The Altered (4 page)

But apparently
Keira hadn’t. Jordan had seen that look on her face far too often,
and he knew when an interrogation headed his way.

“How is he?”
he asked, trying to get her off track.

It worked for
a few seconds. She glanced back out the window, her expression
turning soft as she watched her twin brother, Sam, pad about on the
grass. “Okay, I guess. Hard to tell when you’re having a one-way
conversation.”

She watched
Sam a little longer, looking as open and vulnerable as Jordan had
seen her in a long time. Jordan had only known Sam as a wolf—he’d
been in that form when Jordan met Keira at college. He sometimes
forgot that Keira knew Sam as something different. Eight years was
a long time to miss someone.

“Anyway,” she
said, standing up a little straighter and running a hand through
her hair. She turned to glare at Jordan, all trace of softness gone
from her face. “You and the seer? Are you fucking crazy?”

Jordan
instantly bristled.

“Keira.”
Charlie moved to put a hand around her waist. “Maybe now’s not the
time.”

She leaned
into him, but her tone was still irritated when she spoke. “When is
the time, then? When we’ve been captured and they’re using us as
test subjects? Would that be a good time? Because I’d like to avoid
being cut open and examined if at all possible.” She slumped back
against Charlie’s chest and closed her eyes, leaving a tense
silence in the room.

Jordan let it
settle around them while he thought carefully about what to say.
Keira needed delicate handling when she got like this. Her distrust
of seers was unfortunately borne of experience. Despite the fact
that any shifter could pick out another of its kind, seers were
sought after because they posed no danger. They had no claws, no
teeth, no enhanced senses or strength. Easy to capture, easy to
control. For humans who wanted to locate shifters, seers were the
perfect tool.

No shifter
would willingly turn in another altered, but some seers would, and
had.

“Keira.”
Jordan’s voice had dropped low and soothing. “They were in trouble
and we helped. That’s all.” He moved toward her slowly and placed
his hands on her shoulders. “He had an altered protecting him. I
don’t think he’s going to turn anyone in.”

She sighed
heavily, relaxing more into Charlie, and Jordan stepped back to
allow Charlie to wrap his arms around her. Their dark hair and eyes
matched so well, you could easily mistake them for siblings at
first glance.

“Okay, fine.”
She managed the barest of smiles. “I admit I might have overreacted
a little.” Charlie snorted and grinned at Jordan over her shoulder.
“Oh, piss off, Charlie.” She glanced back at Charlie, and Jordan
felt a pang of jealousy at the look they shared—something he’d
never had and doubted he ever would.

“That still
doesn’t explain why you acted weird around him. Weird even by your
standards.”

Charlie burst
out laughing, burying his head in Keira’s hair. “That’s exactly
what I said.”

“We’re done
talking about this.” Jordan wished he’d never agreed to go out in
the first place, then none of this would have happened. “I doubt
we’ll see either of them again, so there’s nothing to discuss.”

Both Keira and
Charlie eyed him dubiously, but Jordan had zero interest in arguing
the point anymore. He needed fresh air. The cloying scent of the
two of them filled the kitchen, and Jordan wanted to get outside
and just breathe without being constantly reminded what he was
missing out on.

Sam whined and
trotted over as soon as Jordan closed the patio doors behind
him.

“Hey, Sam.”
Jordan let Sam sniff at his fingers before walking over to the
wooden seat on the far side of the grass with Sam at his heels. “Do
you believe in mates?

Sam wuffed,
sat down, and tilted his head to one side. Jordan had no idea how
much Sam understood in his wolf form. Keira seemed to think he was
the same as if he was human, but he just couldn’t answer back.

Jordan lowered
his voice. “She’s so fucking infuriating sometimes.” He glanced
back over toward the kitchen, now empty, and sighed. “It’s no
wonder you stay like that.” He gestured to Sam’s body, quickly
pulling his hand back when Sam snapped at his fingers. Yeah, maybe
Sam could understand everything, after all. “Sorry, that was a low
blow.”

Jordan offered
Sam his hand again, relaxing back against the seat as Sam pushed
into his touch. “I know both of them believe that’s what they are.
Mated
. And I’m honestly happy for them. But I just don’t
think that’s how it works. The pathogen changed my physiology, but
it didn’t create some special person somewhere just for me.”

