Chapter 1

1: Washington, DC

For all the times Lyle had ever included the words “teeming with” in a thought or statement—which, when he considered it, were actually few and far between—none had been as accurate as his thought that the airport was teeming with people. From the smallest shrieking infant to the tallest ear-budded man, from the casual vacationer in their comfy travel clothes to the business people in their suits and skirts, every shape, size, and ethnicity was represented. It was the largest, loudest, most chaotic group of people that Lyle had ever been part of in his life. And it was fucking amazing.

He’d felt the buzz of the terminal before he’d been halfway across the jet bridge that brought him from the small plane that had carried him, his father, his siblings, and Randy, his father’s—partner, Lyle thought, and instantly diminished the word to friend—from the airport in Casper to their current stop in Denver. They wouldn’t be there for long, a mere hour before they’d step back onto a (hopefully) much bigger plane and finish their journey up to DC, and Lyle intended to enjoy every single second of it. The smells were intense and copious: hormones heavy with fear, anxiety, grief, and excitement; fast food, restaurant food, alcohol; cologne over sweat and perfume over fabric softeners. If he could have done it without consequence, Lyle would have forced himself into a shift right then and there. The thought of experiencing all those scents with a nose more educated than the one he wore at that moment was almost too seductive.

His father wasn’t doing quite so well, which meant that, through proximity alone, neither was Randy. That fact was more amusing than it probably should have been, though Lyle was doing his best not to let his amusement show. His father, Vaughn, wouldn’t be impressed in the least if Lyle made those feelings obvious. Respect and subservience to the normal majority of their world was not just expected, it was insisted upon—to the point that when Lyle had wandered a little too deep into instinctual territory over dominating those around him, Lyle had been shipped off and brainwashed by the fucking committee until he’d sworn up and down that he was wrong and was going to live within their rules. It had been a bullshit season for Lyle, that winter and early spring he’d spent in the clutches of the GDBCG (the Genetics Development and Biological Connectivity Group, who worked for the Committee with respect to research and rehabilitation), and Lyle had no intention of ending back there. Besides, the next time it might not just be a few months of parroting back rules and expectations. Next time, they just might decide Lyle wasn’t worth the effort and put a bullet in his head. They could do it, too. Without anybody ever lifting an eyebrow over what had happened.

The door to the family washroom that Randy and his father had disappeared into with both kids in tow (to the utmost horror of both kids, who were, according to his sister Hannah, waytoo old to have washroom escorts), finally swung open. Randy stepped out first with Hannah in his arms, and Vaughn followed with his hand gripping Isaac’s as though someone or something was lurking within snatch-and-grab range. Those kinds of fears always made Lyle grin, even if most of the time he had to force himself to keep those grins internal. Neither Lyle nor his father would have any trouble chasing down a mere man, even in unturned form. Besides, Isaac and Hannah were no ordinary kids. At least, Lyle hoped they weren’t. Only time would tell. Theirs was not a gift that automatically got passed down to the next generation. More often than not, it ended up skipping one or two, and lately it seemed even that was becoming rare. As Vaughn was also a shifter, Lyle had been an oddity among rarities. At least, that’s what they’d told Lyle back in the GDBCG.

Lyle wasn’t buying what they were selling, though. He was pretty sure the family trait had more to do with the fact that his mother had also been of the same…well, they’d want him to think ‘affliction.’ Problem. Issue. Curse. They’d never be able to convince him it wasn’t a blessing, though. And even in the GDBCG, there’d been the few behind closed doors that agreed with him.

“You don’t know how lucky you are,”the one counselor had said. “This thing you have, I mean, my God! The power…the freedom! I wish…I would…” She’d bitten her lip and stared for a long second. “Well, let’s just say you might be surprised by the things I would do for you if you asked…”

After she’d spoken, they’d been stuck in a moment of silence—a single, solitary minute when Lyle hadn’t been agreeing or nodding or making an effort to show that these people knew everything and he was nothing but an idiot, and the counselor had given him one of her looks. It was an expression that said she really wasopen to anything he’d be up for. Anything at all, even it if meant going against the things that damn committee was trying to get him to bow to. If he’d actually been the creep they’d been trying to convince him that he was working at becoming, he’d have taken her up on the offer. Worship me, he could have said. Bow the fuck down to me and suck my cock. After all, weren’t sex and domination what all those holier-than-thou wise men seemed to think everything had been about?

He hadn’t, though. He’d let the moment pass as if it had never existed, and before long, they were back into their games of brainwashing the “aggressive” wolf before he got himself out of control and wrecked everything.