Human Shifter (Book Three: A Werewolf BBW Shifter Romance) (2 page)

"Ooh, chilly," Damien said.

"Breathe in," Jordan said. He bent so close to Damien's chest that his beard hairs tickled Damien's skin. "I've never met a pup more than a month old who whined so much during a checkup."

"Have I ever told you that you need to work on your bedside manner?" Damien asked.

"Breathe out, if you have any hot air left in you," Jordan said. He moved the stethoscope lower. "Breathe in. Breathe out. Okay, now don't say anything, just hold your breath."

Damien obliged. Jordan took off the stethoscope and put it back in his bag. Damien waited as he took out a needle and syringe from his bag, laying out the gauze and bandages on the sink, medical instruments clinking against the granite counter. Damien waited and waited. Was Jordan seeing how long he could keep air in his lungs? He hadn't counted, but he was sure it was more than a minute ago. His lungs burned for oxygen, but he held on as long as he possibly could. Finally, he could not hold his breath any longer. He exhaled loudly.

"What was that for?" Damien asked, panting.

"Oh, holding your breath?" Jordan said. "I just wanted a moment's peace and quiet from all your yipping."

Damien cuffed his friend on the shoulder.

"You're a terrible doctor," he said.

"Never pretended otherwise," Jordan said. "So why are we here?"

"I'm worried about Julia," Damien said.

"Clearly. So you ask me to give
you
a physical examination." Jordan tapped his fingers on the edge of the sink. "What's this about Julia?"

"Whether or not she can shift."

"I've done this already," Jordan said. "I've gone through it with her and with you."

"And there's nothing—"

"There's nothing physically wrong with her," Jordan said. "And the blood tests come back the same as the grandmother. Shifter. And I don't have the equipment to do it here, but even if I did a genetic test in more depth, I already know how it would look. Look at her red hair, green eyes. She's got every recessive gene there is, including that of a purebred."

"If she's a purebred shifter, then why can't she shift?" Damien asked.

"Ask the grandmother."

"Dee doesn't know what happened," Damien said. "There's very little she does know. Hypnosis, that was all she could say."

"Hypnosis can't change her physical structure," Jordan said. "I may not be the best doctor in the territory, but I know that much."

"Then why can't she
shift
?"

"Got me," Jordan said. "Put out your arm. Why do you want to know?"

"We've been trying to conceive," Damien said quietly, his voice dropping to a lower register. He winced at the tiny pinch of the needle in his arm, glad at the very least that he didn't have to see the blood flowing through the needle. He'd always hated needles.

"There shouldn't be anything wrong with that," Jordan said, his expert fingers pressing a square of gauze against the needle and withdrawing it easily.

"She hasn't felt the conception yet," Damien said.

"It doesn't always happen the first time," Jordan said, a smile in his voice. "Sometimes it takes a while. Weeks, months, even years."

"I'd be alright with waiting," Damien said, "but it's not fair to her to just keep waiting and waiting without making sure it's not a physical impossibility between us."

"Would it change anything?" Jordan asked. Damien drew a breath between his teeth. He knew what his friend was asking him. The entire pack depended on him as alpha, and if he wasn't able to have a litter of his own, someone would almost certainly challenge him for the role. If he decided to stay with Julia, and if Julia was stuck as a human for the rest of her life, he could not go on leading a shifter pack.

"I'm not sure," Damien said. "But I'd like to have as much information as possible before I decide on any one path. Scent twice before you run, right?"

"Right," Jordan said. "If you want me to check her out—"

"I want you to check everything with me first," Damien said. "I don't want to assume that it's got anything to do with her. I haven't had any pups myself, so it may well be me."

"Unlikely," Jordan said. He leaned back against the wall, scratching his beard.

"But possible. I want to rule it out before having her go through all of this."

"I think you just want me to touch your furry parts," Jordan said, and Damien knew that he was grinning.

"You got me," Damien said. "This is all an elaborate ploy to get you to fondle my twig and berries."

"Damien, my dear alpha," Jordan said, "all you had to do was ask."

