Chapter 29 #2
“You’re gonna make me do it, aren’t you?” JJ asked, glaring at Robbie.
“Do what?” Robbie asked, feeling as if his skin was on fire.
“Rose is going to be insufferable,” JJ said through his teeth before locking eyes with Robbie. “Run,” he said, his voice a command, a bark. A true bark.
Robbie felt his feet moving before his brain caught up, his body following his Alpha’s command without thought.
The sheer immensity of the moment crashed into Robbie like a freight train.
JJ was the Alpha. JJ was his Alpha. With that command, a command Robbie was helpless to refuse, JJ had just assumed the mantel.
And he, Robbie, was about to become something entirely new.
He ran, hard and fast, and JJ caught up with him.
They raced through the woods, down the path that led to the lake.
Robbie felt the way he had the first time he and JJ had run together, as if his broken body were knitting itself back together with every step.
His heart was still a ravaged chasm in his chest, nothing but empty agony where hope had bloomed so vibrantly hours before.
But his body was strong. His legs were powerful and his lungs full and tears streamed down his face as he ran from the sheer bigness of it all.
“Now,” JJ said from beside him, a dark shadow in the gloaming, “shift.”
It was agony. But his mama had always said that chaos can only multiply so much.
At some point it reaches a peak, she’d said, and any more just melts into the chaos you’ve already got.
It stops growing and just is. He thought of her as he shifted.
As his bones cracked and broke and reformed, as the sinews tore and knit themselves back together, as his body birthed this new version of himself.
Pain, like chaos, could only multiply so much.
And while the feeling of his body transforming into another body entirely was a blinding sort of agony, it wasn’t any more painful than the wound left by Nadja’s leaving.
The pain melted into itself. He leaned into it, reached for it with open arms because it meant that he was here, that it had meant something. That she had meant something.
No, not something. Everything.
And then, as quickly as it had begun with JJ’s barked command, it was over.
His heart was a keening entity, crying out in the hollow of his chest, but the rest of him was made of pure magic.
He rose to his feet and shook himself, feeling the way his fur and the loose skin beneath it slid against the backdrop of his muscles. He felt the ground beneath paws.
He was panting, his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth as his breath came back under his control.
He could hear a squirrel bedding down for the night a mile away.
He could smell the cigarette that JJ had snuck that morning and covered up with toothpaste and mouthwash and too much coffee.
His vision was sharp, even if the colors looks different.
He shook himself again, feeling the soft earth beneath his claws.
Someone whistled, and Rose appeared from the trees. He hadn’t smelled her. Or maybe he had but hadn’t registered her presence because she smelled like pack.
“I knew you’d be beautiful, but goddamn,” she said, reaching out a hand.
Robbie approached her, and she scratched behind his ears with her long nails.
His rump dropped to the ground almost involuntarily and his tail wagged as she dug into the crease behind his swiveling ear.
It felt so good. Suddenly, he thought of every dog he’d ever known, how they would angle for ear scratches and butt scratches and—shit, belly rubs.
Robbie flopped down and rolled onto his back. Rose laughed, a bright, sharp sound in the darkening wood.
“My mama always said, ‘sweet as a man, sweeter as a wolf,’” she said, dropping to a knee and rubbing his belly with both hands.
As she gentled her hands, moving to stroke the lines of his face, the length of his snout, the flat planes beneath his eyes, he knew that he would carry his pain for the rest of his life. He’d never get to put it down. He’d never get to forget it, to forget her.
He rested on his side, even after Rose stood, talking quietly to JJ. He heard every word, of course. And they knew he did. JJ told Rose about the note, about Nadja, about Hell.
“I’ll be damned,” Rose said, her voice soft and full of wonder. “I’ve never seen it.”
“That’s what I said,” JJ answered.
Rose dropped back to her knees and stroked the length of Robbie’s side. “You’re a good man, Robbie Cain. And you’re a good wolf.”
He licked her hand, snorting when it tasted like strawberry-scented lotion.
“We’re here for you, baby,” she said, her voice gentle and crooning. “We can’t take the pain away, but we can help you carry it.”
He rolled onto his belly and scooted closer, lifting his head to rest it on her thigh, closing his eyes as she pet him.
“Everyone’s ready by the lake, Alpha,” Rose said.
“Rose,” JJ said, the warning in his tone evident.
But Rose paid him no mind, petting Robbie and chuckling. “I won’t say I told you so.”
“You won’t say it, but you’re sure as hell thinking it.”
She laughed aloud, nudging Robbie’s head off her thigh and standing.
“Come on then, boys. We’ve got things to do.”
In a flash, Rose was gone. In her place stood a gray wolf. She bumped her head against Robbie’s and trotted off down the path toward the lake.
“I swear, wise women will be the death of me someday,” JJ said.
Moments later, he stood before Robbie on four legs.
His wolf was a beast, and even though Robbie had seen him before, the sheer size of the animal before him still filled him with awe.
Russet and gold, with a white belly. He approached Robbie and looked down his snout at him.
Robbie felt like he should tuck his ears back and drop, to show this wolf that he wasn’t a threat, that he understood the pecking order.
But then JJ’s wolf dropped his chest to the ground, hind end in the air, tail wagging.
Robbie knew it was a posture of play, of invitation to chase.
JJ yipped at Robbie before leaping up and taking off down the trail.
Robbie paused a moment, heart aching and heavy, but body alive with possibility, before chasing after him.