Shift

Remy

Holland’s palms were flat on the counter, the skin along her jaw tight with the kind of fear that doesn’t have room for sound. I followed her gaze through the glass.

Under the sodium lamp at the far edge of the lot, a man stood too still for the cold. Hood up. Hands in pockets. Light hit him wrong, hollowing the face and leaving the eyes in shadow. I didn’t need more than the tilt of his head to know.

Robbie.

I had looked into her past, even if she didn't leave the clues behind, my connections spread far and wide.

Pierce rose in me like a storm front. Ours. Move.

“Stay behind me,” I said—quiet, the way you talk to a spooked horse, never forgetting that terror is strength without a handle. I didn’t touch her. I didn’t reach for the door yet. I let the moment scale to its true size in my body: not panic, not rage—clarity.

I flicked my eyes to the shop door. “Todd,” I called, not loud, and he was already there, boots eating the distance. He took one look at Holland’s face and didn’t ask questions.

“Lights,” I said. “Row three only. Cameras on loop.”

He nodded and vanished like he’d been waiting for the call. I pushed the shop door with my shoulder and stepped through, already unbuttoning my coat. Jacek met me halfway down the hall, phone in hand, jaw set.

“He’s at the far lamp,” I said.

“I saw.” His voice was all gravel. “Looping west cams. I’ll take east patrol and run interference with the front road.”

“Good.” I shrugged out of the coat, moved through my office long enough to pull the emergency kit from the bottom drawer: shorts, a thermal, zip tie, collapsible leash, a canvas wrap for teeth. We never plan to use them and we always do. Alpha life is a probability table.

Pierce pressed harder, shoving at my ribs like a dog at a half-open gate. Now.

“In a second,” I told him, aloud or not, I couldn’t tell. I stripped down to my undershirt, kicked out of my shoes, shoved the emergency shorts into the pocket of the coat so Todd could bring them when I needed them. The cold would bite; it always did. Pain is the tax that keeps the rest honest.

When I came back to the lobby, Holland hadn’t moved far. Her breathing was shallow but steady now—training herself back into her body, the way I’d shown her ten minutes ago without knowing I was buying this exact minute with it. Her eyes flicked to me, then back to the glass.

“I’ll be right in front of you, Holland.”

I opened the door.

Cold slapped my skin and the night carried the lot’s metal tang straight into my lungs. The sodium lamp hummed like a bad idea. Robbie didn’t step forward. He let the light do his work for him, lifting his chin to catch the angle that turned a smirk into a skull.

“Evening,” he called, not loud. His voice had that sheen addicts wear when they want to be charming for fifteen seconds. “I’m just here to say hello. Saw an old friend.”

“You’re trespassing,” I said. “You’ll leave now.”

He cocked his head. “That your girl in there?"

He wanted me to charge. He wanted a story. I gave him none of it. I walked straight, deliberate, the way you approach a dog that may or may not bite, and stopped at the line of oil stains ten yards out—the place where the cameras could see me but not the details of my hands.

Todd hit the panel and row three went dark. The rest of the lot stayed lit. To anyone driving by, we were two men speaking in a parking lot. To anyone who knew how the grid worked, we were in a stage pocket.

“Leave,” I said again. I kept my hands visible, shoulder-width, not clenched. I didn’t smell drugs on him. Not fresh. What I did smell was sour fear, cold sweat, yesterday’s cigarettes rolled into a hoodie that looked like it had been a floor blanket last week. Underneath, a human panic that vibrated like a watch with a dying battery.

“Or what?” He eased a hand from his pocket. Empty palm.

“Or I will remove you,” I said, and let the Alpha sit in the sentence. Not roar. Not growl. Just an iron bar across a door.

He smiled and I saw the boy he had been cut through the man he’d made himself, a mean little slice that had learned early what got a reaction from girls and never bothered to learn anything else. “You gonna call the cops?” He glanced at the glass. Holland was a faint reflection behind me, a ghost in her own life. He tilted his head like he wanted to make sure she saw. “You gonna arrest me, boss?”

I took a step closer, enough to make the dynamic change without forcing the break. “Last time,” I said. “Leave.”

He moved first. Not toward me. Toward the glass. A sudden pivot and two quick steps, a hand coming up for the handle like he could walk into my house and make dinner plans with my people.

Pierce punched me from the inside. Now.

I grabbed Robbie by the front of his hoodie and swung him sideways into the shadow of a trailer so clean and fast his feet skidded out from under him. The sound he made was surprised, undignified, not pain. He scrabbled, tried to use my coat as purchase, found skin instead, flinched at the heat.

“You’re going to leave,” I said in his ear, voice very even, every word an exact measurement. “You are not going to come back. You will not speak her name. You will not call, you will not message, you will not breathe in the direction of this building again. If you do—”

He spat, not at me, but ground-ward, a boy’s small defiance. “She left me for dead.” He said it like a courting gift. “You know what that does to a man?”

I tightened my hand in cloth and human weight and let him feel the baseline of what my self-control contained. He knew how men felt. He’d never cared to know how a person feels. That, more than anything, lit a match under my calm.

Behind me, a small sound from the glass. I didn’t turn. Holland didn’t need to see my face change shape.

“Don’t come back,” I said, and released him with enough force that he stumbled into the trailer’s shadow and caught himself with both palms.

He looked up at me and something in his expression shifted. Not fear. Not exactly. Recognition, like a man realizing he’d been poking a sleeping dog and finally saw the teeth.

“Walk away,” I said.

