She opened the cell door, smiling in apology when the sound grated on my nerves. “It’ll be some time before you fully adjust to your heightened senses,” she told me. “During this time, you’ll have to take it slow.”
Heightened senses? Was that what I was feeling back at the hospital? And just how long was she expecting me to wait?
She didn’t honestly expect me to stay here, did she?
Oblivious to my thoughts, she placed a hand on my arm and nodded in the direction of the door leading outside. “Come with me. There’s something I want to show you.”
The air outside didn’t help. Instead of clearing my head like I’d wanted it to, it made matters even worse. The barn I thought I’d been in was nothing more than an over-sized shed with acres of open land surrounding it. There were no flowers, no trees aside from a far-off forest, and no wildlife.
The lack of life, however, didn’t bother the woman beside me, her eyes fixed on something I couldn’t see.
“How do you know my name?” I asked, finally able to speak without my voice getting stuck in the back of my throat.
“As Alpha, it’s my job to know everything about my wolves. including you.” She paused mid-step and looked right at me, her eyes flickering from silver to gold, then back to silver again.
“Why do you keep doing that?” I asked, gesturing at her eyes. Forget the fact she kept insisting I was a wolf. I’d never seen anyone’s eyes act that way before.
She laughed, and a moment later, she removed a compact from her back pocket. “Here. Look for yourself.”
Taking the small mirror from her, I opened it and took a deep breath. No amount of breathing could prepare me for what I saw. My usually blue eyes were hazel and gold. The rings around my irises shimmered, but if they changed color, I couldn’t see it.
Frowning, I gave the mirror back, then hugged my arms around myself to fight off the chill. “What is it?”
“The gold flashes?” she asked, nodding a second later. “It’s your wolf, same as mine. You might not be able to feel her just yet, but you will in time. Your eyes are still gold because you just came off a powerful shift. It’ll be a while until your eyes go back to normal.”
“But they’ll always have the same ring around them?”
There was no way I’d be able to keep Val from noticing something like that. She worried if I so much as looked at her the wrong way, but if she saw me like this? She’d lose her mind for sure.
“The ring will come and go,” the Alpha replied, jutting her chin toward a thick tree line in front of us. “The ring will appear shortly before a shift and remain until days later. We’re used to it and shift regardless of the mark, but I can understand the alarm this might cause.”
Thinking back to my time in the clinic, I wondered if my eyes showed any signs of my being a wolf before everything went to hell in the parking garage. “You found me right before my shift,” I said, studying the forest full of pine in front of us.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the trees went the entire way around the property.
“I did,” she agreed, shoving her hands in her pockets.
“There are no outward signs before your first shift,” she explained, practically reading my thoughts. “Lycanthropy comes on much like the flu, but at a much faster rate.”
“But I wasn’t bitten,” I said again, unable to hide the annoyance in my voice.
“No, you weren’t.” She paused just outside the tree line and looked right at me, her face falling once she did. “Tell me,
how much do you know about the most recent treaties.”
“Between humans and wolves?” I shrugged. I honestly wasn’t keeping track. Sure, we may have patched up a few wolves every now and then, but seeing as I didn’t deal with organ transplants, the more recent developments weren’t my concern.
“But in your line of work, you are aware of the new laws, correct?” she asked, deep creases forming above her eyes.
“I have to be. It comes with the territory,” I said, dropping my gaze a moment later.
Westgrove had been one of the first hospitals in the country to offer care to humans and wolves. Once the new treaty went into place, wolves were able to donate for other wolves as well. We ended up splitting the hospital right down the middle, so wolf care was given to wolves only. Same with humans.
But if the two got mixed up…
“Oh god.” My legs buckled, throwing me to the ground as the world spun around me. My heart seized, starting up moments later as I gasped for breath. The half-frozen ground bit at my fingertips when I tried to claw my way through it, my entire body tingling with nerves.
“Joanna, I need you to listen very carefully,” the Alpha said, her tone harder than before. She knelt beside me, dipping her head so she could see my face. “You’re in no condition to go through your second shift. Fight it back.”