Sam settled on
the ground at Jordan’s feet, and Jordan let his head rest back onto
the wood behind him. He stared up at the night sky, pushing down
the part of him that hoped Charlie and Keira were right.

Daniel woke up
on Friday morning with the whole of his left side feeling as though
it was on fire. His jaw ached too, but it was nothing compared to
the sharp stabbing pain in his ribs every time he moved.

“Fuck.” He
rolled onto his good side and braced himself before trying to push
up into a sitting position. He managed to get upright, but it felt
like a hot knife searing into him, and the shock of it took his
breath away. He collapsed back onto the bed with a choked-off
sob.

There was a
light rap on his door, followed by Ash’s voice as he pushed it open
enough to poke his head in.

“Hey, if you
don’t get up soon, you’re gonna be late for—
shit
. What the
hell happened to you last night?” He stared at Daniel for several
seconds, his short dark hair stuck up on one side and plastered to
his head on the other, and then shouted back over his shoulder.
“Matt!”

Matt burst
through the door before Daniel had a chance to protest, wincing as
he took in the state of Daniel curled up on his side.

Ash glanced at
Daniel and then back at Matt, one eyebrow raised. “He didn’t look
like that yesterday. What did you do to him?”

“It wasn’t
me.” The expression on Matt’s face said otherwise. He might not
have caused Daniel’s injuries, but obviously blamed himself for
what happened.

Ash was still
looking at Matt, clearly coming to the same conclusion as Daniel.
“Yeah, I know it wasn’t you, you idiot. I was just joking.”

Ash was fully
human, nothing about him altered in any way by the pathogen, and
despite Daniel’s best efforts he still sometimes thought of Matt as
Daniel’s protector. Which was funny most of the time, and both Matt
and Ash took the piss out of Daniel for being a “delicate flower”
in need of saving.

However, this
was all on him. None of it was Matt’s fault, and Daniel hated the
way his best friend looked so guilty. “I fucked up.”

Matt shook his
head. “You didn’t—”

“Yeah, I did.”
Daniel rolled onto his back in an effort to find a more comfortable
position. “I was careless and almost got us both killed.” He’d
wanted so badly to lead a normal
human
life, and they’d been
safe for years. Too long it turned out, because he’d forgotten how
dangerous it could be for those like him.

He heard them
come farther into his room, and Ash settled on the foot of his bed,
while Matt slumped down onto the floor next it.

“What did
happen, then?” Ash sounded more worried now than when he’d first
opened the door, and Daniel sighed before filling him in on the
night’s activities. He didn’t go into much detail about what had
happened with the altered in the bar, and he should have known Ash
would have more questions about that.

“So.” He
turned to face Daniel, pulling one leg up onto the bed. “You’ve
managed to keep what you are a secret for all these years, then you
see this one shifter—sorry,
altered
,” he amended at Daniel’s
frown.

The
distinction didn’t bother Daniel most of the time. Hell, he used
both terms himself, but
shifter
implied something that
Daniel wasn’t, and it made him feel more like an outsider. He
didn’t need that after last night.

“And suddenly
you can’t control yourself?” Ash continued, snapping him out of his
thoughts.

When he put it
like that, it did sound kind of ridiculous, but that was exactly
what had happened. Daniel nodded, not bothering to lift his head
off the pillow, though, because that would hurt.

Ash shuffled
closer, apologising when he jostled Daniel. “What was so special
about him?”

And wasn’t
that the million-dollar question? “God, I don’t know, okay.
Normally I just get a quick glimpse of how they’ve been
altered—maybe teeth, fangs, fur, whatever—but this time…. this time
I got a good look at his full shift—his wolf—and it seemed to last
for ages. I half expected someone in the bar to scream and point at
him. And I guess it startled me enough to make it noticeable.”

“You weren’t
the only one who felt something.”

Matt had been
silent while Daniel spoke, and when Daniel glanced over at him, he
had an odd look on his face.

“Obviously,”
Daniel scoffed, gesturing to his bruised face and tender ribs.

“No, apart
from those two arseholes, who weren’t even in the bar at the
time—someone must have tipped them off. The full
altered—
Jordan
, I think they called him—he noticed you too.
Did you make eye contact for long?” he added when Daniel opened his
mouth to butt in. “Because that might explain it. I’m used to you
now, and I can ignore it, but remember what it was like at
first?”