He did the opposite of walking away. He pivoted and ran—not toward me, not toward the road. Toward the glass door. The geometry of it was simple: if he reached the handle and pulled, the lobby was a box with a woman in it. He didn’t need to get inside. He only needed to test if he could.

Now, Pierce said again—not a push. A fact.

Sometimes an Alpha is a wall. Sometimes he’s a door. Sometimes he’s a knife. Tonight I was a choice: expose us or let the wolf sleep while a human man taught my house about terror.

I chose.

I didn’t think about Council memos or footage or the calculus of secrets. I thought about a woman who had finally found a room where she could sleep without flinching at the wind and how I would burn the building down myself before I let a man teach her fear in it again.

I took three running steps away from the glass—away, so if his hand touched the handle I would still be between him and the inside—and let Pierce out.

Shifting is not pretty. People who’ve never done it imagine a magician’s trick: a shimmer, a blink, a new skin. Reality is physics. Bones don’t vanish; they move. The human skeleton is negotiated with, not discarded. It begins in the back for me, spine lighting like a fuse and then cracking outward along ribs. The shoulders hinge, collarbones reshaping to take new pull. Hands ache first and worst—the bones shorten, widen; nails push; fingers split into something heavier. Teeth ache like a bad memory and then it’s all mouth: jaw pushing forward, palate widening, tongue learning a room that has changed shape. The whole body floods with heat and cold like you dumped ice and fire in equal measure into a single vessel and shook it.

I’ve done it enough to ride the pain like a wave, not fight it. I heard clothes give—the soft sound of thread saying nope—felt cold slap skin and fur rush to meet it. The ground tilted because my center of gravity had moved, and then it leveled into the stance that’s been mine since before I had language for it.

The world snapped into scent and sound. Sodium light hum turned into a note with edges. Holland behind the glass smelled like cedar warmed in a hand, fear-hormones bright and honest—not panic, the sharp focus that keeps you alive. Robbie smelled like old smoke and adrenaline and hoodie cotton that needed a wash.

My paws hit pavement with a soft thud and claws clicked once, biting for purchase. I was between the glass and the man before his hand closed on the handle. He skidded, momentum failing him in an evil little slide, and crashed straight into the idea of me, then the reality: a wolf longer than a man is tall when stretched, chest heavy, head low, eyes pale and bright.

He went on his ass in a graceless tilt, hands up instinctively like a kid learning a hot stove lesson.

Some men try to dominate by being loud. Wolves do it by being very, very quiet. I didn’t lunge. I didn’t growl at first. I simply occupied the space between him and the door and let him understand.

“Holy—” He didn’t finish the word. He scrambled backward crab-like, palms skidding on grit. His gaze skittered between my teeth and my eyes and back again, looking for human in there and finding none he could use.

Behind me, through the glass, Holland didn’t scream. She didn’t faint. Her hand lifted, a small involuntary movement, fingers hovering in the air like they wanted to whisper against the fur at my shoulder. Pierce exhaled and everything in me that was animal lifted its head to listen. Ours, he said again, but not to drag—this time to name.

I took one step toward Robbie, not a jump, a claim. He froze. Good. The knife at his waist flashed, a bad idea acquired at a gas station. He didn’t reach for it. He knew in some old mammal part of his brain that metal would get him torn before it got me pierced.

I let a low sound roll up from my chest, not the kind that rattles teeth, the kind that says last chance.

He got the message. He scrambled sideways, found his feet, and ran—not toward me, not toward the glass. Away. Toward the outside fence, the gap between trailers, the kind of run that isn’t about strategy, just about getting his meat further from my mouth.

I let him go five steps. Then I followed, long and easy, close enough that he felt the breath of my presence push him faster, far enough that I could cut if he swung back. He ricocheted off a trailer corner and learned what the edge of metal does to knees when you’re not paying attention. He screamed—high and undignified—and kept going.

At the fence he went small to slip between chain link and stacked pallets where a person not paying attention wouldn’t think a body could fit. He fit. He lost a sneaker and didn’t come back for it. He abandoned the lot and the light and the illusion that he had control and bolted into the dark. I chased to the line where the road sees us and stopped. I could have taken him in the road. I didn’t. The calculus of secrecy comes back once safety is secure. Always.

He vanished into the scrub along the culvert, breathing like a man who’d swallowed cold water and regretted it. The last I smelled of him was fear-sweat and the iron tang where he’d cracked a shin. Somewhere a car passed, very ordinary, windows up, heater on, radio low. The human world went on being human.

I stood there and breathed until my pulse smoothed into something that wouldn’t scare the girl behind the glass.

“Perimeter clear,” Jacek’s voice said in my head, that low mindlink hum we’ve all known since we were kids. “East cameras looped, west scrubbed, front road boring as sin. Do you need me?”

No, I sent. He’s gone. Keep eyes on the culvert. Call Todd for lights.

“Copy.”

Row three blinked back on, one by one. I turned and started back toward the door. Todd had anticipated. He stood just inside the glass holding the emergency coat open and not looking directly at me. He kept his eyes on a smudge on the floor and held the thermal out, hands steady. Good man.

Holland didn’t move. She stood like a girl at the edge of a tide, letting it come to her ankles and not running away. Her eyes were too wide and too alive. She wasn’t looking at my teeth. She was looking at my eyes.

That’s the part that gets you. Human eyes lie constantly. Wolf eyes don’t know how.

I stepped up to the glass and let her look. A small sound came out of her that wasn’t fear. It wasn’t anything I had a word for. It lit something in the deepest part of me I didn’t let anyone see. Pierce pushed his head, the way wolves do when they want to be known. I let him. I lowered my muzzle an inch. She lifted her hand an inch. The glass kept the world sensible.