21. Ryder
Ryder
Ihate sitting still.
Always have.
The problem is that moving around too much gets people noticed, and right now the last thing I want is attention.
So I stay where I am.
Mostly.
The roof of the abandoned garage behind Harley’s building gives me a decent view of the street and the apartment entrance without making me obvious.
Nobody ever comes up here. The place smells like old oil, rust, and pigeon shit.
It isn’t exactly comfortable, but after the places I’ve slept during the past year, it might as well be a luxury hotel.
I shift my weight and wince.
My ribs still ache.
Not from anything recent. Just another reminder that being a shifter doesn’t magically make a guy invincible.
Below me, a delivery truck crawls past. A woman walks a dog that looks more rat than canine. A teenager nearly gets flattened crossing the road because he’s staring at his phone.
Normal people.
Normal lives.
I wonder sometimes what would’ve happened if I’d never met Drake. If I’d never gone home with him.
If I’d never woken up screaming while my bones tried to tear themselves apart.
My stomach knots. Even now, thinking about him makes my skin crawl.
I close my eyes. Fuck, that’s a bad idea. The memory comes anyway.
One second I’m sitting on a garage roof. The next I’m back there. Back in that room. Back on that mattress.
Back to the worst night of my life.
I push myself upright and immediately regret it.
Pain tears through me so violently that black spots dance across my vision and my stomach clenches hard enough to make me think I’m going to throw up.
Every muscle in my body feels strung tight, as if somebody has stripped me down to the bones and rebuilt me while I slept, putting everything back in slightly the wrong place.
Even breathing hurts. My skin feels too tight, too sensitive.
I can hear things I shouldn’t be able to hear, smell things I shouldn’t be able to smell, and none of it makes any sense.
Before I can force another question past my lips, a door opens somewhere behind me. I whip around so fast my neck protests.
Three men walk into the room. Not one of them says a word to me at first. They simply stop and stare, their attention moving over me in a way that makes me deeply uncomfortable. I feel like livestock at an auction. Like something being inspected before a purchase is finalised.
The shortest one glances at me, then looks at the guy I met last night—Drake. At least I think it was last night, but who the fuck knows! My head’s all over the place.
“He’s awake.”
Drake rises from his chair.
For one stupid second, relief washes through me. I think maybe now somebody is finally going to explain what’s happening. Maybe somebody is going to tell me where I am, why I’m covered in blood, why every instinct I possess is screaming that something inside me has changed.
Instead, Drake merely walks over and stops beside the mattress.
There isn’t any concern in his expression. No sympathy. No regret. Not even curiosity.
Just a weird look of pure satisfaction. Like somebody admiring a finished piece of work.
“What did you do to me?” I ask again, my voice rough and shaking.
His smile widens slightly.
“You’ll figure it out.”
That’s it.
That’s the answer.
No explanation. No reassurance. No attempt to help me understand what the hell is happening to me.
Just four words.
I stare at him, waiting for more.
It never comes.
Drake reaches down and pats my shoulder once, almost casually. The gesture should feel comforting. Instead it feels possessive somehow, and a shiver crawls down my spine that has nothing to do with the pain.
Then he turns and walks away.
Just like that.
The three men move aside to let him pass. A few seconds later the door closes behind him.
I wait.
Surely he’ll come back.
Surely somebody will.
People don’t just do something like this to another human being and leave.
At least that’s what I tell myself.
The other three men linger for a minute or two. One tosses a bottle of water onto the mattress beside me. Another drops a paper bag that smells strongly of food. The third keeps staring at me with an expression I still can’t quite explain, something between pity and unease.
Then they leave too.
The lock clicks and silence settles over the room.
I sit there staring at the closed door for what feels like forever, convinced somebody will come back and explain everything. Every few minutes I glance toward it again, waiting for the handle to turn.
I don’t know it then, but that’s the first real lesson Drake ever teaches me.
Looking back, I think that’s the moment I should have realised exactly what kind of man he was.
Sitting on the garage roof behind Harley’s building now, watching the afternoon sunlight creep across the street below, I can almost laugh at how long it takes me to understand that.
The bastard changed my entire life in a single night and then walked away, leaving me to figure it out alone.
