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  I could hear Elomina's voice again, but it was far enough away and so soft that I couldn't hear her anymore. I had devised my own plans on how to bring Conner's wolf out of him, from this place shared between our minds and into the real world. With a glance over my shoulder to ensure that he couldn't see me, I leapt upward and perched on a thick maple branch, knowing the sweet smell of the tree would mask my own. I waited but a few short seconds before he appeared beneath the tree, ears twitching as he listened closely for any trace of me. Rather than waiting longer and missing my chance, I dropped from the tree onto his back, grabbing fistfuls of the hackles on his neck and holding them like the reins on a horse. He rose up on his hind legs, barking and bucking as he attempted to throw me off of him. I wouldn't be deterred, though. He dropped back to all fours and ran --ears flat back against his head-- at breakneck speed through the woods, branches snagging at my hair and clothes.

  My inner self that was very much Skadhi closed her eyes and those dark ruby lips whispered, "Come to me, Conner. Be as your maker intended you to be."

  And just like that, I snapped back to reality as Conner exploded in front of me, a mass of blood, flesh, bone, and gobbets of other things I really didn't want to ponder on. Not just in front of me, but all over me. I'd dragged the wolf screaming out of him, and he now lay on the ground in ulven form, panting heavily from the run I'd just taken him on. Aside from the fact that everything smelled like something had died, he seemed alright. I knelt by his side regardless. His canine maw was open and his tongue lolled out with heaving breaths. I petted his face gently, ruffling the fur behind his ears. The giant pony sized wolf rolled one large amber eye open and he looked up at me with it before letting it slide shut and whining softly.

  "Jesus, Conner... I'm sorry! I had no idea..!" Elomina was beside me and her hand fell reassuringly on my shoulder.

  "I told you it would be painful for him. But with some rest and food, he'll be perfectly fine. As his Ulv form, he is whole, so shall he be once he shifts back. There's no need to fear for him. But now you must do the other, and that will likely knock him out cold."

  I looked up at her, uncertainty clouding my eyes that were filled with the light of the winter snow. "So soon? Seriously?"

  She nodded. "It could be a matter of life or death someday, Kacea. The fact that you actually succeeded on the first try, without too much effort, honestly does surprise me. This will be the best way to determine if you do have the potential to be as powerful as I truly believe you can be."

  Conner whined again, his mouth still open. "Let me at least get him some water or something."

  "No," she said simply. "If he were inflicted with some terrible wound that could take his life, would you want to send him to death in comfort, or inflict a bit more pain to keep him alive?"

  I was silent, and my silence was answer enough. She was right. "I'm sorry, my dog friend."

  “Don't worry, Kaysh. I'll be fine.” His mental words sounded strained, and that wasn't very reassuring to me.

  I was already covered in gobbets of gross, and I had a pretty good idea that it was only going to get worse when I forced Conner back into his human form. I put my hands on his furry wolf shoulder and closed my eyes, focusing fully on the image of him human and whole in my mind. Much to my surprise, and slight dismay, it didn't take nearly as long to bring him back this time.

  The sound of flesh bursting outward like a grenade of gore made my stomach churn and I had to swallow back bile from the smell of it. Fur, bone, flesh, and enough blood for a low budget horror film erupted from the body of the wolf before me and a naked Conner now lay under my hands on the wet grass. He was curled up in the fetal position, shuddering slightly. I made a point not to mention the tears that made clean trails through the macabre mess on his face. I knew better than to wound a man's ego like that.

  Elomina clapped lightly and I couldn't fight the hint of anger that ran its way up into my eyes. I looked away from her to keep it from intensifying. She was helping me, all of us. It wasn't her fault. Conner had known what he was being volunteered for, and he seemed to be okay aside from the residual agony that had him trembling. I brushed some of his blood soaked hair back from his face with gentle fingers that were just as streaked with fluids. "So much for being a masochist, you putz..." I said lightly.

