“S-Sasha?” I whisper. My teeth are chattering, and I can’t stop shaking.
“You’ll be all right. I promise.” She hands me a steaming mug, crouching beside my trembling body. If she knows what happened—and she must know something bad happened, or why would I be like this—it doesn’t change the way she treats me. “Drink this. It will help you through what you’re feeling. You’ve been through a lot tonight, and the night isn’t over yet.”
“Wh-what does that mean?” It’s a struggle to keep from spilling the hot liquid all over myself, but I manage to get most of it down my throat. It’s spicy and sweet, and it has the power to wash away the foul taste of blood and vomit. Even if there’s nothing magic about it, that’s enough.
Her gaze is soft but unflinching. “It means you’re going to have to face the elders now. The council. The alpha.”
Oh, no.
“You can’t put this off. Word has already spread—putting it mildly.” She rises from her crouched position beside me and goes to my dresser, pulling clothes together.
“They know?”
“They do. All of them.” My parents. My parents know. What do they think of me? I’ve been a disappointment for so long, and now I’m a murderer. I’ve violated pack law. I’ve never been anything but a source of shame.
Sasha continues getting things together for me, talking over the panicked thoughts racing through my head. “You need a shower first, of course. I’ll walk you down to the bathroom and wait for you if you want.” In other words, she doesn’t want to leave me alone. Is that because she’s afraid of what I’ll do to myself or of what I might do to anyone who crosses my path?
“I feel sick,” I whisper as I climb to my feet with her help.
“The tea will ease that. You’ll feel much better by the time you’ve finished your shower.” She brushes an errant strand of dark hair behind her ear before draping my bathrobe around my shoulders and opening the door. “There’s no time to waste.”
The hallway is empty, and the doors are all closed. Sasha hurries me down its length until we reach the first bathroom, the one where I found the wolf couple mating earlier. It might as well have been a lifetime ago. She turns on one of the showers, her back to me.
I lift my wrist to my nose and inhale deeply. It isn’t only blood I smell. I smell like the other wolf. The one with the golden eyes. They both carry this smell, I realize. Why would I smell like them?
Why did their shifting cause me to shift? After all this time, after waking up every day wondering if this would be the day it all changed, all it took was their presence. What’s so special about them? Or was it only a coincidence? Maybe the shift would’ve taken over without them showing up. Maybe it took nearly dying—coming within moments of it—to bring my wolf forth.
I’m glad to step under the hot spray and wash away the evidence of my crime. It isn’t like I could ever forget what happened tonight, so I don’t need the evidence of it dried to my skin and hair. It takes a little scrubbing, but eventually, I’m clean.
Though the scent of those wolves still lingers on my skin. I smell it as I’m getting dressed—slowly, but not as slow and weak as I was before drinking Sasha’s tea. Whatever it was made from, it was enough to bolster me.
Not enough to keep me from shrinking away from my reflection, though, when I catch it in the mirrors above the sinks. I force myself to study what I see, searching for any signs of a difference in me. Now that I think back, Emma didn’t look or act any different after her first shift.
But she didn’t kill anybody, either. That’s the difference. It doesn’t show up in my eyes, even though they’re almost bulging out of my head, thanks to the fear of having to face my pack after what I did. What will they say? Will I have to leave tonight? Will I be able to say goodbye to my sister?
Sasha’s waiting for me by the door and gives me a reassuring nod. “You look much better.”
“The tea helped.”
She takes my hands in hers and holds them tight. “I know you don’t understand what happened tonight. But do you know what took place, at least? Do you remember it?”
Now that she mentions it, I do remember what happened to my wolf. That sense of finding who made me complete. My future. My everything. The place where I belonged.
And then the soul-crushing rejection when he broke whatever was connecting us. He rejected me. My mate rejected me without flinching, and my wolf shattered. “Everything went dark after he did it.”