She does, then puts her finger to her tongue.
“Bubbles!” is all she gets out before she shifts, vanishing inside my shirt.
I jump to my feet, looking down at the lump in my shirt on the chair. A wriggling, frustrated lump that puffs, then whines.
She’s tangled up in my shirt, stuck, but fighting to get out of it.
And last night there was a tiny spark of familiarity in my chest, like what I feel when someone in the pack shifts for the first time and my wolf recognizes theirs. Today, that spark is stronger. My wolf needs to meet Bailey’s wolf.
I lift the shirt up and Bailey’s wolf startles, then is immediately putting her front paws to the table, eating the steak.
“You want me to cut that into bites for you?” I ask.
She’s paying no attention to me. She’s going at that steak like I’m about to steal it. If I try to get in there, I’ll get bit again with those tiny, but razor-sharp baby teeth.
She doesn’t get all the way through it, only eating about a quarter of it, though she walks across the tabletop to mine and licks all the red off my plate before jumping down, missing the chair and tumbling to the deck, yelping.
“You okay?” I ask, squatting.
She gets up on her hind legs, balancing her front paws on my leg, wagging her tail and panting happily.
I ruffle the fur on her head and scratch behind her ear, but it’s cut short when something catches her attention and she’s darting to the steps that are four deep going to the next level of the deck, but halts and jumps back like the stairs make her nervous.
I can sense something in my chest. She wants at the grass.
I pick her up, tuck her under my arm, and bring her down there where she immediately puts her nose to the grass and sniffs, sneezes, then gets what can only be described as the zoomies. She’s running, ears pinned back as if it’ll make her go faster. Very fucking cute.
I’m in just sweatpants, so I take them off and turn to set them on the deck rail so I can shift and introduce her to my wolf, but before I get to it, she’s on the other side of the fucking fence!
Yep. Definitely need to fix this fence. She slipped through a two-foot gap in one corner of the yard.
“Bailey!” I call.
She looks over her shoulder at me but then chooses to ignore me, putting her nose to the ground and following along the riverbank.
I don’t have a back gate; it’s something I’ve been meaning to add so I can make use of the river without having to hop my fence.
I climb the fence, throw a leg over and shift mid-air so when I land, I land on four paws.
Fuck, she’s small. She’s a couple hundred feet away already, nose to the ground like she’s tracking something.
She spots me, stops and howls before giving up whatever she’s tracking, now running as fast as her short legs can carry her to get to me. She’s whining, excited to meet my wolf. That spark in my chest swells as my wolf licks her face. She yips excitedly, bucking and then pouncing with excitement before circling me, sniffing me, then pouncing and landing on her belly with her ass up in the air wiggling like she wants to play.
I regard her and I guess I don’t return the playfulness quickly enough because something catches her eye and she’s off andrunning, heading between two homes a few houses down from our place.
She glances over her shoulder and yips. She wants me to follow.
I follow, letting her explore but staying close.
She crosses the road between the houses four and five homes away from our place to go south and I don’t like that she doesn’t look both ways before crossing. It’s okay, I’m directly behind her, and just as we’re halfway across the road, Riley is traveling this way on his motorcycle, so I shift to two feet and wave.
Rye stops and frowns, looking at Bailey’s wolf, who stops and sniffs the air. Erica is on the back of his bike.
She covers her eyes at the sight of my nudity.
“Bailey,” I tell them, covering my crotch for Erica’s sake.
Rye’s head jerks back in surprise.