  He chuckled through a wordless sob, struggling to sit up. Jynxx came and knelt beside us, giving the naked young man his jacket. Conner held up his hand and shook his head. "Dude, I will wreck that thing with how gross I am right now."

  "It'll wash out. Leather’s good like that, and the jacket wasn’t cheap so the liner’s pretty good quality. Put it on and get your ass inside before you freeze to death. I'm gonna need you to do the same for me in a bit, from the looks of it." He spouted mundane details so we could try and pretend nothing was out of the ordinary. I realized I'd been staring at Jynxx and settled my eyes back on the ground. I'd almost forgotten he was there; he'd been being so quiet.

  Insistently and before Conner could protest again, he put his coat on the more slender man. Conner wrapped it around himself like a blanket and his shivering stopped almost instantly. "I'm gonna go catch a shower," he said, getting to his feet and walking back to the house.

  I made a point of not staring at the curve of the bottom of that perfect ass that was just barely peeking out from under the bottom of Jynxx's jacket. Well.... Made a valiant effort to not stare, and managed to be sneaky about watching. My eyes came back to Jynxx and flicked to Elomina. "Can we wait a bit before I have to put him through this fucking torture..?" My voice came out thready and shakier than I would have thought. Maybe I was going into shock. Too much weird shit all at once. Entirely too much.

  Her silver eyes were frosty and held no sympathy for my plight or that of the wolves I was abusing. "I think that it would be in the best interests of all parties, present and not, for you to learn and perfect this skill as quickly as possible."

  "I suppose you're right," I murmured, still not happy about it. I turned more fully to Jynxx where he was kneeling in the goo from both human and ulven Conner that was now soaking into the earth like the precipitate from a rain storm. The ground swallowed the blood as greedily as a hungry vampire and the hunks of flesh disappeared in short order. It was disturbing as hell, and a chill ran down my spine from watching the ground consume the tissue. That shit was not natural.

  "Are you ready for this?" Elomina asked, and I wasn't sure if she was talking to me or to the not-yet-werewolf beside me.

  Jynxx shook his head. "Hell no. But we don't have a lot of options, or a lot of time for me to become accustomed to the idea of having my body essentially self-destruct. Let's do this and get it over with. If it will help me keep everyone I care about safe, and give me the potential to see my parents alive and in person again... I'm all about it, Kaysh."

  His dark eyes told me otherwise. He was scared. Just as frightened by this discovery as I was. And there was nothing that either of us could do to fight against it or deny it. I held his hands in mine and closed my eyes.

  Chapter 12

  He shuddered under my touch and my eyes darted back and forth beneath my eyelids, almost as if I'd entered a rapid eye movement state of sleep. "Don't worry. Everything will be fine," I murmured softly, more to myself as a mantra of peace to maintain my sanity than to assuage Jynxx's fears.

  Inside of his mind, rather than the shared space Conner and I had created where I'd found his Ulv sitting serenely in a forest glade, everything was dark. I could see, with the help of the luminescence provided by the glowing white eyes of the goddess Skadhi, but everything was in shadow. It was well into night in the place where Jynxx's werewolf form dwelled, as if it were afraid to come out. Frightened of what it was capable of, scared of the world at large and how it would treat him. And more importantly, I sensed a feeling of anxiety towards me from him. How would I treat him when I saw the monster he was on the inside? Would I look at him differently? Would I look at him at all
? Would I turn from him and run?

  I didn't respond to any of the thoughts he had that raced past me in the darkness with their sharp teeth of insecurity. I didn't want to let him know that I could hear the things he wouldn't ever want to share aloud with anyone, much less with me. I was a beacon of light in all that blackness, my eyes lighting up the dark around me. I walked through the dense underbrush with confidence, as though I'd been here before. If Skadhi was truly the Beloved of the Wolf, surely she had seen many shaded forests like this one. I knew, as did she, that not all wolves were prepared to accept and embrace what they were. Like our Jynxxie, many were afraid that they would become soulless, mindless beasts. Victims to their rage with no control over themselves.

