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Cole was looking at me as if I’d grown a second head.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I thought you’d freak out,” he said. “I mean, there’s more than one reason most of us don’t walk around like this, even when we have to fight in humanoid forms. Most people, even some shifters, think a partially shifted person is monstrous and ugly. Claiming—people out of the clawset in areas like New Middle Bluff, we usually just forget about it as a thing. Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about it until my dad mentioned it.“
“I could never think you’re ugly,” I said. “I mean, I’ve seen real ugliness, you know. I’ve seen it in Wyatt and Curt. Not in how they look. In the hatred they spew.”
I tangled my fingers with his, brushing my thumb over the soft fur. His hand curled around mine, dwarfing it nearly twice the usual size.
“So, for you to claim me, you’d have to have sex with me like this?” I asked.
“That’s a pretty large part of it, yeah,” he said. “There are some other aspects to it.”
“Like what?”
His hand shifted back to its normal size and appearance. “Marley, I don’t want you to think I’m a freak. I really don’t want that.”
“I’m not going to think you’re a freak.”
“You might,” he said skeptically.
“Cole, please give me a chance to show you I’m a good partner. I don’t want you to have to hide anything from me. Least of all anything having to do with you being a shifter. Please tell me.”
He sighed and looked away from me again, leaning his head against the wall. Squeezing my hand, he gnawed on his lip for a moment. Finally, he spoke.
“There are some theories that the act used to be related to...uh...breeding. Something about the finale is slightly different from the human form.”
“That’s nothing new,” I said. “You’ve finished in me before.”
He shook his head. “Not like this.”
“What’s the difference? Cum is cum, right?”
Cole snorted a laugh and gave me an incredulous look. “It is so odd to hear you talk like that.”
I chuckled. “Should I be more clinical?”
“No, please don’t. I think that’d be worse.” He heaved a slow breath. He closed his eyes and took in a long inhale. “Marley, what do you know about the anatomy of lupine creatures?”
I frowned. “Not much.”
His brow twitched faintly. “So, let me put it this way. My, uh, situation down there is part of what is partially shifted in the claiming process.”
“Oh,” I said, drawing out the syllable. “Does that mean it’s bigger or something?”
“Yes.” Cole pressed his lips together. “It has another feature in that form.”
“What is it?”
“In that state, there is usually a knot.”
“A knot? Like a sore spot or something?”
“Oh, Marley,” he said wistfully. “Not that kind of knot. It’s a part of my cock that swells up, okay? It will happen when we’re fucking, and eventually, when I’m close to coming, I’ll be in such a rut-wild state that I’ll press it into you before I come, and...basically, we’ll literally be joined at the hip until we both wind down.”
His face was scarlet. I’d never seen him so flustered before. Sure, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t kind of shocked by this information. Maybe not so much the information as the fact that I’d never heard about it before. But Cole had said himself that most shifters didn’t even acknowledge that wilder side of themselves unless they were in remote areas or in packs.
I was still running through the logistics when Cole took his free hand and covered his eyes, cringing with shame.
