Chapter 7
7
Alex had finally found the perfect opportunity to get revenge against Devin Ashwood. She set up her phone to record video and made sure the tranquilizers were within arm’s reach.
Who knew all those takedown speeches she’d practiced in the shower as an angsty teen would actually come in handy one day? She used to imagine alternate versions of history where she marched around the curtain at that con and gave Devin Ashwood a piece of her mind instead of running away after he insulted her. And yet now that her time had come, she found herself hesitating, biting her pinky nail instead of delivering a verbal smackdown that was long overdue.
It was hard to enjoy herself, knowing this wasn’t a fair fight. Alex had spent more than half her life analyzing him with a giant chip on her shoulder, bolstered by a veritable army of introverts on the Internet whose hyperfixated sleuthing skills would probably scandalize the actual FBI.
Over the years she’d gleefully consumed reports of Devin Ashwood’s flaws and misadventures like so many BBQ kale chips, licking her fingers as she went. But standing face-to-face with him, Alex couldn’t bring herself to mention his messy divorce or the rumors of adolescent drug abuse.
“You chickening out?” Devin gave her a half smile, a hint of teasing challenge from where he stood across the tarp. “Because I promise I can take it.”
Fuck he was cute. A million times more potent in person. And just like when she was seventeen and starstruck, he’d picked up on her nerves and leaned in, trying to put her at ease.
Alex stiffened her resolve. She could not afford to like him.
She had at least five perfect setdowns she could’ve delivered in that moment easy, so of course she said, “Your performance in the season-six finale was really mediocre.”
“…Huh?” Devin seemed to have expected a better effort.
“I’m serious.” Okay, this was not her best work, but she’d thrown the gauntlet and now there was nothing left to do but double down. “It was questionable the entire season whether you had any chemistry with Kennedy Roberts at all, but your response when she told you she loved you as Juliette? Completely wooden. Your face didn’t move for a full nine seconds. Literally. People made a timer on Tumblr.”
“Everyone loves that episode.” A flicker of confusion passed over Devin’s face. “It has one of the highest scores on IMDb of the entire series run.”
“Okay, first of all, it’s embarrassing that you know that.” Alex didn’t consider herself cruel, but maybe she was a little righteous. “Second of all, people like that episode because of Gus . That’s the episode where he makes a deal with Death to visit his mother in the underworld. I cried so hard watching that scene I literally threw up.”
Relying on critiques of the show felt safe, familiar. Artists, at least in theory, knew art once shared belonged to the audience to interpret and interrogate.
“Wait a second.” Devin shook his head. “That was the B plot. Colby and Juliette were the main story arc. We laid the foundation for that romance for like sixteen episodes.”
Holy shit. Did he really not know?
“Nobody likes that pairing.”
“What do you mean?” Color climbed Devin’s cheeks.
Rising body temp , Alex mentally recorded. They were on the right track.
“There’s an entire tag on AO3 labeled ‘no beta we die like my boner whenever Colby kisses Juliette.’?”
“That’s ridiculous.” Devin’s nostrils flared as he inhaled. “What are you saying? That I’m not compelling as a romantic lead?”
“Oh, no,” Alex said, sunny, beginning to enjoy herself. “I fully believed Colby was in love with Nathaniel.”
Devin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why does everyone think that?”
“Are you kidding me?!” Despite herself, Alex’s voice rose. “How else do you explain Colby whimpering while Nathaniel drank blood from his femoral vein?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know…they were buddies?”
“Please!” They were in Alex’s arena now. She could fight shipper wars for days. “Colby placed both of his hands on Nathaniel’s bare abs in the middle of a supernatural street fight and bellowed, ‘Tell me who hurt you!’?”
“What was he supposed to do? Not avenge his—” Devin cut himself off. “Colby is not gay. And look, there’s nothing wrong with being gay. I’m just saying Colby isn’t.”
“How can you be sure?”
Devin threw his hands in the air. “Because I’m not gay!”
Alex blinked. “Please tell me you realize—”
“Yes, okay, I heard it.” Devin began pacing in a small circle.
Alex noticed for the first time the dark circles under his eyes.
Had he not been sleeping? And if so, for how long? No wonder he seemed out of it, close to the edge.
Alex’s breath stuttered as his eyes flashed silver under the garage’s LEDs.
“Uhh. Devin—”
“Do you know how many people told me I was the reason they kept watching The Arcane Files for all those years?” He swung his arms in agitated slashes through the air. “And then after thirteen seasons, the thing finally ends and Gus, fucking Gus Rochester, who literally got discovered waiting tables at SUR, is the one to make the transition into movies?”
With a metallic-sounding click, like a lock sliding into place, Alex watched Devin’s fingernails lengthen, darken, and turn to sharp black points.
Oh god. The baby-fine hairs on Alex’s arms stood up. It was happening. The Change. For real.
And Devin was seemingly oblivious, lost in a self-loathing spiral that Alex had contributed to, even if he did a lot of the heavy lifting himself.
