Chapter 12
12
Devin didn’t know what he’d expected when he walked into the vet’s office for his first trial, but it definitely wasn’t a forty-seven-slide PowerPoint presentation, he could tell you that much.
His eyes kept sliding from Alex and the laptop she’d propped up on a chair in the center of the garage to the industrial-sized metal tub looming in the corner.
“Okay, so obviously we can’t submerge you in a frozen lake like they did for Colby’s endurance trial, but I’m reasonably confident that I can simulate the sensory experience in a safe way using this bathing station.” Alex pointed at the tub with an office laser pointer he suspected she’d purchased for this occasion. “Normally we wash the large dogs in there, but don’t worry, I made sure it’s thoroughly sanitized.”
At least she’d accepted his donation of the cleaning solution. His schnoz was in heaven, even if his ass was starting to fall asleep in this folding chair. He’d gotten here twenty minutes ago, and they were still only on slide four.
“I researched cold water therapy,” she continued, “like the kind athletes do after a big game, and found some overarching safety guidelines.”
The slide changed to display pictures of various sports stars across generations grimacing while up to their necks in ice baths. Damn, even Jeter looked uncomfy.
“As long as we keep the water between forty-eight and fifty-nine degrees, you should be able to remain submerged for twenty minutes. Most doctors recommend ten to fifteen, but experienced athletes can do twenty. Assuming that your body temperature remains stable, I think it’s reasonable that we attempt that benchmark, since we’re supposed to push your stamina to the limits.”
Stamina, huh? Devin smirked.
Alex had on pale pink scrubs today, and he kept accidentally wondering whether they were lighter or darker than the color of her nipples.
He liked her in full archivist mode, including embedded sources. She was both nervous and bossy, the combination oddly charming.
“I’ll consistently monitor the water and your body temp to make sure you’re not in danger of hypothermia.” Alex cleared her throat, so he was probably leering.
“Wait a second—hypothermia?” Devin gulped. “Is that, uh, a big concern here?”
When they shot the lake scenes for Colby’s trial, he got to wear the bottom half of a wet suit, they’d put him in his own personal heated van after every shot, and he still almost lost pinky toes.
“Well.” Alex clicked the slide. The words “medical risks” appeared in large, bright red type on the screen. “Messing with your body’s core temp can be dangerous, obviously, but I did create a ‘warming zone.’?” She walked over to a metal cot with a thin mattress piled high with fluffy towels and a sleeping bag and held up her arms like Vanna White.
“Looks cozy.” This was fine. Athletes did ice baths all the time. And Alex seemed more than prepared to monitor the situation closely.
“If at any point it seems like something might be going wonky, we’ll stop. Colby failed his trials dozens of times. We can always think of something else.” Alex came over and put her hand on his arm.
Devin stared down at her pretty tattooed fingers, premourning the loss of her gentle touch. He needed to tell her that from a timeline perspective they couldn’t afford to get this wrong. She wasn’t going to like it.
“Well, actually. I sorta need to nail it on the first try. I forgot until my publicist texted me this morning, but I agreed to play in the TW network’s celebrity basketball game on February second.” He winced as he finished the sentence.
For a long moment, Alex just stared. “Of this year?”
“Maybe?” he said sheepishly.
“Devin.” Alex started pacing. “You can’t be serious. You’ve never even been conscious for a full moon as a werewolf. You can’t go out in front of a packed arena that same morning.”
“We’ve got three weeks to practice.” That gave him plenty of time to get back to his place in LA and put security measures into effect before the shift.
Alex thrust her hands onto her hips. “It took Colby almost six months to complete the trials. He failed ‘submission’ nine times.” The furious fold of her mouth said, It’ll probably take you nine hundred .
“No, listen, I know.” Devin stood up so he’d stop feeling like a kid on the set of a principal’s office. “But I’ve already sort of been through the trials once, you know? I played the part. That’s like spiritual rehearsal. Besides, the risk is worth it.”
He’d given up a childhood and arguably a marriage to be an actor. This wasn’t that different. And in any case, there was no other option. He’d fallen too far from the video’s bad press. His comeback clock was ticking, and at this rate, the charity event might be the last appearance he managed to book for the foreseeable future.
