Page 29 of Wolf Trial

Look at me and only me, he commanded in such a steady, unwavering voice, and with such confidence that I did. It was a voice not to be ignored, and I didn’t have the power to ignore it even if I wanted to. There was a part of me that was completely out of control, and that part of me pushed my head down in a ridiculous facsimile of a bow. As if he was my king. As if they were telling the truth, and it was wolf instinct that made me bow to him.

I shook even harder, denial becoming harder to hold onto. What the fuck is happening? I demanded, but my voice was so small.

Lainsz is right, the alpha said, keeping his distance from me but never taking those dark eyes off me. We found you on the floor at the base of that hill, and the damage was so bad that your body couldn’t fight it. We took you inside in the hopes of healing you, but you were too far gone.

You’re saying I’m dead, I said in a voice little more than a squeak, a whimper.

I’m saying you were right on the edge of dying, and we saved you. He paused, holding eye contact, something significant in it. I saved you.

Which means you’re part of the pack, the soft voice one spoke. Our Alpha saved you, which makes you one of us.

One of you, I repeated, the shaking intensifying. You mean you bit me and made me into a freaking werewolf. That sounds insane. You know that sounds insane, surely? The laugh that came from me was forced and brittle, and not so much I heard as felt. I’m not a wolf, I’m human and completely ordinary.

You’re a miracle, the soft one said.

Alright, Leander, tone it down, the alpha chided.

Leander. The awed, soft-voiced, green-eyed wolf was called Leander. It occurred to me that they didn’t even know my name. They were saying all these batshit things about me dying and becoming a wolf, and they didn’t even know my name.

Okay, I said, backing up. I’m just gonna leave now. Thank you for saving me, I’m a big fan of being alive. Let’s meet up sometime. But right now I have places to be, people to see, you know how it is.

My laugh this time was strangled, but that didn’t stop me retreating, my feet finally cooperating to carry me three steps away from them. And I realised why they allowed me to retreat when my backside slammed into a tree.

It wasn’t pain that made me freeze so much as the sensation of it. Not rough bark on skin, but a shudder along my nerves, a feeling like my hair standing on end, except all over my body. It began at the place I hit the tree, and moved all the way along my back to my neck and my head, and then down my legs. All four of them.

A sharp, wolven cry ripped from me, my delusion torn away all at once until reality punched me in the face.

I really wasn’t human anymore. I was a wolf.

CHAPTER 18

SADIE

Leander launched forward at the sound of my cry, a whimper leaving him in answer. Before I could scurry away from the tree, he was beside me.

He brushed the entire length of his wolf body against mine, and I should’ve been terrified, my fear should have vibrated through every cell in my body, but the opposite happened. My shaking calmed, and the panic that gripped my chest in its tight fist began to loosen. And then: the strangest feeling in my chest, a feeling I’d barely known and hardly recognised. A feeling like coming home. Not to a gran who would sell me. Like coming home to a place I knew I was safe, and wanted, and welcome.

That was bizarre enough that I forgot I wasn’t supposed to look down. And there was the evidence, the final proof that I would never be able to out run. No shoes, no human legs, no shapely calves. Instead, there were matchsticks covered in fur the colour of blackened wood. A wolf’s legs, not human legs.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t pull air into my lungs quick enough. But the drags I managed to sip were sharp with details and so much clarity that it should’ve been obvious from the moment I woke up that I was no longer human. I could taste the trees in the air, their roots in the earth. I could taste the rain that hadn’t arrived yet but hung in clouds above the tree line. I could taste blood, clinging to something not too far away. The place where I died?

I thought the open space would help, the Alpha said almost apologetically as he came closer, with slow, careful steps. The pale, blue eyed wolf didn’t approach, I noticed. He stayed a safe distance away, watching with narrowed eyes. And it hit me again like an axe to the chest. He wished I was dead. He wished I’d died before he could meet me, and for some reason that gouged into my heart like a fistful of thorns and ripped open a dozen different wounds all at once.

I was well accustomed to being unwanted, but this pain was beyond anything I’d felt before.

Why does it hurt? I asked, and didn’t recognise my voice. Not because it sounded wolfish, but because it was hurt and quiet and aching. Had I even sounded like this when Gran betrayed me?

It was the alpha who spoke, and as he did, he slid the length of his body against my side. The comfort that hit me was so severe that my eyes rolled back. I’d never known this level of hurt, but I’d never felt anything like this reassurance, this physical comfort that seemed to go beyond the physical and touch something I’ve never sensed before.

It hurts, he said with remarkable softness. Because he is your mate. As we are all your mates.

My voice shook when I said, Just because you saved my life doesn’t make us friends.

I tried not to think about the fact my mouth didn’t part as I spoke, and no audible words came out. Psychic links. Pack bonds. Rebirth. What else would I be forced to accept as truth when there was no chance in hell this could be real? Maybe I was dreaming; maybe my nightmare of Suri had never ended, and I just had to slap myself in the face to wake up.1

Not mates in that way, the alpha said, so unflappable that it was starting to piss me off. But then he rubbed his head against my neck, and air flooded my tight lungs, my muscles relaxed, and I decided I could endure his annoying composure if his touch felt as good as this.

Soulmates, Leander said in a rush, as if the word had been desperate to escape him. It rang around my head, as incriminating as it was insane. We’re your soulmates, Starlight. When your transformation was complete, we felt it instantly. You’re not just pack; you’re our mate.