Unfortunately, that turned out to be the easy part.
A dog starts barking somewhere down the street and the sound jerks me out of the memory before I can sink too far into it.
I rub a hand over my face and let out a slow breath.
The stupid thing keeps barking.
A small brown mutt strains at the end of its leash while its owner tries to drag it along the sidewalk. The dog doesn’t want to move. It keeps staring toward an alley beside Harley’s building, barking at something I can’t see.
The sound makes the hair rise on the back of my neck. Not because of the dog, but because I remember.
For weeks after Drake abandoned me, every dog I encountered reacted to me.
Some barked. Some ran. Some tucked their tails and hid behind their owners.
At first I thought it was coincidence. Then my first shift happened. I still remember every second of it. mostly because I spend months wishing I could forget.
Three days of wandering around trying to figure out what the hell’s wrong with me. Three days of hearing things that aren’t supposed to be audible. Three days of smelling things I shouldn’t be able to smell. Three days of being so hungry I can barely think.
I haven’t slept much.
Every time I close my eyes I see Drake’s face.
Every time I wake up I hope this has all been some kind of psychotic break.
It never is.
By the third night I’m sitting behind a convenience store eating food out of a dumpster because I’m broke, exhausted, and too scared to ask anyone for help. The shame burns almost as much as the hunger.
I keep thinking about Harley. About what he’d say if he could see me. Probably something sarcastic. Definitely something honest.
The thought almost makes me smile.
Then the pain starts.
At first I think I’m sick. My stomach twists. My muscles lock and a ferocious heat pours through my body. I stagger to my feet and make it halfway across the alley before my legs give out completely. I hit the ground hard.
The scream tears out of me before I can stop it. Every bone in my body feels like it’s breaking. Not one at a time. All at once.
I claw at the pavement while blood floods into my mouth from biting my tongue.
I pray. Actually fucking pray! Because I think I’m dying. Maybe I want to die. Anything would be better than what’s happening to me.
Then I hear it, but the sound is coming from inside me.
A growl.
Low.
Deep.
Alive.
And suddenly I know I’m not alone inside my own skin. The sound vibrates through my chest, through my skull, through every nerve ending in my body. Panic hits me hard enough to make me choke.
“No.”
The word barely makes it past my lips before another wave of agony tears through me.
Every muscle in my body locks up at once, so violently that I pitch sideways and hit the concrete floor hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.
For several seconds all I can do is curl around the pain and gasp for air while my body seems determined to destroy itself from the inside out.
Something moves beneath my skin. I feel it travelling up my spine, a horrible grinding sensation that makes me think of bones being broken and reset at the same time.
The pressure builds until I am certain my back is about to snap in half.
Panic surges through me. This can’t be happening.
People don’t change like this. People don’t wake up after a one-night stand and suddenly find their bodies turning against them.
I claw at the floor, trying to drag myself away from whatever nightmare this is, but the movement only makes the pain worse.
My fingers cramp. My wrists twist at strange angles.
Every joint in my body feels loose, as though someone has dismantled me and put me back together without bothering to read the instructions first.
A flood of scents crashes into me all at once. Dust. Damp plaster. Sweat. Blood. Three other men somewhere nearby. My own fear, sharp and bitter enough that I almost gag on it.
“What did you do to me?” I choke out. But there’s no one there to answer.
For a second my mind simply refuses to accept what my eyes are seeing.
The fingers that have belonged to me my entire life seem to be shrinking.
Dark fur pushes through my skin in uneven patches.
My nails lengthen and curve, becoming thick black claws that scrape against the concrete floor with an ugly sound.
My arms buckle beneath me as another convulsion hits. The bones in my shoulders shift with a series of wet pops that nearly make me vomit. Pressure builds in my jaw until I think my teeth are going to shatter. Instead my face seems to stretch. My skull aches. My entire body aches.
The transformation doesn’t care what I want. It doesn’t slow. It doesn’t hesitate. It simply keeps going, remaking me piece by piece while I lie there helpless beneath it.
My clothes split apart.
My body stretches and reshapes.
The floor seems to rush closer, then farther away.
The room grows larger.
No. Not larger. It’s me that’s changing, not the room. The realization finally punches through the terror.