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Our own problems were far from over, though. I’d fought the entire preceding battle on one lungful of air, and the shark’s teeth had squeezed half that volume out of me before I was able to fully make use of my limited oxygen supply. Without two-inch-long teeth beckoning, in fact, lupine instinct begged me to open my mouth and let water fill cavernous lungs.
Stooge was in an even worse state. Blood gushed out of his wound in reaction to his over-exertion while my half-assed bandage had slid aside to reveal an arm that resembled nothing so much as tenderized meat.
Worse, Stooge was eying me with the same expression he’d used in the face of that attacking oceanic predator. Aggression and anger, but most of all fear.
We’re still us, my wolf brain retorted, but the inner voice was unusually tremulous and laden with repressed emotions. Because, much as we both hated to admit it, the evidence of our own eyes proved that he’d been wrong and I’d been right. When faced with a four-legged partner, my once-buddy was less than enthused about sharing the ocean with a wolf.
My lupine half wanted to force the issue, to find a way for Stooge to accept us just the way we were. But my rational human mind quickly convinced the beast that we were better off rejected rather than dead. So, together, we squeezed lupine eyes shut before opening human eyes back onto the world.
Saltwater cradled me, but my lungs burned even worse in my two-legged form. It’s just me, I tried to say with a quirk of my lips. Unfortunately, now that the heat of battle had passed, Stooge was reluctant to meet my eyes.
Meanwhile, without either fur or wetsuit, pelagic chill instantly seeped into my bones. And all I could think was air, air, air.
I hesitated to swim toward my partner, though. Because a Navy EOD tech was ten times more dangerous than an innocent shark. If Stooge decided I was a threat, then his dive knife in my gut would be a simple way to squash the perceived menace.
Wounded wolves bite. Wounded humans too. Stooge’s left cheek twitched in that subtle tell of a high-stress situation. It was the first, last, and only sign he generally displayed before taking an unsuspecting enemy down.
I wasn’t unsuspecting, though, and my partner was injured. In fact, he was weak and fading fast. The final dregs of shark-induced adrenaline left Stooge’s system even as his eyelids fought against iron willpower and attempted to sag shut.
The easy solution would have been to wait the sucker out. Assuming my lungs would allow it, my continued strength would eventually overcome Stooge’s edged weapon. At that point, I could force him to share the condensed gases that, here beneath the surface, were more precious than gold.
But I didn’t have to use such Machiavellian logic after all. Hunching his shoulders up around his ears as if warding off a blow, my wingman paddled in a circle until his back was facing my front. There, the aptly-named buddy bottle with its enticing hose and regulator dangled beside his own larger gas cylinder.
Barely believing my good fortune, I cupped my hands into make-shift fins and arrowed toward my partner. Then, finally, I breathed.
***
THE REST OF THE DAY was a piece of cake. Sure, my wolf was ominously quiet during the rest of the swim to the surface. And, once there, my team mates wanted to know how I ended up losing all of my equipment up to and including swim trunks. But the latter were far more interested in rushing Stooge to the hospital and debriefing me about the bomb threat than in deciphering unexpected nudity, while I was too exhausted to care about a strangely somnolent inner beast.
No, trouble didn’t begin brewing until twenty-four hours later. By that point, the shark scratches on my back were scabbing over and Stooge’s painkiller dosage had been reduced to the point where he was no longer babbling about Smurfs and Care Bears. That’s when he started shooting me sidelong glances and refusing to meet my eyes every time I entered his hospital room.
Given recent events, in fact, I half expected Stooge to refuse my offer to drive him home. The two of us had been sharing an apartment on base for over a year, but it wouldn’t have been any skin off his back to request a transfer. Probably easier than continuing to bunk with an undercover werewolf.
Still, Stooge hadn’t said anything to the contrary, and we were supposed to be best friends. So on the day of his discharge, I showed up at my wingman’s hospital-room door with a folding wheelchair meant to assist the transfer of my buddy from bed to car.
“Knock, knock,” I said with forced cheer as I rolled my burden through the open doorway. My partner had been sound asleep when I entered, but now the bitter scent of fear oozed into the air as he jolted alert. His eyes were wide and his breathing heavy, the sound filling what would otherwise have been an awkward silence.
Shit. I couldn’t do this. Stooge had dealt with enough over the last forty-eight hours without having to tell me to piss off and leave him alone. The least I could do was to give him an easy out.
So I did. “I’ll get someone else to drive you home,” I said, leaving the wheelchair as I turned toward the door. I was glad I hadn’t closed it behind myself—escape would be easier that way. “I can find a spot to crash tonight and then....”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Stooge said gruffly.
Turning, I found my friend busy leveraging himself out of the bed, broken arm strapped to a sling crossing his chest. His eyes remained averted from my questioning gaze, but he sounded more like his normal self when he spoke again. “We’re both going home...but I’m not riding out to the car in that sissy-mobile.”
As if the wheelchair was the sole reason he’d resembled a deer in the headlights when I first walked in. Still, if Stooge didn’t want to acknowledge my fur, then I wasn’t going to shove it into his face. We were both stereotypical American men, well aware that sometimes it was better not to talk about the elephant in the room.
Metaphorical pachyderm danger averted, Stooge and I slowly trooped down the hallway side by side. My hand hovered just behind his back, ready to prop up my partner if he faltered but unwilling to push my luck with an unwelcome touch. Together, we braved an eternal sixty seconds in the elevator while fear pheromones eddied through the confined space, then we tumbled into Stooge’s old beater of a car seconds apart.
I’d never bothered to track down a ride of my own in the past since I didn’t really have anywhere to go...and since my wingman had been so generous with his own set of wheels. In fact, Stooge was often to be found in the passenger seat anyway since I usually shouldered the role of designated driver after a night out on the town.
So it didn’t feel at all odd to be driving down the street with my wingman in the passenger seat. It didn’t feel odd to carry his shit and mind his back while he stumbled up the walk toward our cluttered apartment. And it didn’t feel odd to cook dinner for two then to disappear into my room for the night without another word exchanged between us.
What did feel odd were the dreams that dragged me under as soon as I closed my eyes. I relived the shark attack in minute detail, the exhilaration of the hunt engulfing me and overwhelming my senses. I smelled blood, tasted the saltiness of the other beast’s flesh as I ripped through its hide, and heard the thrashing of fins through water.
The fantasy wasn’t a nightmare. It was more of a waking daydream, pure wish fulfillment in an imaginary package.
In other words, I was hungry for another go at the great white. This time around, my inner wolf was confident we could take it down, size difference be damned.
Which was all well and good until I woke with a start, four-legged and naked despite the fact I’d fallen asleep in my familiar human form with boxers covering my ass. I woke far from my bed even though I’d taken the time to flick the lock with human fingers before turning in for the night.
Not that I thought Stooge would dredge up a cache of silver bullets and try to shoot me or anything. I just wanted one more layer of protection between my friend and my inner beast.
But there was no protection for my house mate. Not when my sleeping self had unlocked the door, slipped out of our clothing mid-transformation, then padded into my wingman’s messy bedroom.
Traitor, my inner beast whispered as we took in the view before our lupine eyes. Stooge was sleeping like a baby, drool dripping out of his half-open mouth and saturating the edge of the pillow beneath his head.
And I was panting over his comatose form, jaws open and ready to bite.
