Chapter 4 Khalid
It felt like my heart had been racing and my fight-or-flight instincts were running on overdrive ever since I shifted on accident. I guess I expected the first time to happen once I’d figured out all the mechanics and had total control over it.
Stupid me. As soon as Mazen shifted and I thought he was going to attack Sage for beating the shit out of Lola, it just happened. I didn’t even get to enjoy it or figure out how I did it so I could repeat it. And I certainly didn’t know how to turn it off so I could communicate.
I needed to talk to Mazen. I mostly needed to apologize because I could admit when I was wrong.
He hadn’t been going for Sage when he shifted.
He jumped on the bed and tried to protect Liam.
Mazen didn’t even ask his girlfriend for an explanation.
It was pretty self-explanatory what she was doing and she would have just lied.
He jumped straight in with our lot and decided he didn’t want her version of what happened.
And he’d been trying to help me shift back.
I hadn’t been trying to be a dick about it and refuse to listen.
Deep down in some part of my brain, I knew I should listen to him, but I also got irrationally angry at the suggestion to leave Sage with the danger out there.
And then Sage’s baba showed up and said we were dealing with Apep. Everything I was feeling just intensified. It felt impossible to ever shift back. I needed to be in the library. I knew what human books said about Apep. I wanted to see what a supernatural library had on him.
“Maybe Khalid should try the zoomies in here and see if it burns off some of his adrenaline,” Liam said.
I bared my teeth at him. I wasn’t a dog. I was a jackal. Jackals weren’t domesticated, and I hadn’t done a ton of study on them, but I was fairly certain we didn’t zoomie in a dorm room. It was uncivilized.
“Running could help, and Sage would be close,” Lucian suggested.
“Hey, jackals are predators, right? I could break into the kitchen and steal some sausage. We can hang it around Lucian’s neck and you can chase the Prince of Darkness around the dorm room.
You won’t catch him because he has super speed and once you’re nice and tuckered out, we’ll all share the sausage. I’m hungry,” Liam said.
I couldn’t tell if Liam was honestly trying to be helpful, or if he’d gotten bored with taking the piss out of Lucian and it was my turn.
I was not chasing a vampire with a sausage around his neck.
Though sausage sounded like an excellent idea right now.
I was starting to get what Elliot and Petros said about my metabolism changing when I shifted.
Okay, I actually really wanted sausage right now, but I refused to chase Lucian for it.
“Let’s try this. Roll on your back, Khalid,” Sage said.
If it had been anyone else, I would have bitten them. I was not okay with showing my belly to anyone else. I had no idea why she’d asked this of me, but she was my mate and I trusted her implicitly.
Sage asked Liam to sing and started stroking my belly. I instantly relaxed, and my tongue lolled out of my mouth. Yeah, I wasn’t going to zoomie like the common canine, but belly rubs were very nice. I could get used to that.
The only thing keeping me from completely passing out and falling asleep was Liam’s voice. It made sense. I didn’t know what the original Horned God or the reincarnations that came before Liam were like, but music had been around forever.
Liam wasn’t a siren, but it was as if he was tapping into something primal when he sang. He healed the trees, and I could feel my mind coming back to itself. Sage’s hand kept stroking my belly, and my fight-or-flight instincts started retreating.
I still knew we were seriously fucked unless we could figure out who Apep was and how to kill void beings. But the rational part of my brain started to take over and realize I could protect Sage better by researching how to do that than with sharp canines.
My body shuddered, and the next thing I knew, I was sprawled naked across Sage’s lap. She ran her fingernails across my abs, and I broke out in goosebumps.
“How did you know that would work?”
Seriously, I already knew she was a goddess, but the moon was streaming over her shoulder through the open window, giving her red hair a silvery glow, and she knew exactly what I needed. She was perfect, and she was mine.
“Liam has some kind of magic with his music. We didn’t need to rile you up; we needed to calm you down. I figured petting you while he sang might help.”
I laughed because it definitely did. And Liam was probably going to roast me for this later, and I didn’t care.
“I don’t suppose you could still break into the kitchen and steal sausage?”