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She took my arm and guided me up the steps, pretending not to notice the way I stumbled. Once I made it up, we went inside. I followed her through to the kitchen, where my dad was sitting at the table drinking coffee. He got up and poured me a cup without asking. I took it gratefully and sat, and Mom sat opposite me with a mug of her own. “So tell me about the stairs,” she said briskly.

My gut squirmed, and the anxiety I’d been doing my best to force down came roaring back. “I can’t get up the stairs to my apartment. Or down them. It’s like my body doesn’t understand what it’s meant to do. And the elevator isn’t exactly an option,” I said. “I tried it and freaked out.”

Mom shuddered. “Elevators are terrifying.”

My dad let out a low chuckle and Mom glared at him. “They are!”

“Sure, honey,” he said. “Elevators are terrifying, but fangs and fur and your entire skeleton transforming into a wolf is no big deal.”

He had a point, but I wasn’t stupid enough to point it out. Besides, elevators were terrifying. How hadn’t I realized it before?

Instead I said, “Can we get back to the thing with the stairs? Unless you want me to move back home, I’m gonna need to figure it out.”

Mom sighed. “It won’t come to that. It happens sometimes in new wolves that the neural pathways get confused, because your body’s changing shape and the brain has trouble figuring out whether it’s trying to control a wolf or a human. I’m no expert, but at a guess I’d say that’s what’s happened in your case. You have a lack of rear-end awareness.”

I had what now?

My confusion must have shown on my face because Mom took a sip of her coffee and continued. “It just means the part of your brain that’s responsible for coordination panics, because it’s had an entirely different neural pathway overlaid on top of its existing one. It’s like trying to read two sets of operating instructions that have been printed on the same page, and one of them is printed backwards.”

I sat with that, turning it over in my mind, and thought of the way I kept seeing paws where my feet should be. “That makes sense, but it still sucks,” I said. A horrible thought struck me. “It’s temporary, right?”

Mom hesitated. “Usually? Sometimes it’s a one-off thing, and sometimes it can take a while for your body to sort the two systems out.”

“A while?” My voice teetered dangerously close to a whine, but I couldn’t help it. “How long is a while? Because you know I work construction, right? If I can’t climb stairs, I don’t even want to think what’s gonna happen when I need to climb a ladder.”

Mom’s expression turned soft. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how long it will take for you to figure it out. The fact you’re only half werewolf complicates things.”

“Great,” I muttered. “Just awesome. I finally get to shift, but the trade-off is I don’t know how my legs work.”

Mom reached out and clasped her hand over mine and I relaxed instinctively. Even before I’d learned how to shift, my body had always recognized my mom as my pack leader, and her touch could ground me in an instant. “Don’t worry. I know someone who specializes in cases like yours. I’ll find you his card.”

“Cases like mine?” I asked. “Wait, you mean this really is a thing?”

Mom laughed. “It’s more common with new shifters than anyone cares to admit. Heck, the first time I shifted I spent an entire day hiding in my room while I figured out how to walk on two legs instead of four. We just don’t talk about it because, frankly, it’s embarrassing.”

I thought about my crab-scuttle down the stairs that morning, and yeah, I got that. And I had to admit, hearing that this was a known problem made me feel better. I might be rear-end unaware, but at least I wasn’t the only one.

Mom got up and went and dug through the junk drawer in the kitchen and came back with a business card. I took it and found myself staring at a small picture of a tanned, muscular guy in a tight tank top with his arms folded in a way that showed off his impressive bulk. He had longish blond hair, bright blue eyes, a jaw so square you could have used it to teach geometry, and a friendly smile that fairly oozed confidence. He was undeniably hot, and I kind of wanted to climb him like a tree, or maybe lick the wall of muscle that he called a chest.

Then I read the card.

Hunter Madison

Canine Agility Training

There was a cartoon husky in the corner.

I shot her a look. “Really?”

She rolled her eyes at me. “Well, he can hardly put ‘personal training for werewolves with a lack of rear-end awareness’ on his card, can he? Call him.”

This whole day had been a roller coaster of emotions so far. Between the high of finding out I could shift and the shock of learning I couldn’t climb stairs, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to laugh or cry at my own mother sending me to a dog trainer.

It was ridiculous.

“Absolutely not,” I said.

My mom hummed. “Well, keep his card in case you change your mind. Hunter is the best in the business. He has a one hundred percent success rate.”