Chapter 21
21
ELLIOT CRANE
How are you feeling today?
SETH MAYS
Worse.
How much worse?
I don’t know.
How do I know when I need to go in?
Trouble breathing.
Trouble keeping food down.
Passing out.
And if your bones ache, go in immediately.
My ribs ache from barfing.
Are you keeping anything down?
Liquids.
Have you tried broth?
Yeah. Noah made some.
I do okay with ice cream as long as there are no chunks.
That’s good! Keep doing that.
You’ll be okay.
Promise?
Okay doesn’t necessarily mean human.
But I think you’ll live.
I’m scared.
I know. It’s okay.
Do you want me to call?
It hurts to talk.
I’ll stay right here.
He did. For the next three hours while I half-dozed, half-watched an endless series of Disney movies, because I didn’t have the energy or ability to concentrate on anything pitched above about the fourth grade level. Keeping me from trying to think too much, because my head hurt and my optimism from the day before had been extremely misplaced.
I was at least able to keep down the ice cream, soup broth, and 7Up, and Noah had added chocolate milk to the list, but nothing solid.
The real problem was that the fever had come back with an absolute vengeance, however. I had two heating pads, every blanket Noah could find plus a new fleece one he’d bought, and I was wearing sweat pants and a sweat shirt under the pile of fabric.
I was still shivering.
My throat felt raw—ice cream and chocolate milk were about the only things that made it feel better—and speaking was out of the question. My skull felt like it was full or spikes or broken glass, the skin of my forehead so sensitive to touch that I could barely stand to have the damp washcloth on it.
Focusing on anything—the questions Noah asked me, the memes and questions and little texted stories Elliot sent me, the movies I think I watched more than once because I couldn’t follow most of what was happening—was like trying to read through water. I knew it was there, but I couldn’t force my brain to hear or comprehend it.
Noah left me for ten minutes to go buy a thermometer, which he stuck under my tongue.
“Seth, we need to go in,” he said softly, his voice worried.
“Go where?” I asked, not understanding what he wanted.
“The hospital,” he replied, his tone clipped.
“Why?”
“Your fever is way too high,” he told me.
“For what?”
He let out a sigh, frustrated with me, although I wasn’t sure why. “To stay at home,” he said flatly. “We need to go in.”
“In what?” I was struggling to understand why he was so upset.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “Just… can you get up?”
“I don’t want to get up,” I complained. “I’m tired.”
“I know you are,” he said softly. “But I need you to get up. ”
“I’m cold, Nono. I want to stay in the blankets.”
“I know, Sethy.” He started pulling the blankets off me, and I clung to some of them. “But you can’t take them all with you.”
“Take them with me where?”
Noah sat down on the edge of the bed and put his face in his hands. “Seth, please,” he rasped, emotion thickening his voice, although I didn’t understand why he was so upset.
“Please what?”
“Just… get up. Please. For me.” He was pleading with me, and while I didn’t want to get up, I also didn’t want Noah to be upset.
“I’ll try,” I told him, because my legs felt like lead, and as soon as I sat up to try to stand up, it felt like I was on that old ride from carnivals when I was a kid—the Tilt-a-Whirl. I shut my eyes. “I don’t think I can, Nono,” I whispered.
“I’ll help you,” he said, moving off the bed so that he could put his smaller body under my armpit. Noah might be shorter and slimmer than I am, but he is a shifter, which meant that his strength was significantly more than you’d expect for his size. He maybe couldn’t carry me, but he could absolutely maneuver me—with my admittedly pathetic help—into a pair of loafers and then down into the car. It wasn’t easy , but I couldn’t say whether it was harder for him or for me.
I was clammy, sweaty, and still somehow cold by the time Noah got me into the passenger seat. He was also sweaty, but from actual exertion. Hauling my heavy ass down the stairs and into the car wasn’t easy, even for a shifter.
I slumped against the door, resting my forehead against the cool glass. It wasn’t a particularly cool day, but it also wasn’t warm. I couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or a bad thing that the window felt cool. Not that it mattered.
