Feral Northern Shifters 2

head at the sight of an unchanged, motionless Bram and walked towards the bed. “Hey, what’s going on?”
For the first time, Bram whined. He looked miserable. Ethan suddenly had the terrible thought that maybe Bram was having trouble shifting. Was that possible? Could three months of being feral be causing Bram problems? Ethan wasn’t exactly expert on this and for the first time he wished that one of the wolves had stayed behind even if he wanted Bram to himself.
Slowly, Ethan settled himself on the bed near the wolf, then edged closer, so his leg came in contact with Bram’s side. Ethan leaned over to hug Bram and the wolf shuddered.
“Come on, buddy, I’m waiting for you.”
He whined again, as if in distress, and Ethan wasn’t entirely sure what to do. That wolf’s heart was speeding again. “Shhh, it’s okay, it really is. Just come say hello to me.” He rubbed his face into the back of Bram’s neck.
It took Ethan a moment to realize the shudder this time was the beginning of a shift. The strange sensation of rippling flesh and fur had him jolting back, getting out of the way, as Bram’s body made its journey from wolf to human.

Chapter Fourteen
    Shifting was private, so Ethan turned his back on Bram, rose from the bed and walked a few steps away. He could have left the room, but being polite and staying away hadn’t worked so well for the first half hour. Besides, he wanted to be there when Bram came back to himself as waking from a shift could be very disorienting.
    Not so much when you were going from human to cat, because the human was prepared. The cat always less so.
The sound of shifting was silence. It was hard not to look around, so Ethan sat in the chair facing the desk and made himself turn on the computer Trey had left him. Much to Ethan’s embarrassment. The instrument unfortunately baffled Ethan, which made him look stupid. He’d missed too much education and his years as cat hadn’t done anything to catch him up.
A familiar feeling of panic caught at Ethan’s chest. He was twenty-nine and essentially useless in the human world. Trey had got him work moving boxes and the physical labor earned him some cash, but Ethan needed a longer-term plan.
It might help if he could read properly. In self-disgust, he switched the computer off. What was he playing at, pretending he could do something with the computer? Sometimes he feared this was to be a brief sojourn into the human world before he permanently returned to the life of a cougar.
He’d been so lonely. It would be hard to go back. But it might be harder to stay. Well, not in the short-term, not when he wanted to talk to Bram, find out what had happened that weird night he’d escaped, and make sure Bram was in a safe place, not with that asshole Doug.
The expression on Trey’s face, when Ethan had told him Bram and Doug were lovers, had alarmed Ethan. Trey rarely displayed much emotion, but disgust had been there and it sure as hell hadn’t been about anyone being gay. Trey was gay. It had been about Doug abusing his power.
It might take a while to ask Bram about that.
Ethan frowned, thinking Bram was overdue with his shift, and yet still so silent. After wrestling with his decision for a few more minutes, Ethan pushed himself to standing and made himself turn.
To watch a shift was rare and rather wondrous. Bram still shimmered, his body stretched between wolf and human. A dark shadow, a light aura. A thing neither nor. Ethan was scared, scared that Bram could somehow stay in limbo though that didn’t happen. He’d never heard of it.
“Bram?” he whispered. What was going on? He racked his brain trying to remember if this was within the range of normal, ten minutes into a shift and still no final form. The bulk of the time with shifting was spent in recovery, not changing form. Because, yes, often a shifter remained unconscious as his body healed from the dramatic change. But this seemed wrong.
Ethan walked slowly to the bed, crouched down beside it and rested his elbows on the mattress. He was scared to touch Bram and cause him physical damage when his body was so vulnerable.
“Come on, Bram. I need to talk to you.” It might have been his imagination, or maybe hope, but the shimmer seemed to recede, and Bram appeared more human. Ethan forced himself to say more though he thought he’d exhausted the one-sided conversational possibilities a day ago. “I, uh, I’ve been having conversations with you in my head for the