Page 75 of Destined for Dreams
She worked quietly for a few minutes before speaking again. “Do you know anything about the mating bond?”
Derrick stiffened. “Why do you ask?”
She lifted the tattoo machine from his skin.
“Well, it’s just that I’ve been getting this bad feeling since yesterday. First, it was cold chills, and today it’s been nausea, but through everything, I’m feeling this horrible sense of doom. If Bartol hadn’t called me about an hour before it started, I’d swear something was wrong with him, but he was just about to leave to Prague. I can’t imagine he’d run into trouble that fast.” It felt good to voice her anxiety, so much so that it took some of the edge off of her tension.
“I know a little about the bond,” he said carefully.
“Do you think I’m being paranoid?”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Derrick paused and bowed his head in thought. “But I’d wait a while longer before jumpin’ to conclusions. It might be your own fears causin’ you to worry, or maybe you’re just gettin’ sick, like you said.”
He must have overheard her and Asher talking.
“Maybe,” she agreed.
Cori went back to work on the tattoo, forcing herself to concentrate on him being able to turn into a wolf during the day. She thought of how unfair the rule was and that there was no reason he shouldn’t be able to shift when he wanted. It was hard to say whether she totally believed that since every powerful race should have some handicaps, but Derrick was a decent man for the most part. He’d never intentionally hurt an innocent human that she’d heard about. Melena had also mentioned a few times that the alpha wanted nothing more than for supernaturals to live in peaceful coexistence with all the races, which was something she could appreciate even if he could use an adjustment on his personality.
It was a little over half an hour later when she finished. Unlike with the first werewolf, Derrick’s skin healed within minutes of her working on it. She’d had to go more quickly and deeply to get the tattoo to stick, but at least he bled less. As she wiped his skin clean, she found the cloth was barely tinged red.
“You’re done,” Cori announced after applying a bit of ointment.
She held up a mirror so he could see the work she’d done from over his shoulder. He studied it closely for almost a minute. “Not bad.”
“Do you have any other tattoos?” she asked, setting the mirror back down. “I didn’t notice any.”
“Nope.”
He’d acted like it was nothing and showed no signs of this being his first time. She felt a little humbled that he’d let her experiment on him. “Thanks for trusting me then.”
“We still gotta see if the tattoo works,” he said gruffly, standing up.
Derrick grabbed hold of his t-shirt and led the way out of the room. Sometime while they’d been away, the younger werewolf had shifted back to human form and gotten dressed. He was relaxing in the seating area she had at the front of her shop by the windows.
Bambi had crawled up onto the stool behind the counter and sat there with her legs dangling. If not for her pudgy nose, oddly shaped ears, and unusual orange hair—all making her look like she was at least forty years old—she might have appeared like a child sitting there. She was certainly kicking her feet back and forth like one. Cori made a mental note to scrub the stool with her strongest cleaners before she left for the day.
“Well, ‘bout time,” the troll said, annoyed. She’d come to the back and looked in a few times, but mostly she’d stayed at the front of the shop while Cori worked on Derrick’s tattoo. “I gotta get back ta work soon, been wastin’ my lunch break on this.”
Bambi ran the herb store just a little ways down the same shopping center. It was one of the only reasons she bathed more frequently than most trolls since she didn’t want to scare all her customers away. Cori often wondered if she took over the business after the last owner, Felisha, died as a sort of remembrance of the fairy. Bambi would never admit to sentimentality, but the one positive thing that could be said about her was if she liked you enough to hang out with you, then it meant she cared in her own way.
“Keep complaining, and maybe I’ll give you a tattoo that will undo your anti-cleanliness curse,” Cori warned. She had no idea if that was possible, but one could dream.
The troll bared her sharp teeth. “Ya’d never get close enough.”
Asher snickered but shut up when Bambi growled at him.
Cori turned her attention to Derrick and found he’d already stripped his clothes off. She kept her gaze on his face, not wanting to see anything she shouldn’t and yet not wanting to appear weak like she had with the first werewolf. That had been too embarrassing. She would ride it out this time without getting nauseous if it killed her.
His muscles and skin began contorting. She waited for the nasty popping and crunching sounds, but the shift went much more quietly. Derrick’s body was going through the change with hardly a noise to give it away. Fur sprouted from his skin and then his muzzle elongated. When he reached the final step, his legs bent into the proper angles of his animal form. In a matter of moments, they had a massive wolf standing in front of them that easily outweighed any others she’d seen by at least twice as much.
“Holy shit,” Cori said, gaping at him.
Bambi hopped off her stool and came a little closer. “I swear he’s gotten bigger since last time I saw him like this.”
Cori wasn’t sure if it was because he was an alpha, over a century and a half old, or because he had a mix of demon and angel blood in him. All she knew was she’d never imagined he could become a wolf that huge. Suddenly, he seemed a lot more intimidating than any of the other supernaturals she’d met. This was an animal that could tear anything apart with little effort and probably take on several enemies at once. A person would have to be stupid to challenge him, which explained how he beat a vampire who was over a thousand years old in a duel—or he would have if Felisha hadn’t gotten in the way. Then again, he’d fought as a human that time, so she didn’t know how much that affected his fighting abilities.
Derrick paced around the shop for a few minutes, stretching his legs. When he finally came back to his original place, he started shifting back. The alpha didn’t need the longer break his younger pack member had required, and the return to human form went as smoothly as it had to his wolf body.
