understood. No wonder Saul had gone feral.
“Not the sheriff,” Saul qualified, as Elias climbed the stairs to the back door. “Call the state police. I can’t kill him, but I’m going to make sure he spends the rest of his life in jail.”
JACK HENRY
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“So you’re all wolves?”
The words were slow to penetrate through the fog of Jack Henry’s supremely satisfied sleep. There was a barrier between him and the meaning of them, as if he were listening to a language he only barely spoke. So you’re all wolves. What did that mean? It’d been Elias who’d said it—that much Jack Henry understood. The bond helped. He could feel who was speaking better than he could hear it. He could feel wonderment and pain too, though he didn’t know why.
He stretched, shaking off the remains of sleep. Oddly shaped limbs slid over the sheets with the unexpected sensation of fur rubbing across brushed cotton, and he began to understand. He was a wolf. He sat up. Or more like crouched, getting onto his haunches to look around the room. Jasper was next to him, also in wolf form. They’d been curled together like dogs, sharing a small circle in the center of the bed.
The last thing he remembered was getting fucked near to death. And needing it. They’d been on top of the comforter, and some tiny, sane part of his brain had been annoyed by that. And then nothing except peace and sleep.
He barked because he couldn’t say words. He was scared now, trapped in wolf form and not knowing how to get back.
“It’s okay.” That was Saul. Comfort came strong over the bond. “I couldn’t figure out how to shift back either at first, but it’s not really so hard. Smell my hand and think human.” Saul extended his hand cautiously, as though Jack Henry might bite it.
Jack Henry took a whiff. The deep and familiar scent of mate flooded his nostrils, reminding him who he was, calling him home. Human, he thought. I’m a human. And the next thing he knew, he was.
“Wow, you did that good.” Saul’s words were easier to follow now. “When I shifted back, I felt like I was dying, and it took me, like, a solid minute.”
Elias nodded emphatically. “I wasn’t sure Saul was going to make it, but you shifted back like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Probably because you’re so in tune with your body.”
“If I’m so in tune with my body, how come I didn’t know there was a wolf inside it? And what do you mean about Saul?”
“Like I said, everyone is a wolf now. Except me.”
“When did Saul shift?” Jasper asked. He’d returned to human form without any of them noticing because his shifts were so smooth. He lay on his back now, naked and lean, smiling like none of this was either surprising or concerning.
“We’ve got a lot to tell you,” Elias said. “Looks like you’ve got some things to tell us too.”
Despite having been able to feel the baby’s presence on the bond from the instant of conception, Jack Henry still panicked whenever anything went wrong, and waking up as a wolf had really rattled him. Of all the things they didn’t know about how omega pregnancies worked, one thing they definitely didn’t know was what happened when an omega shifted into a fucking wolf while there was a baby inside him.
Everyone assured him it would be fine. His mates, his parents, Dee. Hybrids were meant to be wolves sometimes. But what if, in shifting, he’d turned the baby into a real wolf? Saul said it would be adorable to have a pet wolf, but Jack Henry wanted a baby.
Which was why he spent the next three weeks on pins and needles waiting for the sonogram. As he sat on the crinkly paper covering Dr. Morris’s examination table with all three of his mates crowded around him in a room not meant to hold that many people, he was on the verge of hysteria. He was three months along now—far enough that they’d be able to see something like a baby. He ran a hand along his stomach, which was basically flat. Only the slightest pooch suggested the presence of an alien extra within.
“Dr. Morris might be able to tell what sex it is,” Elias said.
“I just want to know what species it is. Let’s leave the sex a surprise.”
“Do you think it’s shifting in there?” Jasper asked.
“Please stop.” He hadn’t had any nausea yet. According