“I’ll be right back,” Noah told me, then ran back into the apartment building. I stayed where I was, my muscles fatigued by the short journey to the car, watching the heat of my breath as it condensed on the glass. Condensating. The word reminded me of something…
It’s what Tierney had said about the last victim. How he knew that the body had been chilled and dumped. Because it had been condensating .
The temperature of my own skin was making me wonder just how long the killer would have had to have chilled the victim to get them cold enough to condensate if they’d had a fever like mine.
And if they’d had a fever, would they have been taken to the hospital?
Who would have taken them?
Did someone? I wasn’t in charge of notifying next of kin or anything, but I couldn’t imagine that all three of them had no one in their lives. They’d all lived alone, but Jessica Haverill at least had friends she saw regularly. People who would have taken care of her if they’d known she was sick.
I wondered if the neighbor woman who had found Haverill had been going over to visit her friend, to walk with her, or maybe just to check on her, to see if she needed anything.
I wondered who checked on the other victims—Lisa Johnston and Miles Volkov.
I had Noah, but if I hadn’t, who would check on me?
I didn’t know.
My relationship with Devin had ended so catastrophically that there was no way I could have called him or any of ‘our’ friends to help me. I would have felt too guilty about asking someone who could contract Arcana to come take care of me, which meant I wouldn’t have asked Quincy. Or Ward Campion. Hart, maybe? He didn’t strike me as being particularly nurturing, but he’s probably who I would have ended up with, since Mason had his nephew to take care of, and everyone else I knew had either been at the scene or was still human and vulnerable.
Would I have managed to figure out that I needed to go to the hospital?
I couldn’t decide. While I was thinking about it, Noah returned to the car, passing me a bucket with a trash bag inside it. I looked stupidly down at it.
“In case you need to throw up,” he said as he started the car.
I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d need it, so I just held it loosely in my lap, not bothering to lift my head from the window.
I had needed the bucket, although only once, which I considered a personal victory. I also considered it a victory that I managed to throw up into the bucket, as opposed to on myself or some part of the car.
Noah pulled up to the Emergency entrance, ran around the car, and leaned in, taking the bucket from me to set it on the ground, then gently putting a mask over my ears. “Come on, Sethy,” he coaxed, and I made a soft involuntary noise as he helped me out.
“What’s the matter, sir?” a businesslike voice asked, and I lifted my head, trying to focus through the exhaustion on the scrub-clad figure, also masked, who was pushing an empty wheelchair .
“He has Arcana,” my brother said brusquely.
I watched the nurse or orderly or doctor’s gold-brown eyes narrow over their mask, light brown skin furrowing with a frown. “And you?”
“I’m a shifter,” Noah replied flatly.
If I’d expected derision or something else, I was pleasantly surprised, as the nurse/orderly/doctor simply nodded once, then maneuvered the chair so that Noah could deposit me into it. It made a vaguely inanimate sound of protest as my weight hit it harder than I’d meant to, my legs not wanting to function terribly well.
“He also has chronic Lyme and alpha-gal,” Noah said hurriedly.
“We’ll get you the paperwork inside,” the nurse/orderly/doctor told him. “And take medical history. But we need to get him into isolation. Has he been keeping anything down?” The nurse/orderly/doctor looked pointedly at the bucket.
“Up until the car ride, yeah, he was doing pretty well the last few days,” Noah answered. “His fever spiked today, though.”
“What’s his name?” the nurse/orderly/doctor asked Noah.
“Seth,” my brother answered.
“Hi,” I managed.
“Hi, Seth,” the nurse/orderly/doctor replied. “My name is Wyatt. I’m a nurse here at St. Cyprian’s.”
“Hi,” I repeated, my eyes feeling heavy.
“Is he your… brother?” Wyatt the nurse asked Noah.
“Yeah,” Noah replied.
“What species?” Wyatt asked, then.
“Wolf,” Noah replied. “Why?”
“Transformations and Arcane abilities run in families,” the nurse replied. “So we’re going to want to keep him in a more secure room, just in case that’s true here, as well.”
I watched Noah swallow, his blue eyes wide and worried.
