14. Ava
Ava
We didn’t see Poe the next day. I didn’t know whether he hid in the woods or found a quiet part of the den to wait for the full moon.
After the scene, Lycan helped me to my feet, took me to the bathroom, and washed every inch of my body in the tiny shower before I did the same to him.
When we climbed into the tiny bed in the back room, he tucked me close to his chest and ran his fingers through my hair until I fell asleep.
He’d never say it, but I sensed he’d been hurt by Poe’s sudden departure, too.
Maybe we should have talked about what this meant for us, how we would deal with Poe when we saw him again, but I was too tired, and Lycan didn’t bring it up.
Were we meant to be exclusive? I wouldn’t stand in the way of the two of them, and Lycan had said our arrangement was educational, to satisfy my curiosity.
At twilight the next night, we went to the forest where Thurjin had indicated we could shift without interruption.
We’d be protected by the wards and the pack of shifters on the territory.
I’d spent most of the day filled with a trepidation that bordered on anxiety.
Maeve had told me it would hurt. The pain would be unimaginable.
But then, halfway through, it would be explosive and euphoric.
She said I might even like it. I doubted it.
“You’re going to be okay, Trouble,” Lycan said, stopping at a clearing. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I tried to smile, but I didn’t mean it, and Lycan knew it. He stepped closer, cupped my jaw, and lifted my face to his.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said.
Lycan leaned down to kiss me, and my heart tripped over itself at the contact. His lips were so soft, and his calming scent wrapped around me. “Just give in to it, okay?”
Footsteps echoed in the undergrowth behind us, and I stepped back to see Poe walking toward us, his hands in his pockets. He’d changed since yesterday, so he must have gone back to the cabin at some point when we weren’t there, which ached even more. He’d been actively avoiding us.
“Nice of you to show up,” Lycan said. “With the way you ran away twice last night, I figured you’d shift alone.”
Poe pursed his lips and ran a hand over the back of his neck, hesitantly meeting my gaze. That familiar ache in my soul pulsed, nearly tugging me to him.
“Nothing to say for yourself, then?” Lycan scoffed. “Typical.”
“You want to do this here? Now?” Poe snapped. “The moon’s rising. We don’t have time to go over all the ways we’ve disappointed each other.”
“Disappointed?” Lycan stepped closer to him. “What about last night was disappointing to you? You didn’t have to stand outside, looking like a lost pup. If you’d asked nicely, I would have let you in. And if you’d asked very nicely, I would have let you—”
“Let me what?” Poe twisted his features into an angry glower. “Watch you fuck your wife? Watch you mark her until—”
“Enough,” I cut in. “Poe’s right. We’re running out of time. This is my first shift. I don’t need the added pressure of…whatever this is.”
Lycan growled and cracked his neck, shaking his head as he unbuckled his belt and kicked off his boots.
“Let’s just get this over with.” Poe reached behind him to yank off his black T-shirt, and I forced myself to look away.
I remembered the fire in my veins last night, how much I liked being controlled by Lycan while Poe watched.
It made me wonder what Lycan had been about to say.
What would he have done if Poe had asked very nicely?
Ignoring that for now, I unbuttoned my blouse and stepped out of my shoes.
My skin itched, and my stomach churned as the nocturnal wildlife awakened around me.
Foxes chittered, and owls hooted. The frogs chirped out their mating calls, and far to my left, something heavy ambled through the fallen leaves and leftover brush from winter.
When I was done, I hugged my arms around my torso and told myself not to feel intimidated.
Lycan had already seen me naked a dozen times, and I was certain Poe had seen countless women before me.
Still, they were formidable males, all defined muscles and strong limbs.
And I wasn’t exactly in shape. Lycan rolled his head and shifted his shoulders.
Poe dropped down to his knees and put his hands in the dirt.
I was just about to ask how long we’d have to wait before it started when my gaze caught on the moon lifting over the horizon. God, it was beautiful, and this far north, it seemed ten times bigger than it was in Montana. So full. So magnetizing. Had a full moon ever been so gorgeous?
