And her name is…

After breakfast Tiago cautiously approaches me and glances at Wulfric. I unfortunately already know that he knows we slept together last night but he looks like he trying to get a read on the pair of us. I’m not sure why I enjoy seeing people uncomfortable with straight forward conversation, but I do and he looks the part.

“What is it?” I encourage after a minute and he sighs.

“He wants to ask if you need to go for awalk,” Nyx interrupts, joining us and looking to Wulfric. “Alongwalk.”

I can’t speak as I nod because I can feel the voice that isn’t like my usual tone creeping up. Wulfric wraps a protective arm around me but I don’t know why. I’m excited to go outside, more than I should be, and I bounce on my toes ready to go.

“What does this mean?” Wulfric asks outright, not looking at me as if they’re forcing me to go.

“You could come if you want, but you won’t like it,” I inform.

“Where are you going?” He asks, eyeing me more.

I don’t hide my teeth as I smile. “Like they said, we’re going for alongwalk.”

-

I’m not honestly sure why they all want to come when they’re going to need to move far away from me anyway. Wulfric starts dressing me in layers of his clothing, since my room key is still missing, like I’m leaving home to never return. As tempting as that sounds, I’m not quite ready for that to be the case. I’d like to at least pack some food for such a lengthy excursion. He pulls up the hood of the coat as we move to his door and I knock it back off my head, only for him to pull it back up and hold both sides around my face.

“What is this Theo? What aren’t you tell me?” He begs.

I smile and put my hands over his before pulls them down. “It’s nothing you need to worry about. I don’t even think it will be as bad this time with what happened last night.” I smirk and shake the hood back off.

There’s a knock at the door and I moved to open it to see Nyx and Tiago waiting. We’ve barely closed and locked the door behind us before Tiago has transported us far away. Wulfric is looking around us in surprise; I’m sure trying to gauge the sun and stars and figure out where we are. Somehow he figures out which direction the house is in in seconds and starts gesturing toward it and to the mountain in another direction. Tiago and Nyx both look at me accusingly when they realize I’ve told him essentially nothing.

“I thought you were going for a walk? Why are we so far from the house?” Wulfric asks me, even though the others present are more likely to spill.

“My affinity is stronger than me. It used to be manageable, but being starved so long made me lose the balance I had maintained and made it more difficult….” I admit but, where I used to fear admitting such a thing, I feel strangely proud of that. My affinity is strong. “I can kill a few beings to fulfill my needs, or not kill a whole bunch of things.” He is staring at me without much in the way of an expression so I continue nonchalantly. “The math is a little messy. I still end up killing small plants, and animals that can’t get out of my range fast enough, but it’s better than sacrificing a dozen virgins-“ I chuckle but no one laughs. “I’m kidding,” I assure, “I’ve never killed a virgin… Anyway, when I let go of my affinity in a controlled manner I can almost reach my full potential, and I do this by kind of meditating while I let my affinity reach out and siphon from around me.”

There’s silence for a minute so I nod at Wulfric and go to sit under a tree where it’s dryer. He catches my arm and I turn my face back to him. He looks at me like he’s trying to find the ‘but’, the ‘and’, the joke or punchline or other additive. There is none, and my eyes roam around him out of boredom. After nearly a minute of this I release my magic enough to send a pulse of my energy out as a warning. My friends around me stagger a step and look at me.

Tiago takes Wulfric’s wrist from the hand on my arm. “We have to go. She’ll be fine.”

Wulfric keeps looking at me. “Will you?”

I shrug. “Probably. Honestly if you’re worried we should probably pick up and move farther. If you spin me around a few times I haven’t been paying attention to landmarks so I won’t be able to find my way back.”

“That’s not what I meant, I meanyou. Will Theo be alright?” He clarifies.

Again I shrug. “Probably. This is the first time I’ve done this since shifting, but if I turn into a wild beast I know some yetis nearby that would put me up. Don’t worry so much, and stay with the others. If you come back at the wrong time the chances are high I won’t even realize I’m killing you.”

