Page 2 of Spatially UnawareWolf

I opened my mouth to say, “I don’t.”

What came out was, “Arooo?”

Jesus, since when did I sound like Scooby Doo?

Cal huffed out another soft laugh. “I’m flattered. I’ve never fucked someone into a shift before.”

I blinked in confusion and my vision fractured until it was like looking through a kaleidoscope. I blinked again and the world came back into focus, except sharper, everything outlined in sharp contrasts, and the deep blue of my bedsheets was suddenly ten times brighter.

Again, what in the deep-fried fuck?

Cal pressed another kiss to my shoulder before rolling off to one side. He propped himself up on one elbow and his brow creased, a faintly worried expression flitting over his features. “Hey. You okay?”

I hummed and gave a nod, not trusting myself to speak. The sound of my heartbeat thundered in my ears and my nerves jangled like a set of keys. I rolled onto my back, pulled my arms up against my chest like I was a T. rex, and closed my eyes, lying as still as I could—and holy shit. Was I seriously playing dead right now?

Apparently so.

A fingertip trailed down my cheek, and Cal said, “Wow, you weren’t kidding about not moving once we were done, huh?”

I hummed again and plastered a satisfied smile onto my face. And I was satisfied, don’t get me wrong, but all my attention was on the fact that I’d at least partially shifted. The smile must have been convincing enough, though, because Cal laughed softly, slung an arm over my belly, and let out a pleased hum of his own. We lay there for a couple of minutes that stretched out like an eternity before he said, “So, you wanna go again?”

I shook my head and through sheer force of will managed to form the words, “You wrecked me. I’m gonna sleep.”

Cal gave a pleased laugh. “I’m gonna head out then. Thanks for a great time.”

The bed creaked as he moved, and I kept my eyes closed through the rustle of clothing. Then the bedroom door closed with a soft click, leaving me to freak the fuck out in peace.

I took a deep, shaky breath, my heart pounding in my chest like it was auditioning to be the drummer in a heavy metal band, and opened my eyes. Everything was still in HD, and my fingertips were still tingling. I held up one hand and let out a whine when I saw what were unmistakably claws emerging.

“Fuck,” I whispered—or tried to, at least, but I must have used up my allocation of words for the night because what came out was, “Owowoooo!”

I found my gaze drawn to the full moon, blazing high in the sky outside my window, and as I stared, transfixed, my whole body thrummed with unleashed power, raw and new and overwhelming. A crackling, sparking sensation washed over me, like I was touching a live wire. I threw back my head once again and howled, and this time the moon answered, drawing me into its thrall.

My jaw stretched, my skin prickled, and my last thought before I sank into oblivion was, Holy shit. It looks like I’m a shifter after all.

CHAPTER 2

HUNTER

I had to give credit to whoever had named Hyde, Maine.

As far as in-jokes went, it was a pretty good one, especially for a secret town full of supes. Still, Hyde was a great little place. It was nestled into a tiny cove and built to hug the curves of the windswept coastline, off the main highway and easy to miss if you didn’t know it was there—which was kind of the point. The town consisted of a scattering of unassuming cottages with big yards, and it gave off a certain rustic charm. The surrounding forest added to the air of isolation, but the town center had a scattering of modern apartment buildings and top-notch facilities, including the health and fitness center where I worked. If the town hadn’t been a secret, it would have been a beachside tourist mecca.

I considered myself lucky to have been invited to live here—and it was invitation only, make no mistake. Sure, there were a handful of people in town who were blissfully unaware of the fact that their hometown was crawling with shifters, but they were exceptions—professionals whose presence was tolerated because there weren’t any shifters who could provide the services they did.

Hey, have you ever tried to source a werewolf vet?

I wasn’t sure how the system worked exactly, but basically, if you weren’t a shifter or didn’t know about them, Hyde wasn’t for you. It might happen every so often that some stranger driving through Downeast Maine would take a wrong turn, stumble on the town, and decide that it was the perfect place for them to retire. But as soon as they tried to relocate, they’d find that despite its charming appearance, Hyde didn’t have a single job vacancy or house available to rent or buy. The locals would shrug and tell them the town was dying, muttering about the toxic aftereffects of a chemical spill and freakishly high local mortality rates, and most people changed their mind real quick after that.

I was in the know, which was why I’d been invited to live here—and why I was at a dog park in the middle of the night, training my latest client as waves crashed in the background. Despite popular belief, werewolves didn’t only shift at the full moon, and Chelsea was currently in her wolf form.

The park was deserted, which made sense given that it was close to midnight, and my breath made tiny white clouds in the night air. But hey, when else was I gonna be able to put a werewolf in full shift through their paces without attracting attention? It wasn’t so much that I was worried someone would see a werewolf and freak out, not in Hyde, but more that my clients didn’t necessarily want the eyes of the town on them while they were trying, and possibly failing, to run a dog agility course.

“Come on, Chelsea, you’ve got this!” I jogged alongside the course she was running, doing my best to encourage her—not that she really needed it. Chelsea was doing exceptionally well. In the space of only two weeks, she’d gone from struggling to remember how to sit upright in human form to being able to run both the canine agility course as a wolf and the more standard obstacle course as a human, all without missing a beat.

I was proud of her—and proud of the job I’d done getting her here. Chelsea had been in a head-on collision when a pickup veered onto the wrong side of the road, and for anyone who wasn’t a werewolf it probably would have been fatal. Instead she’d escaped with a head injury, but it had really done a number on her coordination and her ability to control her shift. But to look at her now, you’d never know it.

Chelsea flawlessly navigated through a series of jumps and picked up speed, racing toward the end of the course, and when she reached the top of the ramp at the end, she let out a series of excited yips, her tail wagging furiously. I resisted the urge to call her a good girl, knowing she’d probably rip my throat out with her fangs if I dared try it.