11. Daxton

Chapter 11

Daxton

We were having a blast. Oscar fit right in, just like I knew he would. I still hadn't seen Willy and was getting nervous that maybe something happened to him, when he caught up with me at the cookie table.

It was weird that we both worked for AIDEN. It meant we were both in danger at all times. If they ever found out what either of us could do, we'd be toast. And because of that, I found myself extra protective of him.

"Cookie?" I held one out to him, and he snatched it. "I'll take that as a yes."

"Yes." He spoke around a mouth full of cookie. "Got stuck behind an accident and it was a mess. Just got here."

"I think there are some burgers left." They'd be cold, but cold food was better than no food, and filling up on cookies was a quick way to get sick.

"Otto is with my parents and talking about making some kind of pasta for the little one. I'll probably have some of that. Got a minute?"

"Yes?"

"Good, follow me."

We walked toward the riverbank, where the noise of the barbecue faded into the background.

"Alpha pulled me aside as I got out of the car," Willy said, his voice low. "There's some new intel—not about the lab we were at, but about another one that's recently opened. They think it might be housing...patients."

Patients. What a horribly inaccurate term for who those people were. They were prisoners, experiments, torture victims. Just the thought that there was a new facility had my stomach wanting to revolt.

It was a lot to take in…too much.

We were just about to head back when Willy's foot got caught on a rock that was mostly buried in the ground. It wasn't unusual—the land wasn't completely flat; we were on a riverbed, after all. But what happened next changed my life.

His hand transformed into a claw, and he dug out the rock with ease, tossing it into the river before his hand returned to normal. Not both hands. No. Just one. I wasn't even sure what animal it was from. But did that matter? Not really.

"Whoa," I exclaimed, my eyes wide. "Did you just...change? Like, just part of you?"

Willy shrugged. "Yeah, I've been working on it. I'm not good at it yet, but that's my best trick—being able to dig stuff out of the ground. It's not really necessary, but because I can, I did." He wiped his hand on his jeans. "Have you tried to do that?"

I shook my head, still in awe. "I had no idea it was something to try. What else can you do?"

"Name an animal." Willy did the thing with intertwining his fingers the way they did in the movies as they were about to play pool. He was loving this.

"Panther," I said without thinking too hard.

And then, where his hands once were, two huge paws appeared.

"Okay. Name another one." He was acting like this was no big deal, but it was.

It was a huge deal. I might not have known a lot about normal, everyday shifters, but I knew enough to know this wasn't normal. "Uh...raccoon?"

He held up his arms, and I watched in amazement as one hand turned from a panther's paw into a raccoon's, while the other stayed exactly like it was.

"You can do two at once?" My jaw dropped.

"I can do four." He grinned.

Next thing I knew, he had two new paws, a beak, and scales where his hair used to be.

"I wanna try." Maybe not exactly that. Scales sounded itchy, but a partial shift? I was all in.

"Why don't we start with one?"

I nodded.

"Focus is key. You'll have to really concentrate on what you want to happen."

We started easy, with a monkey's paw—since it was closest in design to a human hand that we could think of. Willy thought it might make for an easier transformation. I tried and tried, calling forth my beasts, envisioning what I wanted to become. When I looked down, I had a hand with the palm of a monkey, though all my digits were still human. My heart leaped with excitement. "I did it!" I squealed, wrapping my arms around Willy in an excited hug.

At that moment, I heard a twig break and turned to see my mate walking my way.

"Oh, Willy, this is Oscar, my mate."

Oscar was watching us with a curious expression on his face.

"I've heard so much about you." Willy smiled.

"This is Willy from work?" Oscar asked.

"Yeah." I stepped back and gestured to him. "Remember, I told you I had a friend? This is him."

"I see." Oscar nodded, though he seemed more interested in my hand than my words. "Do you have something pinching off oxygen? Your color's wrong."

"That's because it's a monkey paw—just the palm, though." It wasn't a success, but it was a start.

"So, you came out here to try to have monkey paws?" My mate raised an eyebrow, a hint of amusement in his voice.

"More like, we came out to talk about work stuff, but yeah." I laughed along with him.

"I thought…never mind what I thought." He closed the distance between us and hugged me tight.

Willy broke into laughter. "Peace out, guys. I'm not getting in the middle of this."

"See? How much better is it to celebrate with your mate?" he murmured and kissed me soundly.

"Yeah." I sighed, feeling the warmth of his embrace. "Yeah, it is."