“Did you know that asshole couldn’t even be bothered to thank me in his acceptance speech?” He kept pacing, his strides lengthening into something fluid, almost…a prowl.
Goose bumps broke out across Alex’s arms. A primal fear response. Prey recognizing predator.
“I was supposed to be the breakout.” His voice trembled with something more than anger.
Alex edged toward the syringe full of tranquilizer slowly, hoping to avoid notice.
It didn’t matter that Devin had found her heartbeat in the middle of a crowded restaurant, that he’d caught her in lie after lie. Alex had written off his extraordinary metabolic readings as a fluke, perhaps an admin error. Who could blame her? The human brain found plenty of ways to justify the impossible.
Her heart clenched as she closed her fist around the syringe.
Great. Now all she had to do was stab him in the neck.
“But no. Nope.” As Devin closed his eyes and laughed without humor, his incisors extended, sharpened, forming into lethal-looking fangs.
Alex’s every instinct screamed for her to move, go, RUN , but she didn’t heed them.
As a vet tech, she regularly stuck her hands between the jaws of panicked, angry animals. Already she knew this was a thousand times more reckless. But it wasn’t enough to take this experiment halfway.
Eyes, claws, jaws.
Devin seemed to be triggering a partial shift. If whatever was happening to him kept playing by the rules of The Arcane Files for whatever reason, he wouldn’t be able to fully transform—to take the shape of an actual wolf—outside of the full moon, but they’d never know if they didn’t test how far into the Change his body could progress. Because of the angle, the video on the pier hadn’t shown his final form one way or another.
Devin bowed his head, his brow furrowed, and his mouth thinned, as if he were fighting a massive sudden-onset migraine.
“Here I am”—his voice dropped in pitch, taking his already gravelly tone into a growl—“an unemployed laughingstock stuck in the middle of Hicksville, USA, begging a complete stranger for help because I’m turning into some kind of half human, half dog.”
As hurt bloomed like roses across his perfectly stubbled cheeks, Alex gave herself over to adrenaline. She shoved down the parts of herself that were soft, afraid.
This was her idea. Her responsibility. She’d told him they needed to do this, that it was the only way.
“Devin,” she said tentatively once more, shivering because she no longer expected him to answer.
His eyelids sprang open. With a vicious snarl he dropped from his standing position into a crouch on all fours.
Alex gasped, stumbling backward a few steps.
As loath as she was to admit it, she was an expert in Devin Ashwood. The way he held himself, the way he moved. There was a time, as much as it physically pained her to recollect, when she’d literally spent hours cataloging all his different smiles. That was how she knew, in her bones , that the thing in front of her wasn’t him.
The wolf—she didn’t know what else to call it—raised his head, scenting the air. His startled gaze landed on her like gunmetal, white-hot and lethal, cutting down her form in wary assessment.
Alex forced herself to hold still. Not to flinch or make any sudden movements. She hadn’t grown up Dr. Isaac Lawson’s daughter without learning the safest way to respond when suddenly confronted with a wolf.
It was a total mindfuck how eerily similar Devin looked to how they’d made him up on the show. When they’d applied contacts, and prosthetics to his teeth and nails—just enough makeup to suggest “wolf” while still keeping his face and form mostly unchanged. Heaven forbid viewers forget for a moment that their hero was handsome.
Oh god. Now was not the time to start thinking about the 5K-comment thread on the archive discussing the prompt “be honest, would you fuck Colby in a partial shift?”
It didn’t matter that he looked mostly human. Alex knew on a cellular level he wasn’t. Not anymore.
The wolf held himself rigid as his eyes darted around the room. That type of limb locking, Alex knew from her father, meant the animal was afraid and ready to defend itself at any cost.
It was like she’d suspected when she first saw the video: he was scared.
He didn’t seem any more comfortable with this transformation stuff than his human counterpart.
Devin had estimated that his previous shifts lasted for hours, but there was no way Alex was just gonna hang out, trapped here alone, waiting for nature to run its course.
She had the syringe in hand. But her plan had been poorly conceived, back when she’d still believed, deep down, that werewolves were fictional. She’d need to get close enough to administer the tranquilizer. Within maiming distance.
She forced herself to take a step forward, slowly.
The wolf growled, warning her back. He still seemed more wary than threatening, but instinctively, Alex lifted her hands like she was under arrest.
He immediately bared his teeth as if she’d challenged him.
Of course he doesn’t recognize that type of surrender. Alex lowered her arms and dropped her gaze to the ground. She almost said Easy there, good boy in her best soothing vet-tech voice but stopped herself just in time.
The wolf’s growling shifted, slowed.
Good. Alex needed him to think her submissive long enough to strike.
She reminded herself that Devin Ashwood had called her brave last night and, churlishly, she wanted to prove it.
That said, had the wire transfer even cleared yet? Who was going to make sure her dad went to his doctor’s appointments if this all went south? He’d order Domino’s for dinner every night, left to his own devices.