"Ask? That's it? You wouldn't have asked me to buy you dinner?"

"Maybe a drink or two," Jordan said. "You already have my heart."

"Easy to win over. I like that." Damien chuckled.

"Alright," Jordan said, clapping his hands once, briskly. "Now drop your pants and howl at the moon."

The examination went quickly, although Damien did have to ask Jordan more than once to stop giving him compliments on each body part he examined. True to his word, when they headed out afterward to the local bar, Damien offered to buy the first round. Jordan carried their beers back to a booth where it was unlikely anyone would overhear their conversation. Damien adjusted the dark glasses over his eyes. They itched the bridge of his nose, and he'd grown accustomed to not wearing them around the house. In public, though, his scars might attract attention, and he had no idea how to control the glow coming from his eyes. It had never been an issue before.

Damien sighed and drank a gulp of cold beer. The brew was mildly tart, acidic, and very hoppy. Damien's nose twitched at the citrus scent but the liquid went down smooth and cool against his throat.

"How's Mara doing?" Damien asked. "I haven't seen much of her."

"She's still smelling her way around," Jordan said. "Kyle and Katherine have been making friends with her, but she's a bit standoffish. Condescending, if I could be so blunt. I get the sense she's not sure if she wants to stay in the pack."

"She can leave if she wants to," Damien said. "It's not as though we have a mate for her here. Just as long as I know she won't be spreading word about Julia anywhere."

"You spared her life," Jordan said, his drink clinking on the hard top of the table. "I don't think she's one to forget a debt she owes. By tradition, she's yours to do with as you please."

"Tradition be damned," Damien said. "I won't have someone in my pack who doesn't want to be part of it. It's just Julia I'm worried about."

"Mara will come around," Jordan said. "We might need to find a mate for her, but she'll come around."

"Agreed. How has she not fallen in love with you yet?" Damien asked, smiling. "Have you grown that much uglier since I lost my sight?"

"I'm hideously ugly," Jordan agreed, sipping his beer. "It's the beard that did it. Besides, I'm saving myself for you."

"Ah, yes, almost forgot about that. That's the only reason you're here."

"You know it," Jordan said. "That, and this pack makes me feel better about being so ugly. At least I'm not crippled."

Damien let out a burst of laughter, almost spitting his beer out onto the table.

"So you'd rather Mara leave? Being as she's the only other shifter who is whole, body and mind?"

"Body, she's whole," Jordan said. "That girl has muscles on her muscles."

"I think you're just saying that because you fought her to a standstill," Damien said, but Jordan was still off in thought about the girl wolf who had just recently joined them.

"Her body ... her
physical
body will be fine. Her mind, I'm not sure about. The other pack did a number on her."

"She'll get better," Damien said, the thoughts of Trax and his gang flitting a dark memory across his mind. "And then the two of you will plan a takeover of the pack."

"I'm sure she will," Jordan said, cracking his knuckles in precise staccato succession. "But if I
wanted
to take over the pack, I would have already. You're no match at all for my cunning wit and dexterity."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Damien said.

"Anytime," Jordan said. "You know I'd follow you anywhere. To the ends of the earth and back."

"You don't have to follow me around to the ends of the earth." Damien raised his glass. "At least not anymore."

"Let's drink to that, then," Jordan said.

"To finding a home at last for our ugly, crippled pack," Damien said, raising his glass.

"May we grow in number and loyalty," Jordan said, clinking his beer mug against Damien's. Damien drank deep, the cold liquid giving way to foam as he finished his drink. He licked his lips.

"Isn't it strength?" he asked.

"Hmm?" Jordan was still finishing his beer.

"May we grow in number and strength? That's a scripture verse, isn't it?"

"Yes, you're right," Jordan said. He took the last sip of his beer and set the glass down slowly, so that Damien could barely hear the faint clink. "But I happen to think that loyalty is better."

CHAPTER THREE

Julia

Julia gritted her teeth, her eyes closed, trying as hard as she possibly could to shift into wolf form.