A sharp slice hit me in the spine and cascaded in every direction—down my legs to my toes, up my neck to my scalp, over my arms to my fingertips.
Every nerve ending burned like I’d been dropped in a pyre.
I groaned and crumpled to the ground, arching my back in sad attempts to alleviate the pain, but it only made it worse.
My forearms split open, the flesh peeling away from the muscles, and I clenched my eyes shut, unable to bear the horror of it.
But the pressure in my skull…it was worse than any splitting migraine I’d had, like someone had rammed a sword straight through my third eye and out the back of my head.
I opened my eyes, only to scream as my eyeballs pushed out of their sockets.
I blinked again, certain I’d gone blind, but no. I could still see.
“Give,” said a voice inside my head. My inner animal. The one I’d heard but hadn’t officially met. “Give over to me.”
My face split apart, my nose bursting open to make way for something to grow out of it, something huge and black, covered in fur.
I tried to wrap my mind around that, but the agony in my fingertips drew my focus.
My nails broke and fell away, long spikes sprouting in their place, and my spine cracked in a sickening chorus of splintering bones.
My hips shifted under my weight, my legs reforming under them.
When I looked down, I didn’t have feet. I had paws.
Giant, black, furry paws with claws the size of one of my hands.
“Let me in,” the voice said again. “Let me out.”
Unable to take it any longer, I fell to one side and twisted into myself, hoping the torture would end soon. Metal coated my tongue, and my teeth loosened from my jaw. I spat them out and tried to block out the sensation of sharp, pointy canines taking their place.
Inhale.
Exhale.
I told myself to breathe through it, to let it pass, to give in to it like Lycan said.
Fighting it would only make it worse. Just when I’d been certain I was going to die, when I’d resigned myself to a certain end, a different sensation took hold in my gut.
It started as a warm flood, almost like descending into a hot bath, and gradually faded into a delicious ecstasy that made me moan.
The pain subsided, my bones stopped cracking, and when I took another breath, I smelled the ethereal presence of the entire woods.
A small creek bubbled to my right, a few hundred feet away. The frogs’ chorus now chanted louder. My world had grown so much clearer, and I could see every blade of grass, every buzzing insect, every speck of displaced dust.
A cool nose nudged my head, and I lifted my gaze to the massive white wolf standing in front of me with pale gray eyes.
Lycan.
“Get up, Trouble,” he said. “You’re alright. You’re through it now.”
I lifted my upper body enough to put my weight on my forelegs…my paws!…and tried to stand, only to stumble on my face.
“Give her a minute,” Poe said, trotting over to stand next to Lycan. He was a massive brown wolf, his coat almost as dark as his hair in human form. His eyes glowed the same amber I’d seen in him before.
“I can do it.” I put my legs under me again, using my back pair this time, and grumbled as I pushed up. Now standing, I didn’t know what to do, and a weight on the back of my body shifted side to side. Glancing over my massive shoulder, I widened my eyes at my bushy black tail.
I have a tail!
“What am I?” I had an idea based on the paws and massive torso, but I wanted confirmation. I needed them to tell me.
“You’re a wolf, Trouble. Like me.” Lycan’s tongue lolled out the side of his mouth. Such a goofy expression to see on a massive beast.
“A giant black wolf,” Poe added. “Your eyes are blue like your human form.”
My human side beamed with pride, but my wolf, this new creature I’d barely begun to discover, had no time for that.
In this form, she had control. The human retreated far inside my mind as I took a step forward, nearly stumbled but righted myself, and took another.
It took a few moments to figure out how to work all four legs together, especially with the tail.
I was massive, much bigger than I anticipated, and balancing my new weight took some practice.
Lycan came closer and nuzzled his face against mine, running his snout down to my neck and back again before doing the other side.
When he got to my neck, he paused and opened his mouth, taking my throat between his massive teeth for a taunting hold.
Ava, the human, wouldn’t have known what this was, but my wolf instinctively tilted her head to the side to let him.
In this form, his scent hit a million different notes—male and shifter and primal dominance, but also something so attractive, it nearly bowled me over.
I wanted to savor it. Coat myself in it.
