Page 65 of A Dusk Of Stars

“What?” he asks with a defensive shrug. “I’m a fox shifter. Sometimes, what I need to do is punish water for being the way it is.”

“And what is that?” I demand with a growing smile.

He turns to squint at the lake. “Don’t know. Can’t explain. But infuriating for sure.”

Laughter bubbles up my throat, and the next thing I know, he’s throwing me a playful scowl and shifting, his fox coming to bow its head so I can get on top.

***

The drooping branches of the willows behind my back are slowly swaying in the cold night breeze. We’re sitting on the plateau stretching along the Sobbing Lake, our legs hanging off the edge of the weathered, musty wooden boards, Bane skipping rocks over the glimmering surface of the water.

I guess it wasn’t strange enough that I had fun talking to him. Now we’re sitting in silence that’s not awkward in the slightest. This night is getting weirder by the second.

Leave,now, I urge myself, before it turns sour somehow. But I don’t want to. I want to keep talking to him. There’s something in particular that I want to talkabout.

“So,” he starts with another flick of his wrist in the direction of the water, followed by the rock hopping over its surface. “Any curious little facts about the lake?”

“It’s a wolf,” I say before I even give it a second thought.

“Ah, the lake is a wolf?” he says with a pensive nod. “Well, you learn something new every day, I guess.”

I blow a laugh through my nose. “My animal, she’s a wolf.”

“Yeah, I know,” he says, turning to me with a smile, putting the rocks in his hand down.

I frown. “How?”

“It’ll start happening for you too, atsomepoint, but I don’t need to see other shifters in their shifted form to be able to tell,” he explains. “You were the exception, probably because you had practically no connection with your animal. Until that night in the forest at least.” There’s a moment of tense silence before he rushes to add in a teasing voice, “Very predictable of you, by the way, to turn out to be a wolf.”

I laugh.

“But,” he continues, with this caution in his voice, “to be fair, what I saw today at the gym…”

“I thought you said ‘you’d all find it in yourselves to move on,’” I protest.

He shrugs. “I did.” He pauses for a second before he says, “Doesn’t mean it’s not a problem foryou. Especially since those weren’t exactly your typical shifter marks.”

I hesitate a little. “It’s…” I shake my head. “I don’t know what happened. I guess I lost control.”

“You did,” he says with a nod. “Spectacularly, if I might add.”

It makes the sting of guilt rise to the surface. “Being a shifter,” I start as I fix my eyes on the lake. “It’s hard for me, but not because I’m generally stuck up,” I say, referring to what he told me that one time. “I have a problem with anger in particular. I don’t seem to want to let myself feel it. It’s such an ugly emotion.”

There’s a moment of silence before he says, “You know, you can’t pick and choose.” He pauses before he adds, “At the risk of sounding preachy… togaincontrol, you first need tolosecontrol.”

I let out a scoff. “Yeah, in this case at least, I don’t think I’ll be taking any advice from someone likeyou.”

“Someone like me,” he echoes. He turns at the waist, lifting his leg and laying it flat on the plateau to face me, his eyes fixing me in place. “Alright, smartass, let me have it. Let it all out.”

I squint at him. Then I shrug. “You’re the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with this world,” I say flatly.

“Wow,” he drawls, his eyebrows raising. “Please don’t feel like you have to be gentle with me.”

“You started it,” I protest.

He just looks at me for a second. “And I guess I’ll be a big enough masochist to ask you to finish it,” he replies with a laugh. “Please, how can a single person even be what you’re making me out to be?”

“Let’s see,” I mutter, tapping a finger on my chin. “You’re an alpha without a pack—”

---