And though I was strongly empathetic, not as much as my sister had been, but strong enough, why did I feel it in so many people? Normally, I could pick up on the emotions of those around me. Nothing more, nothing less. But this, now, numbered in the several hundred. It was weird and made me feel kind of hollow. Like there was no room deep inside me for anything other than these feelings.
His hand scrubbed over the curve of my head, and when he scratched my ear, I grunted with delight. I wasn’t sure if he’d distracted me on purpose, if he could feel this overwhelming sensation too, or if he just wanted to touch me—to touch me as much as I wanted to touch him.
But when he scratched me, distracted me, I forgot about the other people, about their grief. It whispered out of my mind as though the wind caught it.
“You’re different,” he said softly, and the words, though whispered close to my ear, seemed to shiver along the wind too. “I don’t know your name, but I will the second you shift back. So, for the moment, I’m going to call you Silver.
“You don’t know this, but silver and gold wolves are very rare. Werewolves, shifters, have been around for thousands of years, as long as humans, and we’ve shared terrain with you. Some humans know of us, some don’t. But the ones who do, have kept our secrets safe, just as we protect them and our territory.
“It’s to my dying shame that this happened to you last night. I will find out who’s responsible for turning you against your will even if…”
As he released a sigh, I tensed, wanting to know ‘even if’ what?
He scratched my ear again, distracting both of us until he built up the courage to mutter, “Even if it was Mother-blessed.”
Mother-blessed? What the hell did that mean?
His mother? Whose mother?
The no pain thing was beyond epic, but not being able to talk sucked. Fuck.
I pulled back, looking him square in the eye. Or at least, trying to. I had to tilt my head this way and that to get a good picture of him because in this form, my vision was odd. I saw different stuff, the colors weren’t the same too which…
Crap!
If the colors were different, then how could I read his aura?
Blue might have been murderous, and green might have been passion for all I could discern in this skin!
He surged to his feet, even as he kept his hand on my head. The connection felt good, and I peered up at him when as he stated, “You need to learn to walk.”
My tongue lolled out at that.
Walking couldn’t be too hard, could it?
“The first instinct, when you shift that initial time, is to go and eat. But once you awaken from the stupor, it’s like being a pup. So I’m going to assume that your stasis has been on fast forward for a little while. Let’s get you started so we can go home.”
Home?
I hadn’t had a home for a long time, and the way he said it, it wasn’t like he was saying it was his home solely. Like it was my place too.
The yearning inside me made me release a keening sound that drew his attention. He tilted his head to the side and studied me, but I didn’t think there was much he could read in that form. Somehow, I was able to communicate the things I’d kept buried away inside me for over a decade in this shape, but he couldn’t translate them.
Wasn’t that bittersweet?
He released a breath, closed his eyes, and within seconds, he was like me again. Walking on four legs rather than two.
When his nose ran down my back, along my side, scenting me, I didn’t stop him. It felt good. And since he was a wolf, it didn’t feel weird, because I knew this was how creatures like this interacted. His nose ran over my hindlegs, and when he sniffed up my tail, only then did I yip at him to back off.
As he returned to face me, his tongue dangling, I’d swear that I saw amusement in his eyes. It was like he’d known I’d yell at him for that. Shakily, on legs that felt as fragile as saplings, I attempted to take a step forward.
My body heaved with the effort of staying upright, of not falling over, and when the male wolf nudged me, eagerly helping me along, a warmth blossomed inside me.
I wasn’t alone.
Even the grief that had weltered deep in my being from out of nowhere, while a negative emotion, was further proof that somehow, I’d been merged into a collective.
I wasn’t an individual anymore.
Maybe another person wouldn’t have been happy about that. Maybe they’d mourn the loss of their independence, but they weren’t me.
With my background.
With my history.
Each paw connected with the soft ground, and I felt the earth in a way I wouldn’t have ordinarily. I liked walking barefoot. In truth, it was my favorite way to move around. But standing here, now, feeling the loam squish between the pads of my paws, smelling the scents blossoming from the pressure of my weight atop the soil burst into being…it was magnificent.
Just walking was an experience.
Before I knew it, I’d made it from one end of the clearing to the other, and all along, the male was at my side.
Sure, my chest was heaving like I’d walked a thousand miles, but I’d fucking done it.
I’d walked!
Yeah, it didn’t escape me that I’d managed to achieve what a toddler could do, but still, I felt triumphant.
Mostly, I felt free from pain, and it was enough to make me feel delirious.
I wanted to thank Kali Sara from the bottoms of my paws to the tips of the ears that now sat on the top of my head rather than at the side of it.
The relief and joy I felt at being free from the ever-present discomfort my condition had granted me was like a bright light being shone through the darkest of tunnels.
On some days, yesterday included, the pain was so strong that I could feel the echoes of it down my nerve endings. The shadow wasn’t excruciating, more of a memory. One that made me realize that, for certain, I should be angry about being forced into this transformation, and yes, there was someone out there who’d meant me harm—which was nothing new, not with my having been on the run for twelve years—but for this freedom?