Oh God,
unfortunately Daniel did remember, despite his best efforts to
erase it from his mind. “I don’t think so? I mean, I looked at him,
but then the weird wolf-show thing happened, so, um, maybe?”

Daniel closed
his eyes, trying to remember if he’d met Jordan’s gaze and held it.
His memory was a little blurry around that point, and hours after
the fact, it was hard to be sure what had happened exactly.

Ash nudged him
in the foot, making him open one eye.

“What?”

“You can’t
just say something like that and not explain. I wasn’t around when
you two were
altered
, so come on, spill. What was it like at
the beginning?”

Daniel turned
and grinned into his pillow. He didn’t have to see Matt’s face to
know he’d be blushing.

“Hey, fuck
off.”

Matt pinched
Dan’s calf through the quilt, and Daniel tried and failed not to
laugh. It quickly turned into a groan when it made his ribs hurt.
“I couldn’t help it.”

“Stop arsing
around and just tell me.”

Daniel glanced
up in time to catch Ash rolling his eyes.

“And make it
the quick version. I need to get ready for work. Since it looks
like I’ll be going on my own today, I should probably make the
effort to be early,” Ash said.

Daniel turned
to Matt and raised an eyebrow. “Shall I?”

Matt frowned
and shook his head. “No.
I’ll
tell him, because you always
exaggerate.”

Daniel let his
smile get bigger, not trying to hide it this time, because he did
not exaggerate at all. Matt just wanted to downplay his reactions.
“Fine, you do it, then.”

“Okay, so,”
Matt shuffled around and leaned back on his hands looking at Daniel
and Ash. “Since the pathogen kicks in sometime during puberty, we
had no clue if we’d be altered or not. Daniel had already come out
to me as gay the year before, yeah?”

Ash nodded,
and
God
, it seemed like a lifetime ago that that had been
Daniel’s biggest fear—people finding out he liked boys. Hardly
anyone cared about that these days. Now they looked at each other
and wondered who could produce claws or fangs.

“So, when I
discovered I’d been altered—well, not fully, which sucks, because
that would have been awesome—I couldn’t wait to tell Dan. He was my
best friend, and that was sort of like my
coming out
, just a
little different.”

Daniel noticed
Ash glance at his watch and motioned for Matt to hurry up.

“I’m getting
there. Hold your horses,” Matt said, before carrying on, pointedly
facing Ash this time. “Anyway, of course Daniel had to ruin
everything. When he came round my house later that day, his hair
had gone this freakish blond colour, and he took one look at me and
declared, ‘You can shift’.”

Daniel joined
in. “And Matt was so pissed off I’d stolen his thunder, he glared
at me for ages, and then all of a sudden he pulled me into a hug
and sniffed my neck.” Daniel snickered as Matt’s cheeks flushed
red.

“I did not
sniff you.”

“Yes, you
bloody did. And you wouldn’t let go until your dad found us and
made you.” Daniel put his hand on his side, holding himself still.
“Fuck, don’t make me laugh.”

“So, if a
sh—an altered looks into a seer’s eyes too long, it makes them want
to…
what
? Cuddle and sniff them?” Ash looked between them
both, clearly thinking they were full of shit.

“Sort of.”
Matt huffed. “It doesn’t happen all the time, and I’m sure there’s
more to it, but it’s like your instincts kick in, and all you want
to do is scent and touch.
Protect
. Some people believe seers
are good for other altereds—they ground them or something like
that—because they can see”—he raised his fingers in little
quotation marks—“the
altered
form.”

“Hmm….” Ash
stood up and straightened out his jumper. “Obviously not everyone
feels that way.” He gestured at Daniel with a sweep of his
hand.

“No.
Unfortunately most of the altereds we’ve met or heard about don’t
view seers as a good thing. For obvious reasons.”

Daniel thought
back to the two who had attacked him. They weren’t the first by a
long way, and he doubted they’d be the last either. He understood
it to some extent—he didn’t like it—but he understood. They could
hide from the humans who wanted to hurt them, but not from other
altereds. And while shifters would never give each other up, some
seers didn’t share that sentiment. Daniel wasn’t one of them, but
he never usually got the chance to convince anyone.