Page 6 of Wolfsbane

Everyone was panicked all around me. The witches, the wolves, the small creatures in the woods.

I noticed it all, classified it, tucked it into the appropriate box. I wasn’t sure why the pack was worried about me. I wasn’t Aleks. I wasn’t Mama. If I died, most of them might actually sleep better at night, since they found me disturbing. Why would an attack on me bother them?

Maybe because it had been intended as an attack on Aleks.

I couldn’t focus to truly understand in that precise moment, though.

All I could think about was the horrific tearing sensation in my soul, and the silence that had followed.

Part of my soul was gone, stolen by the witch who had been aiming her spell at my brother. At the man who needed to lead our pack into our new era. She’d been planning to enact this horror on Aleks, and I couldn’t imagine how my brother would have survived such a thing. I’d almost screamed aloud at the burning pain, like claws being dragged down my entire self, as . . .

As my wolf had been stolen from me.

Every bit of him was gone.

Aleks patted me down, looking for a physical symptom to a metaphysical attack. Mama worried over me. Even Leo, who’d been more and more uncertain of what to do with me since my return, seemed concerned, if still uncertain of what to do.

I shoved them off, warding away concerned touches and recoiling from my pack.

What if they could tell, just by touching me?

Worse, what if . . .

No, I couldn’t jump to conclusions.

I needed to be alone.

It took most of the day before everyone stopped hovering over me, annoyingly enough, so I didn’t get the chance to test anything until after darkness fell and everyone went off to bed for the night. Mama came to my door, like she had when we’d been children, traumatized by the latest government attack. I’d had nightmares of my birth mother’s death for weeks after the event, and she’d always been there in the doorway when I’d woken with a gasp, the wound newly reopened.

She’d never said a thing, just come to my bedside, offering me water and sitting in silence.

If she was that worried about me again, I clearly hadn’t covered my pain as well as I should have. She had enough to worry about, with the rest of the pack treating her as a communal mother. She didn’t need to be expending that effort on me.

I locked the door, which I wasn’t prone to doing, but . . . well, even if she would know I wasn’t inside, I needed to give her a sign that I was fine. That I didn’t need her there. That made sense, right? She would know I was fine, as long as I acted fine.

So I locked the door and climbed out the back window, planning to sneak off into the woods.

That was where the first problem came up, before I even managed to intentionally do the tests I’d been planning.

When I dropped the five feet from the edge of the roof to the ground, the pain that lashed through my ankles, knees, and hips was almost blinding. It didn’t just pass in an instant, either. It stayed, even as I stood again and slunk into the woods.

I walked a mile, just to make sure I had space between me and the pack. It wasn’t actually enough, but it was something. It let me be certain I wasn’t being followed, even as I confirmed that my hearing was dulled to near uselessness.

I barely heard the animals moving in the trees, and the breeze flowing through branches. I couldn’t hear a single heartbeat, not even my own.

The panic threatened to rise up in me, but I pressed it down.

It had never been welcome before, and it was no more acceptable now. Whether it was warranted mattered little enough. The pack needed a sense of calm, my family needed my strength, and my fear would aid no one.

So I went off on my own, and I tested.

The understanding that my senses were dulled was brought home when, after I spent a few moments pacing the clearing I’d found, Leo’s little raccoon friend Drew came toddling out of the trees. I hadn’t heard him coming, and raccoons, while clever and excellent at surviving, were not exactly the most agile, silent creatures. And Drew? He was less agile and silent than average, for one of them. If Leo hadn’t been feeding him for nearly three years, I’d have thought him a juvenile, but I thought three years was longer than most raccoons even lived.

Still, the animal wasn’t going to rush back to Leo to tell on me, even if he could comprehend what was going on, which was quite unlikely. So I turned back to my original purpose.

I must have known, though, because I didn’t even take off my shirt before trying, and failing, to shift.

Wolf?