My knee chose that moment to throb with pain, and I rubbed at it, then frowned down at my hand, which had immediately cramped up upon rubbing my knee.
“Does your knee hurt?” Wyatt asked me, his voice tight.
“Yeah. Always does,” I replied, still frowning at my hand. “Hand doesn’t, though.” Then I winced as my other hand twinged.
“Okay, let’s go,” Wyatt said, his voice having taken on a sharper edge. “We’ll deal with the paperwork later.”
“Can I come with you?” Noah asked, but my new nurse shook his head sharply.
“Sorry, but no.” He was already backing me toward the automatic glass doors. “You remember,” he said softly, and I watched the blood drain from Noah’s face.
“Remember what?” I asked Wyatt as we left Noah behind.
“Shifting,” he replied, his voice both gentle and pitying.
Fear sliced through me, hot and sharp.
Or maybe that was just the pain.
Everything was wrong.
Too loud.
Shrieks and cries and the scrabbling of nails.
My eyes didn’t work right.
My hands were useless.
I couldn’t stand.
Or sit.
Or even lie down .
I could smell cement.
Urine.
Shit.
Blood.
Vomit.
Sweat.
Bleach.
Something sour and unfamiliar.
I was hot and cold and shaking with pain and fear.
I wanted it to stop.
I wanted everything to stop.
I had the vague impression of a floor, cold and hard.
I was naked, and my skin felt bruised and burned and raw.
Air rasped in my throat, and swallowing was so painful it made me whimper.
I smelled something thick and coppery, and it turned my stomach.
Licking my lips told me that it was my own blood, my lips cracked and chapped. The taste of it made me retch, but I didn’t have anything in my stomach to bring up, so I just curled in on myself.
My skin was hot and prickly.
I tried to draw a breath, but then the pain came back.
There were people, but they were strange.
So loud, voices harsh and garbled.
They smelled sour. The same sour I did not know .
They seemed too big, strangely lumpy. Brought food that tasted too much.
Put needles in me.
Drugs that made things slow and layered, like too many exposed negatives on top of one another.
Drugs that made me slow and stupid and put a bitter, bleak taste in my mouth.
Drugs that brought darkness.
I’d thought I understood pain. I’d had chronic joint pain since I was twelve. I had pain daily.
I now had a whole new definition of pain.
And I understood completely how it was that shifters—and orcs and fauns and vampires and elves—seemed impervious to the kind of physical damage that would incapacitate a human.
Nothing compared to what it felt like to have your body completely change its shape and makeup overnight.
Or about a dozen times in a single night, in my case.
Over the past few days, I’d been turned inside out at least a hundred times, every muscle, every bone, every tendon in my body fatigued and shaking, lactic acid soaking through me and oozing out in sweat that felt like it had to be half blood. The hand I could see, lying on the floor a few inches from my face, was pale and clammy, the knuckles bloody and scraped.
I could smell it. Coppery and salty.
The floor, up next to my nose, smelled stronger. Bleach and something sour, a chemical lemon that burned through my nasal passages and felt acrid on the back of my tongue. Underneath that, something slightly musty—the chalky smell of the cement itself layered over with the smells of old urine and bile and blood that wasn’t mine.
It made my head hurt and my throat burn.
I tried to lift my head, to move my nose away from the smells, and failed, darkness washing over me and blissfully taking away the smells.
I smelled blood and sweat and shit and bile.
My stomach gnawed at my ribs.
My throat burned.
Every joint in every limb throbbed, my pulse beating through my bones.
I tried to weep.
I do not know if I succeeded.
Twice in my life, I’ve prayed for death. This was one of those times.
Neither time was my prayer answered.
It was hot. Too hot.
Stifling.
But there was no sweat.
I could only cool myself by gasping air through my mouth. Air that was cooler outside my body than in.
It made me retch.
I put my hands, my feet on cement to cool them.
They were odd. Ineffective .
I was broken.
Tired.
So very tired.
I didn’t know how long it was before they brought me food. Maybe hours, maybe days. I didn’t know anymore how much time had passed or what shape I’d been in for most of it. It was oatmeal, the lumps thick and slightly nauseating, with too much cinnamon and sugar. It assaulted my nose, making me sneeze.
