Page 26 of The Broken Wolf's Redemption

“Don’t worry. They’ll know. Wolves understand each other.”

“Yes. I’ve only ever run with my parents, but that’s true.”

Briar May put her hand on Seren’s shoulder. “Is there anything else?”

Around them, women dropped to the ground and started to shift. It was the craziest thing to watch. Seren blinked several times, half feeling like she was in a dream. Most of the wolves were stark white, a few were gray or brown tinged. None were black.

“What color is Rome?” She immediately regretted whispering that out loud, but Briar May only gave her a soft look of understanding. No one knew that she wasn’t really withRome. She felt like a liar, like an intruder.

“He’s a black wolf. He never did look like any of us. I mean, he does in his features. Just not his coloring.” She sighed and put her hand over her heart. “I wish he was here. Every single day I wish he hadn’t had to leave. We all miss him so much. You know how you get used to someone being that wretched older brother who is endlessly annoying, always playing jokes on you or poking fun at you, but when they’re not there, you miss them so much because you realize that being awful was really their love language?”

It was framed as a question, but Seren didn’t have an answer. She didn’t feel like she should really be here with this pack. A run was sacred, and they were a secretive community. For them to open their doors to her meant they accepted her and Waverly as a part of them. She’d never felt more like a fraud.

She didn’t feel that she could say no. She’d truly wanted to see this and experience it, as all shifters should. Since her parents were packless, she was packless. There was almost zero chance that she’d ever be accepted into any other pack, and so she’d never tried. She’d never considered finding a mate in order to have them share their home and family and pack with her. This was another world. She was struggling in more ways than just fitting in physically. Mentally and spiritually, it was also hard.

All afternoon since she and Waverly were picked up from Brooke’s cottage, she’d thought about Rome. She’d wished a thousand times or more that he could be here on the run with them. She knew that even when she shifted and tried to give herself over to the wolf to enjoy the once in a lifetime experience, she’d be thinking of Rome. Wishing, even as the wolf, that he was with her or that she could catch sight of him in all his animal freedom and glory.

He was a bastard. He was such a fucking bastard.Being in that bed, broken and banished, was half his fault and probably half his karma, as far as putting bad energy into the world.

And still. She couldn’t stop feeling. She wanted to kick Rome in the balls and smack his smug face, make him eat his contract, and at the same time, she wanted to help him out of that bed, wrap her arms around him, fix his broken spirit, and bring him back here to his family. He needed them. All wolves needed someone. Everyone needed family. Everyone needed love.

It wasn’t her job to give it to him.

But she wanted it for him all the same.

Clearly, she needed to get a referral to a brain doctor because her head was not in the right place. Her heart was definitely not the right place. The rest of her body? Yeah, that was so wrong it bordered on hilarious.

“Seren?”

Briar May said her name again, bringing her back to the densely forested woods. The night was silent, no wolf calls yet. No bird calls or even many insects croaking. It was like the whole area stopped and stared in wonder, or fear, at what was happening around them.

“Sorry. I’m okay.”

“He’ll be alright. You both will.” Briar May’s hopeful, radiant smile broke her clean in half.

“Yeah. I’m ready now. I think.”

She stripped off the rest of her clothes as Briar May did hers and then she got down on all fours. She focused on the wave of energy that washed over her. It always felt to her like a tidal wave that was all bright energy. It prickled and burned, but when it passed, she was another being entirely.

New body. New eyes, ears, heart, lungs, brain, new feelings and instincts entirely.

She was wolf.

The night was alive in brand new ways too, transformed. She saw, heard, smelled, and felt as a wolf would. Her wolf senses were much sharper.

A white blur streaked by her, the long, thick fur brushing against her shaggier soft brown pelt. Briar May leapt ahead, turning with soft yellow eyes glowing in the night for her to catch up. Her scent was strong, animal and musky.

Seren raced after her, running until her breath was steaming in great hot puffs, even warmer than the humid summer night. She’d never known such clean, fresh air. Scented like trees and earth, like the bodies of so many other wolves. She caught sight of them flashing beside her, behind her, up ahead. And then, the first long, mournful, soulful cry.

It tore at her insides, tore at her heart. Tore at the emptiness that was always going to be a part of her, human or wolf, at never carrying a child. That long, wounded sounding cry wrenched the wounded parts of her own interior. She didn’t think about Rome as a person when she was the wolf. It was different. She felt a sense of loss and emptiness in the space around her. In the night. In the black fur that would never materialize. She ached at her own cruelty to him. She wanted to take it all back, including the way he’d turned her body into a liquid inferno. She felt the heat as the wolf, but she felt emptiness too. A wolf without a wolf. A female without a mate.

She needed to go back to the city. Her wolf knew that better than the human parts of herself. She wasn’t disoriented, but she was on the highest alert. She’d be gone by morning. She needed to be, in order to keep herself safe. She wouldn’t run. Wolves didn’t run. Distance wasn’t running. Sometimes, it was vital, or the only thing that could ensure survival.

Another cry joined in that mournful sound.

She was somewhere in the middle of a vast forest, on lands that would never be hers, running with a pack she’d never know past today. This wasn’t her home. This wasn’t her land. This wasn’t hers. Rome was never going to belong to anyone but himself. She was forever destined to be that half of an uncompleted whole.

She needed to separate herself before she broke herself.

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