  While my eye sight was passable in the shadows, I decided that there had to be a better sense I could be using to operate more efficiently. I'd been wandering for several minutes now and had seen no sign of any sort of wolf, much less of Jynxx's. I closed my eyes and relied on my ears instead, listening intently for movement. After standing still for a few seconds, I heard something. It was far off and muffled, and I knew without needing a second guess that it was Jynxx relocating. My ears were sharper than they should have been, my hearing more acute than that of the best hunting dogs money could buy, and I could hear the soft tread of his padded feet on the moist and rich earth a short distance off.

  My own feet fully silent on the forest floor, I followed the sound, moving swiftly as though the wind at my back helped me speed along. When I finally found him, I wasn't prepared for what I saw. I was taken by his beauty, firstly. Ulven Jynxx was larger even than the pony sized wolf Conner had become. He stood taller than he had in person, easily towering over me in the mien of Skadhi by a foot and a half or so. That made him an astonishing nearly seven feet tall. His fur was as glossy and black as his hair, and his eyes were glimmering softly in the darkness. He crouched back, having effectively cornered himself with a few trees at his back that he couldn't scuttle back between and away from me. Rather than being receptive and playful as Conner had been, Jynxx's hackles rose and a rumbling growl that rattled my ribcage bubbled from his lips. I held my hands out to him in a non-threatening gesture usually used when meeting a new dog whose intentions you were unsure of. You put your hands out there like a treat and hoped and prayed that they didn't smell something that made them think your fingers were snack food.

  Jynxx's reaction to the scent of my hands made both Skadhi and I pause and lower our position, squatting down closer to the ground to seem less threatening. "Come now, dearest Kongen. You have nothing to fear. You will retain your humanity unless you wish to will it away. You are more in control of yourself than you may seem to realize. This first change is the only one you will not be in control of..."

  That made the unnaturally large wolf snarl and gnash its teeth at us menacingly. If it were just me, I probably would have thrown my hands up and said the hell with it. But Skadhi knew that he wouldn't hurt us. That he couldn't hurt us. He was like any other animal in unfamiliar territory, frightened and unsettled. So I moved forward towards him, tempting fate.

  Jynxx continued to growl for a minute before the rumbling finally faded away to a soft whimper that tugged at my heart strings. So frightened. Why was he so afraid? Conner had no problem with it. Hell, he seemed to enjoy it aside from the side splitting pain the forced change had put him through. The giant beast sat back on its hind haunches and those amber eyes caught mine, and his thoughts flowed unbidden into my mind.

  He'd always been a freak in school. Many people had blamed him for the death of his parents, which we now knew wasn't true at all. People were afraid of him as it was, because of his size and the way he dressed. Would they be able to smell the monster on him? Was that why they'd always been afraid, from the get go? I had no way of confirming or denying how well people could sense a person who had the potential to become a werewolf, but I had a feeling there was a nugget of truth to it. I don't want to risk actually becoming the freak they think that I am. Once I do this, there's no going back...

  I moved closer and he winced as I touched his furry muzzle. I cupped his Ulven face in my hands and gave him a soft smile. Skadhi let me speak with my own voice, rather than her echoing and commanding one. I sounded tinny and hollow in comparison. "You’re only right about one thing, Jynxx. There is no going back from this. But you're not a freak, you're not a monster. You're gorgeous, and one of the most caring people I've come across, Jynxx. Not that you'll be telling many people anyway, but if they don't like you because you’re different... Then fuck them."

  He seemed uncertain, but a long tongue came out to loll against my hands, his ears back slightly against his head showing that he clearly wasn’t happy about it. "Can you come out from the darkness for me, Kongen?" We spoke and it was Skadhi's voice again, softer but still insistent.