The spoon they’d given me was a rounded, soft plastic. The kind of spoon you’d give to a toddler. I guess so I didn’t cut myself if I started shifting partway through my oatmeal. I didn’t, which was a goddamn miracle as far as I was concerned. There was a gnawing pit in my stomach that told me I hadn’t eaten in a while. A day or so, maybe.
I had no idea what day it was or how long I’d been here, my body trying to destroy itself through hunger or transformation or both. My shaking hands felt too big, my wrists too bony, and a look down at my torso suggested that I’d lost maybe ten pounds, which made me wonder how much of that was to fuel the constant shifting and how much was because I hadn’t been able to eat.
I didn’t remember the last time they’d fed me. If they’d fed me.
I couldn’t imagine they hadn’t given me something . The body—human or shifter—can’t go more than a few days without water, so they’d hydrated me somehow. I assumed they’d fed me, as well.
Or maybe I’d just forgotten what normal hunger felt like, given that my internal organs had moved and changed multiple times.
I finished the oatmeal, still hungry, wondering why that was all they’d given me.
I had the answer to that question about half an hour later when I threw it all up again post-shift.
I was too tired and sore to cry, although the tightness in my chest felt like I had been. Maybe I had. I had no idea what my body did anymore. How it worked.
I wanted a blanket.
They’d given me at least one before, but I think I’d shredded it, judging from the small scraps of fabric scattered around the room.
I wasn’t sure how they brought me things, fed me, or cleaned me or the room, since I would have assumed that I should have been much more filthy… It had been days—how many, I didn’t know—but while I could smell stale urine and feces and blood and sweat, the only fresh scents were sweat, a little blood, and cleaners.
The blood came from scrapes on my knuckles, knees, and elbows. They were scraped and bruised, and my left knee was badly swollen—moreso than usual. Well, than my old usual. I had no idea what my new usual was going to be.
In some of my more lucid moments, I’d wondered whether becoming a shifter might help my Lyme. If the state of my knee was any indication, the answer was no. I guess it was too much to hope that I’d be able to offload one physical problem for another one.
If you could call having two bodies a physical problem .
Noah didn’t seem to have any issues with it anymore, so I suppose I could at least look forward to that.
If I lived through this part.
I was still lying face-down on the floor, my head turned to the side, when I heard a sound that I didn’t recognize—a metallic grinding, followed by the sound of a bolt slamming loudly home. Then the creak of metal hinges as the heavy reinforced door swung open.
Feet scuffed loudly on the cement floor.
I tried to push myself up, turn my head, anything. I failed.
The shoes—multi-colored clog-like shoes that basically screamed nurse —moved into my field of view. The person in them smelled soft, a little dusty, and warm. Like sun on sand, undercut with something spicy that I didn’t recognize.
I heard the sound of rustling fabric, and then Wyatt’s familiar face—light brown skin, gold-brown eyes, almost delicate features—appeared as he crouched down and turned his head to look at my face. His was partially obscured by a hospital-standard mask.
“How are you today, Seth?” he asked me.
I wondered how many times he’d talked to me and I’d had no clue. I tried to answer him, failed, but did at least manage a half-grunt, half-whine.
It must have been a milestone, because his face split into a grin. “Feel like trying something solid to eat?”
The next noise I made was a little less horrific and, I hoped, a little more positive. Because something I could actually chew sounded amazing.
“How do you feel about eggs and chicken?” Wyatt asked me.
I made a half-squeak that hopefully sounded positive. Chicken and eggs wasn’t really something I’d have asked for, but at that exact moment, I probably would have agreed to a bacon cheeseburger, terrible idea as that would have been.
“Okay, I’m going to help you sit up, yeah?”
I made a noise, and Wyatt took it for agreement, fortunately.
He was stronger than he looked, by quite a bit. He was thin and shorter than me, maybe an inch or so taller than Noah. There was a faint… animalistic scent to his skin that made me frown as he brought over a reading pillow, then helped me to sit up into it.