He moves toward me quickly and kisses my lips. It’s sweet and I enjoy every moment of it until he pulls my hood up again. I groan against his lips and he laughs.

“Stay grounded,” he reminds, and then Tiago takes them away.

I send another warning out as I sit, but I can already tell this is going to be different than usual. As I sit I can feel my magic like bumble bees under my skin, and my antlers come out like they had before though this time it is decidedly more painful. My magic works without me needing to think as much and my mind wanders to Wulfric. That’s not what I want to think about, but it was him who told me to stay grounded so that’s what happens.

I want to trust him with everything, and that innate feeling that I can depend on him confuses me. It makes me wonder whether this was forged over a time I don’t remember, or whether it’s due to us being mates. We do share a birthday, but I’m sure there were other Sioga born the same day as well. He certainly believes we are, unless the whole his birthday thing is a lie. It’s not like I kept my mouth shut about mine. It would have been easy for him to just say ‘me too’, but if I’m wrong…. I can’t let him know my plan. My heart clenches a little at the thought of leaving him.

“…. Little mouse!”

The familiar name draws my attention and I try to take in my surroundings and reign my magic in. No one should be near me right now and the only one that calls me that is Wulfric. I’ll drain him dry if he’s within hearing distance, but…. But I don’t feel like I do when I’m taking in energy. I fight my way through that open door in my mind and find myself no longer sitting beneath the tree I stationed myself under. I’m standing, and one hand is clawing a tree while the other is holding… a dead squirrel or rabbit. It’s definitely dead, its energy drained dry to put it gently to sleep, but I have my claws in it and I think I’ve been eating it. The thought horrifies me enough to leap forward in my consciousness.

“Theo, are you in there? Come on little mouse you’re stronger than you think,” Wulfric has been saying in Orthoirian. “Come on my Queen, come back to me.”

I blink several times and try to speak, but it comes out as an almost squeak with some growling. Removing my hand from the tree and flicking the dead thing to the ground, I start to look around where I am. I can see my coat laying nearby, so I didn’t go far from where I started and that’s reassuring-ish. My head swings from side to side as I look around before my eyes connect with Wulfric’s again. He hasn’t stopped speaking softly to me, I just stopped listening for a minute.

“Theo,-“ he reaches out to me and I watch the hand like I think it has something, “come to me.”

It’s an effort to not view his boldness as arrogance or a challenge. I know somewhere that he’s approaching me out of concern, that his boldness is because he knows I’d snuff him out if I viewed him as weak. I pull my lips back, showing him my rows of sharp teeth, and he opens his own mouth enough for me to see his own sharp teeth. For some reason that elicits a giddy feeling in my chest and I lower my stance slightly toward his level.

“I won’t lose you like this Theo. You’re in there. Push forward,” he encourages.

It’s funny, I thought I was forward until one of those strange laughs peal from my throat. I crouch down and observe him again, more on eye level now.I’ll miss him.

He smiles at me and gestures with his hand again for me to take it. I do, and then he flips my hand over in his and curls my fingers in to kiss my knuckles. My hand compared to his is much bigger and I start to wonder whathechanges into. I get lost in the touch of his hand against mine and my eyes drift closed. I can feel his finger against the short fur as he tugs my hand closer to him. Suddenly I feel his tongue slip between my fingers as he kisses my knuckles and I shift to look at his face again.

He only smirks. “Come my Queen, let me worship you.”

Another of those strange laughs leaves my mouth but this timeIcaused it. His thumb rubs over my hand and I focus on returning the pigment to my normal skin tone. Though I’m only looking at my hand I know my skin is shifting back evenly as my stature also shrinks to my shorter self. The antlers are last, but before I get to those I feel Wulfric’s hand reach up to run over them. I reach to do the same, feeling them hard like bone but soft with their coating of velvet.

“I wonder if I kept them out for longer if the velvet would fall off,” I muse.

I’m surprised that I can feel his hand running over them. I can’t tell if it’s the nourishing coat of blood vessels, hair and skin that provide the sensation or if it would still have it without the velvet, but it feels…delicious.I reach up to grab his hand and force him to stop as my face starts to heat up with the contact.

