Small Town Love

Chapter 22

Change is inevitable but transformation is by conscious choice.

Heather Ash Amara

"You know, if you ever wanna scare a girl, this is a great way to do that. Just drag her to some weird barn...thing," Daphne said, voice filled with false bravado as she trotted alongside Luke into one of the many, many buildings on the Schuyler's property. Daphne really wondered what they even used half of them for.

The one they were entering in question, was empty, the floor covered with some mixture of hay and other trampled hard ground and Daphne couldn't help but flinch when another howl of wind ripped through the air.

Nobody had allowed her to back out of her agreement of finally shifting, and so it was the day after her birthday, icy cold outside and Daphne was already regretting agreeing. She wouldn't pull back now, but she couldn't help the fear in the pit of her stomach that was there and growing and growing with every minute.

Would she turn into a cold-blooded killing machine when she finally shifted?

Luke's wolf was content to be nothing more than a lapdog to her most of the time, sleeping in front of her bed and while Daphne wasn't scared of him (She wasn't. She never had been) , she would have been stupid not to recognise the strength that was behind these gleaming white teeth and the muscles that covered his body. When he had jumped after Harrison that had given her a peek at what an angry Luke in his wolf form looked like and that was not something that Daphne wanted to see again. He had been...majestic in his anger though, something that had given her pause.

She wondered belatedly if that was her bond talking, the same piece of her that had been totally on board with Luke protecting her from any bond interference.

Right now Luke seemed admittedly very amused while she was crossing her arms and glaring at him.

"Why are we here?" She finally asked with a sigh. "Shouldn't we be outside? You know, somewhere where the whole wolfing out thing happens?" She asked him snottily, resulting in Luke chuckling while he looked through the big barn doors that were still open.

"Because I don't want to stand around in the cold outside," Stephen Schuyler finally answered her seriously.

Fair enough.

"And we are not doing in inside the house, because I just got the Chair Rail done in the living room downstairs, and the last time we had somebody change in there, he ruined the whole downstairs area." It was obvious that Luke's father was still annoyed with that person.

"It was 8 years ago and it was Sebastian," Luke answered her unasked question. "He took apart the new sofa. It...took a little while before Christian got me out of the house."

"You mean when my brother threw his mate bodily through a window so that he would stop running berserk in our house," Stephen clarified drily. "No windows to jump through here."

"And if you go running, Daphne, please do us the favour and go into the forest? Otherwise, I am gonna have another discussion with the Major about there not being any wolves running around on my property but it being just a few overgrown dogs," Stephen requested with a sigh.

"That works?" She asked him, unable to believe that they actually kept the humans in Fairbury in the dark with excuses like that.

"Most of the time," Luke's father told her with a shrug. Daphne somehow didn't want to know what happened the rest of the time.

"So how does it...work?" She finally asked with a sigh. There was no reason to procrastinate anymore. She would get to meet her wolf before the day ended, and trying to get away from that wouldn't help anybody.