  Ulven Jynxx stood and we gave him a reassuring smile, placing our hands on his front left haunch and closing our eyes. I sank fingers into that thick and inky fur, feeling a pull that dragged at both of us like we were swimming upwards from far below the surface of the ocean. The forest glade around us wavered and disappeared as we broke through that barrier and came tumbling back into the physical world, Jynxx's human form bursting like a ripe melon under siege by an AK-47. I was smart enough to close my eyes and mouth this time as more pieces of human showered me. I had a moment to be pissed off enough by my clothes getting wrecked that I really wanted to tell Elomina she owed me a new outfit. I realized that the likelihood of the apparently ancient woman taking me shopping was relatively non-existent, so I shook it off, literally shaking some of the gore from my body and hair, and moved to kneel beside the very exhausted body of a very furry werewolf Jynxx. He whined softly for a moment, his breathing labored as Conner's had been.

  "I'm sorry," I said softly, stroking the velvety fur of his muzzle. I knew it would be horrendously painful, but I didn’t want to wait at all to send him back into his human form.

  This time it was much easier to do as I'd done to Conner. Just from one execution, I'd managed to master the technique. Well, maybe not master it, but I definitely did a damn good job, all things considered. I didn't even bother to close my eyes this time, merely holding my palms to his side and willing all that glorious obsidian fur to melt away and reveal the porcelain pale flesh of Jynxx's human form. There was less of an explosion this time around, and more like a bubbling, rushing, oozing of flesh and fluids as though someone had dropped hunks of meat into a vat of acid. Everything just sort of ran from his bones, looking as if someone had hit him with the super strong spray from a fire hose. A fire hose strong enough to make hunks of meat be ripped away from bone, like someone peeling pieces from a turkey. Not exactly the sort of thing you'd want to be messing around with.

  The earth greedily swallowed both the human and wolf gore that lay strewn about. It actually made a squelching noise, and it made me want to toss my cookies. But the thought of the ground sucking up my vomit like a dry sponge made me even queasier and I managed to resist the urge. A naked human shaped Jynxx lay on the ground, his bare skin the color of fresh milk, curling up into a ball and strangely clean in comparison to the mess that had been all over Conner. Must be I had actually managed to improve from just a single run of the torturous technique.

  I took off my sweatshirt and covered him with it. His eyelids fluttered like he was struggling to maintain consciousness and I half expected to need to run and grab some smelling salts from the first aid kit I’d spotted in the living room. I knew that it had taken a lot out of him, and we hadn't eaten breakfast, either. That made me wonder if maybe food consumption had anything to do with how well wolves recovered from trauma. I had a feeling that the boys had a big breakfast, for the most part. Everyone barring Jimmy, that is.

  He fought off the temptation of passing out, sitting up and holding his head in his hands like his skull was trying to split apart. When he moved, I hurried to look away before seeing something that I wasn't qu
ite prepared to see just yet. It was pathetic, really. Being eighteen and worried about seeing a guy naked. I blamed my parents and the location of our house out in bumfuck nowhere for making me a social pariah, as well as awkward as hell when it came to situations like this. When you don't grow up around a bunch of people your own age, it turns you weird.

  Apparently Jynxx had caught me blushing and averting my gaze, because he reached out with fingers that were hot enough to scald and brushed them lightly across my cheek. "You really are such an innocent little thing, Kaysh. I can't get over it." His voice was shaking, but he was trying to keep the conversation light, as if he were on the verge of breaking down mentally... Or just into tears. Again with the waterworks... I could see unshed tears glittering in his black eyes, and it made me help him to his feet without him needing to ask, very careful not to let my gaze travel any farther south than his deliciously sculpted chest. Nipples I could deal with, I decided. Bully for me.

  I can't stand it when guys cry. It goes against the natural order of things, and it's just damned depressing. You know something is either really wrong, or they're in immense pain. I felt like Jynxx's tears weren't just due to the excessive pain I had inflicted upon him. I'd forced him to shift, and I felt like I'd deflowered him because of it. Like I’d taken away his Ulven virginity or something. I felt like your first change should have been something special and magickal, not something filled with blood and screaming. But then, from what I've heard from some of my friends... That was a fairly accurate description of their first time having sex, too. I grimaced at the thought and Jynxx tilted his head at me questioningly.