CHAPTER 5
Learning Curve
Eliot had felt a surge of emotion in the bonds and knew he needed to intervene in what was happening in his cabin. Walking back from the woodpile Eliot didn't knock when he came through the door. Hardison and Parker jumped apart like teenagers surprised by a parent after curfew. "And that's something that isn't going to be happening right now or for the next little while either." Eliot waggled a finger between the two. "Sex is no place to be learning about increased strength and the rest."
"We…" "I…" Parker and Hardison's statements collided.
"Parker see what you can figure out about who's after me and what the next step oughta be." Eliot turned his focus on Hardison. "You and me need to go for a run and figure some things out. Come on." Eliot waited to follow Hardison out before he closed the door.
Eliot could feel Hardison's embarrassment and annoyance as they walked down the hill away from the cabin. "Increased libido might be a problem for a while." Eliot thought that if they talked about it clinically it might help alleviate some of Hardison's embarrassment and give him the chance to ask questions he might not have brought up otherwise.
"Only a while? I'm thinkin' that if you're any kind of example it might be more than just a while." Hardison huffed as he pushed his way past a bush.
And maybe they'd resort to name calling before it was over. Eliot rolled his eyes as he followed Hardison. "Regardless, you are going to have to curb it unless you want me playing hall monitor." Eliot could see an open space coming up that would suit his purpose. "Stop in the next clearing."
When the game trail they'd been following opened up into a small grassy space Hardison stopped and looked around. "Something special about this patch-a-grass?"
"I want to get you through your first change. With whatever is going on we may need to move quickly, and I need you to have control. Best way to get control is practice." Eliot could barely remember anything from his first two changes and what he did remember was bad. He wanted better for Hardison.
Hardison's eyes went wide, and he could hear his own heartbeat pick up. "What? Now? Just like that?" He looked around at the clearing again.
Eliot stripped off his shirts and boots. He tucked his socks and shirts into his boots to help discourage any little critters from seeking the residual warmth. He turned back and Hardison was still looking around wide eyed. "Come on Hardison. You don't want to shift in your clothes." Eliot crossed his arms and waited.
"But it's cold out here. You expect me to just run around naked? In the snow?" Hardison gave a significant look downward. "I might freeze!"
Eliot scoffed and shook his head. "You won't freeze. Just hurry up would ya."
"But where am I supposed to put my clothes?" Hardison looked around the clearing. "Just 'cause some people was born in a barn is no reason to think that I…"
"Dammit Hardison just do it!" Eliot growled and let his eyes go yellow.
"Fine, fine." Hardison pulled off his coat and laid it on the ground. "Uncivilized…" He muttered while he pulled off his shirt. "buncha hill billy nonsense…" He continued to mutter while he finished stripping off and setting his clothes on his coat. "I am gonna get frost bite on my toes!" He whined at Eliot. "If I lose a toe, I'm blaming you!"
Eliot rolled his eyes. "Close your eyes for a minute. Are your feet painfully cold or just colder than they were when you had your boots on?" Eliot watched Hardison knowing the answers before he asked. He rolled his own pants up and put them on top of his boots.
"I don't see why we couldn't have done this in the cabin." Hardison complained.
Eliot enjoyed the cold weather most of the time, so he knew that Hardison wasn't actually suffering. He was just trying to find excuses to not get to the point of why they were there. "Okay. I want you to imagine what it would be like to be a wolf. Imagine being on four paws. I want you to imagine changing shape from the shape you are now to the shape of a wolf. Fix that in your mind." Eliot relaxed and let the power that made him Alpha ripple out from him. "Look at my eyes." Eliot's eyes were already the yellow of his wolf. He saw Hardison's eyes go yellow and Hardison tilted his head to the side just a little in a natural show of submission. Eliot knew it was instinct and he was glad that Hardison felt safe enough to follow that instinct. "Don't be scared. This is going to feel strange, but it won't last long."
"Bet you say that to all your dates." Hardison smirked.
"Don't be an asshole." Eliot shook his head in humor and managed not to break eye contact. Eliot started his shift and pushed power at Hardison.
Eliot saw hair sprout up along Hardison's jaw and neck. Hardison's breathing got faster and shallower and Eliot could see Hardison's canines lengthen. Eliot could feel Hardison starting to panic, and Eliot pushed certainty and power through their bond. Eliot's vision went blurry, and he closed his eyes as his skull shifted shape. In a moment he opened his eyes again to see a huge grey and black wolf staring back at him. Eliot let his tongue loll in a wolf smile.
