Chapter 6
Robbie slipped in and out of consciousness. How long had they been driving? Where was she taking him? And what had she said before shoving him out the office door and into the backseat of his car? Something about shifting? No. That was impossible.
Shifting itself wasn’t impossible. He’d met plenty of shifters before.
Hell, he’d worked for dozens. But that he was a shifter?
That was bananas. He would have known. He would have shifted by now.
He was thirty-four, for god’s sake. Fifteen years or so too old for a first shift.
But his bones ached. His head ached. His teeth ached.
Maybe he was only dying. Just normal, run-of-the-mill human dying.
That thought made him sad. His mama would miss him, and his sisters.
Even if he hadn’t been home in more than two years, something Ma never failed to remind him of when he called.
Esther and Jory would miss him, too. And Callum, the man who hadn’t even known they were friends until Robbie had told him.
Robbie had always been a bit of a rolling stone. He’d travelled a bit of everywhere since leaving home right after high school, never staying one place longer than a year or so. Not because he particularly liked wandering, but because he got itchy. His mama always said he had traveler’s feet.
A wave of sharp pain threatened to drag him under, and he felt his eyes roll back.
“Robbie?” Nadja asked from the front seat. She sounded fried, her voice thin and shaky.
“Yeah?” he groaned.
“We’re almost there. We’re almost to my friend’s pack.”
“Why are we going there?” he asked.
“I told you. You’re about to shift for the first time. You need help to get through that.”
“I can’t be shifting. That’s impossible,” he answered, clutching at his stomach, which felt like it was on fire. His fingers throbbed, swollen like he’d boxed bareknuckle for twenty rounds.
“It clearly isn’t, because it’s happening.”
Robbie closed his eyes, feeling that momentary lucidity slip away ever so slightly.
The car pulled off the road onto a gravel lane and bumped along, Nadja driving faster over the ruts and dips faster than Robbie would have.
She was clearly mistaken about the shifting, but maybe this place would have a doctor who could help him.
Or at the very least, someone to put him out of his misery.
Maybe with one of those giant hammers like in the cartoons.
The car stopped, jolting him awake. He hadn’t been aware of falling asleep again. He heard talking outside the door but couldn’t tune in enough to make sense of what was being said. His body ached and he lifted an arm experimentally, as much to see whether he still could as anything.
The door opened, and the scent of pine rushed into the car. Pine and water and rain and animal. He filled his lungs with the smell, breathing deeply, feeling shaky and alive the way he felt when an energy drink hit his bloodstream. Robbie’s heart pounded and his fingers trembled.
“Come on out, bud,” a deep voice said.
“I—I don’t think I can,” Robbie replied, his words slurring together as that first rush of scent left him and he crashed again.
There was a long, exasperated sigh. And then Robbie felt himself being pulled by his legs and then lifted out of the car. Whoever it was tried to stand him on his feet, but his knees immediately gave out and he crashed into the side of the SUV.
“Whoa there,” the voice said, a deep bass that almost sounded like Hank’s. Strong hands helped to guide him down until he was sitting on the ground, leaning back against what felt like the tire. The pine straw was soft beneath him.
“That’ll do, pup,” the voice said. “How long has he been like this?”
“He started to lose it in my office, but it’s been getting worse on the drive. I think he’s in pain.” That was a different voice. Husky and soft. Nadja, Robbie’s brain helpfully supplied.
“Of course he’s in pain.”
“I didn’t think first shifts hurt like this,” Nadja said.
“They don’t.”
“So what’s wrong with him, then?”
The voice sighed again. “You know if you get your tonsils out as a kid, you have ice cream for two days and feel fine? But if you get them out as an adult, it’s painful for weeks? First shifts are supposed to happen around eighteen. You said he’s thirty-four?
“That’s what he told me.”
A snort. “Yeah. This is gonna hurt like nothin’ else then.”
Robbie’s eyes were still closed. The world outside the car was too bright. He wanted to look at the owner of this voice but he couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes.
“You know,” Nadja said, “I really like this new look.”
The new voice grumbled. “The girls got a hold of me.”
Curiosity outweighed any sense of self preservation, and Robbie opened his eye just a crack.
Crouched in the dirt in front of him was a very large man, with broad shoulders and thick thighs.
His mama would have said that this guy was built “solid as a brick shithouse.” He wore faded jeans and a T-shirt.
But as Robbie’s gaze travelled up, he saw that the man’s long hair was in two braids, decorated all the way from bottom to top with pink flowers.
