Page 56 of The Golden Receiver

I never felt freer than when I was running with the pack.

There weren’t any expectations. There was no pressure to be anything other than just Evander.

It was a freedom I’d never felt anywhere else.

Until I met Kieran.

He let me be free, too. His small laughs at my jokes made me feel like I was powerful. He tried to keep up with me when we ran, but he never asked me to slow down. He gave me little secret smiles that I knew he didn’t share easily, because he didn’t just smile to smile. Not like I did. I mean, sure, sometimes he got annoyed with all my antics, but I never felt like he was trying to make me be less than I was.

I missed Kieran.

I wanted to see him.

I wanted to sit outside Karloff Hall and make sure nothing happened to him.

I wasn’t thinking. It was that same animal instinct that led me back to his door a few days earlier. My paws started leading me through the woods, across Creelin, back to the college.

A different smell pierced the air. It was coppery and warm and wrong. It didn’t smell like fall; it smelled like ruin.

A noise caught my ear. A whimper.

His whimper.

I’d heard it when I was taking him apart in one of our beds. But this one sounded wrong. It was distorted.

Pain.

He was in pain.

I let out a loud howl that ended in a snarl.

All my instincts narrowed to one point. Him. My human. Mine.

I ran faster than I ever had in my life, tearing through the woods and jumping over briars and underbrush. It didn’t take long to break through the tree line on Creelin University’s campus.

I paused long enough to get my bearings. I was on the far edge of campus, near one of the science buildings that I’d never stepped foot into. Kieran and I had run the trail that started a few yards over just last week. A few other times too, but that was the most recent. I cocked my head to the side, my ears going rigid, as I tried to hear him again. Listening for that whimper. I breathed deep.

There.

I caught the smell of copper again.

I heard the whimper.

I took off running toward it.

I was near the library when I saw something lying on the sidewalk. I thought it was a bag at first. A really big bag. But then I noticed the slight movement, a subtle rise and fall in the middle. I noticed the way it smelled. Familiar even under the copper.

A growl formed at the base of my throat and ripped through me.

Mine.

My human.

My Kieran.

I wished I could shift back into my human form. I could call for help if I did. But the blood moon meant that I couldn’t. I couldn’t turn back into a man, and I just had to hope that I didn’t scare him. I moved closer to him, and the smell of copper burned my nose. Underneath the copper was that sour smell I knew too well and a few others I didn’t. I’d never smelled them before, and I knew I never wanted to smell them again.

I got closer, and I heard it. The whimper. The sound of his heartbeat, too fast.