Eliot could feel Hardison's relief melt into curiosity and he began to follow his nose around the clearing. Eliot let Hardison wander for a moment while he got a look at him. Hardison's ears and the nape of his neck were black and so were his legs and the tip of his tail. The rest of him was mostly a dark grey except for a little fringe of black fur that helped frame his face. Eliot thought it made the big wolf look like he was made of smoke and shadow. Really looking at him Eliot realized that Hardison was big even for a werewolf. He would guess that Hardison was at least five inches taller than him. Making him around forty-five inches tall at the shoulder and probably outweighing Eliot by fifty or sixty pounds. Eliot laughed inwardly at his own hubris. He'd been expecting Hardison's wolf to be smaller than his own.
Hardison heard something small rustle in the bushes, and he bunched in preparation to leap after the sound but then he froze and looked to his Alpha for permission. Eliot understood the urge to hunt and was glad it was something that seemed to come naturally to Hardison. Eliot had to admit to feeling a little selfish though because he wanted their first hunt to be a moon hunt and since that was only three nights away Eliot decided to wait on the hunt. But that didn't mean that they couldn't have fun before then.
Eliot ran at Hardison and bumped him hard with a shoulder on his way past. The bump caused Hardison to spin and lose his footing but watching Eliot run from him was more than his wolf could stand. Hardison jumped up and bolted after Eliot. Eliot led Hardison on a chase that covered miles but eventually circled back to the clearing where they'd left their clothes.
As they got close to the clearing Eliot dropped to his belly causing Hardison to trip over him. Hardison went down in a tangle of limbs and a growl. Eliot sprang back up and went to him. He could feel Hardison's wolf's attention as he got closer. When he was within a foot Hardison's wolf rolled with a snarl toward Eliot. Eliot leapt and pinned Hardison on his back, belly up, and laid his fangs across Hardison's throat. He waited until he felt the wolf under him relax. Eliot stepped back and Hardison rose with a shake of his fur. Eliot watched and waited. Hardison came to Eliot and leaned into him as he passed. When he turned to face the same way that Eliot was he stopped just before his head was even with Eliot's.
They made the last of the trip into the clearing side by side. Eliot stopped near his clothes and used the pack bonds to get Hardison to look at him. Eliot locked eyes with Hardison and started his shift. He pushed power and the urge to shift at Hardison and watched as the shift bowed Hardison's back and his ears seemed to retract into his skull. They were both tired from the run so Eliot pushed more power at Hardison, but he could still hear the pop as Hardison's leg joints shifted from wolf to human. Some shifts were just more difficult than others regardless of energy levels or experience.
Hardison made a noise that melted from wolf whine to a human gasp. "Oh! Ow!" Hardison shook his hands to alleviate the painful tingling and watched in fascination as his claws shifted to nails on the ends of his fingers. "Damn man. You never said how much that hurts."
Eliot grunted in acknowledgement of Hardison's comment. Sometimes it took a minute or two before speaking felt normal again. "Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't." Eliot shook out his pants and pulled them back on. Dressing quickly, he turned to see how Hardison was doing. Hardison had gotten pants and shirt on but tipped over while trying to pull a boot on. "It's okay. Just sit there for a minute and let things catch up. Your big computer brain is probably still processing." Eliot got both of Hardison's boots on and tied. He picked up Hardison's coat and held a hand out to him. Hardison took it and Eliot pulled him to his feet and helped him into his coat. "Come on man. Parker is dying to hear how it went."
Hardison followed Eliot back up the hill. When they got to the top of the hill Hardison walked next to Eliot and nudged him with a shoulder. "Um, …" He couldn't seem to find the words.
Eliot stopped and looked Hardison over. "You okay?"
"Did that back there, the wolf thing, seem right?" Hardison hunched his shoulders like he was cold.
"Yah, I thought things went really well actually. Why?" Eliot could feel that Hardison was worried, but he didn't know why.
"It's just some of it felt… some of it felt normal I guess, like I was me and I knew what was going on and some of it kinda felt like I was watching someone else." Hardison looked away.
"That was your wolf. Eventually you want to be the one in control all the time but even then, the wolf is still there. Like at the end of our run when I got your wolf to challenge me. It wasn't you that lunged at me. I pinned your wolf and made him submit. I needed to prove that I am your Alpha and it's safe for you to submit and follow me. You don't need that, but your wolf does. It'll probably happen again." Eliot gripped Hardison's shoulder and then pulled him into a hug. "I'm sorry this happened."
"I'm not sorry." Hardison stood up and gave his coat a tug to straighten it. "You know other than that last change the rest was pretty cool."
Eliot clapped a hand on Hardison's shoulder, and they continued on to the front of the cabin. The door had been barred on the inside and that made Eliot smile. Even with two werewolves right outside her door to protect her Parker was taking every precaution. "Parker, darlin' would you let us in?" Eliot tapped against the door with a knuckle.
"No." Parker's voice was teasing from the other side of the door.
"Why not?" Eliot asked confused.
"Here let me try." Hardison rapped on the door with his knuckle. "Will you let me come in?"
