36. Tate
Tate
It took four of us to carry Tank out to my truck, which I’d left down a side track. Honestly, the bastard needed to go on a fucking diet, or better still, not lose his shit so badly Markus had to use a mage stun gun on him.
As much as I disliked the croc shifters, Markus had his uses, and the cold-blooded bastard didn’t think twice about knocking Tank out when he shifted into his monstrous wolf.
Tank’s wolf was fucking feral half the time, and none of us needed the hassle of cleaning up after a massacre.
I hoped Tank was ready for the fallout because Marcel Frosthaven would not take kindly to hearing his son had lost control of his wolf.
Control was everything to a pack alpha. Lose control of your animal and you lose control of your pack.
Worse still, the Supernatural Council had a habit of arresting shifters they viewed as problematic.
Such shifters disappeared, never to be seen again.
Tobias turned to me as I clambered into the driver’s seat. “What set him off?”
Markus and his sidekick had already left. No doubt he’d be straight on the phone to both our fathers, spilling his guts.
Tobias’s leg jiggled nervously as I gunned the engine and headed back toward campus.
“No idea,” I replied with a tired shrug. He’d been fine until just before the fight with the bear shifter. Although now that I thought about it, he’d been acting strange for a few days.
“He needs to get laid,” Tobias muttered. Of course he’d think that. Sex was his answer to everything.
I ignored the unhelpful suggestion. Tank had never exhibited interest in females or males, so I doubted a lack of sex was the problem. It wasn’t until we turned into the tree-lined driveway that led to the academy’s gates that Tobias voiced what I’d been thinking.
“Could it be the early signs of feral shifter disease?”
Nobody knew what caused feral shifter disease. The first cases of feral shifter disease emerged several years ago, but in the last twelve months, there’d been whispers of ever greater numbers of affected shifters. Mostly wolves and bears.
The Shifter Council had reassured us all that cases were rare and not to worry. The problem was, nobody knew what caused perfectly healthy shifters to regress into feral, aggressive creatures that eventually became so dangerous that the only option was to put them down.
There had been whispers, of course; persistent rumors that the mages were behind the disease, even though the Shifter Council had issued strongly worded press releases stating that such rumors were false.
I pulled into the parking bay next to our dorm. Everyone else had to leave their vehicles in the main parking area, but not us. It paid to be a mafia heir with a father who was happy to make significant donations to the school in return for the principal turning a blind eye to problematic behavior.
Tank had shifted in the time it took us to arrive back on campus. He lay on his back snoring, still splattered in blood from the carnage he’d caused. I hoped the bastard had a massive headache from being knocked out.
“Wakey, wakey, asshole,” Tobias said, prodding him in the chest. My friend still hadn’t explained where he’d disappeared off to, but for now, my priority was Tank.
“What happened?” Tank groaned while rubbing his temples. “I feel like shit.”
“You wolfed out, dude,” Tobias replied. “Tried to eat a bunch of people.”
“Markus zapped you,” I added.
Tank grimaced. “Fuck.”
“Yeah, fuck.” I scowled at him. “What triggered it?”
I stood back as Tank climbed out of the truck and groaned some more.
“I don’t know,” he replied, but the stench of his lie filled the air between us. Tobias and I exchanged a worried look. Tank obviously knew what had set his wolf off, so why wasn’t he saying? We didn’t hide stuff from each other. At least we never had before.
“Look,” I said, scrubbing my eyes as fatigue set in. “Let’s just get inside.”
Tank nodded while staring at the ground and then headed for the door to our apartment. I was about to follow him, fully expecting Tobias to join me given the late hour, but to my surprise, he mumbled something about needing some air and then dashed off.
I glared up at the moon. Since the last full moon, everything had gone to shit.
Or so it felt. Tobias was acting weird. Tank too.
And my fucking father was knee-deep in something he refused to talk to me about.
Worse, he’d formed an alliance with the mages and croc shifters, which worried me.
The mages couldn’t be trusted, and the crocs were stone-cold psychopaths.
Worse still, a certain hybrid wolf was proving to be a distraction I did not need.
Fuck my life.
Once upstairs, I pulled a witch weed joint from the tin Tobias had stashed in the living room and disappeared into my bedroom.
A few lungfuls of the potent herb helped calm my anxiety and sent my wolf into a relaxed slumber.
The tension slowly eased away. By the time I’d finished the joint, my limbs were nice and loose and the headache throbbing behind my temples had abated.
Then my phone lit up with a call from Dad, and all my anxiety and stress came flooding back with a vengeance.