Omega Blues (Gay Romance)

Chapter Twenty-Five: Giddy Legs

Matt

The werewolf words came easily. The walking was a little harder. The others made wolves look totally easy. They'd slide into wolf-form like it was just another set of comfy clothes.

For me it felt more like that time I'd tried on Chop's heels. I'd wobbled all around her room before she made me give them back, laughing that I might break them with how clumsy I was being.

My body felt too heavy and low to the ground. The way the others were laughing at me, I started worrying that I wasn't really a wolf. Maybe I'd become a lizard by mistake, or a sloth that hung out in trees all day and could only wobble-walk on its skinny legs.

My paws looked wolfy, but they were also huge and kept disappearing into the snow and leaving tracks as wide as a bear. I tried looking at my body, but craning too hard made me fall over and then I was trapped on my back, weirdly warm for lying in the snow, with my big-pawed feet flailing in the air.

Then all my friends were around me, jumping and playing and snuffle-laughing. They looked less scary from wolf-height. I was surrounded by my band and my boyfriend, each a swirling mass of fur and legs and smiling teeth. I'd never felt more safe or more like I belonged.

Even though everyone was moving fast and jumping around everywhere, I could tell them apart. That seemed weird at first—normally when we wrestled and goofed about it was hard to tell everyone apart in the tangle of limbs. But now I could tell Will by the scent of wood, Chop by the grip powder she put in her shiny hair to make it spiky, Liv by the Fast Fret she used even though the rest of us made fun of her for gunking up her guitar.

Only, they were all wolves. None of them had hands, or hair. If I could still smell the human scents that clung to them in wolf-shape, my sense of smell must be really, really good.

It wasn't just smell, though. They all felt different, not physically, not in a way I could even put into words. Everyone in my pack was different so they felt different to me. It was simple as that.

And beyond my friends, I heard the rustling of leaves and the crackling of snow settling. I heard the insects in their tree houses, the soft breathing of sleeping birds. They were all there, all the things that my band had told me I'd be able to hear when I became a wolf. Everything had worked out. After all that worry and arguing, I was a perfect werewolf.

"I told you!" I caught Bren's furry ears in my big jaws and chewed at them. "I told you so! I'm a kick-ass werewolf!"

"You're right," he said, words I understood even though they were coming from a wolf mouth. "I'm so happy for you Matt."

It wasn't all that easy to be a wolf, though. My body didn't do what I wanted it to. My legs were all wobbly when I stood on them, twitchy and jumping around so I had to keep moving to try and get my balance. I didn't run gracefully like the others. I stumbled through the pack in a kind of half-controlled collapse. It reminded me of Buzz Lightyear in the Toy Story movies, trying to fly on plastic wings.

It was exhilarating, the rush of the wind through my fur, the brittle chill of dirt and leaves under my paws. My new senses completely changed the landscape. Scents wafted into my sensitive nose in an ever-shifting 3D image and the ground shone like the moonlight was sparkling from inside it. My pack flowed all around me, their human smells clinging to their wolf bodies and mingling into one happy scent that made my chest warm with home.

I felt fantastic. My broad new senses made up for my clumsiness.

Chop nudged against my shoulder. "How cool is this? We're all running together!"