He’d never been particularly well respected in the industry. His career track record was basically child actor stigma plus soap actor stigma plus long-running TW show stigma. Every role he’d played was in a part of the entertainment landscape that no one took seriously. Kids and families, housewives, nerds. The audiences that liked him were the ones that constantly got discounted or dismissed as unable to appreciate “real” art.
Devin couldn’t afford to second-guess himself. Not when it came to his career. If he said he could get this werewolf thing under control in a matter of weeks, he would.
“I’m an actor. I’ve learned all sorts of stuff on the fly. I perfected a French accent in five weeks.”
Alex began to tap her foot against the concrete floor. “As someone who has extensively analyzed season eleven, I can assure you that you did not.”
“Wait, really? No. Come on. Lots of people struggle with the r ’s, okay? At least admit that I pick up fight choreography superfast.” He did a roundhouse kick to demonstrate.
Alex sighed. “Even if that’s true, in those circumstances you had a full team of experts with established training programs. May I remind you that I am a vet tech armed with a DVD box set and an archive I first built when I was fifteen .”
She was trying to protect him, Devin realized, blinking against the shock of it. His parents, his team, everyone else in his life would have agreed “the show must go on” and fuck the cost, but here was Alex, trying to save him from himself. Devin didn’t know how to process someone telling him that his well-being mattered more than his career. It felt impossible. And like a gift.
Devin held her steely gaze. “Can you trust me enough to let me try?”
He knew the answer would have been no yesterday. But there had been a moment in the hotel last night, after he’d gotten her hopped-up on room service root beer and catty cast gossip, that Devin had looked down at their knees almost but not quite touching on the couch and thought he’d done something right by asking her to stay.
“Fine,” she said, guarded and begrudging, before stalking over to the tub and hauling out a huge green Coleman cooler full of what looked like gas station ice.
“You can go ahead and strip,” she called over her shoulder, casual as you please.
“Uh, like, naked?” Devin wasn’t a stranger to taking his clothes off in front of people, but usually he had a little more warning. And time to do some push-ups in his trailer so the veins on his biceps popped to their best advantage.
“You can leave your underwear on.” Alex’s voice was perfectly even as she reached for a hose hanging off the wall.
Devin began shucking his tracksuit, waiting for Alex’s heartbeat to speed up, for her cheeks to turn pink. He loved her crush on him.
She didn’t even bother looking up.
Devin told himself he wasn’t disappointed. Alex must have come to the same conclusion he had: whatever attraction existed between them should be suppressed in favor of a professional working relationship that prioritized their shared mission. Damn. Sometimes being mature really bit the big one.
Together, they dumped bags of ice into the massive tub, and then Alex filled the basin within a few inches of the brim using the hose. Fuck. When Devin sat down, the water would go up to his chin.
Alex placed a battery-powered heart rate monitor on his finger.
“You can get in whenever you’re ready,” she said, looking at the ice-clouded surface of the water. “But fair warning, whether or not this works, it’s probably going to be really unpleasant.”
“Oh, you mean different, then,” Devin said, “from the blackouts, public humiliation, destruction of my career prospects, and the complete upending of my physical and mental health?”
“Good point.” Alex brightened slightly. “Never mind. Should be par for the course.”
The second Devin stepped into the basin, every muscle in his body pulled taut with shock.
He forced himself not to linger on one foot. Climbing in fully, he sank on his butt into the icy depths between one breath and the next.
Water sloshed, settling around him, lapping at his jaw and dampening his beard. Tingling needles stabbed every inch of submerged skin.
He shook his head, breathing through his nose. Somehow the cold was in his teeth, even though they remained above water.
Alex set the timer on her phone and pulled up a folding chair alongside the tub so they were at eye level.
The wolf howled inside his head like a car alarm going off, blaring, disorienting, drowning out his thoughts.
Devin gripped both sides of the basin, forcing himself to stay down while every instinct revolted.
“Breathe,” Alex said, reminding him that he wasn’t.
His vision flickered, the colors in the room going less saturated.
“Are my eyes—”
“Silver,” she confirmed. The tranquilizers were on the table beside her again, in case Devin couldn’t beat this thing back by himself.
