The jarring sensation of everything shrinking begins as my orange fur recedes to reveal pale, clammy skin underneath. The weight ofmy large paws lessens, and I feel my bones crack and reduce in size with each agonizing pulse. It's a sickening and exhausting process, a relentless pressure squeezing me inward like I’m in a compactor.
My vision blurs as the world seems to tilt when I can no longer hold my head up. Panic claws at my throat, but my mews and whimpers dissolve as I shrink back to my familiar human form. It doesn’t feel familiar anymore. It feels like I’m a bomb waiting to detonate with no idea of who will get caught up in the blast.
I want to run away. I want to hide from the impending rejection of the only family I’ve ever known. But I can’t. Everything hurts, and I’m so tired. So instead, I curl up on the cold tiled floor as shivers rack my body.
I can’t begin to process what just happened. One minute I felt hot and achy, and the next, I transformed into a beast. Then my mom is covering me with a blanket and smoothing my hair back from my sweaty forehead. Dad comes over and drops down in front of me.
“I didn’t do it on purpose… I don’t know how… What’s wrong with me?” I ask before dissolving into panicked breathing and gasps as I try to hold back the tears just under the surface. Silence stretches around us, my whimpering the only noise in the quiet kitchen.
“You didn’t want to eat anyone, did you?” Pippa asks, and I don’t know how to answer her. I didn’t. I didn’t even want to be in the same room as them.
“No, I… I was still me. But not me. I’m a monster.”
“Shhhh, it’ll be okay, baby,” Dad soothes. “We’ll get you help. It’ll all be okay.”
“You… you won’tmake me leave?”
“You’re our daughter,” Mom says, her voice shaking yet certain. “You’re not going anywhere. We’ll figure this out. Together.”
A sob of relief nearly chokes me. I’ve never needed anything more than I needed to hear that. Curling into my mom, I let the tears break free. Surrounded by my family on the kitchen floor, I cry and cry until there are nothing left, and my dad carries me back to my bedroom.
“I only changed that one time,” I say after telling him the story of what happened all those years ago. “It was agony. Afterward, my parents put me in therapy so I could learn to regulate myself and keep my feelings in check. Learn how to stop myself from letting my emotions get the best of me. I figured out how to stop listening to the voice and push it down. Before you came along, it was barely a whisper.”
“And after I came along?” he asks.
“It got louder. Telling me things I didn’t understand. It wanted… It told me to claim you, to… It wanted me to bite you.”
Ryan grins at me, and his eyes glow golden. He sweeps my hair back and presses his lips to my skin at the juncture where my neck curves to meet my shoulder.
“Here?” he asks.
I whimper and nod as electricity radiates from the connection. The fact that he is still naked becomes patently obvious when his cock twitches below me and my pussy throbs in response.
“Have you ever felt like that before?” he asks, and I can’t deny that I’ve never experienced anything remotely like the pull I felt toward him. Both as my patient and as the masked man.
“Our kind—shifters—we mate for life,” he explains, cupping my face in his hand and staring into my eyes. “We get one fated mate. Our perfect other half, made for us by the Moon Goddess, if you believe in that kind of thing. Or maybe it’s just biology. No one really knows. Some never find their fated mate. They take a chosen one and hope for the best. That’s what my parents did, but it didn’t work out for them. I never wanted that. I waited for Fate.” He pauses, then adds, “I waited for you.”
His words sink into me like a blanket of warmth and belonging, and I know in my bones that they are true. This is what I’ve been trying to ignore. Because I already knew.
It doesn’t change the fact that he lied to me. He misled me.
But he wasn’t the only one who was lying. Maybe if I had been honest with myself, I would have been able to skip past so much of the last few weeks. And as the thought crosses my mind, I realize I don’t want to change it.
Ryan holds all my answers. Every answer to every question that has been going around in my head for years. My head spins. And underneath all the confusion and pain, one thought remains:I’m not alone anymore.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Maya
Ryan gets dressed as daylight starts to fade, and we both climb into his car. I have so many questions and no idea where to start.
“The dogs are at the kennel for the next two nights. How about we head to my place and talk?” Ryan asks before starting the engine. I give him what I hope is a soft smile and nod. “I just need to let Sofia know first.”
His eyes glaze over, a milky opaque layer rolling in like a fog. A few seconds later, he blinks, and his eyes return to normal. “All good,” he says with a smile.
“Maybe start by explaining whatever that was.”
“Shit, sorry. Wolves in a pack can communicate through a mindlink. It’s sort of like sending a direct message to the other wolf’s head. As long as they are open to receiving it and within a reasonable distance, they will hear it.”
