Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
The others had shifted and asked him to join them before melting into the bush, but George needed to wait for Evan, and they’d understood that with no words being spoken. Next time, he’d run with the pack leaders. He sat on the lawn, head tilted as he listened. Evan was still in the house and, from the sounds of it, still human.
It felt as though he’d been waiting for hours. He wanted to run and stretch and play with the other wolves. He wasn’t dating Evan, so why did he care so much?
His front paw stamped on the grass as indecision pulled at him.
What if Evan was waiting for him to leave?
Maybe Evan didn’t want to play with anyone when shifted. He admitted to shifting at home and lying on the sofa, which sounded as boring as fuck. But then, George loved running on four feet. Just as he was about to stand and walk away, Evan stepped onto the veranda, naked. Then the view was too good for George to move.
All that lean muscle and golden hair…his mouth opened, and his tongue hung out. He couldn’t help it. Evan had always been his drug of choice, and that hadn’t changed.
“You didn’t have to wait.”
But he had, and they were having this delightfully awkward moment. Some shifters didn’t like making the change in front of people, and paws down, Evan was one of those people. George stood and stretched and turned away, pretending that he needed to itch his ear.
When he heard footsteps on the grass, he stopped and looked at the wolf Evan had become. There was nothing wrong with his wolf form. He was a pretty, light brown, and he was a good size. He had nothing to worry about.
But Evan walked as though expecting to fall over because he didn’t trust his limbs. Each step was awkward and ungainly as if this was his first shift, and he needed to learn how to use this body. Was that because he didn’t shift very often or because he didn’t like this body?
He gave Evan’s muzzle a lick, but Evan pulled a face as if he’d eaten a frog—something George did not recommend, though he had won the dare.
Right, no wolf signs of affection.
By the time they reached the edge of the grass, Evan had loosened up, but it was clear he wasn’t happy. However, he followed George as if content to let someone else lead so he didn’t have to think.
There were so many unfamiliar scents that he needed to sniff. New wolves he hadn’t met in person, and the unmistakable tang of witch magic, along with the natural scents of the bush and the animals that lived there. He could hear the other wolves, but he wasn’t in a rush to join them.
He glanced at Evan, who seemed to be standing around waiting for the earliest moment he could return to the house and shift.
He might hate being a wolf, but at the same time, didn’t he want to do stuff?
George turned and bounced, inviting him to play.
Evan rolled his eyes in a far too human gesture. George had never seen a wolf with so many obvious human mannerisms…yet he was more than happy for some of his wolf behavior to bleed through when he was human. It really didn’t make sense.
Evan mimicked George as if agreeing to play. George made a slow run through the trees, checking over his shoulder to make sure that Evan was chasing him. He deliberately slowed enough so Evan could catch him. He wanted him to, but he was also curious about what Evan would do when he did. Evan gave a halfhearted tackle and made a fake growl sound.
What the fuck? He’d heard Evan make more wolfish growls in bed.
George stared at him, and if he’d had proper eyebrows to lift, they would’ve been up near his hairline. He huffed out a breath and shifted, crouching in the dirt and fallen leaves as a man.
“You’re a better wolf when you’re human.”
Evan shuddered and shifted. He stared at his hands on the ground for a couple of moments before lifting his head to look at George. “I don’t know what happens. I shift, and then I don’t know who I am. I see the paws beneath me, and they aren’t mine.”
“How did you manage runs with your pack?”
“I faked it better. Would you like me to try a little harder? I thought you wouldn’t mind if I…” Evan shrugged and returned to looking at the ground.
“I don’t mind how you wolf. I just want you to have fun.”
“This isn’t fun for me. It’s weird and vaguely repulsive. If crawling around like this was enough, that would suit me fine. But it’s not.” He bit out the words. There was a snap and a snarl in his voice and a wildness in his eyes as if his wolf were about to break free again. “And I don’t know how to make this work. I can’t avoid it, and around you, it’s much closer than usual.”
“You’re blaming me for the roadside incident?”
“I have never lost control like that.”
“If you didn’t suppress so much?—”
“I let my wolf out in human form. Why can that not be enough? Why do I need to do this?”
“Because it’s part of who you are. Or are you so used to hiding who you are that you don’t know who you are?”
“You know nothing about me. You never did. You skate through life with that smile on your face, doing whatever the hell you want with no consequence.”
George stared at him.
For so long, he’d believed Evan had it all, and on the surface, he had his life together. “Are you fucking jealous because I like shifting?”
“And you travel, and you do?—”
“And so can you if you pull your head out of your ass and let yourself live.”
“I don’t want to live like this.”
“Well, there is no way to stop being a shifter, so you’re going to have to learn. Speak to one of the Coven shrinks. Perhaps they can help you. Do something instead of…nothing.” He finished rather lamely. He hadn’t meant to blurt out the bit about the shrink. “You can’t be the only shifter with issues.”
He didn’t want to add that Cooper had already talked to him about the issue. The pack leaders were worried about Evan. And Evan didn’t see it.
Evan bared his teeth. “I doubt talking is going to fix any of this.”
“You’re right, so why bother trying? It’s much easier to be miserable and to blame someone else. And how dare you blame me for the unexpected shift. All I wanted to do was help you.” He’d offered to drive, so Evan could lie on the backseat and pretend to be a large dog. When that wasn’t what he wanted, he’d been more than happy to burn off the heat another way.
“Well, then why else am I suddenly losing?—”
“Fuck you.” George shifted a little too fast for it to be anything but unpleasant, and then he turned and ran before his body was ready. But he didn’t care. He couldn’t look at Evan right now. And if he’d remained human, he’d have said something that couldn’t be taken back.
As it was, Evan’s words had cut.
He wanted to go somewhere quiet and lick his wounds. It would be much easier if they were the visible kind. That he was only smarting because he liked Evan far too much was additional salt in the wound. He was going to add closeted shifters to his list of people not to fool around with. Not that he’d ever run into a shifter like Evan before.
And Evan had been nothing but honest when talking about how much he hated being shifted. But George hadn’t expected it to be like that . He hadn’t expected Evan to blame him for his loss of control.
However, he liked it when Evan let his wolf out in human form, and Evan liked it when he did the same. He liked leaving his teeth marks on Evan’s skin and feeling Evan’s nails in his skin.
This wasn’t teenage infatuation.
But he wasn’t sure there could be anything between them when Evan wanted to bury his problems instead of trying to resolve them. While there wasn’t a fix, there must be ways to alleviate the issue so Evan wouldn’t hate himself so much.
George stopped running when he reached the fence. It was a bad idea to cross it, so he followed it for a little bit, not sure where he was going, only that he didn’t want to return. He wasn’t enjoying this run anymore because he was fretting about Evan.
Which wasn’t what he should have been doing on his first run with the pack. He was the new wolf, so he should find Kyle and make all the moves so it was clear he didn’t intend on taking over the pack. He could barely manage his own life. Running a pack was not even remotely on his to-do list.
Yet Evan thought he was living the best life or something because he enjoyed running on four feet and could travel. Neither of which required much skill. Neither would get him very far in the human world…or the animal world, but he wanted to make sure he enjoyed his life.
He had definitely enjoyed the past week with Evan.
With a sigh, he stopped.
The breeze ruffled his fur. Usually, he could let all his human worries fall away. Today, he couldn’t shake them. They stalked him. And tripped him.
He had no idea where he was, so he turned around, jogging through the grass as he followed his own scent trail. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing Evan back at the house. And for once, he had no idea what to say.