The moon was only at fifteen percent illumination tonight. That was nothing. His wolf would grow exponentially stronger, more insistent, in the week before the full moon. Devin needed to fight right now like his livelihood depended on it.
He exhaled carefully through his mouth, focused on slowing down his ragged breath. The cold was so intense he couldn’t think.
His wolf howled again. PainBadWrong.
Devin tried to ground himself, unconsciously reaching out for the thump of Alex’s heartbeat. The soothing metronome became an anchor in his ears. The rest of the world didn’t exist. There was just Alex and his breath.
He caught the impossibly good scent of her on each inhale, even underneath all the layers of competing scents in the clinic. Devin could narrow in on her now, could sort and sift and zoom with his senses.
Alex’s smell wasn’t just alluring; it was comforting somehow. Safe.
Slowly, Devin relaxed his muscles one by one. The cold became clarity, and he entered a state almost like meditation as his body gradually went numb.
Devin blinked as if against the wrong contact prescription, trying to pull the room back into focus. This was the first time he’d been fully aware of the change in his anatomy, observing as it happened in real time.
He knew he’d managed to reset his eyes against the first sign of the partial shift when the pink of Alex’s scrubs stood in starker contrast to her skin.
“Impressive,” she said, leaning over to check the temp of the water. “The first few minutes are supposed to be the hardest.”
Yeah, we’ll see.
After measuring the water, she used a different thermometer to check him. The electronic device beeped in her hand. “You’re down four degrees, but since you’ve been running hot, that’s okay for now.”
Devin nodded. “The wolf is pissed.”
Alex tilted her head. “How does he communicate with you?”
The question was a welcome distraction. Devin could think about how to explain instead of about the way his balls were trying to climb back up into his body.
“The physical stuff—eyes, claws, jaws—it’s all involuntary. Like the way your heartbeat picks up without your permission. My body reacts and then my brain has to catch up. Closer to the full moon, I guess it’s sort of like being drunk. My inhibitions lowered. I was more susceptible to what the wolf wanted and less aware of my body. I didn’t lose fine motor control entirely, but it took me longer to notice when I slipped into something not strictly human.”
When Devin looked over, Alex was taking notes on a little pad propped against her knee. She must have had it in her pocket.
He bit back a smile. Once a nerd, always a nerd.
“What?” Alex said when she caught him, defensive in a way Devin was increasingly finding delightful. “I’m not gonna update the archive or anything, but don’t you think you should have some kind of record of your experience?”
Devin supposed that would be useful. Maybe someday he’d write a memoir or at least a guidebook for the next sap caught at the wrong place under the wrong moon.
“The emotional communication with the wolf is almost like arguing with yourself.” If she was gonna take notes, he might as well give her all the details he could. “You know how sometimes you pick up a pair of leather pants and part of you is like, Hell yeah, my ass is gonna make ’em weep , and then another part is like, Am I too old for these? ”
Alex arched an eyebrow. “Do you own leather pants?”
“That was a hypothetical.” He’d returned them.
“Of course.” She leaned over to take his temp again.
Beep.
“Your vitals are holding steady but your temp is down to ninety-seven.”
Devin grunted in acknowledgment. Every muscle in his body felt stretched to the breaking point with tension.
“Is it interesting getting to know your subconscious on a deeper level?” Alex asked. “Like, what does the wolf want?”
“Mostly food.” Devin clenched his jaw. “He likes to run.” It was getting harder to concentrate, the cold seeping into his bones through his skin. “And to be around you.”
Alex flailed, almost dropping the digital thermometer in the water.
“Your wolf likes me?”
Devin lowered his chin to his chest and shifted his breathing, trying to take long inhales through his nose.
“Don’t get so excited.” He closed his eyes again as he lost control of his vision. “You’re the only person he knows.”
From the wolf’s perspective, Alex was helping them, protecting their secret, ensuring their survival. He didn’t understand the nuances of human relationships. Or the exchange of big wads of cash. As far as he was concerned, Alex smelled GoodStrongSingle . Homeboy’s qualifications for a mate were pretty cheap.
