Fan Service

Chapter 6

6

Devin checked in to the finest hotel within a ten-mile radius of Tompkins: a Hilton Garden Inn off the highway with three stars and stunning views of a neighboring bog . His executive suite featured a shitty little sitting room complete with a faux-leather beige couch, a kitchenette with an electric kettle, and a mattress that was sure to mess up his alignment.

When he gave his room info to his assistant and asked her to send clothes and his PS5, she used a soft, concerned voice because—oh yeah—his team had floated the story that he was in rehab. Well, that was less inflammatory than the truth.

The morning after they met, Alex suggested via text that he meet her that same evening at the vet clinic where she worked the overnight shift. Apparently they’d have the place to themselves and she’d have access to “supplies”—whatever that meant.

If Devin thought about anything too hard right now, he panicked, his breath coming short and shallow while he broke out in a clammy sweat. So he put up blinders and focused only two feet in front of his face. Despite rising concerns, he deemed himself innocent until proven guilty (human until proven werewolf).

With the day to kill, he rented a vehicle since Uber barely worked out here. The souped-up truck felt appropriately backwoods, but in a fun way, and driving around Tompkins was a trip. The town clearly had money. Or at least parts of it did. But not the same kind of money Devin had grown up around in Los Angeles. These people were Old-Money Rich, aka boring as fuck.

Their quaint little Main Street looked like a set on the back lot. Pastel-twinset-clad townspeople might as well have been extras in another remake of The Stepford Wives . He saw several hand-painted signs announcing an upcoming county fair that were so twee they made Devin’s teeth ache.

It was like an invisible line divided the haves and the have-nots around here. Or, more likely, considering the entire economy seemed to revolve around racehorses, the haves and the help. At least no one seemed to recognize him as he ran errands, which was good, all things considered. Even if it made his battered ego twinge.

He pulled into the vet clinic’s small parking lot a little after eight p.m. As he stepped out of the truck, Devin tipped his head back to check out the night sky. The air was better here than in LA, cleaner, sweeter. His senses were still going haywire, everything too much all the time, but not right now. Not here in the quiet, in the darkness, with nothing moving for miles in any direction.

The inky blackness dotted with stars reminded him of Iowa, where he’d grown up—or, he amended, at least where he’d lived until he was seven and his parents first figured out a way for him to make them money. It was surprisingly nice.

When he tried the handle on the front door of the vet, it turned easily, even though the little wooden sign in the window had been flipped to Closed . The second he stepped into the front waiting room all the hairs on his arms stood up. Without conscious thought, Devin found himself sniffing at the air. It was heavy with the combined smell of dozens of animals.

As he stepped forward, a wild chorus of howls and screeching broke out from the animals contained in the rows of metal pens. Devin froze. The alarm felt strangely charged. Personal. Like the cats and dogs knew something he didn’t. Before he could stop himself, a growl built in the back of his throat. Devin hurried farther into the facility, through a long hallway, and outside, where a single horse grazed within a fenced-in pen.

The stallion had a blondish coat and a dark brown mane. His ears drew back at Devin’s approach, and he began to toe the ground nervously.

Not wanting to upset the poor guy any further, Devin went back inside and found Alex wielding a spray bottle of antiseptic near the front office.

Devin’s nose itched. The smell he’d recognized on her at the coffee shop wafted from what looked like a homemade cleaning solution in a spray bottle.

“Oh thank god.” Relief washed over him. She didn’t smell bad naturally. He hadn’t been able to tell last night when she was shrouded in stale beer and smoke.

Alex raised her eyebrows.

“…you don’t use Clorox,” Devin supplied, lamely. “I’m very against that brand. Morally. Due to their impact on…fish.”

“Uh-huh.” She put away the bottle and crossed to the cages of animals to speak softly to one hound still whining, clearly agitated by Devin’s presence.

Devin’s cheeks warmed. “Do all visitors upset them this much?”

“No,” she said grimly and led him out of the room and into the hall.

“I think I might have upset your horse,” he confessed as they walked.

She made a dismissive noise. “Lou will be all right. He’s jumpy around most people.”

“Lou? Is that his name?”

“Yeah, it’s short for Legacy’s Outlaw.”

Devin grinned. “Sick. Is he a racehorse?”

Something pulled tight around her mouth. “Former.”

“What’s he doing here?” The horse didn’t look sick or anything.

“Someone abandoned him,” Alex said tightly, opening the door outside but leading him in the opposite direction from Lou’s pen. “It happens every few months. Owners don’t want to pay to feed and house a racehorse that can’t run anymore and won’t take to stud, so we get them tied up out front.”

