Cade (20 page)

“Like you now?” Phoenix asked incredulously.

Cade nodded. “Kind of, I guess. He could shift between man and wolf, and he could hunt and eat. Of course, eventually he met a woman and they had a family, and their children were born with their abilities. They were able to do the same.”

“And then they grew up and had children of their own?”

“Exactly,” Cade said as he took another piece of cloth. “Tilt your head back.” He wiped the blood and dirt away from Phoenix’s face. “Eventually, these children had children, and their children had children, until it got to the point that they would only marry someone who was the same as them. This meant that their
wolf
inside was pure. Both parents.”

“Like you? Your mum and dad are
wolf
.”

Cade nodded again and rinsed the cloth once more before cleaning his grazed chin. “They are. But it was discovered that this
wolf
thing—lycanthrope, they call it—could be passed along with a bite.”

“Like me?”

“Yes. But these turned
wolves
that get bitten, they usually die or go into these frenzies where they kill everything.”

Phoenix looked down with shame as he thought about the boy at the town. “Like me,” he whispered again sadly.

“No, not like you. Someone should have helped you at the start. It isn’t your fault.”

Phoenix let his head hang down for a moment, heavy with the thought of what he had done and what he was. Cade reached over and hooked a finger under his chin, forcing his eyes to meet his.

“You’re not the same, okay? You’re through that part, and you’re here now.”

“Do you think I will be able to do it like you?”

Cade sighed and shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe you can be better, I don’t know. You're the first bitten
wolf
I have ever met.”

“What if I can never shift?”

“What if you can?”

Phoenix nodded at that. He rubbed at his leg absently with his good hand.

“That itching you feel is your
wolf
. He wants out. We get it when we haven’t shifted in a while. Cade paused for a moment. “Do you want to try now? You and I?”

“Right now?”

Phoenix followed Cade’s gaze to the back door. “Well, I’m not doing anything else, and shifting will help your hand to heal ... be like new.”

Phoenix wasn’t sure, afraid of failing. “You won’t hate me if I can't?”

“If you can't today, we try again tomorrow. We’ll keep at it.”

Phoenix nodded slowly. “Okay,” he whispered.

Phoenix stood next to Cade out in the back garden and on the small patch of mowed grass. He stared out into the overgrown mass that extended outward. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be his
wolf
and then to run through all of that. It seemed impossible.

“We have to take our clothes off first,” Cade said. “Are you ready?”

“They don’t just fall away.”

Cade shook his head, smiling. “Nope. They tear to shreds. Think Hulk.”

Cade was already half undressed—all he had on was his jeans. He was barefooted and bare-chested, but it suited him. His muscles were defined, bulging in all the right places, his body an image of masculine perfection. He had the kind of body that Phoenix envied and promised he would work his way to being one day. He wanted to be as big and as strong as Cade and Stephen.

Phoenix dared to pull his shirt up over his head and tried not to hide himself. His ribcage jutted out beneath pale skin, and he looked like some kind of famine victim. Next to Cade, his chest was flat and the skin grey and lifeless.

When Cade slipped his jeans off and dumped them on the ground next to him, Phoenix hastily looked away, feeling more uncomfortable by the second. Although he wasn’t much shorter than Cade—reached his shoulder—he felt small in comparison to his broad frame. Even Stephen had been huge. And that cool tattoo that went down his back had just seemed to add power and height to him. Next to either of them, Phoenix felt puny, and he felt every bit of it in that moment as he slid his shorts down, standing there only in his underwear.

“Those are going to tear to pieces,” Cade said. Phoenix glanced down and pulled at the waistband. When he didn’t take them off, Cade added, “You’ll get used to it. Either that, or you're going to go through an awful lot of clothing.” He grinned at him. “Are you ready?”

Phoenix swallowed hard and stared out into the garden. “Yes.”

“If you can't shift, don’t worry.”

Phoenix nodded. “When did you first shift?”

“It’s different for us. I am born like this. I was shifting before I was walking.” The idea seemed so incredible to Phoenix. That babies could actually do this. He frowned. If a baby could do this, then so could he.

“We should get down on the ground. Do you remember how Stephen did it?” Cade nodded towards his hand. “Can you manage with that?”

Phoenix nodded. His hand was a little better. Or at least it seemed to be. Whatever Cade had put on his hand had offered some relief and taken the darkness from the bruises. Yellow tinged the edges already. Phoenix knelt down on the grass, sitting back onto his haunches.

“Close your eyes,” Cade said, kneeling down next to him. “Close your eyes and imagine your
wolf
. I’m right here. All the time.”

Phoenix nodded again.

“Tell me when you can see him.”

Phoenix did as Cade had said. Resting his broken hand on his bare legs, he tried to bring his
wolf
to mind. Though the sun was warm against his chest and face, he shivered. He wanted so badly to get this right—to do this for Cade. Not knowing exactly how to look for his
wolf
in his mind, he tried to picture an empty room. Clinical—white and empty. He tried to picture the
wolf
there, focusing hard until a
wolf
suddenly appeared. Phoenix wasn’t sure this was his
wolf
or if he had just thought one up. Maybe he was just doing this all wrong. Was this how it was supposed to be? “I can see him.”

“What is he doing?” Phoenix opened his eyes to look at Cade, but he stopped him. “Close your eyes. Keep them closed.”

“He’s just sitting there,” Phoenix said after a moment. “He isn’t doing anything.”

“Can you reach for him? Put your hand out and touch him.”