My mouth immediately started watering when he went out into the hall, then opened some containers that held hot chicken and scrambled eggs, which he put together in a bowl, then brought me another toddler-spoon. And then he had to hold both my hands—the one holding the bowl and the one with the spoon—to help me feed myself.
He was watching me like a hawk as he helped me eat.
I didn’t understand why… until I did.
As my body rebelled against my control, skin stretching painfully, needles—fur—ripping through, bones stretching, muscles rolling, tendons stretching, jaw aching as my teeth grew and shifted in my changing jawbone.
Wyatt moved fast .
He was out the door in seconds, the door itself bolted before I finished thrashing my way to the floor, clawed hand-paws already digging into the soft material of the reading pillow. Everything around me became sharper, harsher, sounds assaulted my ears, my skin screamed—or maybe that was just me.
I couldn’t tell where I ended and the pain began.
I lay on the floor, again, this time on my side, staring over at the mostly-shredded remains of the reading pillow. It had lost most of its definition, although there was still enough of it clinging together that you could tell that it had probably started life as some sort of pillow.
I wasn’t sure if my ability to not completely render it into its constituent parts was a good sign or a bad one—good, because I hadn’t gone so thoroughly savage that I’d obliterated it, or bad because I hadn’t had the strength to do so.
I still had exactly zero control over myself in wolf form—I assumed it was wolf form. For all I knew, I was turning into a bear. Europe doesn’t have a lot of apex predators, so my choices were rather limited, not that I got to actually choose.
I heard the bolt on the door again, and this time—this was an improvement—I was able to lift my head to watch as Wyatt came through the door, already holding a bowl and spoon. I sniffed tentatively—I’ve learned to sniff tentatively , because it’s like things scream-smell now.
He had chicken again, but this time it smelled citrusy, too. Lemon. And something herbal. And something… earthy?
I swallowed a couple of times, trying to sort out where my vocal chords were. “Wh?—?”
Wyatt’s expression brightened almost immediately. “This?” he asked, lifting the bowl slightly.
I managed a tiny nod.
“Rosemary lemon chicken,” he replied. “Shredded, so you can’t choke on it.”
I wanted to tell him that I wanted to chew something. Gnaw on it. Crunch bones between my teeth… My skin prickled.
No. Stop.
Wyatt had frozen, watching me .
Just eat the stupid chicken, I told myself. You’re not an animal .
Except sometimes I was an animal. Well, a non-human animal. But I didn’t want to be that again. I wanted to sit. To eat like a normal person.
Emotion pushed at the back of my throat, and I felt saliva gathering in my mouth.
Stop , I thought again. Just stop .
Everything felt like a trigger. Food. Emotion. Fear. Anything and everything could fucking send me over the edge into hours of blurred images, painful smells, and panic.
Wyatt had frozen again, watching, waiting. But there was something almost pleased in what I could see of his expression.
“You’re doing really well, you know,” he said, then, his voice gentle.
I glared at him.
“It’s only been nine days,” he said softly. “And you’re already learning to control it.”
Nine days . Panic tried to rise, and I shoved it back down, my hands spasming and breath rasping. I looked back at him, his brown-gold eyes wary, but kind.
“Most people don’t even begin to get control until fourteen or fifteen days,” he said. “And we usually have to administer sedatives for them to really be able to get the hang of it.” He smiled. “You’re getting there all on your own.”
I studied him, trying to tell if he was telling me the truth or just trying to make me feel better.
“It took me almost seventeen,” he said, then.
He’s a shifter. It made sense, I supposed. You want to have someone who knows what it’s like. Who remembers—in as much as anyone could remember the hell I was going through. I was still in it, and I could barely remember the last ten days. I wondered what kind of shifter he was. How long he’d been one.
I swallowed again, wincing around my raw throat. “Hu—” I coughed. “Hun-gry?” I managed.
Wyatt grinned widely, the corners of his eyes crinkling up and his cheeks lifting the side of the mask. “You’re doing great ,” he told me, then stepped forward so that he could crouch next to me and offer the bowl with its toddler spoon. “Really, Seth.”
“S—Sit?” I asked. Having gotten one word out, the next one was easier. It still hurt, but it was easier.
