Chapter Five

Amaris

Pain stops being pain and becomes everything. Bones move, muscles pull, my skin burns from the inside out, and then the world breaks open so violently that I don’t understand it at first. The ground is too close. Suddenly smells have shape, and sound has distance. My hands are gone, four white paws in the place where my hands should be, and for one completely reasonable second I decide I’ve died and this is an aggressively weird afterlife.

The first thing I understand is that I'm still me. That should not be a revelation, but when your arms become front legs and your face has a muzzle, standards change. I can feel the forest floor under every pad, individual pine needles bending beneath my weight. Wind moves through fur I didn't have a minute ago. My ears turn toward a bird before I decide to listen to it, and when something tiny scurries under leaves twenty feet away, my entire body knows exactly where it is. The overload from school is still here, except now it fits. Sound has direction instead of just volume. Scent has layers instead of chaos.

The presence inside me stretches like she has been waiting years for room. She doesn't arrive with a speech or a name. She is instinct wrapped around language, pleased to finally have my attention and deeply unimpressed by my panic. I ask whether she has always been there. The answer is a flood of feeling rather than history. 

Sleeping. 

Waiting. 

Us. 

I tell her that isn't enough information. She gives me the mental equivalent of a shrug.

Then another presence moves inside me, not foreign exactly, but no longer silent. 

Breathe. The voice is mine and not mine, female and wild and somehow calmer than I am. What the fuck are you? Her answer carries amusement I can feel more than hear.

I try to stand too fast and nearly put my face into the dirt. Kenton twitches like he wants to help, then stays exactly where he is. Good. I figure out four legs by humiliating trial and error, one careful step at a time. My wolf keeps correcting my balance with impatient nudges. 

Left.

Other left. 

Apparently becoming supernatural doesn't improve my coordination.

The absurdity makes a laugh try to escape, except wolves don't laugh like humans. What comes out is a huff. Kenton's mouth almost curves before he sees my expression and apparently decides survival requires him not to enjoy this. Smart man.

You.

I'd argue if I had a human mouth. 

That isn't helpful.

Kenton is sitting several feet away with both hands open where I can see them. His face has gone completely blank except for his eyes, which are fixed on my coat. “White,” he whispers. I look down again. White fur. Not cream. Not silver. White.

His shock at my coat is obvious and immediate. He doesn't sniff me or anything weird, Thank God. He just looks. His eyes travel from my paws to my shoulders and over the white fur covering every inch of me. And all that I can imagine is looking as if somebody dumped me in bleach during the worst day of my life.

I turn enough to catch my reflection in a shallow sheet of rainwater caught between roots. The face staring back is unmistakably a wolf and somehow still mine. Amber-brown eyes. White coat. A narrow scar near one ear I don't remember earning because apparently even my wolf body came with secrets. My wolf preens at the reflection. 

Beautiful.

 I tell her vanity is unattractive. She doesn't care.

Pretty.

My wolf sounds pleased with herself. 

This isn't the time.

“You’re a White Wolf,” Kenton says, the wonder and confusion evident. He then explains that White Wolves aren't supposed to exist anymore. Not rare like an endangered animal, but actually gone. That there are stories that have been handed down through generations and old pack records. He stops there when my lips pull back from my teeth. I've had enough people tell me what I'm supposed to be. The last thing I need is a stranger reacting to my fur like I climbed out of a prophecy he has been waiting for. He seems to understand the warning and shifts from information to observation. I'm breathing. Standing. Not bleeding. Those are the only things he comments on next.

My wolf is more interested in him than in extinction. She circles once, testing our body, then points every sense toward Kenton. I smell wolf on him now that I know what I'm looking for. Nothing more than that. Just that he’s another shifter, familiar in a way humans weren't ten minutes ago. She wants to see the part of him that matches the presence under his skin.

Kenton says this like those words are supposed to actually mean something to me. I bare my teeth in response because I still don’t trust his tone. 

He immediately lowers his gaze. “I’m not coming closer.” 

Good. Smart. Unfortunately, my wolf is still interested anyway.

I know there’s a wolf inside him. I don’t know how I know. Scent, instinct, the second consciousness now sharing my head, maybe all of it together. 

Wolf, She nudges the awareness forward. 

I gathered that.

Her attention stays fixed on Kenton. Show.

Kenton seems to read enough of my posture to understand. “You want me to shift?” He asks before doing anything. That matters even when I'm currently incapable of saying yes in English. He gives me options anyway. 

“Blink once if you want me to shift. Back away if you don't.”

I blink once. 

He looks almost offended. “That’s not a reliable yes.” 

I huff hard through my nose. 

He strips fast, turns partly away while he does it, then lets his body change.

The dark wolf standing where Kenton was is huge. Dark black coat, powerful shoulders, eyes that are still unmistakably his. He lowers his body and turns slightly sideways instead of coming at me head-on. My wolf steps forward before I decide to. 

Wait. She ignores me. I said wait.

Kenton’s wolf lifts his head. Something slams through me so hard I stop breathing. It isn’t love. It isn’t trust. It’s recognition without permission, a brutal certainty that goes through bone and blood before my brain can object. 

My wolf’s voice rings clear. Mate.

This recognition isn't romantic, there’s no soft music or a convenient explanation. Instead, it feels like something ancient inside my body slamming a file folder onto a desk and announcing a fact I didn't request. 

My wolf knows him. 

His wolf knows us. 

The certainty is physical enough that I nearly lose my footing again. My human brain immediately starts listing reasons the universe has terrible judgment.

Kenton's wolf doesn't rush me. He lowers his head, then turns slightly away so I can choose whether to close the distance. 

I don't and my wolf whines. I tell her we’ve only known him for approximately twelve minutes as a wolf and a few years as a guy that I barely tolerated seeing at school. She reminds me that Recognition doesn't care about my calendar. I remind her that I do.

Absolutely not.

She pushes the certainty at me again. Mate.

I back up until my hind legs hit a root. He’s the guy Axel told me to question. 

Her answer is stubborn. Still mate.

Then you have terrible judgment. 

She snarls at that, and I realize with horror that I’m arguing with myself while standing naked under fur in the woods behind school.

Kenton’s wolf takes one involuntary step toward me. I snap hard enough that my teeth click. He stops instantly, shifts back, and crouches far enough away that I don’t feel cornered. “Okay. I’m stopping.”

His breathing is rough. “You’re stunning.”

I growl. “Right. Sorry. Not useful.”

He rubs both hands over his face, then looks at me again. “Mate.”

The word comes out like he hates how much it explains. My wolf nearly purrs. See?

I see a problem. Nothing about any of this helps. 

Not with Axel’s letter. 

Not with Kenton’s wolf knowing mine.

None of it tells me why he stopped asking questions. 

And it doesn’t make me trust him, forgive him, want a future with him, or even like him. My wolf can know whatever ancient thing she knows. I’m still the one who has to live with the man attached to it. And I haven’t forgotten why I came here.

If anything, the bond makes the problem worse because now attraction has been mixed into the one question I needed to keep clean. I came here to find out why Kenton stopped asking Axel what was wrong. I didn't come here to inherit an animal, an apparently dead bloodline, or a man fate apparently thinks belongs in my life. Wanting to step closer to him doesn't erase the fact that I still don't know whether he failed my brother because he was scared, careless, obedient, or cruel.

My wolf sends one last quiet certainty through me. Mate.

I answer with one of my own. Not trusted. 

She doesn't like it, but for the first time she doesn't argue. 

Maybe we can work with that.