His mate’s eyes were a striking blue-grey in color, like a rainstorm just before swollen clouds rolled in to obscure the sun.
Her skin was pale, almost porcelain white, with a sprinkling of freckles over her nose. Belatedly, Az realized she was skinny, not just thin and curvaceous, but actually super thin. Looking at her wolf self out of the corner of his eye, he wondered if she came by that look naturally or if it was a starvation attempt that achieved it. If it was the latter, they were going to have to do something about that…
I don’t know that woman at all. Leah’s husky voice sounded so despondent, he reached out to stroke her soft fur.
Your memory may return when your physical form does.
He heard her sigh in his mind. Just ‘may’ return?
Until we know exactly what it is that was done to you, we won’t know when or if your memory will come back.
Az thought he’d known frustration caused by his inability to save the lives of his father’s created wolves. None of that was anything akin to this. He was a person who got things done, he solved problems. Hell, he had inserted a tracking device into Cullen and Summer that had allowed the pack to track them to Mexico. He’d climbed a building in the middle of a rainstorm to reinstall a more efficient lightning rod that let them harness some of their energy supply from lightning strikes.
Yet with his own mate, he couldn’t bring her back to her human form—he was going to have to rely on Tristan for that—and he couldn’t help her with her memory problem. If he were Leah, he wouldn’t want to mate with him at all. Out of the whole pack, he was the most useless member for her.
“Let’s move.” Tristan nodded to the group. “Maybe once we get her back into human form she can give us some answers.”
Az looked down at Leah. “Want me to carry you? I know you can walk. I just kind of want to.”
Don’t you get tired? I must be heavy for you to cart around.
He shook his head and tried to keep his amusement out of his voice. She didn’t know, he shouldn’t find that adorable, only he did. “I’m a shifter. We can carry roughly two and a half times the amount that a regular person can. So, no, I did not get tired and I can do it again easily.”
His wolf’s voice sounded in his head. Show off. Even if you did get tired you’d want to carry her now that you’ve seen what she looks like. Admit it, you think she’s hot.
Az smirked. He did and he’d gladly admit it but not to his wolf. It would give the damn canine way too much laughter at his expense.
Leah leapt up, surprising Az but he still caught her. Pulling her against his chest, he followed behind the pack, which was moving to what they referred to as the ‘east lawn’.
In reality, it was a grass filled clearing just east of the main residence. Surrounded by trees, it was the easiest place to do the magical spells hidden away and protected by the natural forest.
Magic had always irked Azriel. His mind—at least his human mind—didn’t like the ambiguity of the whole process. Sometimes magic worked, sometimes it failed miserably and it all seemed to rely on the personal knowledge of the person in charge of the ceremony. The pack had its own magic that depended entirely on the strength of the Alpha. Only women could perform the ceremonies necessary to ‘call’ on magical forces and yet you could never be sure which women held the powers to do what since none of them came into their abilities until they were mated.
He rolled his eyes. It would have been nice to have been able to just snap his hands and stop all the wolves his father created from dying on his lab tables.
What are they going to do to me?
“It’s a magic circle where Ashlee, Summer, Faith, Jana, and maybe some of the other women will call you to the pack. It will literally force your wolf to shift into its human form then to your wolf form repeatedly until you are in control of the shifts yourself. I’ve only ever seen it once before and it was on my brother Tristan, before he became Alpha.”
Will it hurt?
He thought about her question for a moment. “If this is your first shift, meaning you have never been from wolf to human before then yes, it will hurt. However, I think that is highly unlikely. I think you’ve probably been made to shift a lot.”
Which would mean it won’t hurt?
“I’m not sure, Leah. See this is the trouble with magic—I just don’t have any solid answers for you. In science, if you can create something once, you should be able to duplicate the results. We know the first shift hurts; I know that from personal experience.” The image of his first time filled his mind’s eye. He’d been alone except for his father. It had been pitch black outside in the middle of winter. He hadn’t eaten for days… He shook off the memory. Leah needed him to stay in the here and now.
“Some people find some discomfort from it later on too. I think it kind of depends on your own tolerance for the reshaping your body goes through and how willing you are to give into the white light that surrounds you.”
Were you able to do that?
Az nodded, not wanting to elaborate more. “After a time. I have a tendency to over think things.”
What if I’m not a wolf? What if I’m a human?
“Then I’m not sure what will happen after you regain your body. It may stop right there.”
Leah closed her eyes. I’m so confused about all of this. I don’t even know how this happened to me.
“How could you not be?” Really, she was being remarkably calm. No screaming, no hysterics to indicate that all of this was driving her to the brink of losing her mind. How much should he tell her? He didn’t want to make her upset.
Everything. That was his wolf’s advice. How would you like to be kept in the dark?
“Okay, so there is a lot about you we don’t know but there are some things that we do.”
Leah’s eyes opened, her wolf gaze excited and trusting. Tell me. I remember nothing outside of your lab.
“You were brought to us from New York City by Malcolm and Jana.” Az looked for the couple off in the crowd. It still amazed Az to see Jana back. He’d known her his entire life, she’d been one of the ‘hot’ unmated females who the young males liked to look at and hope they were mated to. One day she’d been there, the next she’d been gone, and all the mated females were dead. It had been that fast.
How did they find me?
“You were part of a wolf pack that attacked them on Valentine’s Day. Presumably, you were being controlled by Jana’s former boss who had aligned himself financially with Kendrick.”
He felt her shudder in his arms. I attacked them?
“No one blames you for that. You’re under my father’s control. I tried to save all the wolves that had been part of your pack but only you survived. After that, when you were separated, your incidences of what you didn’t like called ‘lunacy’ started.”
Why am I under your father’s control? Az, I hear voices telling me to kill.
“That’s got to be all part of the same magic, which is why it drives me crazy. I have no idea why that is happening to you. My father is Kendrick Kane. While I was growing up, he was the Alpha of this pack. We were a huge number back then, several hundreds of wolf shifters. We resided on all these islands.” Az nodded off in the distance to show her the direction of the other islands. He didn’t know if she cared or not but to him life existed in the small details that made up the large whole of the universe. He would have wanted to know where the islands were.