Page 3 of The Lab: Rigg

It had been a week and a half since I let my wolf out, and he was being a pain in the ass today, pushing so hard I worried he was going to break through in my studio apartment. Once he got out, I didn’t have enough control to keep him quiet. I could imagine my landlord using his master key to enter my place to catch my “pet” and then charging me a pet fee. I barely had enough money to cover rent as it was. I couldn’t afford any extra because my wolf was being an asshole. And that was the best-case scenario.

If he recognized me as a wolf, that would end poorly.

I pulled into the turnoff and drove down as far as my car could go before climbing out and shucking my clothes. I didn’t bother folding them nicely and just left them in a puddle on the grass. My wolf took over before the shirt even hit the ground, the shift coming so quickly that it hurt almost as badly as my first shifts did back when I was a teen.

My beast took off like a shot. He needed to hunt.

No—that wasn’t exactly true. What he needed was a pack. But hunting would have to do, at least for now.

I grew up in a pack. Heck, I was the royalty of the pack—the firstborn son of the Alpha. And tradition said I’d take over and become Alpha myself one day. It wasn’t a goal of mine, but I’d learned to accept my fate.

If only it were that easy. There was one huge-ass problem with the whole succession bullshit— my younger brother, Aaron.

When my father passed, Aaron started making noises about being a better fit for the role. He was probably right. He loved power and being the boss, whereas I did everything I could to avoid both.

If it were possible, I’d have let him take it over without thinking twice. I didn’t have a desire to be Alpha. I would’ve gladly been his Beta—or even just a member of the pack. But that wasn’t how our pack worked. We were old-school to a fault.

Rumor had it that Aaron was going to call for an official challenge.

There was no way that could end well. I could kill him, get a job I didn’t want, and be shrouded in guilt my entire life—or he could kill me. There was no good option. But with official challenges, death was the only conclusion. Submitting my position wasn’t an option.

The truth was, he was stronger than me and would bleed me out quickly. I’d be done. And being barely eighteen, he didn’t need to live with that. Even if I were the stronger of us, I couldn’t fight back. He was my baby brother, and as much as I hated the decision he was rumored to be making, hurting him wasn’t something I could do.

If we’d been one of those more progressive packs, stepping down would’ve been an option. But we weren’t. It was all about blood, death, and challenges. That was how you transferred power.

So I went rogue before my brother could challenge me. And now I was stuck in the city with a shitty job as a dishwasher-slash-busboy at a bar.

And it wasn’t fair to call it shitty. The job was actually pretty good. They gave me the hours I needed, they helped me find a decent place to live, and I got to eat for free when I was on shift, saving me a lot of money.

But being inside, surrounded by people that weren’t ours—that weren’t pack—and not regularly shifting, was taking a toll. A big-ass freaking toll.

My wolf stopped dead in his tracks and picked up his head, scenting deeply as the air shifted.

Fox.

Great.Can’t you get a rabbit?I didn’t like fox. It always left me—human me—with a stomach ache.

My wolf ignored me, running toward the scent, ready to pounce and devour my stomach’s nemesis.

He ran and ran—and then lost the scent.

Good. He’d find something else, something not fox.

And he did. A squirrel, which he managed with one pounce.

I wasn’t sure where the fun in that hunt was. That was more of an “oh, dinner—cool, takeout,” but he did it, devouring it and then rolling around on the ground and scratching his back against the dirt.

In a lot of ways, my wolf was a freaking house cat. If there had been someone there to pet his belly, he’d have been good to go.

After a few stretches, he got up and went to his favorite place—the river—and jumped right in. The water was always cool here, even on summer’s hottest days, and he loved the feel of it against his paws and nose as it seeped into his fur.

He also loved messing with the fish. And I say messing with because he was the world’s worst fisherman. We’d never caught one. Ever.

I half-wondered if he’d even like it if we did.

I could feel him calming with each splash of the water, and eventually, he jumped out, shook off, and padded slowly back to the car. He hadn’t really been talking to me for a while now—and he for sure wasn’t listening to me—so usually I just ignored him too. It wasn’t good for us, but nothing about living here was.

What we really needed was some time in the woods, preferably with some other shifters. I’d heard there was a pack not too far into River’s Edge that was accepting of rogues. And a few times, I’d thought maybe I should head there to see if they’d welcome me.

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