And what about Rowen? If Alex died, no one would be there to pick them up after band practice on Thursday. They’d call her cell, waiting in the rain, and it would just ring and ring.
Hopefully Cam and Eliza, at least, could eventually laugh at the irony of the circumstances of her death.
Against her will, Alex let out a whimper.
The noise seemed to give the wolf pause. He frowned at her, the gesture almost comically human against the monstrous blazing of his electric-silver eyes. Cautiously, he approached, prowling on all fours, sniffing the air. In some act of mercy from the universe, he seemed to like the way she smelled. His growl quieted, though it stayed in his throat, an engine idling, low, constant.
“Does that mean you wanna be friends?”
The wolf shifted back into a crouch to better study her, tilting his head as though intrigued by the sounds she was making.
Unsure she’d get another chance, Alex seized her opening and rushed to close the distance between them. She swung her arm in a descending arc that left no room for uncertainty as she plunged the needle into his neck.
The beast howled, the sound wounded this time, an accusation, his eyes flashing with betrayal.
To be fair, Alex knew the feeling.
“Sorry,” she said inanely, as the cry died in his throat and his eyelids began to droop.
Devin’s body listed to the side, the wolf throwing out a clawed hand to try to catch himself as he slumped to the ground.
Fully zonked, the beast began to snore with a force that moved his whole chest.
After much grunting effort, Alex managed to roll him over flat on his back. His breathing shifted in the new position, his mouth falling open so she could watch in real time as the fangs receded back into normal blunt incisors.
The shift definitely seemed tied to his emotional state. His claws went next, fading back into human fingernails with that metallic snick sound.
Alex leaned over and gently pushed up one of his eyelids to confirm his irises had gone back to their signature celery green.
With the immediate threat neutralized, she once again checked his vitals. His pulse was slightly elevated but remained steady, strong. Under her fingertips, his neck was warm, and sure enough, when she took his temp it was high—102. The wolf ran hot.
Up close she could make out the fine lines across his forehead and where they fanned out from his eyes. His skin was gorgeous, smooth, glowy—way better cared for than hers—but she could also see a very faint acne scar under his chin.
It was strange to find a spot on the topography of his face that she hadn’t previously mapped. Alex had seen pictures of him from so many angles. Two decades’ worth of gifs on her dashboard and in her DMs. When she was younger and more foolish, she’d pull them up to study, trying to diagnose the exact shade of his eyes, hunting for the perfect words to describe the dip of his upper lip. But she’d never seen him like this, lax in slumber. She noticed she was just resting her hand gently on his throat and shot, shakily, to her feet. Suddenly, this all felt strangely intimate.
Alex had been so sure werewolves were a myth. Fiction from the TV show she’d dedicated the greater part of her adolescence to archiving. Most fans would love the chance to slip into the world of their favorite story. To have the actor who played their beloved supernatural character adapt into him in front of their very eyes. But in practice, it felt more like a nightmare than her dream come true.
She pressed a hand to her racing heart, trying to ground herself with the facts.
Werewolves were real.
Devin Ashwood was turning into one.
Alex had agreed to help him.
“Shit.” She forced herself to take a deep breath. This was fine. She could handle this. Stuff like this happened in fic all the time. She wiped her clammy palms down the front of her scrubs.
As much as she might want to pretend to be grown up, above it, her fangirl heart had always secretly hoped for something like this to happen. Who wouldn’t want to be the one who was clever and brave enough to rescue the damsel in distress (in this case, Devin)?
Real life had been difficult at times, had called for sacrifice or courage, but taking care of her dad never once felt heroic. Maybe she deserved this, even if Devin didn’t. One chance for adventure in her small, boring life. The opportunity to bring at least one man who’d once disparaged her to his knees.
All she needed was a plan.
Building the archive had seemed an overwhelming undertaking when Alex first had the idea, before she broke it down into small pieces.
Step one: watch the show obsessively.
Step two: take wildly detailed notes, explaining what she saw to herself.
Step three: ask her friends for help.
The same strategies might work here.
It was weird that Devin’s werewolf stuff followed so closely to canon. Was it because it was him? Had he spent so many years playing Colby, falling so far into the role, that his body forgot where the character stopped and he began?
They had that in common, she realized; they both saw too much of themselves in Colby Southerland.
Even if she lost her nerve, Alex needed the money. For Dad’s medical bills. For car repairs. For the roof that both of them had been pretending wasn’t leaking all year. Like it or not, she was in this with Devin until they figured it out or he destroyed one or both of them. Whichever came first.
Alex jumped as her phone alarm went off. It was time to check on the (other) animals. Given the volume of horse tranquilizer Alex had given him, even with what appeared to be an evolved metabolic system, Devin would likely be out for a few hours. Alex promised both herself and his sleeping form that by the time he woke up she would have a plan for next steps.
The next time she called Devin Ashwood a monster, it would no longer be a metaphor.