect to the part of us that’s, um, what would you call it?”
“Civilized?” said Laird.
Lucian snickered. “We’re not ‘civilized.’”
They were all laughing again.
“Just that emotional part of you, I guess,” said Leo. “I guess that’s what it did. I don’t know, though, it bothers me. Like, what if he hadn’t called out? What if we hadn’t heard that? What would we have done?”
“No use thinking like that, Leo,” said Laird. He and Lucian exchanged a glance, both rolling their eyes.
“You say that,” said Leo. “But, uh…”
“Well, now, every time we see someone out in the woods when we’re shifted, we’re aware,” said Lucian.
“That’s true,” said Leo. “And before we ever attack, we always pause. There’s always a moment. Like a checking-in moment. With, um, the thinking self?”
