AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Just take off your clothes and shift,” he said. Nakedness was a normal thing for wolf shifters, but I felt self-conscious being naked in front of him. “It’s faster this way. You can get dressed again once we get there.”
I bit down on my lower lip but nodded. I stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind me. Shane turned his back to me and I also turned my back to him before I was tempted to stare at his round, firm ass. I mean, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t before, but I didn’t know … I still felt a little shy about all of this.
Pushing those ridiculous thoughts from my head, I slipped off my pajamas, put them on the couch on the porch, and shifted.
I inhaled deeply, letting the crisp night air fill my lungs and energize my blood. I'd had free access to my wolf for a week now, and even though I had shifted at least a dozen times since, it still felt like a dream. That I had to enjoy it while I could, because this dream could turn into a nightmare at any time.
Ready?Shane asked in my mind.
I turned and found he had already shifted, and his big black wolf twice the size of mine.
Yes, I told him.
Together, we ran back to his house. The front door was wide open and we went right in. In the foyer, we shifted back into our human forms. With our backs to each other, we picked up clothes from the coat closet—Shane put on runner’s shorts, and I grabbed one of his mother’s summer dresses. He had put several of his mother’s old clothes there for me, just in case. I had teased him at the time, questioning his reasoning.
I should have known.
Shane and I climbed the stairs to the second floor and found Tyren with Minsi in her bedroom. Minsi sat on her bed crisscross applesauce, rocking back and forth and muttering nonsense words, while Tyren sat beside her and rubbed her back.
He saw us entering the room and jumped up. “Thank the moon you’re here.”
I walked around him. “Has she been like this since it started?”
Tyren and Shane shook their heads.
“She had a nightmare,” Shane told. “She came to my room to tell me, but I think it started then. She began crying and couldn’t even tell me anything. That was about forty minutes ago. I brought her to bed, stayed with her. She seemed to relax for a couple of minutes, but then she started screaming.”
“It sounded like someone was ripping her limbs apart,” Tyren said. “She stopped, started rocking like this, but she had another screaming fit.”
Shit, it hadn’t been this bad in a while. “I’ll see what I can do.” I glanced at Tyren. “Could you bring me some ice, please?”
Tyren frowned. “Sure.” He walked out of the room.
“Ice?” Shane asked from the doorway. He hadn’t entered the room.
“The shock in temperature helps to break the cycle,” I explained. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.” I sat beside Minsi, facing her. “Hey, girl. I’m here.”
Minsi’s rocking slowed, and after what felt like an eternity, her gaze shifted to me. “Raika,” she whispered. She threw herself on me and wrapped her thin arms around my neck tight.
“Hey, hey, I’m here.” I adjusted her in my lap and embraced her shaking body. Minsi was such a small girl, it sometimes scared me. She didn’t look eleven years old. With her short height and frail frame, she looked more like seven, if not six years old. “Everything is all right now.” I smoothed my hand down her back as she continued to rock in my lap, and hummed in her ear.
Tyren came back with a glass full of ice. I picked up two ice cubes, mouthed “thank you,” and disentangled Minsi’s arms from their death grip around my neck. I placed the ice cubes in her hands. She gripped the ice and her breath hitched. I moved us around, laying her down in bed and snuggling beside her.
“I’m here, pretty girl. You’re okay. Try to sleep.” I placed a kiss on her forehead and she nestled her head in my shoulder.
I shooed the boys away. I wasn’t sure of the time, but I knew it was the middle of the night, and both of them should be sleeping. Shane and Tyren disappeared from the bedroom.
A minute later, Minsi’s body became heavy against mine, and I picked up the ice cubes from her hands before they melted and soaked her pajamas and her blanket, and placed them back in the glass.
Shane came back with his pillow. He sat down with the pillow between his back and the dresser, facing the bed. I lifted my eyebrows, as if asking what the hell are you doing, but he wasn’t fazed. He kept staring at Minsi and me. Creep. I tuned him out and tried relaxing beside Minsi. Usually, the dozens of times I had snuggled in bed with her like this, I had ended up sleeping too.
But this time, I didn’t. I continued humming to her, even though I knew she was finally sleeping, and thought about her. Poor girl. We needed to do something more for her.
Jay was our healer, but besides being the apprentice before the first attack, he didn’t know anything about panic attacks. Witch potions only went so far. They were like cold medicine. They treated the symptoms in the moment, but they couldn’t cure the root of the problem. Minsi needed real medical treatment, with a real human therapist.
The problem was how we would do that.
After about thirty minutes, when I was sure she was out for the rest of the night, I disentangled myself from her. Shane, who also hadn’t slept, shot up and helped me get out of her bed without waking her up. On tiptoes, we left her room, went downstairs, and stopped in the kitchen.
