Page 8 of Fighting Furry

I bent over his arm and sniffed. I kept my nose there and tried to get past the light scent of his cologne and deodorant. At least I think it was his deodorant. It might have been his soap. I didn't smell anything else. I lifted my head. “Um, what is wolf supposed to smell like?”

“You'll know it when you smell it,” he said. “Keep trying.”

“So helpful,” I muttered. I dropped my head back to his arm and I breathed him in until I felt like I was tasting his scents as much as I was smelling them. I was about to lift my head when I smelled something different, something that made me want to pull him through the bars and wrap myself up in the scent. It was pine needles and warm blueberries and green grass. Clear mountain water and freshly turned earth. A strange sound, a cross between a purr and a growl rumbled up from my chest. I didn't even know I could make that sound. I rubbed my cheek against his arm, trying to get closer, trying to rub his scent on me.

He groaned and the sound made me press harder against his arm. I wasn't thinking about his scent anymore, I was thinking about him naked with naked me doing naked things. Fun naked things.

Pain and pleasure sliced through my midsection simultaneously and I dropped to my hands and knees. Axel didn't let me go, he slid his arm away until he was cupping my face. “Don't fight it,” he said. “It feels wrong the first time, but it's the most right thing you'll ever experience.”

“That's what she said,” I said. The words came out garbled, because something strange was happening to my mouth, to my face.

“Your jaw and your teeth are shifting,” Axel said in a soothing voice. “It will be over soon.”

A weird feeling, like the all-body shudder caused by nails scratching on a chalkboard, started at my toes and shivered up and over my body. I squinched my eyes shut until the feeling had passed. When I opened them, I looked down to see two furry paws on the cement floor. My fur was dark brown, like my hair, thick and gorgeous. I turned toward Axel. “Take a picture,” I tried to say, but it came out like a sort of bark growl.

“Shit,” Axel said. “I can already hear you.” He pulled a cell phone from a pocket and tapped on it. He looked at me before he took the picture. “You okay? Do you feel angry or frightened? Are you in pain?”

I felt amazing, but I decided to test this new body out before I committed to anything. I bounced around on four feet, which was way fun. I could get so high. Then, I took off and ran increasingly tight circles around the interior of the cell. It probably looked like I was chasing my tail.

I didn't even feel dizzy. With a squat and a push, I leapt from the center of the cell, bounced off the iron bars, and landed on my feet back where I'd started. This wolf body was more fun than my human body.

“Guess she feels pretty good,” Clarissa said.

Her voice brought me back to face the two of them. “How do I shift back?” I howled.

I thought I saw a smile tickle Axel's lips but it was hard to tell with all that beard. “You don't have to vocalize,” he said. “I can hear you in my head. If you want to shift back, just visualize yourself turning human again, it might take a while, but just—”

He stopped because I'd already shifted back. I grabbed my clothes and yanked them on as quickly as I could. Enough being naked in front of them. “That was amazing,” I said, practically bouncing in place as I pulled my shirt on and hopping around as I yanked on my jeans. Joy and excitement were zinging through me, like I'd just discovered the very thing I'd never realized was missing from my life. “Holy shit. I can't wait to show Shelly.”

“You can't show anyone,” Axel said. His words were a decided buzz kill, but his voice was more than somewhat pleasant. I wanted to go over there and feel that voice rumble against my bare skin and then I wanted to wrap myself around him until he stopped sounding so grumpy.

“Shelly won't tell anyone.” I sat on the bed. I stretched and flexed my knee. It felt amazing. “It's not like it can be that much of a secret anyway.”

“It is a secret,” Axel said. “Do you know what would happen to us if it were revealed that we can shift into wolves? Our ancestors were hunted and massacred…”

I tuned him out, because my arm, my arm that had been broken before I shifted, was now completely healed. I swung it around and clenched and unclenched my fist. No pain. No tendon damage. I rolled my shoulders and rotated my right one. No pain, no weird clicking noise. It was as though I'd been reborn. I hopped to my feet. “I've got to get back to LA. I'm going to make that Leclare fight after all. Coach is going to be so—”

“No,” Axel said. “Have you been listening to anything I just said?”

“Nope,” I said. “Unless it has something to do with you letting me out of this cage, I'm not interested.”

Axel's hands balled into fists and his face got fire-engine red. Now, I'm a tough woman and I have what some would call an exaggerated sense of my own…Alright fine, they'd call it cockiness, but even with years of fighting experience, years of self-defense training and years of therapy, an angry man still scared the shit out of me a little. Especially an over-sized angry man who had me locked in a cage.

I took a couple steps back before I could stop myself and blank my expression. It was too late, Axel must have seen the fear on my face, because his expression softened and his fists loosened.

“You can't leave, Julie,” Clarissa said in a gentle voice. “You belong here now.”

“Nope,” I said. “I belong in LA. I belong in a UFC cage, not in this sad excuse for a jail cell.”

“You're a young wolf,” Clarissa said. “Untested, inexperienced. We can't let you go out there.”

“I think I handled going wolfy pretty damn well,” I said. “I can clearly control my wolf and, with this new ability to heal, I'll be unstoppable.”

“You're also ten times stronger than you used to be,” Axel said, his tone a bit less gruff. “You'll kill the first fighter you go up against.”

I snorted. “You think I don't know how to pull a punch? You think I'm some idiot rookie?” I spoke with a lot of braggadocio, but I was freaking out more than a little bit. Ten times as strong? I rolled my shoulders and shook it off. I'd figure it out. I had to fight.

“You belong here with the pack,” Axel said. “You're mine.”

---