Phoenix did. It was so stupid, but he did it anyway. He reached for his
wolf
, still not knowing if his mind had just made him up? The
wolf’s
fur was white and grey, like shades of snow in the shadows. As Phoenix inspected him closer, he gasped. It had a mark above his left eye exactly the same as his.

“Keep your eyes shut,” Cade said when they would have shot open again. “Reach for him.”

Heart thumping, Phoenix reached out slowly. His
wolf
didn’t move. He stretched out until the tips of his fingers grazed the top of the wolf’s fur. It was soft and warm and so inviting. The urge to run his hands through it was overwhelming. Everything around him had grown silent, the sounds of the outside world non-existent. The real world had vanished.

“Reach for him,” Cade urged. “Touch him. Get closer. Phoenix moved closer and dared to place the palm of his hand down on the
wolf’s
head and run it through its fur. The
wolf
pushed his head up to meet him and it suddenly dawned on Phoenix that he could actually feel fur for real. He jumped back instantly, snatching his hand away. Suddenly off-balance, he fell on his side and onto his hand. He screamed as his weight fell onto it.

“It’s okay.” Cade was beside him. “Try not to think about the pain.” Phoenix tried to open his eyes to look at him, but they were so heavy. He peered through them and saw Cade lying down on the ground with him.

“Close your eyes again.” He let his lids slide shut again and looked for his
wolf
once more. It was no longer sitting in front of him, but curled up against him, the fur pressing into his stomach, all down his legs. Panicking, his eyes shot open, and he reached out towards Cade for help. But Cade simply smiled at him. “You’re doing great,” he said encouragingly.

He tried to speak, but all that came out was a strangled growl. He stared at his outstretched hand and realised it was no longer a hand. It was a paw. It was white and not quite right, but it was a paw nonetheless.

“You're nearly there. I promise.” Cade said.

The
wolf
had disappeared, gone from sight at least, but his presence was there. It was all over him, enveloping him in a blanket of warmth and fur and contentment. Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe. Suddenly, every bone in his body began to throb with a pressure he had never experienced before. Every muscle twisted and spasmed. He rolled onto his front so that he could get up and move, but when his face hit the ground, he realised that his nose was different. It was longer. His teeth were now canines and even his lips were different—thinner and elongated. He tried to call out to Cade again, but he couldn’t get any words out. A growl vibrated through him, and he realised it was him who had made the sound.

“Breathe” Cade said, and Phoenix struggled to do just that, taking in deep, slow breaths. “Now open your eyes.”

With great effort, he managed to get them open. The bright sunlight blinded him for a moment and he fought the pain that speared through them. It felt like when he’d sat in the dark for too long and then suddenly come out into the sunshine. He blinked to clear his vision, and when he was able to focus, he realised that everything was so much sharper, so much clearer. He noticed details that he had never observed before.

When he turned to look at Cade, he was grinning at him. “You did it.”

Phoenix’s heart started to pound in excitement.

He had done it. He really had. He was
wolf
.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Cade was sitting at the kitchen table with the back door open. He could see Phoenix from where he was. He would catch a flash of him every so often as the light coloured wolf bounded through the overgrowth, racing around and creating circles in the long grass. Cade grinned. He was sure that just a few more days and the entire stretch of land behind his house was going to be totally flat, and Cade wouldn’t need to mow it. It was a win-win situation.

A week had passed since Phoenix’s first shift—a god damn long week it seemed. A week of trying to ask Phoenix questions, without pushing him too much, and time was quickly running out. Cade needed to know things. In two boxes next to Cade, and on the table in front of him, were reams and reams of paper. Each page held countless entries that Cade had to examine. He had the code to Phoenix’s tracer and now the never-ending job was to search for all the names of listed shifters and match it in the hope of finding the one responsible for biting him. That was easier said than done, of course. It was a series of symbols and numbers, and his eyes had already begun to cross. He rubbed them and let out an exhausted sigh. Sitting back in his chair, he rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the taut muscles.

It had been a good week at least. They had made some progress with settling Phoenix. However, neither of them had talked about anything important—or rather, Cade hadn't. Every time he thought about talking to Phoenix about having to challenge his maker, he would catch a glimpse of the young boy in there, and then the words just seemed to get stuck in his throat. Tomorrow—that was his mantra. Tomorrow … everything would be said tomorrow.

Phoenix was still a little like Bambi on ice as he tried to run. He was not used to running on four paws yet, and he hadn't quite got his coordination down. But he was getting better. Cade had tried to make him feel at home, had bought him clothes, and they had spent two days fixing up the back bedroom. There wasn’t so much to do to it—mostly, it was painting it and actually adding some furniture so that it seemed like it was lived in. It was somewhere that Phoenix could call his own.

Phoenix jumped around in the long grass and then suddenly vanished behind the half-broken greenhouse. Cade chuckled at the memory of a very wet—and a very unimpressed—Phoenix dragging his ass inside the day before, after discovering there was a pond behind it. The minutes ticked by, and Cade straightened in his chair, all his senses going on alert. Just as he decided to go and check on him, even though he could intuit no danger, Phoenix emerged, his arms in the air as he pulled his shirt on over his head. Cade let out the breath he had been holding and relaxed back into his seat.

“Good run?” Cade asked when Phoenix came back into the house. His face was flushed, his eyes bright with excitement. He had changed back into his jeans and t-shirt, and Cade thought how nice it was to see the kid in clothes that fitted him.

He beamed at Cade and then produced a rabbit from behind his back and dropped it onto the table with a thunk. It was dead, of course. Its fur was dotted with red where Phoenix had clamped his jaws down on it and killed it. “I caught dinner,” he said proudly.