Page 39 of Shaped to Be Yours

“Shit!” I panted, finally reaching the backyard too. I gave myself a minute to catch my breath, and then jogged over to where the cat had disappeared. I wasn’t sure how many ways in and out there might be under there, but at least the cat was out of the woods. “There you are.” I could see its glowing eyes in the semi-dark. “We’ll get you. Jason—”

“Ah!”

Just as I turned to him, he yowled almost as panicked as the cat had and fell to his knees, clutching his forearm where the cat had bitten him.

“Ahhhhh!”

“Jason!” I leapt back to my feet to go to him, but as he fell forward onto his hands and knees, he held one hand up to keep me back. Aclawedhand, and when he lifted his head, his eyes were glowing green with slitted pupils.

He was changing, just like I’d seen whenever he lost focus, but this seemed painful, the way he’d described the first time he’d ever turned into the wolf. But the wolf’s eyes were yellow. Everything about this change, the more Jason grew and started growing fur and claws and longer ears, was just slightly off from what I’d seen before.

Jason’s growth in size caused his T-shirt to rip. The button of his jeans popped, the rest of the denim growing strained around his bulging legs. His fur was gray but also tabby striped with much more prominent white down his neck and chest and lower into his jeans. His teeth were different too. His ears wider. The fur longer at his cheeks. And he definitely had never had whiskers before.

He shivered all over when it was finished, slowly pushing up onto his knees, and then getting to his clawed, paw-like feet, which were also white, like the socks and mittens on the cat.

“Thefuck?” Jason rumbled my same thought. “Was that another monster?”

“It’s… just a cat!” I said. “I swear! I was chasing it away from our research area.”

Jason stared at his hands, and then touched his fluffier cheeks and felt his whiskers. His face was still humanoid like when he was a wolf but definitely more feline. “Do I just turn into anything that bites me now?”

He really was super cool that way, torn clothes and all, but what type of monster turned a person into anything that bit it?

“Mrreow?” The cat’s chirp brought our attention to the porch, where it was climbing back out and approaching Jason with cautious prowling. Once it reached him, despite Jason backing up a step, it went right after him and rubbed against his legs.

“Oh,nowyou like the guy you just bit. Why, ’cause I can turn into something like you?” He bent to scoop the cat into his arms. It was much more docile now, as if it had found a new mommy. Jason’s next rumble sounded like a purr, or maybe that was the cat, content in his arms. “Specist,” he said.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it! “This is crazy. Incredible.” I moved toward him, wanting so badly to pet his new fur.

“Crazy is the accurate one,” he spat. “You wanna bite me next and see if I turn human?”

“Jason, you have to come back with me to talk to the scientists.”

“What?” He held the cat closer to his chest and backed up another step. “No way! I am not being tested.” With much concentration, he managed to shift human. The cat didn’t seem fazed, still utterly entranced by him.

It must be his smell, some lingering pheromones. Of course a cat would run from a wolf, but what did this mean? There were so many questions to answer. Was he only this now, or could he turn into both cat and wolf?

“Not happening,” Jason reiterated and stomped past me.

“Jason! You are too connected to this. You know you are. And now a whole new species? A whole new form? We will never figure out what it means, what you are, if you don’t let them test you.”

“You’re on their side now?” He whirled on me, already up the single step onto the porch, which made him tall enough to cast me in shadow. “Not mine?”

“I am always on your side, but you have—”

“You’ve been thinking I’d make a better pincushion this whole time, haven’t you?”

I had, but he needed to listen. “Can you try to be reasonable—”

“Reasonable?” Jason snarled, eyes flashing… green again? Yellow? It happened too fast for me to be sure. “And when they dissect me into little pieces and makeyouhold the scalpel, will you still think I’m not being reasonable?”

“That would never happen—”

“Ricky!” I heard Zinnia call for me from the woods.

“Now you’ve led them to my house?”

I couldn’t see Zinnia or the others yet, but I turned back to Jason. “I just wanted to protect the cat. They already knew where you lived—”

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