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His eyes flash open, and he grins up at me. “Is that what you think we do when we run off into the woods in our wolf forms?”

I burst out laughing, my cheeks flushing, a little embarrassed. “I don’t know! Maybe! I haven’t thought about it a lot!”

He laughs too, looking up at me, and his face is just so…lit with happiness. I don’t know. My smile falls a bit with surprise and…

I just can’t stop looking at him.

“No, Nadi, I’ve never attacked and eaten a bunny. I’ve got plenty to eat in my human life – it’s not something I need. But if I were starving and in a survival situation, shifting into my wolf body would certainly make it easier to hunt and feed myself.”

I nod, understanding. “I guess that makes sense.”

He nods too.

I cock my head, remembering something from when we were children together. He used to shift – he and Jude both did, though Iris used to hold back so as not to make me feel jealous. “Can you do it like, from when you are born?”

“Shift?”

I nod.

He exhales slowly. “No. We can…well, everyone’s first shift hits differently. The three in my family were lucky enough to have it happen as kids, when our bodies were more flexible.”

“Why is that lucky?” I whisper.

“Because,” he replies, looking up at me and grimacing a little bit. “It’s…excruciating. And it gets worse, if it happens when you’re older.”

My eyes flare wide.

Wait, what?

Chapter 41 - Painful

Nadia

“It’s painful to shift?” I ask, a little breathless with surprise. I cock my head. “But – I saw you do it all the time – and it looked fine –“

“I mean, it gets easier,” he says, nodding to me. “You learn to handle it pretty fast, especially if you shift young. You eventually learn to do it in a flash so that it’s less of a bodily transformation and more of a…I don’t know. Ashift. An instant thing, a trade of one body for another.”

My face twists with confusion, and Cole sighs a little, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, it makes a ton of sense if you’ve done it before. But I can see that it’s not really…translating.”

I shrug, letting him know that I don’t actually understand but that I don’t mind it so much.

“So, it hurt?” I whisper, my fingers resuming their path through his hair, nails scratching against his scalp. “The first time you did it?”

Cole groans, eyes falling shut again as he shakes his head side to side. “Fuckingexcruciating.Luckily my dad was there –“

“It was a surprise?”

Cole opens his eyes again to meet mine. “Not a complete surprise. There are usually signs. A growth spurt, a day when you’re…a little off-balance, a little feverish. And then it hits. But sometimes it hits kids out of nowhere. Iris was alone in her bed when she shifted her first time – she was so young she didn’t remember it.” He smirks. “But I do. We just went into her room in the morning and there was this…teeny tiny white wolf pup sitting in her bed, shaking.”

I laugh a little at the mental image even as I shake my head, feelingsosorry for her. “She must have been terrified.”

“She was,” Cole says, nodding. “But…I don’t know. Iris is tough. She took it in stride like she does everything.”

I nod, wondering if Iris reallyisthat tough. Or if she, like so many women, just feels like she has to be.

Still, I push the thought aside, concentrating on the Prince lying next to me instead. “And your first time?”

“I was six,” he says, nodding, his eyes going a bit distant at the memory. “In the hall, walking toward the elevator down to the garage so I could go to school. It justhit…it…” he sighs and looks up at me, clearly gauging how much detail he needs. “It felt like my back snapped in half.”