8. Auden
Auden
A heavy sigh falls from my lips as I push toward the main campus building. It’s been three days since Khalil fucked me and my boyfriends stupid and I’m beginning to worry he had some magic cock that’s slowly affecting us.
Between the strength, heightened scent, the way we can’t be apart from each other too long, and Zaire’s semi permanent half-hard state, I have to disagree with Zaire.
This shit isn’t just going to go away.
I reach up and scratch at the thickened stubble along my chin, already slightly thicker from when I left the house this morning. I shaved two days ago, which should have lasted me the full week. The worst part is the hair growing everywhere else as well as the need to be filled again.
Elio already ordered that enhancement from an adult store he found, which coincidentally, the piece is called a ‘knot’. I’ve added it to my list of things we’ve been noticing about ourselves, still confused on an explanation.
Elio’s on the steps outside the hall when I get there, wrapped around Zaire with his chin hooked over Zaire’s shoulder. His unruly curls are more pronounced than they were yesterday, looking like I didn’t gave him a haircut already. I stop two stairs down and stare at his head.
“I just fucking cut that Sunday evening.”
Elio shrugs without letting go of Zaire. “Is it more? I wasn’t sure.”
I look at Zaire and realize the stubble on him is worse than mine. “Are we pulling the no-shave life now?”
Zaire glares at me like I suggested it. “I’m a fucking bear or some shit. Look at this.”
He hooks a thumb under his shirt and lifts it just enough for me to see it. A thick tuft of hair coats his stomach and runs down into his jeans, darker and denser than it was two days ago. He drops the shirt before anyone on the steps can get a better look.
“I’m sprouting it everywhere.”
I laugh and bump his shoulder with mine. “Great. So we’re getting furrier. That’s the update.”
Elio finally lets Zaire’s shirt drop and slides off him enough that we can actually stand. “Maybe we are werewolves.”
Zaire gives him a look, but he still waits for both of us before he starts up the steps. I follow them toward the hall with my bag knocking my hip and that stupid list sitting in the back of my head the whole walk.
We take our usual row, Elio basically in Zaire’s lap again before his bag hits the floor. Carter drops in next to us, Dax behind him, Milo already in the seat ahead of Carter and turned halfway around like he has been waiting to be proven right.
Milo points his pen at Elio. “See. I’ve been trying to tell you that wolves stay together. And Elio is probably the Omega or something. It’s cute, seeing a little pack of three.”
Dax drops his bag and stares at all three of us. “Can we stop with the werewolf bullshit? I have been hearing it all weekend.” He tips his chin at Zaire. “I already know where you three disappeared to, and this just keeps reminding me.”
I bite back a laugh, knowing how awkward this must be for Dax. We haven’t been subtle. Zaire wraps his arms around Elio, readjusting him in his lap. “So, you know what’s happening to us.”
“I didn’t say that.” Dax’s nostrils flare as he looks between the three of us, leaving me wondering how much he knows.
Carter groans and slumps in his chair. “God, if the professor is late again, I’m leaving. I did the reading. That should count for something.”
Dax tips his head back, still watching Zaire a second too long before he lets it go. “She’s always late after staff breakfast.”
Zaire slides lower in the seat with Elio still half on him. “She’ll be here in five minutes. Stacey mentioned that they got like catered shit this time so it ran late. We should have walked down the staff hallway.”
Dax turns his head. “How do you know that?”
“Stacey just said it. You can’t hear her?”
Carter looks across the room first. Stacey is two sections over, leaned toward a girl by the windows, talking at a volume that shouldn’t have carried this far.
Dax follows his gaze, then looks back at Zaire.
Zaire shrugs and sinks another inch, then cuts his eyes at me like I’m supposed to do something with that.
I pull my phone out and open my notepad with the list I started because writing it down felt better than letting it sit in my head. I ran all of my symptoms through a search engine twice last night, all of the answers unsatisfactory.
The medical pages said we have infections and or were taking steroids and or had some rare disorder, none of which would explain how it hit three people in the same weekend. Everything else keeps coming back to the same ugly answer. Not human. A body changing into something else.
And then it came down to two options. Werewolves or Vampires.
Sunlight hasn’t bothered any of us, which knocks out half the horror-movie list and leaves the last result.
Werewolves.
I already know that’s not possible and yet, it’s the only thing that includes all of our symptoms.
Somebody two rows up laughs and mumbles that Elio looks like he got dressed in Zaire’s bed. A growl rumbles through my chest before I can swallow it down, Carter and Dax throwing me a concerned look. I offer them a sheepish smile as my gaze drops to my desk.
Fuck.
I lift my hand, trying not to freak out when I see five sharpened indents now in the desk. Turning my hand toward me, I stare at the claws extended from my fingernail beds before they slowly recede as if they never existed.
When I look up, Dax is staring at my hand. The worst part isn’t even that he saw. It’s that he doesn’t look as shocked as feel which means he knows something.