Devin shifted in the water, trying to force himself to stay submerged. His movements sent waves pouring over the sides of the tub to land against the cement floor with a slap.
Something was off, strange, about his body’s reaction to the cold. Alex had said that for most people, ice baths were uncomfortable, not unbearable. They’d done them on The Bachelorette , for crying out loud. But something in Devin’s evolved physiology must make his body react differently to the temperature shift. It was getting harder to breathe. He had to work for it, his heartbeat racing into a sprint.
When Devin played this trial as Colby, he’d suffered stoically: all straining neck and fierce growls, a single tear after hours of near drowning in the freezing tundra. He didn’t have that kind of dignity right now. His chattering teeth were the only thing preventing raw cries from escaping his mouth.
Claws sprang from his fingers, punching holes in the steel tub where he’d grasped the edge. Devin tipped his head back and groaned.
Beep.
“Okay, that’s enough. You need to get out.” Alex’s heartbeat turned hectic in his ears. “Your body temp is down to ninety-six degrees.” Panic began to bleed through her voice. “Hypothermia can set in at ninety-five.”
“Give me a second.” Devin needed to hold the line against the wolf. To make the claws recede and his vision revert once more. If he couldn’t control the wolf this far from the full moon, what chance did he have as they got closer?
“Devin, get up. I’m serious.” Alex must have leapt out of her chair and stepped behind him, because suddenly she was pushing ineffectually at his shoulders, trying to move him. “You could seriously hurt yourself.”
“I’m fine,” he said, the words jumbled by his inability to keep his teeth apart.
The metal sides of the tub crunched as Devin bore down on them, making more water spill and sending loose ice cubes skidding across the floor.
“You’ve proved you’re tough, okay?” Alex was trying to placate him. “Are you prepared to go to the ER if your extremities start turning blue?”
Devin ignored her, grunting as his claws retracted and then reappeared. He could do this. He had to.
The digital thermometer beeped urgently.
“Ninety-five degrees,” Alex read out, brittle with frustration.
Devin began to shiver violently all over.
“Almost.” He could barely catch his breath to form the word.
“Please.” Alex’s voice had grown thin, desperate.
The scent of her fear cut through everything. Make it stop , the wolf demanded. A surge of strength erupted from somewhere in Devin’s chest, and his claws receded with a metallic click.
He opened his eyes to find Alex trembling with fury.
“Get out of the fucking tub,” she said. “Now.”
Blue with cold and shocked silent, Devin obeyed, stumbling out onto the towel she’d laid on the floor.
“Take off your underwear and get in that sleeping bag,” she ordered, giving him her back.
So much for bedside manner.
He lost his freezing boxer briefs and then climbed up onto the cot and into the sleeping bag. After a few minutes in there under Alex’s hawklike supervision, Devin stopped shivering.
“I did it.” He smiled at her. “I reversed the shift. Did you see?”
“I saw.” Alex knelt down and pointed the electronic thermometer at his forehead.
Devin scowled at the obstacle between them. He was lightheaded and she was pretty. He extended his neck so he could look at her again full in the face.
The machine beeped and Alex exhaled.
“Ninety-seven degrees.” Her shoulders relaxed away from her ears. “Looks like you might have avoided harrowing consequences, you lucky asshole.”
Devin snuggled deeper into the sleeping bag. It smelled like the forest and woodsmoke and Alex. Like he was cocooned in her scent. Devin and the wolf agreed this was for the best.
“You did good too,” he told her, sudden-onset drowsiness loosening his tongue.
Alex looked up from checking his pulse rate. “What?”
“You used your big brain to make up that test and it worked.” Devin yawned, happy and sleepy and out of it.
“Shut up so I can take your temp again,” Alex said, but her scent turned pleased.
He held still, docile, with his arm tucked under his head as she re-aimed the thermometer gun and clicked the button.
Beep.
“Shit.” She frowned.
“What’s wrong?”
Alex took another reading.
Beep.
“Your temp is falling again.”
“Is that why I’m getting real dizzy?” Devin pressed his hand against his brow. “Good thing I’m already lying down, huh?”
