Filed to story: The Healer and The Wolf PDF Free
“How did you get here?”
“Followed you. After you helped.”
It still wasn’t very easy to talk, but the food and drink helped. I was trying to pace myself, certain that inhaling the meal wouldn’t be good for me, and I didn’t want to spend some of my first hours as a human again throwing up.
“No, I mean your humanness.”
Ah, right. I supposed that was a pretty significant issue.
“You broke the spell.”
The woman’s reaction was strange, but I could scent something like disbelief coming from her. Well, if she didn’t know about shifters, she likely didn’t know about witches or magic either.
Did I know about witches and magic?
Apparently so. More things were coming back to me, but it was all so disjointed and scattered.
“I… did not mean to be a wolf. You saved me.”
“So, you’re saying something turned you into a wolf? You’re, like, a regular guy and not a werewolf?”
I stopped eating while I pieced together what she meant. That was when a little voice in the back of my mind told me that shifters were supposed to be secretive. I was breaking our code by exposing us to her. But after everything she’d done for me, the woman deserved an explanation.
Explaining wasn’t exactly easy to do considering how goddamn delicious the food was. It was like I was rediscovering an entire world where seasoning existed. Salt! Pepper! How could I have forgotten about those?
How could I have forgotten about everything
?
Honestly, it was enough to make me want to weep, but my eyes and emotions couldn’t quite figure themselves out enough to do that. So, instead, I explained between bites.
“No, I’m a shifter.”
“A shifter?”
“Yes.”
She waited for more, then cleared her throat. “What is that?”
“Shifters can move between an animal and human form. I’m a wolf shifter.”
“You say that like there are different kinds.”
“There are.”
She swallowed hard, and I studied her to see if I had said something wrong. She still smelled of anxiety and worry, which I hated, but none of it ever reached those gorgeous eyes of hers. They were just filled with kindness and curiosity, and I kind of wanted them to never look away.
“So, you’re a shifter but someone forced you to be a wolf?”
“They took away my human form,” I said slowly, closing my eyes and looking deeper at the mess of memories. “Locked me as a wolf. We’re two parts of a whole. We’re not meant to be just one or the other.”
The more I spoke, the more I began to understand how torturous the situation I’d endured was. I was a shifter. A man and a wolf. Two parts working in harmony to be a complete being. We were nature and humanity, bound together to bolster each other’s weaknesses and celebrate each other’s strengths.
Half of myself had been stolen from me.
But why?
Who would want to hurt me in that way?
As she continued to ask simple questions, the largest not-fox-not-wolf came in and sat by the door of the?-
Wait.
Cat.
It was a cat.
I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten what cats were. Andromeda used to have the fattest, most orange cat when I was a tee?-
Who was Andromeda?
Too many questions. I couldn’t linger on all of them. The two other cats joined the first. As if it could hear my thoughts about the old, mystery cat in my memories, the orange cat approached me.
I ignored him, at least outwardly, and let him sniff me. I had the faintest memory that cats much preferred to approach on their own terms rather than have people aggressively greet them.
And my strategy turned out to be pretty sound, because by the time I was done eating, one cat was beside me on the table, one was a few feet from the chair, and finally, one hopped into my lap.
It felt like a badge of honor, and I tried not to preen. I felt useless, stupid, and more than a little confused, but at least the woman’s pack was accepting me.