“What the fuck? Someone just left him?” Devin didn’t know why he felt so personally offended.

Alex stopped in front of a big garage and entered a code into the security pad outside the door.

“Racehorses are bred for one purpose, mentally as well as physically. Owners want them anxious, reactionary, ‘spooky,’ they call it. Once they can’t run anymore for whatever reason, a lot of folks don’t want to deal with the hassle of managing them.”

“But it’s not his fault,” Devin said, too loud. “The horse, I mean.” He cleared his throat. “He didn’t ask to be raised for the limelight.”

The security pad beeped, and the garage door groaned open.

“It’s not his fault,” Alex agreed, her eyes softening a little in a way that made Devin oddly self-conscious. “But it’s hard to find them homes after they’re left here. They’re finicky. Misunderstood. Especially the older ones. They need a soft touch.”

Devin followed Alex inside. “What happens if you don’t find someone to take them?”

Alex flicked on a set of overhead lights that came on with an electric buzz.

“They get shot in the head.”

“What?”

The garage had cement floors. To Devin’s left were a couple of big white vans branded with the vet’s name and to the right were rows and rows of industrial metal shelving full of boxes and plastic-wrapped medical supplies. In the middle of the floor, Alex laid out a huge black tarp.

“Nice setup. Very Dexter .”

She didn’t smile.

Tough crowd.

On top of the tarp, Alex unfolded a small wooden table and laid out a laptop along with a series of vials and metal instruments, including a whole pack of big, violent-looking needles.

Devin gulped.

Taking out one of the syringes, Alex tapped the side to break up a series of bubbles in whatever clear liquid it contained.

“What is that stuff?”

“Horse tranquilizer,” Alex said, mild as you please.

Fuck. “Could it kill me?”

She gave him a look that said, succinctly, Grow up , and replaced the vial on the tray.

“It’s just a precaution. Worst-case scenario, it’ll knock you out for a few hours.”

The barest hint of a smirk tugged at her lips.

Whatever Alex expected to happen tonight, clearly she wasn’t very scared.

That made one of them.

She cued up the video of him at the pier on her laptop.

“I thought we’d start by going over everything you remember about the last time you had an ‘incident.’?”

“Last time,” Devin said, “or the first time?”

Alex furrowed her brow. “It’s happened more than once?”

“I think so.” He filled her in on everything he could remember, plus all that he couldn’t, starting with waking up naked in his backyard the night of the actual full moon.

“Fading out at the pier felt like fainting,” he finished, realizing he’d been talking for almost thirty minutes straight. “Like when they’re gonna film a shirtless scene, so you can’t eat or drink any water for like forty-eight hours.”

“That’s not a relatable analogy.” Alex looked appalled.

“I’m just saying I got woozy and lost consciousness. My body was there, obviously”—he grimaced, thinking of the howling—“but my mind wasn’t.”

“Okay.” Alex looked a little green around the gills. “Well, since you haven’t been to a doctor, I’d like to at least establish a metabolic baseline. If you’re cool with it, I can do a basic workup. Obviously I normally perform these assessments on animals, but we actually use a lot of the same devices. I can run a bit of blood work, take your temperature and BP, and establish a pulse rate. If anything comes back massively troubling, at least you’ll know to go to the ER for follow-up.”

“Oh.” For some reason Devin had expected they’d just jump into provoking the shift. After all, that’s what he’d asked for. The fact that Alex was taking his ridiculous situation seriously, treating Devin like he mattered, made him feel…odd.

“Sure,” he said, then cleared his throat. “Thanks.”

You’re paying her , Devin reminded himself before he got carried away with the idea that Alex cared.

She drew blood first.

“Afraid of needles?” she guessed as she pricked his skin.

Devin nodded, sitting upright in the folding chair she’d produced for him, not wanting to admit that it was her gentle fingertips on the crook of his elbow making him shiver.

Never before in his life had a physical made him horny.

She took his temperature with a digital thermometer held an inch from his forehead. “You’re running hot.”

It was the scrubs, Devin decided. The way the thin royal blue material clung lovingly to Alex’s ass as she bent over to put the device away.

“I’m gonna take your pulse next,” she told him, her husky voice perfect for naughty-nurse porn. “Try to unclench.”

Alex stepped close, until Devin’s chin was practically nestled in her tits.

He took a deep breath and focused on letting go.

And then she touched his neck with two gentle fingertips, and it was all Devin could do to bite back a groan.

The urge to catch her wrist and bring her fingers into his mouth surged through him.

What the fuck?

He jumped to his feet, pulling in air like someone had outlawed it.