“Fuck.” Alex’s good scent was tainted by a sudden spike of panic. Her face drained of color. “I read about this. I think you’re going into afterdrop.”
Black dots danced at the edges of his vision. “What’s that?”
Alex bolted upright. “Sometimes, after the initial stages of rewarming following the onset of hypothermia, a patient’s core temperature continues to fall. It happens most often when cold exposure is slow and prolonged.”
“Oops?” Devin stuck a hand out of the sleeping bag and curled his palm around her wrist. “Wait, am I dying?”
“Not yet.” Alex pulled free to yank off her shoes and then tugged down the zipper on the sleeping bag.
“Hey,” Devin said, in what was supposed to be protest but came out weak and slightly slurred. “Why’d you do that? ’M cold.”
Alex took a deep breath. “Whether or not this works, please know that I blame a lifetime of consuming truly reckless amounts of fan fiction.”
The next thing Devin knew, she was crawling onto the cot and pressing her body against his.
“Don’t be alarmed,” she said as she pulled the sleeping bag around both of them and zipped it back up. “I’m trying to transfer some of my body heat.”
“Why would I be alarmed?” Devin mumbled. Sounded like a great idea to him. He slid his bare legs between her clothed ones, tucked his chin into her neck, and wrapped his arms around her waist, even daring to sneak his chilly hands up under the front of the shirt of her scrubs.
Alex swore, goose bumps breaking out across her stomach. “Easy there, spider monkey.”
Devin sighed, ruffling her hair. “You’re so fucking warm.”
“Right. That’s the idea.”
“Like a little furnace.” He snuggled closer. “Feels incredible.”
“I’m just hoping we don’t bust the seams on the sleeping bag. This thing is a woman’s single.”
Alex still had the thermometer clutched in her fist. She twisted her wrist to point it at him at close range.
“Ninety-seven degrees!” She did a celebratory wiggle, pressing against him in new and inconvenient ways.
Devin groaned; his dick was cold, not dead.
“No, that’s good!” Alex said, misunderstanding his reaction. “That means it’s working. How do you feel?”
“It’s, uh, hard…to say…” Was there, like, a medical term for “horny”?
Completely oblivious to his increasingly urgent problem, Alex took his temp again.
The device beeped.
“What’s it say?” Why did she have to be so soft?
“Ninety-eight point eight,” Alex read. “Practically human.” Her body sagged against his. “I think we can relax.”
Yeah, in about five seconds she was gonna find out how relaxed he wasn’t. He didn’t even have pants on.
Devin knew this was supposed to be a trial of endurance, but these circumstances were truly inhumane. The lingering water from his skin had dampened her scrubs, making the already thin fabric an even flimsier barrier between his naked body and her clothed one.
He tried to distract himself, thinking about taxes and AI and other things that normally killed his boner.
But Alex was so sweetly curved, and she smelled so delectable, and she was taking such good care of him—Oh god. Oh no. Since when was he aroused by emotional intimacy?
Sweat beaded at his hairline and behind his knees. There was nowhere to go, no way to twist his hips or put space between them.
“Oh,” Alex said, growing warmer in his arms by the second as his hard-on proudly announced itself against her ass.
“Fuck, I’m sorry.” Devin tried to reposition but only succeeded in rubbing against her. “Just ignore it.”
“Sure.” Her voice sounded strangled and her heartbeat went nuclear. “No problem.”
“It’s an involuntary response,” Devin rushed to assure her. He didn’t want Alex thinking he was trying to take advantage of her saving him from cardiac arrest or whatever. He respected her boundaries around their relationship, hand to god.
She stiffened minutely in his arms, her scent shifting. DesireEmbarrassmentGuilt.
Devin hated that he’d made her feel bad after she’d so resolutely ignored the blatant opportunity to ogle him presented by today’s trial.
“I haven’t had sex in like sixteen months,” he revealed, providing a helpful new layer of plausible deniability to the way he obviously wanted to fuck her six ways from Sunday. “Sometimes the rumble of driving my rental truck over a particularly large grate excites me.”
“Got it,” Alex said tightly.
They lay there for several more minutes, intimately pressed together, both silently agreeing not to talk about it.
And Devin had thought the ice bath was painful.