I didn’t even feel wet.
It was quiet, and I was alone. Until I wasn’t.
He wasn’t there with me physically, but I could feel him, next to me and inside of me, and in the distance, I imagined that I heard his wolf howling. For me.
I closed my eyes, letting the sound rush over me, bringing with it chills and warmth and the unerring desire to howl back. Gone was the night sky, gone was the creek, and when I opened my eyes again, it took me a moment to realize that they weren’t my eyes.
They were his.
Ours.
My vision was sharper now, and the tiny details of the world—each blade of grass, each hair on each head—were so vibrant that I couldn’t see the bigger picture. And then I heard him.
Heard me.
Heard us.
Howling. Screaming. Fear-anger-desperation-NO.
Saw the girl lying on the ground, and then realized that it was me. Blood pooled at her—my—mouth, and the scent was tantalizing. Terrifying.
We needed to go to her. Our vision began to go, overwhelmed by something More.
Rough hands grabbed our wolf body and hauled us backward, and even though we’d promised not to, we fought—not to injure the one who held us but to escape their grasp, to run to the girl, to curl our body around hers and will her to be well.
A whimper escaped our throat. We needed to fight but had promised not to.
“Chase.” Callum’s voice. Alpha voice. But it didn’t have the same effect it used to.
Bryn.
“Shift back. Shift back, and you can go to her.”
The words somehow permeated our head, and for a moment, Chase and his wolf seemed to consider them, but the fury and fear radiating through their body was too feral to be contained by human skin.
They wanted to kill.
No, I thought, and my voice sounded loud in my ears, loud in his. In ours.
Bryn? His voice was hesitant, his wolf whining
I’m here, I said. With you. I’m fine.
The body on the ground seemed to argue against that point, but my presence soothed Chase. As he calmed, his beast stilled, and for a split second, the three of us were in perfect harmony. His mind should have felt crowded with all of us there, but it didn’t.
“Change,” Callum ordered again.
The wolf in Chase was opposed to this idea, and I wanted to agree with him, to run away and enjoy being part of Them, not stuck in a human form that would never fit quite as well as this fur. But Chase refused to run, refused to turn tail on this fight, or to leave me—or even my body—behind.
Am I dead? I asked.
The question sent a growl into Chase’s throat, and I was struck by the way it felt, by the way everything felt in this body that was Wolf.
“She’s not dead,” Callum said, and Chase and I both paused, wondering if he’d read our mind. “Smell her. She’s just unconscious. Shift back, and you can go to her.”
Smelling. Pine needles and cinnamon. Bryn.
Good. I was alive. Maybe I was dreaming. Maybe this was my dream.
The pain of white-hot metal cutting through bone shook me from my musings, and a horrible crunching sound, like gravel under work boots, echoed through my—our—his—flesh.
And that was when I realized that Chase was Changing back.
In human form, he crouched down to the ground in a motion more befitting the animal than the man
Smelling. Seeing. Needing
Bryn.
Why don’t you put some clothes on first? I suggested mildly. Now that we were human again, I found myself more clearly able to think. And also, a little uncomfortable with the fact that I was inside the mind of a naked boy who wasn’t human enough to realize that he was naked.
“Why don’t I put some clothes on first?” Chase echoed out loud.
Callum looked at him very strangely—naked and crouching, ready to attack, but speaking utterly human words.
My words.
And suddenly, I was back in Dead Man’s Creek, floating. Peaceful. Alone. And then a piercing white light split the night sky, and a wave of pain crashed into my body, splitting it into piece after piece.
My eyes fluttered, but I couldn’t open them. The vague sensation of hands under my arms, hauling me up into the air, took me by surprise. And just before I descended into darkness again, I heard Callum barking out an order.
“Bring her inside, Marcus.”
Floating again. Numb. Nothing hurt. Blessed darkness.
I turned over onto my side, submerging half of my face in water, and I realized that I could still breathe—could breathe right through the creek, like it wasn’t even there. Completely accepting of this development—and delighted—I took a deep breath and dove under the water—
“Put her on the couch, Marcus.”
Back in Chase’s body—clothed, thankfully—I saw Marcus, stiff-faced as he followed Callum’s orders and gently laid my broken body down.
“Are you satisfied that she’s had enough?” Callum asked him.
Marcus looked at me, and Chase’s need to rip his throat out became palpable in our joint mind. Chase did not want Marcus looking at me. He did not want him near me. He could not let them hurt me more.
“She’s not faking,” Marcus said begrudgingly.
“No,” Callum agreed. “Sora beat the girl until she lost consciousness.”
Chase hated Callum for the dispassion in his voice, hated him for doing this to me. To both of us.
“Humans are weak,” Marcus said finally. “Females even more so. It is enough.” Marcus turned his head from my body. “Pack Justice has been satisfied.”
Callum simply nodded, and it occurred to me that it was probably no coincidence that he’d chosen Marcus to carry me inside. If Marcus’s thirst for my blood had been quenched, no one else would argue.
“Leave us now,” Callum said. “I’ll tend to the girl.”
Marcus left, and he was barely out the door before Chase growled. “Bryn. Her name is Bryn, not ‘the girl.’ And one day, I’ll kill you for doing this to—”
Back in the creek, underwater. I barreled toward the surface and broke through, rising up into the air like a humpbacked whale or a mermaid child, and for a long time, things were quiet.
By the time I woke up for real, I’d been flitting in and out of consciousness—and, when unconscious, in and out of my own mind and Chase’s—so much that I wasn’t sure where I was, or who I was, or what had happened. As I opened my eyes, feeling flooded back into my body, and I really wished that it hadn’t.
Moving carefully, I sat up, and my body lodged its various objections, from a groan in my ribs to a hissing scream in my lip. The rest of me just throbbed. After the shock of it waned, I was able to move my arms, running my fingers over my legs, arms, and torso, probing the damage and expertly checking for broken bones.