Page 21 of Hungry Like the Wolf

“Come on, Robbie,” JJ said. “You’ll feel better.”

That would be true. Because it would only take a running fifty yards to kill him dead, which would absolutely be an improvement to what he was beginning to believe was a Victorian wasting illness. He looked at the back of Nadja’s head and could tell by the hike of her shoulders that her arms were tightly crossed over her chest.

With a sigh and shaking limbs, Robbie pulled his T-shirt over his head and toed off his own boots before dropping his jeans and boxer briefs and stepping out of them. He shivered as a sudden breeze blew over his sweaty skin.

“Let’s go,” JJ said, jogging off the path and into the woods. “Nadj, can you bring the clothes to the cabin? You’re an angel!”

“If he dies on this little fun run of yours, it’s all your fault!” Nadja shouted back.

JJ’s laugh echoed through the pines.

As he put one foot in front of the other, Robbie couldn’t help but think of the nature documentaries his sister, Pepper, used to love. He remembered watching the baby giraffes stand up on wobbly, mile-long legs mere minutes after birth. His legs felt even less stable than that, but he put one foot in front of the other and took off after JJ.

They were heading in the direction of a lake. Robbie could see it through the trees, an almost unreal blue, speckled by the shadows of clouds. His head swam and his hands shook, and yet, with every plodding step, he felt stronger. It made no sense. He had just puked his guts up. He hadn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours. He was thirsty as hell. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever being so thirsty.

A minute later, a russet wolf jumped out of the trees, and Robbie shrieked. But the wolf bumped into his hip, nipping playfully at his elbow, before bounding ahead.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Robbie said, picking up the pace, amazed that he could.

The air was cold, he could feel that now, but it felt so good against his skin. His feet pounded over the shifting pine needles on the forest floor, his lungs filling with the crisp air that smelled of cedar and evergreen. Fresh. Familiar.

Where he grew up, in the Appalachian mountains, his home was surrounded by oaks, hickories, and maple trees, with a few pines dotted throughout. But there was something familiar about the crispness, the freshness, the age of a forest like this that had tears springing to his eyes.

This wasn’t Appalachia. This wasn’t Kentucky. This wasn’t even a place he’d been before. And yet he felt every bit as at home as he’d ever felt at the home where he’d been brought up. The russet wolf burst through the tree line ahead of him and charged straight into the lake, splashing and romping in the shallows.

Robbie wiped his eyes and followed, running into the water and gritting his teeth against the cold as the icy water splashed against his balls. But he kept going, plunging deeper until the rocks beneath his feet disappeared. He treaded water for a minute before floating on his back. JJ’s wolf paddled in a circle around him, snuffling and yipping.

Robbie laughed.

And then JJ the man was back, floating next to Robbie.

Robbie turned his head to look at JJ. The eyeshadow and blush were gone, as were the flowers. His sandy hair was a halo around him in the water.

“Does it hurt?” Robbie asked.

“The shift?”

“Yeah.”

JJ didn’t answer right away. “Just for a second. It’s like your wolf has to break a seal to get through. So there’s a sharp jab, but then it’s over. And then it’s just like… being taken apart and put back together again. You feel everything, but it doesn’t hurt. I think—” He paused thoughtfully. “I think it’s more disorienting than anything the first few times. There’s paws where your hands have always been. And your vision is different. And the smells. Fuck, the smells. Right now, you smell pine trees and water, right?”

“Yeah.”

“As a wolf, I smell pine trees and water, but I also smell the raccoon a half mile away trying to get into the commissary dumpster. And I can smell every animal that has crossed that trail for the last week. I can smell the beef stick that you had in your pocket a few days ago and that you rewore your socks from yesterday.”

“Jesus,” Robbie muttered.

“But I can also smell the brownies Agatha is baking with the girls and the weed Rose is smoking on her back porch even though she swears she doesn’t. I can smell that Keisha and Ray were fooling around this morning even though they swear they’re not doing that either. I can smell that you use Irish Spring soap. I can smell Nadja’s perfume, the fact that she uses a scent-free laundry detergent but puts lavender oil on her wool dryer balls.”

She did smell like lavender. It was subtle, but he’d smelled it on her when she’d helped him into the car. He felt a bright flash of jealousy when JJ described her smell, which was absurd. First of all, because he couldn’t tell JJ not to smell things. But mostly because Nadja was just his therapist. Not his wife. Not his girlfriend. Not even his friend.

He had slept through the meeting but apparently she had sweet talked the pack into letting them stay. He’d have to ask her how she did it, what she said, to sway them so quickly.

JJ sighed. “Come on. Let’s go find Nadja. She’s already had too much time to pick the spot on her wall where she’d hang my taxidermied wolf head.”

“Goddamn. That’s grim, man,” Robbie drawled.

JJ laughed.