Alex frowned. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” he said, glad she couldn’t tell when he was lying. “Just…you’ve got cold hands.”

“Oh.” Alex made a fist and then blew on it , which, yeah, was not helping matters.

Devin had been coiled so tightly for the last week, terrified that the second he let his guard down something animal inside him would break free.

He took a step backward from Alex, then another. It was like trudging through quicksand. Fighting his own instincts. He’d never felt anything like this, a stark divide between his rational mind and his gut.

“What’s going on?” Alex frowned.

Oh god. The last thing he needed right now was for her to suck on her bottom lip.

Colby fought his wolf’s urges all the time. In the lore of The Arcane Files , your wolf was like an extra-feral version of your id, animal instincts kicked into turbogear, constantly oriented toward maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. Your wolf wanted what you wanted deep down, only more .

Never in a million years would Devin have guessed that the terrible beast of his nightmares would want…her.

It was why Colby was abstinent (that, and the writers seemed to think all the bare-knuckle restraint increased the show’s sexual tension). He never indulged himself in any creature comforts that might weaken his resolve—the poor guy slept on a threadbare mattress on the floor of a dingy walk-up.

“I need a minute,” Devin said, bolting for the back door.

If he had turned into a werewolf (he really needed to remain in hypotheticals for as long as possible), his wolf shouldn’t be this strong, not yet. Colby’s instincts grew most powerful during the full moon, which, according to the Internet, wasn’t for another three weeks.

This burst of attraction could still be a fluke, he told himself.

And the fact that he’d gotten hard talking to her over coffee? Well, that was probably a fluke too.

Alex Lawson was not his type. And besides, the last thing he needed was to fuck around with the one person who might be able to help him. Luckily, Devin had been working on a PhD in suppression ever since the first time he’d asked his parents if he could quit acting and go to real school and they flat out said, No .

He took a few deep breaths, locked up whatever the fuck this was, and went back inside.

“Everything okay?” Alex said when he returned to the garage.

“Yep.” Devin resumed his seat.

At least she still smelled like dog chemicals.

“Just had to water the roses.”

Alex rolled her eyes. “Charming.”

She took the rest of his vitals with minimal fanfare.

“How’s it looking?” Devin asked while she typed the readings into her laptop.

“According to these stats, you’re exceptionally healthy. Like maybe world-record healthy.”

That didn’t sound so bad. He paid enough trying to stay in shape.

“Okay.” She closed the laptop. “Time to move on to the main event. You feel up to attempting the Change?”

“I don’t actually know how to do it on command.” It was, in his limited understanding, like sex. He had to be in the mood.

“Hmm.” Alex tilted her head. “Well, what if I try to trigger it?”

“How?” Devin did not like the wild glint in her eye at all .

“Well, if we go by The Arcane Files ’ example, we’ve got a few choices. The most frequent trigger for Colby is pain.”

Devin winced. The writers room had always seemed to have a kind of fetish for whips, chains, and other things Rihanna sang about.

“I’d really rather avoid flogging you,” Alex said, “if at all possible.”

“Agreed.”

“The second-most frequent plot device used to bring forth Colby’s transformation was the death of a loved one,” Alex continued, counting on her fingers. “But that’s not exactly viable, for obvious reasons.”

Yeah, not least of all because Devin didn’t really have anyone he cared about that much. His stomach twisted. He couldn’t imagine telling this moody stranger his intimacy issues. It all started when my parents thought I’d be more focused as a child actor if they actively discouraged me from making friends…

Devin racked his brain. What else had happened on the show to force a shift?

“We could try making out,” he suggested tentatively. Wait, who said that?

To be fair, lust was a massive trigger for Colby on the show, especially in the season 4 two-part special. But still.

Immediately, Alex pulled a face. “Absolutely not.”

Christ. The ego hits just kept on coming.

“You know, for someone who used to have a crush on me, you’re pretty rude.”

“Listen, I did not—Wait.” Her eyes grew wide. “That’s actually a good idea.”

“What is?” Her having a crush on him or…?

“I could hurt your feelings,” she said with palpable excitement. “You said that’s what brought on the Change last time, right? That fight with your agent?”

The gleam in her eye made Devin squirm.

“You could at least pretend to feel conflicted at the prospect of berating me.”

She shrugged. “What’s the point in lying if I can’t get away with it?”

He supposed it would be better to lose control now, with some degree of safety protocols and monitoring in place, rather than on some random, unknown future occasion. Colby sure as shit wouldn’t have backed down from a challenge like this. As an FBI agent, he’d walked through hell and back—literally—to get answers.

“Okay, fine. I guess we can try it.” Devin rolled his neck.

How bad could it be?