"No." They could both feel Parker's happiness bubbling in the pack bonds.
"I'll huff and I'll puff…" Hardison smiled as he started the familiar refrain.
Parker lifted the bar and set it to the side. When the door swung open, she leapt into Hardison's arms.
"There's somethin' wrong with you." Eliot growled at Parker as he entered the cabin.
They all settled into the cabin for a late lunch. Eliot cooked steaks over the fire in the fireplace and used the coals to bake potatoes. Hardison and Parker settled behind him on the couch and Eliot listened to Hardison regale Parker with tales of their run through the woods.
"…and then he just knocked me over and ran off!" Hardison half mimed his tumble to the ground.
"Bad wolfy." Parker poked at Eliot's arm with her toe.
Eliot snorted but didn't say anything as he moved a steak from his pan to a warming dish.
"The smells though Parker, you wouldn't believe all the smells. Most were really amazing! There was this one smell though when we were passing a pond…What do you think that was E?"
"Dead cow elk. It's been there a while." Eliot added a new steak to his pan, and he couldn't help stopping to enjoy the scent as the steak started to sizzle.
Parker noticed the way Eliot and Hardison both paused and tilted their heads back just a little in enjoyment of the scent of cooking steak. She smiled to herself. She liked the smells that came with Eliot's cooking, but she was pretty sure they were getting a lot more out of it than she was.
Hardison swallowed and tried to focus on what they'd just been talking about instead of how hungry he was. "How do you know? About the elk?"
"Cause me and a couple of other wolves took it down about three months ago. There really isn't much left of the carcass at this point. By spring it will be hard to find much besides the pelvis and the skull." Eliot flipped the steak over.
"Who were the other wolves?" Parker thought she knew all of the werewolves that Eliot was really friends with, and she didn't think any of them had been close enough to hunt with recently.
"A mated pair not far from here. They're denned up on the other side of the Kalama River about two miles east." Eliot added the last steak to his pan.
"Wait, you're talking real wolves like the not werewolf kind." Hardison leaned a little farther forward.
"Yah, it's just the two and an elk is hard to take down. Worked out pretty well though." Eliot shrugged and used a set of tongs to check on the foil wrapped potatoes.
"Do they just think you're another wolf?" Hardison asked.
"How would I know what they think? Dammit Hardison. I'm not Dr. Doolittle or somethin'." Eliot growled. "Wolves and Were's smell different though, so I doubt they would mistake me for one of their kind. Besides wolves of all kinds are territorial. I think they would have challenged me if they thought I was the same as them. But I'm close enough I guess that we worked together okay."
"You are livin' one strange life." Hardison leaned back in the couch.
"Says the werewolf." Parker snorted.
. ͽϿ Ѻ Ͼͼ .
After lunch they went over everything that Parker had turned up in the search for who was out to get Eliot.
"There wasn't anything useful from Hardison's earbud last night." Parker queued up what she'd found on one of Hardison's tablets. "So, I started with Moreau."
"Why wouldja start there?" Eliot asked while he washed up his cooking gear.
"It was the only place I could think of where your life before the team and your life after crossed." Parker handed the tablet to Hardison.
"Aimee." Eliot said quietly. Drying his hands on a towel he turned back to the table and snapped the lid on the container the salad was in. There was enough left that keeping it would be worth the trouble.
"But after you helped get her dad's horse back, she seemed pretty happy. I don't think she'd stab Hardison to get to you." Parker pointed at something on the screen that Hardison was looking at.
"I thought Flores wasn't allowing Moreau any visitors?" Hardison's question was rhetorical, but he couldn't help saying it out loud. Hardison pulled out his laptop and started typing furiously.
"I'd be careful or you'll brea…." Eliot didn't get to finish the word before he heard the plastic crack on Hardison's keyboard.
Hardison growled. His eyes went yellow, and fur sprouted up on his neck and shoulders.
"Hey!" Eliot called sharply. "Take a deep breath and relax your shoulders." Eliot's tone was soothing but his eyes were yellow.
Hardison's jaw was clenched, and he stared hard at Eliot.
"Come on man. This will be better if you do it on your own." Eliot waited to see if Hardison would comply.
Hardison nodded the smallest fraction and closed his eyes. After a couple of slow even breaths the fur retracted and disappeared. When he opened his eyes, they were the deep chocolate color they were all used to seeing.
"Okay. Good job." Eliot turned and put away his pans in the small cupboards. "Temper is something that can easily get out of control. You want to watch for things that might set you off and either avoid them or be prepared to deal with it."
Parker had slipped off of the couch and for a moment Hardison thought that it was because he'd scared her. Before he could ask or even look for her, she appeared next to his elbow with a keyboard that would pair with his tablet. "You said it was about time for a new laptop anyway."
Hardison smiled up at her. "Thank you."