Nothing is wrong.
Then I focus on my blackened hair where it falls across my face. Through its strands, my left hand is visible, palm down, fingers peeking from beneath the sheet and resting on the pillow beside me.
For that one blissful moment, I can’t see the medallion, I don’t sense the darkness within it, and I can imagine it isn’t there at all.
In the next heartbeat, cold malice rushes through me like icy water, a destructive assault that forces me up into a sitting position, my hair falling around my shoulders and a cry on my lips.
“Stop,” I whisper, swallowing my scream as I wrap my right hand over my left palm, as if I can somehow make the medallion disappear.
Hot tears trickle down my cheeks. “Please stop.”
A low growl sounds behind me. “Asha?”
I jolt and spin, my heart in my throat.
The Vandawolf!
He towers over me as he straightens at the side of the bed, his arm outstretched, as if he were reaching for me. His broad chest rises and falls, as if he’s carefully controlling his breathing. He’s naked to the waist, still wearing his bloodied pants. Faint scars crisscross the muscles of his chest and stomach. His ashen-black hair falls across his face, matted with dried blood and hiding his expression from me.
His appearance is so much like it was the first time I saw him that my heart misses a beat.
“Vandawolf,” I whisper, my eyes wide. “You’re awake already.”
I don’t know if ‘already’ is accurate, since I have no way of knowing how long I was asleep, but I’m certain it hasn’t been days like Elowynn predicted.
He’s very quiet and it throws me. I expected instant rage. Distrust. A storm of questions, at the very least.
His voice remains a growl, but it’s soft. “That isn’t my name.”
He tips his head to the side, his hair falling away from his eyes.
My breathing stills as I take in what he said, as well as the changes I can now see in his face.
His amber wolf’s eye is gone.
It’s… just… gone…
So is his sharp canine tooth.
The color of his irises takes my breath away. No more amber wolf’s eye. Both of his irises are deep-gray, like the color of the sky when the sun has gone down and night is falling.
His hair is the same shade as it was before, its strands still resembling a wolf’s fur, but it no longer strikes me as a crown of darkness, but more like a pelt falling across his broad shoulders.
His jaw remains as strong, his lips as full, and his gaze just as piercing, but the savage characteristics of the beast are…
Simply gone.
No longer do I sense a wolf writhing within him, beating at the cage of his body.
He seems completely calm. Far calmer than I expected. Possibly calmer than he should be.
I’m sure I’ve stopped breathing altogether and that my eyes are as wide as saucers.
Every part of his face is somehownewto me. The cut of his cheekbones, the curve of his lips, the slight crease in his forehead… as if he’s a little uncertain of my reaction.
His entire face has transformed, and he is breathtakingly beautiful, even as he wears the scars of battle.
I try to bring moisture to my lips, helped only by the trickle of tears that reach the corners of my mouth. “How…?”
