Page 17 of The Healer and the Wolf: Part One

I scared the woman, yet she was still feeding me. She’d let me into her home, which she hadn’t allowed before.

Everything had changed. I didn’t know how or why, but I was in my human form again, able to do things I hadn’t in a very,verylong time.

One of those things was remembering that I could be human at all. I was a wolf for so long that there hadn’t been anything else. Now, it was like an entire deluge flooding my mind, and I slowly worked through each detail and memory. It felt a bit like being drunk, except when I paused to think about that I realized I had no idea what it meant to be drunk.

My mind was full of so many of the same jumbles. It suggested something I should know, but when I examined it, there was just… nothing.

What the hell had happened to me?

I didn’t have the foggiest idea. What I did know, though, was that my savior, my friend, wasbeautiful.

I’d been aware of it before when I was a wolf and it didn’t quite make sense, but now? Looking directly at her was difficult because she was so utterly gorgeous. Her skin was the sweetest, creamiest, golden-tinted alabaster, her cheeks as rosy as her lips. And those dark eyes of hers I’d noticed before? They were somehow even more entrancing now. Such a deep, deep brown, I thought I was staring into the earth itself. I was certain that if she stood in a sunbeam, they’d glow like honey.

Everything about her was poetry, even if I couldn’t recall what poetry was like. The curves of her body were plenty, bountiful, the kind meant for broad hands and a strong grip. She was the type I absolutely would have been attracted to back when?—

Back when…

Back whenwhat?

My head throbbed, and I shook it, belatedly realizing that my stunning savior had been asking me more questions.

Her voice was so sweet, so pleasant, with a huskiness to it that it was easy to forget the beginning of her question by the time she got to the end of it. Thankfully, she didn’t seem upset when she had to repeat things.

In fact, she was dealing with the whole situation pretty well. It was one thing to be suddenly introduced to shifters and another thing to have to deal with an amnesiac.

Because that’s what I was, wasn’t I? I couldn’t remember who I was or how I’d come to be stuck as a wolf, so I was pretty sure that was what it meant.

“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 deliciousthe 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.”

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