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Jacob mostly kept to a set schedule on the island. Wake up, teach his class if school was in session, work on anything at the Homestead that needed repairing and head home to spend time with Belle. It was a bit predictable and occasionally broken up by going to see Bella and the baby or Coraline but it was his life and he loved it.

The island, of course, occasionally decided to throw a wrench in those plans and if his way home became a swamp or there was a freak blizzard, Jacob tried to take it in stride and just keep moving on. It wasn't anything new after three years and some change, right? Except today. He'd pulled open the door to his and Belle's little house expecting to see his wife working on some new invention...and got greeted with a complete decor change.

So the new carpet was nice. So was the air conditioning, which wasn't available in abundance on the island (being inside a room without feeling hot and sticky and without the air so thick that he could breathe without drowning was a novelty) but he couldn't figure out how it got here. Was this some trick? Some temporary decorating change that was going away whenever the island's wacky magic decided to swing back to (relatively) normal? Jacob didn't know. Smarter people than him had been stumped by the island and he had never professed to be into researching or anything that involved reading or sitting still for very long.

But the biggest change about this place was the little undercurrent of power he felt. There was a little ripple, a little spark in the air and it just felt different than he'd felt in the three years since he'd shown up on the island and resigned himself to not being able to shift anymore. Maybe he'd learned to live without that part of himself but he'd never really accepted it and he sure as hell had never rejected it. Could it be? Was the wolf still under there after all and he was finally in a place where he could access it?

He turned the corner away from the front desk and let loose on his control, feeling his body shift and change into the wolf he hadn't been since showing up on the sandy beaches of Tabula Rasa all those years ago.

Finally.

[[See Jacob either before or after he shifts into a wolf - don't worry, he's not going to bite.]]

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Jacob arched a brow. "So not exactly paradise. Then again, the island can be that way more often than not too. The coconuts just hide the sinister center and someone really needs to give you a map to that place that's accurate."

Jacob rubbed the back of his neck. "For what it's worth, you were still on the island when I left. So you're in two places at once."

Nick thought back to the last time he'd been on the island. Gods, that was months ago now. Time really flew fast in parallel dimensions.

"So were you, but that's not saying much since you just got here and I've been here since," he counted backwards. "Well, about ten months now." He had to admit, the coconut comment had him grinning again. "I'll give this place something, though. It's never turned into anything else, and so far, nothing inside it has tried to kill us. Already hell and gone better than the sand trap."

"Something for small favors," Jacob agreed. "Have you woken up in anyone else's body? Or as another gender?"

Both had happened to him on his island stay and he wasn't really looking for a repeat here in this fancy hotel.

"No to both, but I think I heard something about a door pulling the sex change thing not long ago," Nick added. "I'm usually pretty cautious about going through any doorway, so I've escaped it so far."

Jacob groaned.

"I could go my whole life without waking up with a set of breasts for my very own. Is that so much to ask, really? It's just the simple things that I want."

Nick opened his mouth, closed it again. He took a second, looked down his own body and shuddered. "I'll grant you that one. I'd imagine that would be fun for all of five whole minutes. Probably less."

"I like boobs but not when I have them," Jacob said, thinking about the last time he got stuck as a girl. That had been awkward.

"I think Belle probably prefers me just like I am anyway. I pretty much don't care what anyone thinks as long as she wants me."