Wyatt offered me the arm that wasn’t holding the bowl. “See if you can pull yourself up.”
“Pull… you,” I told him. I was a lot bigger than he was.
He smiled at me, eyes lifting. “I can handle an orc, I can handle you,” he informed me.
I thought about that. I only knew Mason Manning personally, but pretty much every orc I’d seen was massive.
I reached out, my arm shaking from the effort of holding it up, and gripped Wyatt’s forearm so that I could pull myself up. He leaned away a little, providing counterbalance so that I could use him without pulling him over. There was a faint sheen of sweat on my forehead by the time I managed it, but at least it wasn’t from being feverish anymore.
“Well done,” Wyatt said, then handed me the chicken, although he kept his hands on it, as well, helping me steady the bowl.
I fumbled with the spoon, struggling, and emotion rose again, sending that odd electric sensation running over my skin and through my bones .
No.
My body shook. Wyatt held perfectly still as I fought myself, repulsed at the sight of the skin on the back of my hands rippling.
No. I don’t want to. I wanted to eat the chicken. My stomach was tight, I was hungry . I knew I’d probably eat the damn chicken anyway, but I wanted to taste it—to remember eating it.
My mother had always said I was the stubborn one.
Well, that stubbornness was going to be useful for something, God dammit.
“Very nice,” Wyatt murmured as I shoved the rising tension back down into my belly.
I glared at my hand as I wrapped it around the handle of the spoon. It shook, but I managed to deliver a too-small bite of chicken to my mouth.
It wasn’t good, but it was the best damn thing I’d ever tasted.
I was three bites in before I realized I was crying.
It got easier, after that. Not easy , but easier . As long as I was careful, I could feel the change start, and as long as it wasn’t too strong, I could shove it back down. I wasn’t entirely sure that was good for my mental health, but I decided that focusing on my physical health was going to take precedence first. Because it was a lot less painful to not shift.
Not only was the shifting itself painful, although Wyatt told me that would get better as I got used to it, but because I wasn’t in control of my wolf form—and Wyatt confirmed that I was, indeed, a wolf like Noah—I usually ended up bruised, scraped, and otherwise in rough shape when I came back out of it.
Yesterday, I’d only shifted twice.
I got to have actual chunks of chicken, some sweet potatoes, rice, and peas.
They also gave me a pair of scrubs, another reading pillow, and a blanket.
I only tore the blanket a little and left just one set of tooth-marks in the pillow. I did completely destroy the scrubs, though.
Wyatt told me that was normal, because I’d shifted while in them, and then panicked because wolves are not built to wear clothes, so they’d constricted me.
His eyes tilted up as he gave me a small smile when I’d given him a look that said I really hated this shit. “It takes time,” he said.
I completely lost it when they let Noah in to see me. Not like that—I managed to stay human, although it had been close—I just grabbed him and held on and sobbed like a baby.
So had he.
When I finally stopped, I noticed that he smelled different—familiar, but more . With that same animalistic undertone I recognized from Wyatt— Oh.
I guess now I knew what shifters smelled like.
I wondered if every Nid had a distinctive smell, or if it was just shifters. I imagined that fauns would have to smell different, since they now had fur all over their legs. And vampires and ghouls probably also smelled different. They had died , after all. That kind of a biological shift had to produce a difference in smell. I didn’t know about orcs or elves. I supposed I’d find out.
I could also ask Noah. Or Wyatt.
Or Elliot.
Or Taavi or any one of Noah’s friends from work, for that matter.
I had a whole ready-made community of shifters who could help me. Support me. Teach me what I needed to know.
That should have made me ecstatic. I got to have something that so many shifters and other Arcanids didn’t have. I had a twin who understood exactly what I was going through. I had friends who weren’t going to reject me because I had developed the ability to grow fur and fangs.
And I didn’t want any of them. It wasn’t that I wished they didn’t exist—I just… didn’t want people telling me they understood. Even though they did, to a degree, no one ever really understood what it was like to be in someone else’s body. And mine had already been pretty messed up.