“Please,” I begin, looking up at him, “that’s sensitive.”

It occurs to me that they’re not much of a weapon if touching them like this get’s me hot and bothered. Imustbe able to shed this layer and this feeling. In other antlered animals, they lose the velvet when they are fully grown and I look to what I can see of them wondering how much bigger they could get. Wulfric only pauses in touching them before removing my hand from his wrist and starting again.

“You don’t like it? Put them away,” he challenges.

I let out a shaking breath. “I didn’t say that…-“ I hear the snow crunch and look up to see Tiago with Nyx behind him. “Why, -why…” his hand is so distracting that I reach for it again but he catches my hand first.

“Put them away,” he says gently, “until later.”

I can feel the heat in my face and do as told. When they’re gone he rubs the top of my head affectionately and kisses my forehead. He seems almost relieved that I’m shorter now and I roll my eyes despite dwelling on the feelings it gave me. I’m reliving the moment until I remember the others present and shake my head.

“Why are you all down here?” I demand. “I could have killed you.”

“It was me,” Wulfric interrupts. “We moved far away, and felt your warning, but your siphoning energy never reached anywhere near us. We waited a bit, but I knew something was wrong. When I flew overhead I saw you prowling around in your shifted form like you were testing out your body. You didn’t even notice me approach and I knew you weren’t in control.”

“Flew!?” I gasp and then glance over at Nyx and Tiago who look like they’ve stayed in their state of shock since witnessing it.

“Better not let Noryth know you let that secret out. He wasn’t all too happy thatIknew that particular secret before he knew mine,” I remind. “What are you?” I ask excitedly.

He kisses my head again. “I’ll show you another time. I don’t particularly want to get undressed again.” It’s now that I realize he’s wearing pants,, but nothing else. “I carried them in my mouth,” he offers quickly before Tiago tosses him a pair of shoes.

He steps into them, apparently not caring to brush the dirt and snow off his feet first. I cringe a little at what that must feel like but he doesn’t seem to care at all. He’s handed his other clothes and he slings his coast around him and stuffs the shirt into the pocked. It feels incredibly unfair for him to be getting dressed right now after making me so hot.

I understand, and though I’m incredibly curious I wouldn’t mind waiting for a more private moment to get him naked again. My thumb goes to my mouth in consideration as I chew on the tip of the digit, but forget that it’s covered in blood. I check my hand over and the blood runs down to my elbow but it’s nearly all dried in now. The blood I tasted wasn’t delicious like Wulfric’s but I didn’t seem to mind before so I know, in the least, that it doesn’t taste bad because it’s harmful.

“We should get back,” I say suddenly. “Noryth may have a new plan for me to poke a dozen holes in and I’m hungry for something other than a dead rodent.”

From the look Nyx gives me she thinks I mean lunch, but from the look Wulfric gives he knows what I want.

Tiago goes to pick up my discarded layers. I’m not sure when I took them off but the shoes I had borrowed had been from Wulfric. Apparently his large feet were about the size of mine fully shifted because they’re still on and look fine. On the inside I can wiggle my toes and feel the torn fabric of my socks and the tow of the shoe, but my claws didn’t pierce through it. It’s likely that my other clothes stayed on because of all the extra room as well.

I looked over Wulfric’s bare chest thoughtfully. “I guess there’s more than one bonus to me losing my bedroom key. If I had been wearing my own winter clothes they probably would have been torn right off.”

“I wouldn’t have complained.” Wulfric winked at me.

“Me either,” Nyx added but she didn’t look at me with any lust in her eyes, more like any chance to see boobs was a good day.

Maybe it was less about the boobs and more about a chance to see how shifters shifted. Her gaze didn’t linger on me in a way that made me uncomfortable, and almost as soon as she’d said it she was distracted by something moving in the woods around us. I had the distinct feeling that she could watch me shift, completely naked, and do it with nothing but critical analysis on her mind. Despite myself, I find a small grin spreading over my face. Maybe, if I can get control of it before everything goes down, I will show her just how it occurs.