Page 46 of Leave Me
“How so?” I asked, my face scrunching up in confusion. He was older, and his body more muscular; surely his wolf would also be stronger?
Taking both of my hands in his, he lifted one to his nipple. “You probably can’t feel it, but I had keyhole surgery to remove breast tissue. Going on testosterone at seventeen helped, but it still required surgery.”
“I’m glad you had access to that care,” I told him, letting my fingers graze his nipple until he stilled my touch. “I’m glad you can still feel my touch there.”
“I can.” Fowler nodded, then moved my hand to a small scar I’d noticed on his lower abdomen, right about the hem of his sweats. “I also had a hysterectomy.”
The implications of his words hit me. I’d been so focused on how his alpha cock turned me on, I didn’t think about everything else Fowler went through. “You’re worried your wolf will appear female?”
Fowler nodded and let me go to start heading back toward the stream.
“Didn’t your Gramps end up in a wheelchair from a car accident he didn’t heal from quickly enough?” I asked, following him by retracing our steps. I knew the answer, but wanted him to acknowledge thewhy.
“Yeah,” Fowler grunted.
“If that was the result of a couple days…” I let my implication linger.
Fowler had surgery years before, and his human body healed and grew, accepting the changes. If his grandfather, a fellow Alpha wolf, couldn’t heal his wounds, why would Fowler be any different?
“Maybe,” he allowed. I caught the undertones. Fowler had never wanted to risk undoing years of changes to his body.
Not wanting to push, since I knew less than he did about the subject of shifters and transitioning, I joined him in trudging along the waterway again.
Fowler made us double back and cross the creek a couple times before we followed it upstream. Even though I knew this trick from movies, he’d also made me rub up against some trees to make my scent trail stronger. Every time, I felt like I was a bear scratching my back and had to hold back a laugh, which would have been awkward with how intense the situation was.
After what felt like hours, when the sun was high in the sky, I heard the sound of water hitting rocks and splatting on the pond below. We’d made it to the falls.
Fowler had taken me and our friends to Wolf Falls plenty of times as children, but it was usually during the heat of summer to cool down. I was certainly sweating through my borrowed clothes enough to want a swim, though I wasn’t enjoying the squelching of water in my shoes.
Creeping along the knee-high creek, I caught sight of the dark pond below the falls, where the foothills rose steeply and the trees were dense. It was a sight for sore eyes, but I had no clue what the plan was next.
Fowler tilted his head and stopped our progress. The sound of branches breaking caught my attention, and we both turned toward the sound.
“That’s bigger than a squirrel,” I commented under my breath.
The sound of a distant roar reached us, echoing off the giant rocks on the hillside.
Fowler moved me behind him. “If they get close enough to see, I want you to hide under the waterfall.”
While I worried that if I could see the bears, they could see me, and my hiding place would be pointless, flashes of movement were visible through the trees. Red fur, a similar color to Fowler’s shifted form, showed two incoming masses at high speed.
Time was up.
“Run, Ri. Now!” Fowler pushed me towards the water, and I waded in, stumbling over the rocks and pond weeds.
Looking back as I started swimming, I wished I could stay and help in some way. Despite being more shifter than I knew, I couldn’t shift. Better hearing and eyesight weren’t helpful when two giant red bears burst through the trees and rose up on their hind legs.
Without needing to be told, I stopped watching and swam hard. Crossing the pond to the hidden rocks where I could scramble up behind the waterfall, I pulled myself up on a flat stone. Panting, Ipeered out through the pouring water to see one of the bears lunge toward Fowler’s still-human form.
He may not have shifted since we were teenagers, but he didn’t hesitate when the second bear started for the water in my direction. Jumping toward the one threatening me, Fowler’s pants tore into a million pieces as he shifted mid-air, faster than I’d ever seen before.
Fowler’s dark red fur stood on end as he pushed the bear onto his back and growled a warning.
Everything in me begged to protect Fowler right back, but I could only watch, helpless behind the blur of water.
Chapter thirty-one
Fowler