He also wore hot pink shimmery eye shadow.
“Very pretty,” Robbie slurred.
“Don’t be an ass,” the giant said.
“I’m not,” Robbie panted. “I have nail polish that color. It’s—” He gasped and squeezed his eyes shut again as his legs cramped. “It’s one of my favorites.”
“He can’t stay here.”
“I can’t bring him anywhere else!” Nadja hissed. “Surely you’re not so cruel as to leave him alone for his first shift!”
“I don’t make the rules, Nadja,” he said with a sigh. “No unmated males allowed.”
“That’s a bit sexist, don’t you think? Also, isn’t a mated male just as capable of causing harm as an unmated one?”
There was a long pause. “There’s a pack council meeting this afternoon. You’re welcome to make your case to them.”
“Wonderful,” Nadja said. Robbie liked the way her voice sounded when she was pleased.
“Alright, pup. Up we go,” the giant said, hefting Robbie into the air.
Robbie was not a big man, but he wasn’t a particularly small one, either.
His high school baseball coach had called him gristly.
All the lifting had never really added much bulk to his frame.
Once upon a time, in a previous life, he’d thought he might try his hand at MMA.
He’d gotten in scraps his whole life up to that point, and it made sense, as careers went, especially since he was young and full of fight and wanted to go somewhere and see bigger things.
Then at his first fight as a bantamweight competitor, he’d been knocked out in the first round and told by his coach that he didn’t have the “instincts,” whatever the hell that meant.
But this man picked him up like a princess in a movie. Had Robbie not been nearly blind from agony, he might have commented on that. Or pretended to swoon and say, “My hero! Cowboy, take me away!”
But he clenched his jaw instead because he didn’t want to scream.
Before he closed his eyes again, he saw Walter bumble lazily out of the backseat of his car.
He opened his mouth to warn the big guy about the murderous little creature, but Walter did something that looked very much like nodding to Robbie’s delirious brain before flying off in a meandering path down the road away from him.
Robbie wanted to ask Nadja if she knew where he was going, but his muscles spasmed again and he squeezed his eyes shut and focused on not whimpering instead.
He was aware of being carried into a building and set down on something soft.
He opened his eyes and found himself sitting on a couch in a room that looked very much like a small school cafeteria.
There were racks of folding chairs against the wall next to collapsed and stowed round tables.
The fluorescent lights above flickered and he could hear the electricity buzzing.
Nadja was there, hovering next to the couch.
“Is there anything you can do for the pain, JJ?” she asked.
The giant, apparently named JJ, shrugged. “Unfortunately, not a damn thing. But I think the more wolves he’s around, the better it will get. He’s definitely close. He just needs to realize in his wolf brain that it can happen.”
Robbie groaned. Nadja pressed a cool hand against his forehead, and he stilled, loving the way it felt against his feverish skin.
“How long until this meeting?” she asked.
Robbie saw JJ rub the back of his neck. “It’s supposed to start at four, but people will start meandering in any time now. And it won’t start right on time because we need a quorum and almost never get one until four-fifteen.”
“When will we get to talk?”
“Well, we have to get through scheduled pack business, and then we open it for new business. Could be ten minutes. Could be an hour.”
“So, what? We make our case, and the council decides?”
“The pack votes.”
“What?”
“The pack is the council, the council is the pack. The pack will vote.”
“Do you have any sway?”
“Look, Nadja,” JJ said, “I love you, but I’m not going to bully my packmates into accepting him.
This isn’t like other packs. Half the people here were running away from something.
Escaping bad packs, escaping bad matings.
They’re safe here, and I’m not about to jeopardize those feelings of safety. Not even for you.”
There was a long silence. Robbie could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights, the heating grate vibrating as the furnace kicked on, his own labored breathing.
“But what happens to him if they say no?” Nadja asked.
“There are other packs—”
“He needs help now.”
Robbie was suddenly more exhausted than he’d ever been. He couldn’t keep on like this.
“Please,” Robbie whispered, blinking his eyes open slowly.
JJ groaned.
“I won’t influence anyone,” he said, pointing a calloused finger at Nadja before turning it on Robbie. “They’re allowed to vote how they see fit. But you have my vote. And I’ll speak on your behalf. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t and something happened to him during the shift.”
“Or someone else,” Nadja said quietly.
“Fuck,” JJ muttered.
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Robbie said through clenched teeth before the darkness took him under again.