I’d take it.
Gladly.
And for the smile in that man’s eyes?
Well, that was too difficult a question to answer. I just knew that not even Kian had made me feel this way, and while that was a betrayal in and of itself, he was gone now, dead, and I was alive and barely living.
If this man, this stranger, could make me feel something other than misery? Well, I wasn’t about to turn my back on it or him, or this strange new world I found myself in.
Ethan
I’d been on edge all night. Uncomfortable ever since I’d crossed the threshold into my home and had stayed up watching the council.
They’d long since left, and the roosters on the surrounding farms and ranches had long since cried their joy at another day dawning, but I hadn’t bothered to leave the cabin, nor had I bothered making my brother take over my post.
The urge to sleep wasn’t a strong one, and my ears told me he was still awake too. Which meant we were both feeling the same way—unnerved.
Altogether, that shouldn’t have surprised me. We were similar in that, even though, in many ways, we were completely different entities. That usually surprised people. Especially our people. It was like, because we had the indecency to share a womb, we were clones. Carbon copies of one another. But we weren’t.
I loved reading and learning, and Austin wasn’t happy if he couldn’t get his ass in front of the TV to watch some stupid game at least once per day.
He never read, and I never watched TV.
Of course, that wasn’t the only marker as to our differences, but one way in which we were similar—our wolves. The power we had. The ability to discern nuances about a situation that kept us out of the crapper.
Our instincts.
And ever since we’d found that woman, bleeding out, dying, shifting, changing…she’d been calli
ng to me like a goddamn siren’s song.
I wasn’t used to that, even though I usually found ways to scratch an itch among humans. She-wolves never let us near them because of who we were—not Eli’s left hand, but twins—so it wasn’t too unusual I’d find a human attractive. But this seemed different than attraction.
My cock wasn’t totally in charge. It wasn’t that usual itch I got every now and then. It was…strange.
Deep.
Resonating through every beat of my heart and sending the weird feeling around my body.
I tugged at my bottom lip as I stared at the packhouse, a place I knew Eli hadn’t returned to. A place I knew the female wasn’t in.
The urge to find her was imperative. She was in safe hands. There were none safer. Eli was a damn good alpha but, more than that, he was a fine man. He’d look after her. Help her.
Trouble was, I wanted to do that too.
And if I did?
I knew Austin was right there with me.
One way in which we weren’t different?
The women we liked to screw.
“Stop it.”
I jerked in surprise at his hard bark and grunted over just how damn out of it I was. To fail to hear him stomping through the cabin? My brain was whirring with particulars it had no right to be focusing on when I was on duty.
“Stop what?” I grumbled. “Just sitting here.”
“I can hear you thinking.”
I winced. “Fuck. Sorry.”
His lips twisted into a smirk, because he knew I rarely swore. “Yeah. Fuck. That’s about the long and the short of it.”
Few knew we could talk to one another that way. It was beyond uncommon. The omega was the only one who knew, and she’d been the one to tell us that it was unusual and that we shouldn’t share the ability with anyone else.
Not even Eli or the alpha who, at the time, had been her mate.
We obeyed the omega with as much devotion as we did the alpha, so there was no way we’d argue, but for her to put such restrictions on us meant the ability was unusual in the extreme.
It was also a pain in the butt.
No part of my life was free from his touch, and some damn days, that was more than I could stand.
Austin stomped closer to the armchair I was slouched in, my feet resting against the window ledge as I stared out into the woods and at the packhouse beyond. But he still stayed behind me. His hands going to the back of my chair as he peered out onto the property we guarded like it was our own.
“Eli wants her.”
The statement was simple, but his tone was loaded with more nuances than if he’d raised his goddamn voice and started shrieking.
“Yeah.” I’d seen that. Both as wolf and man, the alpha wanted the she-wolf with the unusual coloring… The problem was, I wanted her too.
“Doesn’t stop me from wanting to help her though,” he admitted, keyed into my thoughts as always.
Because I never lied to him, I confessed, “Me either.” I cleared my throat. “Think she went hunting?”
“I doubt it. She seemed weak.” His brow puckered when I twisted to look up at him. He helped me by shuffling forward and perching on the windowsill beside my feet. Folding his arms over his chest, he tipped back until his spine collided with the glass, then muttered, “Her weakness should be repugnant to us.”
We were alphas by nature, and we usually liked stubborn bitches with more attitude than sense, but the she-wolf emitted none of that.
And it had nothing to do with her being weak from blood loss or the transformation.
That initial shift?
She should have made a marauding, raping, and pillaging Viking look like he was on Valium.
Instead, she’d passed out.
I carried on plucking at my bottom lip as the urge to go to her messed with my mind.
Eli had given us direct orders, which we’d followed. He was the only one we’d ever followed blindly, and that was another reason why the council hated us, but for the first time, I wanted to disobey.
I wanted to see the she-wolf for myself.
So did Austin, because he asked, “Think they’re still in the woods?”
“I haven’t seen him come in through the back way,” I muttered.