I don’t know if it was ironic or paradoxical or just plain stupid, but my life had completely changed, and I didn’t just want to go back to it as though nothing was different.
I wasn’t going to get a lot of sympathy from anyone if I said so out loud, though.
Wyatt smiled at both Noah and I, collecting my empty bowl—I’d been given more chicken, this time with rice and beans, followed by ice cream for dessert. I didn’t feel hungry for the first time in days, and not feeling a gnawing pit in my stomach went a very long way toward making me feel more in control of my own body .
I still wasn’t happy about any of it.
I didn’t want to be a shifter, for one thing. I really didn’t want to be a shifter. I hated the fact that my body felt prickly, that every time I had a surge of emotion, I had to worry about turning feral. I hated that I could smell everything . I hated that I could hear every scuff of a shoe, every creak of a door. Every shriek and scream that they’d tried to muffle, but hadn’t quite managed to do.
“We’re going to move you tomorrow morning,” Wyatt said.
“Move me?” I asked, looking up at him from where I was sitting on the floor, Noah beside me.
Wyatt nodded. “Into a more typical hospital room.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
It was a ‘good’ sign, because it meant they thought I was recovering. I wasn’t feverish, although I felt weak and shaky, but I wasn’t entirely certain how much of that was illness, how much was me adjusting to my new body, and how much was because I had only had one decent meal in the last two weeks.
But I wasn’t certain that I was as in control as they seemed to think. Wyatt was my day nurse—there were two more who came in to check on me, feed me, and so on, but I didn’t know their names. One was a brusque and efficient elven woman, and the other a somewhat twitchy man whose animalistic smell told me he was also some kind of shifter. He was nice enough, but didn’t really engage much with me. That was fine. I kind of preferred the professional distance, to be honest.
Because any attempt to make this feel ‘okay’ felt horribly wrong. I hated it. I hated my body, I hated the trembling muscles, I hated the fact that the slightest thing felt like it could send me into a physical spiral that ended with destroyed pillows and clothes.
I also hated that I hated it.
Because the part of me that wanted to support Noah—and all the shifters I knew and cared about—wanted to be able to treat this like a perfectly ‘normal’ thing. People become shifters all the time. Shifters are people, just like humans and orcs and fauns and Arcs and everybody else, regardless of Arcane status.
I believed that.
And I hated that I’d become a shifter.
How the fuck was I supposed to explain that to Noah? Or Hart? Or Elliot? Or any of the lovely mediums and shifters and orcs and everything else that I worked with? Hey, it’s cool that you’re an Arc or a Nid, but it isn’t cool with me that I am.
It made me sound like the world’s worst asshole.
And it wasn’t even because I knew that suddenly I had become a second-class citizen. I’m sure someone in St. Cyprian’s had already started the paperwork the second they knew what I was and that I wasn’t going to die. They’d probably catalogued my DNA, my fingerprints, and my bite impression, both human and wolf. I no longer had the luxury of being a private citizen—I was a registered shifter, with all the attendant bullshit that came along with it.
I was angry about that.
I was upset about the fact that I was even a shifter to begin with.
Wasn’t chronic Lyme and alpha-gal enough? Why did I also have to now be prone to what amounted to fits of psychosis accompanied by pain, blackouts, and claws and fangs. And since I couldn’t control myself, I could do damage to a lot more than furniture .
I hated that.
I also hated the fact that I suddenly felt a lot more sympathetic to the bigoted shitheads in the Magic Free Movement. From inside a new shifter’s body, I got it in a way that I never had as the twin of a shifter. I’d watched Noah struggle with his new self for years—we were teenagers, and even thinking about the nightmare of going through puberty as a shifter made me shudder. I remembered him saying that he had a hard time keeping his temper and his emotions under control.
I thought I’d understood. I had clearly had no idea just how awful that had to have been for him.
So I hated that I was now undergoing that same struggle, albeit as an adult who—in theory, anyway—had learned how to control his emotional outbursts. And I hated that this experience had taught me just how clueless I’d been. I hated that I lacked control. And I hated that it made me feel like a terrible person all around—for being a clueless shithead, for being an asshole, and for wishing I didn’t know any of that.