“You’re still going to be shaky on your feet,” he muttered, watching me to make sure I wasn’t going to fall again before he took a step back. “You should be resting. I’m not sure why you’re not.”

Well, if he was confused, what the hell was I supposed to be?

With my weight distributed between the front and rear of my body now that I was standing, it felt weird, but what I reveled in was the lack of pain. The relief and the freedom from it made me realize just how much it had bogged me down, ruining every part of my day with its taint.

The pain with fibromyalgia was unbearable because it was everywhere and nowhere. I couldn’t point to my elbow and say, “I twisted it playing tennis when I was fourteen, and it’s never been the same since.” How could you describe the pain when it was like a hive in your bones? One that had wasps surging out to assault you? To invade every nerve ending until an attack could have you feeling as though your entire being was shutting down?

But here? Now? I was free, liberated, and even if I was terrified about why I was like this, even if I knew the story about how it had happened was going to be beyond nuts, I was mostly just happy.

Happy.

I was pain free. What wasn’t to celebrate?

He cleared his throat. “I’m going to try and get you to shift back.”

A growl escaped me at that, because I’d stay like this forever if it meant never experiencing my illness again.

The man frowned, then sighed before he crouched down in front of me. As he did, I eyed him all over and recognized the expensive cut of his clothes, the fineness of his boots—clothes he felt comfortable storing in some hole in the forest floor.

He had money.

A lot of it.

I recognized that because, conversely, I had none.

Still, it wasn’t his fault that I made a pauper look rich. So instead, I just enjoyed the pull and play of the denim covering his legs as it bunched at his groin.

I totally looked.

Shoot me.

“I think we need to start things off the right way. I’m Eli.” He reached over like he was going to take my paw in his hand and shake it. Well, that’s what I thought at first, except instead, he fondled my ears, tickling them in a way that had my tongue wanting to do something weird.

In fact, beyond weird.

I couldn’t stop it from dropping out of the side of my mouth, and I couldn’t stop the keening sound I made as he scratched a little harder.

A laugh escaped him, but it wasn’t mean, and truth be told, I was glad to hear it. He looked so sad, and I wanted to take that sadness away so badly. It was almost as though I could feel his sadness deep inside me.

Huh.

Now that I thought about it, there was no pain in my body, but there was a bizarre feeling. A kind of energy. It didn’t belong to me, but I sensed that it didn’t belong to the wolf either.

What it was, I had no idea, but I jerked back to the present when I realized Eli was talking and I wasn’t listening.

Shit!

“—this is my pack, and I’m the alpha. I know you must be scared, but there’s no need to be. Whoever did this to you will be caught and punished but, in the interim, you are a part of my people now, and I will not only keep you safe, but I’ll also do everything in my power to ease this…” He winced. “I want to say transition, but I can’t even imagine what you’re going through. How scared and confused you must be.

“The choice was taken from you by someone who had no right to make the decision to do what they did. I can only apologize for them and—”

Wait, was this guy for real?

He was apologizing for something he hadn’t done, when he was the only person trying to help me? To guide me through this transition, as he’d called it?

Because words were literally beyond me, I stepped closer to him on legs that were still shaky, because I wasn’t used to walking on four of them, and butted my head against his chest. It wasn’t much comfort, but it was the most I was capable of at that moment.

I didn’t imagine he’d want me to lick his nose, that was for sure!

Eli’s smile deepened, making the tiny lines at the side of his eyes crease. The sight made me happy, and I yipped and bounced slightly on my toes, which was the wrong thing to do. Like I’d reared up instead of just jumping slightly, I toppled to my side like I’d fallen off a pogo stick.

His laughter, when it came, was just as gentle as his smile. I felt no humiliation or mortification at his amusement. Sure, it was at my expense, but it was different. And with my past? I knew the difference.

Eli crouched down, placed one knee on the loamy ground to support himself, then reached over and helped me stand. When his hands moved over my body, it felt good, which was somehow stranger than anything that had happened to me today.

I’d woken up as a wolf, but the weirdest thing was that I appreciated this stranger touching the wolf’s body.

I knew that sounded odd, and though it assuredly was, there was just something right about his touch. Like I knew him, knew his touch, even though I definitely didn’t. I’d never seen the guy before in my life, and if he was from this area, then that made sense. I’d never been to Washington before, never traveled this far northwest. My family was based in the South, and the carnival I’d hooked up with three months ago had been traveling down from Canada into the States. So, even though there was no way I could have known the man, my body disagreed.

“You need to take it slowly,” the guy cautioned. “Normally, you’d be asleep for a long time, until your body was ready to deal with this. I’m not sure why you’re not resting,” he said again, like he was looking for answers, but I couldn’t give them to him.

He looked, I realized, puzzled. More than that, he appeared genuinely concerned.

Why?

Because he felt the link between us? Or was he just a decent man?

I’d known decent men before, knew how they could be like gentlemen, knew that they could have big hearts and warm souls. I felt that in this man. Felt it and, as I stared at him, I saw that even in this form, I could see his aura.

There were greens and blues fading into one another, merging like they were two different rivers flowing into the one source. I felt his ambition, saw his desire to strive for more, but I also saw his goodness, saw that he cared.

It was when I saw the overshadowing gray that I recognized he was in pain. Hurting from something. The notion had me shuffling forward, carefully because I was still wobbly on my feet, until I could push my snout into his chest.

He laughed softly, but he didn’t push me away. If anything, he let me lick the underside of his jaw and allowed me to stand so close that it was kind of awkward. For a second, both of us just enjoyed the moment, enjoyed the strangest, weirdest moment of my life, then I felt it.

More pain.

A mass kind of darkness that made me whine a little.

It didn’t come from him. It was too large. Too—

My whine deepened.

Hundreds of people’s pain.

It wasn’t physical. Exactly like this man’s. It was emotional.

Loss.

Only the loss of someone beloved could cause this amount of pain. It had to be grief.

And though I was strongly empathetic, not as much as my sister had been, but strong enough, why did I feel it in so many people? Normally, I could pick up on the emotions of those around me. Nothing more, nothing less. But this, now, numbered in the several hundred. It was weird and made me feel kind of hollow. Like there was no room deep inside me for anything other than these feelings.