Let it permeate every pore. When Lycan released me, I rubbed my head under his chin, brushing up against his throat like the touch alone could ground me.
Poe circled us, eyeing the interaction with a dangerous hunger and wariness.
A moment of agitation vibrated from Lycan, like he was debating whether to assert his dominance over his packmate or do the same thing to him.
But like everything else about the evening, my wolf knew what to do.
She took over, forcing me to bow down on my front legs and stick my butt up in the air, wagging my tail in an invitation to play.
Lycan barked, and I yipped, and Poe trotted forward.
His scent hit me between the eyes, as strong and as enticing as Lycan’s.
It slithered down my new form and settled into my stomach, causing me to whimper.
Poe ran his snout along mine before stopping at my neck to nip at my tender skin.
He didn’t take my entire throat into his mouth like Lycan.
Instead, he gave me playful bites and nudged his head into mine like he was goading me to do it back to him. I did.
Their combined aromas settled into my veins, my bones, my atoms. The wolf knew something about this that my human side had been shoving down for weeks.
This wasn’t simply attraction or infatuation.
This was something ancient, something the human could never guess at.
And the wolf reveled in it. The uneasiness that had been twisting in my chest for weeks dissipated, dissolving into whatever formed this new connection.
For the first time, perhaps in my life, everything felt…
complete. The human briefly wondered what that meant before the animal dismissed it.
After that, my wolf grew restless and wanted to explore.
I took off, stretching my legs in a run that made me free in a way I’d never been before.
I sped through the open forest, the ground soft under my paws, the wind coasting through my fur.
Lycan and Poe drew up on either side of me, and together, we explored what it meant to be pack.
We sniffed rotten logs and rolled in wet, dewy grass.
I drew up on my back legs and batted at Poe with my front, causing him to bark and tackle me to the ground.
Wrestling and snarling, we coaxed Lycan into our antics, all three of us delighting in this wonderfully sensuous experience.
It went on for an eternity, and yet, seemed to end far too soon.
When the moon dropped below the horizon and the sky started to brighten, we made our way to the spot where we’d left our clothes.
The shift back hurt as much as changing in the first place, even more so because of the sense of loss that came with it.
As a wolf, we’d been carefree and wild. We’d lost the restrictions of the human world and the baggage that came with it.
We weren’t three people with complicated histories.
We simply existed. Now, reality blared back.
My bones broke and reformed. My fur fell out, and my skin split apart to make way for the human to reemerge.
My wolf retreated far inside my mind, and the person stepped forward again.
When it was over, I lay between Lycan and Poe, panting and breathing in the early morning air. The cool night lingered on my sensitive, sweaty skin, and I shivered as I rolled on my side to hold myself tighter.
Gradually, I stood and grabbed my clothes, following Lycan and Poe as we headed back toward the cabin. No one said anything, and I was thankful. No words needed to be said. Magic hummed in my veins, the bond tethering me to both of them ringing like a siren.
Underneath it, fainter, something I’d noticed my whole life without having a word for it. That low thrum I’d always chalked up to sharing DNA. Maeve. An ocean and a continent away, thin as spider silk and stretched to nothing, but undeniably there.
Not only her, but others as well. Dimmer. In a direction I couldn’t point to. I didn’t have an explanation for it, and my wolf didn’t seem to think one was necessary.
After we got back to the cabin, I expected Poe to take the couch while Lycan and I went to the bedroom. My wolf didn’t like that idea. She wanted to stay firmly rooted in the space between them, knowing she was protected on either side by two males who made her feel whole and safe.
“Can we stay out here?” I asked softly, my voice hoarse from not having used it in several hours.
Lycan and Poe looked at each other. Without saying anything, Lycan nodded, and Poe grabbed blankets and pillows.
We created a nest on the living room floor, and I settled in the middle.
Lycan climbed under the comforter on my right, and Poe did the same on my left.
I turned to my side, facing Poe, and Lycan wrapped an arm over my midsection, covering my back in his strong, steady form.
Just before I closed my eyes, I saw Poe smile and soften his shoulders.
Despite being on hardwood, it was the best I’d slept in years.