Our eyes met and held because we knew that was the only way he slipped into the house when he wasn’t dealing with the council BS.
One of the reasons Eli rocked as a friend and alpha was because the posturing that went with the job slipped over his head. He had nothing to prove—N. O. T. H. I. N. G.—and the council, even if it pissed them off, knew it.
Some people liked to show dominance when they didn’t have it, but Eli’s power oozed around him like a second skin. It made him a powerful leader and a difficult enemy.
I was glad to be on his good side, at any rate.
Eli didn’t need the pomp and ceremony of his position to be damn good at what he did, unlike his asshole dad and half the council, who thought because they were a part of that body, their crap stank of roses. It didn’t. All of them were asshats, selected by an asshole who’d been fortunate in his years that no one in the pack had been strong enough to challenge him.
Well, that was a semi-truth. Austin and I could have taken him. Easily. But getting the pack to follow us was another matter entirely. And Eli? He’d have been able to squash Paul like a bug, but he’d never hurt his mother that way.
“Want to secure the grounds?” he queried gruffly, breaking into my thoughts.
My lips twisted at the stupid excuse, but damn if it didn’t sound like a good idea to me.
Rather than answer, I just surged to my feet, and the pair of us ambled out of the room with a leashed energy that told me we were both feeling the strain and neither of us wanted to show it.
When we made it outside, we let the change hit us, and the relief that came with being in our second skin was acute. It felt damn good to be back on four paws mostly, I knew, because I could scent her better in this form.
And she was a she-wolf.
And awake.
A whine escaped me at the realization, and Austin shot me a look that said he’d sensed that too.
The she-wolf who ought to be weak, considering she was a wolf child, was somehow not overcome with the desire for blood, nor was she dozing in the post-transformation coma that was an integral phase of the gift of shifting.
Weirder and weirder.
The pair of us took off at the same time, loping through the forests that we knew as well as our own faces in the mirror. The early morning scent made everything richer, more pungent. Dew slicked the ground, the brisk chill in the air spoke of the sun not yet having had the chance to warm things through, and the woods were starting to awaken to the day with our prey just beginning to emerge from their shelters.
We weren’t on the hunt, and they knew that. Knew, still, to avoid us.
No point in pissing off a predator.
Every now and then, Austin would ram into me. Not to be an ass—which he was—but just to connect. Our wolves were close, probably closer than the human forms, which I knew was odd. Especially since we lived together and, more than that, led most of our lives knocking up against each other. However, that was different.
As humans, we had so much to prove. In wolfskin? Things were simpler. We were who we were, and our wolves loved each other, regardless of the crap that gnawed at us about each other.
The tumbling and playing slowed down as we sensed the clearing where Eli had taken her.
It surprised me to note it was close to the council meeting grounds. The energy from the totem slalomed through the ground with the force of a pneumatic drill that made my paws vibrate, even though we weren’t that close. I heard Eli chuckle and the she-wolf keen…sounds that had my ears pricking high and sharing my surprise with Austin.
Very little surprised him, and his eyes were narrowed as he slouched forward, slinking quietly toward the clearing in an effort to get closer to the scene wit
hout disturbing things.
In my other form, I’d have rolled my eyes.
Eli had to know we were close, so Austin trying to pull one over on him was just amusing.
From between the stark, stripped trees, I saw Eli holding the she-wolf, who was shaking a little. But before I could absorb more of the scene, Eli’s head twisted toward Austin, and his face twisted too, but the expression morphed too quickly for me to recognize what was going on with him.
I saw exasperation and acceptance before I really knew what else I was seeing, so I stepped toward my alpha and the newest member of our pack with little to no shame.
Ambling forward so I didn’t frighten the she-wolf, I lowered my haunches and kept myself springy. Yeah, I knew that sounded weird, but I didn’t want her to think I was stalking her.
I was, sure, but she didn’t need to know that.
Her head twisted to face me, and Mother, it was rammed home once more just how beautiful she was. Not only was her fur glowing in the dim morning light like a precious metal, but her eyes? I hadn’t seen the gleam in the darkness, but now I did, and the power of them struck me in the gut.
She had bright blue eyes.
Bright. Fucking. Blue.
I’d never, not in my entire life, seen a wolf with eyes that color. Bland colors were for the humans who’d been transformed. Naturals got all the beauty…as well as the power. So with her coloring, everyone would know she was one powerful beast.
A keening sound escaped me at the sight of those eyes, and her ears twisted like she knew what I was saying.
Beautiful.
She dipped her chin coyly, and if I’d been a man, I’d have laughed at that.
“No need to laugh at my expense.”
I broke to a halt at that. My paws skidding in the leafy loam as the words filtered into my mind. It was on the same channel that my brother communicated with me on, but in this form, we didn’t really talk that much, except for in emergencies, and with her, the connection seemed faulty. Like a poorly tuned radio station in the car. Slipping in and out of clarity with every second.
I didn’t see Eli’s expression change, but I felt his body spring into an alertness that hadn’t been there before.
WOLF CHILD: A PNR RH Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 1) Page 6
