Conall had never witnessed someone transform from a wolf bite. Almost every hour, he thought his mate was fucking dying from it. He’d never imagined anyone’s body could reach the temperatures Thea’s had without expiring. Instead, she’d writhed, coated in sweat, her face scrunched in pain and fear—Jesus fuck, the room had reeked from the stench of her terror, tearing Conall’s gut.
“It’s one of the most prolonged changes I’ve witnessed,” Brianna had said the previous night, concern marring her brow. “I can only assume it’s because she wasn’t human … and because she was dying.”
“But she will make it?” Conall demanded.
His doctor had placed her hand on his arm. “I hope so.”
Conall had almost fallen into despair until the early hours of the morning when Thea woke him from his bedside vigil with her moaning. There were tears on her cheeks as she writhed on the bed, and then he heard the ugly noise as her shoulder visibly popped.
From there … fuck, from there Callie and Brianna had come flying into the room and Brianna held Conall back as Thea’s body began to break before his very eyes.
“It’s normal,” the doc assured him. “It’s the first change.”
Thea’s screams tore through his heart, powerlessness crushing his ribs as she went through three hours of agony. Just when he thought he couldn’t take it anymore, a bright golden sunlight flared from her body, blinding them all.
When the light finally diminished, Thea was a wolf, lying on his bed, panting.
Alive.
But did she recognize him?
She growled, low and deep from her belly, and he faltered. “Thea,” he whispered. “Thea love, it’s me. Conall.”
Her ears twitched again and her snout lifted into the air, her nostrils flaring as she sniffed.
Her intelligent gold eyes lit with recognition and she whined, shuffling along the bed toward him.
Emotion overwhelmed Conall as he crossed the distance between them and held out his hand to her. Wolf Thea sniffed and then licked it … and then nuzzled into him. Conall laughed, blinking back the sting of wet in his eyes, as he slid his hands into her velvet fur and kissed the top of her head. She made a little chuffing sound and buried deeper into his hold.At first all Thea could feel was terror and discombobulation. She recognized the room she was in and the people were familiar, but she didn’t recognize herself.
Her vision was sharper, her peripheral vision wider, and there was a film of color over it. Not to mention she could see a snout where her nose should be, see fur-covered forelegs where arms should be.
When the tall man with the scar said her name, a wash of familiarity flooded over her and she wanted to go to him, but a much bigger part of her was scared out of her fucking mind.
He kept saying her name over and over.
And she kept growling at him in warning like a beast.
But then … something started to niggle at her as she looked up at him. Memories. A castle. A fire. A man stabbing her in the heart. Then this man’s face. Tears in his eyes.
The words “bite” falling from her lips.
“Thea.”
Conall!
His name came to her in a burst of realization.
Conall was a werewolf, and he’d bitten her to save her.
She moved toward him and he reached out a hand. His scent was the final piece of the puzzle. It wasn’t just his scent. It was hers.
Her mate.
It was like rushing through a tunnel of memories and Thea was herself again. But she was something else too. After Devon had stabbed her in the heart, all she could think about through the pain was the story Vik had told her of the fae who was bitten by her werewolf consort. She’d conveyed enough to Conall that he’d understood. Thea remembered thinking she was in hell, but it had obviously been the change.
Fuck, it had been awful.
But now … she laughed inside her head as Conall hugged her in her wolf form. Burying into him, she smiled to herself. She was alive. And she was a wolf! How weird! How wonderful.
Conall pulled away and turned to his sister Callie. She stood with a woman Thea didn’t recognize. “I’m going to shift. Take her for a run. Is that all right?”
The stranger nodded. “She needs to get used to her new body, so take your time with her.”
The two women left and Conall grinned down at Thea as he began to strip naked. She made a moaning sound, which came out like a throaty growl. Her mate laughed. “There’s enough time for that later. In fact, we have a perfectly extraordinary but mortal life ahead of us.”
Understanding what he meant, Thea would have wept if she’d been in her human form. She no longer had to worry about an eternity of loneliness. Nor about running from Ashforth, who was finally dead and gone.