"Feel the power run through you," Granny Dee said, her hands on Julia's shoulders. "Your body is not just a body. It is a part of the universe, and you have the power to change that part of the universe. Don't think of anything but that power."

Julia let her mind run blank. There was no power within her that she could sense, nothing at all. She thought of Damien, of how he had looked at her after they last made love.

No. No thoughts. Back to the blankness.

Julia chided herself for being so mentally weak. She'd thought that shifting would be easy, once she knew how it was done. But Dee's instructions had run from the most basic—just imagine you're already a wolf—to the complex—take two deep breaths and loosen the tension between the ribs in your chest to let your skeleton slide into its other form. Finally Dee, exasperated, had thrown up her hands. "It's not something that can be taught!" she said. "You have to feel it."

Julia didn't feel it. If she felt anything, it was a bitter disappointment that her grandmother, whom she had looked up to all of these years, would turn out to be helpless in the face of this problem. Dee had always been able to fix anything, whether it was a scraped knee when Julia fell over a log or a homework problem she was struggling with. Now, though, there was nothing she could do to help Julia, and it frustrated Julia more than anything.

"I don't think this is going to work," Julia said, letting her shoulders relax. "I don't feel anything at all."

"No worries," Dee said, her go-to phrase for when anything wrong happened. "We'll figure it out. Keep working at it."

"Sure," Julia said, although she wasn't sure what she was supposed to keep working at. Nothing they had tried had shown even the glimmer of helping her shift.

"Child, come here," Dee said. She sat down on the couch and Julia sat down next to her. Dee hugged her close, and Julia let her cheek press against Dee's wrinkled face. Her skin was thin as birchbark, and just as spotted, but cool to the touch.

"Julia, dear," Dee said. "This isn't just about shifting, is it?"

Tears leaped into Julia's eyes, and she was helpless to stop them from running down her cheeks. Her face turned hot as she hastily wiped the tears from her face.

"It's just ... it's Damien," Julia said.

"Do you want to start a family with him soon?" Dee asked.

Julia nodded, her voice too uncertain to rely on.

"Child." Dee's voice was strict, now, and Julia looked up into eyes that pierced her to the soul. Ever since Dee had shifted back into wolf form to fight Trax's pack of scouts, she'd started to glow from her eyes when she turned emotional, just as Damien did. It scared Julia, to think that someone she thought she knew had an entirely different side to her.

"Yes?" Julia said.

"You have your schooling. That's something you've always wanted."

"Yes," Julia whispered.

"And do you want a family now?"

"I never did!" Julia cried. "I never did, but now I do. I'm looking forward to college; I'm sure it'll be wonderful, but ... " She waved her hand in the air helplessly.

"But this is an ache in you," Dee finished.

"Yes," Julia said, "It's important, and so is school. I can do both." She realized that she was sitting up straight in her chair, every muscle tensed. She'd dreamed about going to college for so long that it didn't seem right to let family become the overriding factor in her life. But now that she'd met Damien, she understood what it was to want a family—not just to want this as an intellectual desire, but to long for a child that was both of theirs and to feel that longing in her entire body. She didn't know how that fit into her plans for attending college, but she knew that she wasn't ready to give up her old dream for the sake of her new one.

"You said that I was hypnotized," Julia said.

Dee brushed her long white hair back and knotted it at the base of her neck.

"That was a long time ago," she said.

"Would the werewitch know?"

"You don't want to go back there," Dee said. Her eyes glowed white at the edges of the irises as she spoke. "It's dangerous."

"But if it's the only way to find out how I can shift—"

"It's not, my dear," Dee said. "And even if you did go back, there's no guarantee the werewitch would still be there."

"She is."

Julia and Dee both turned to the source of the voice in the doorway. Mara stood there, arms crossed. Her dark hair, almost purple in its darkness, hung loosely over her muscled shoulders. A thin white tank top clung to her body, curving around her chest and showing off her toned arms to the greatest extent.

"There's no need to interrupt our conversation," Dee said, her voice icy. "I would have stopped talking if I'd known you would intrude."

"I'm just trying to help," Mara said. "If you'd rather I not—"