Page 63 of The Healer and the Wolf: Part One

I had just killed someone.

While I may not have struck the final blow, it wouldn’t have happened without me. In fact, I was downright instrumental to the warlock’s demise. Maybe Leo would have accomplished it on his own, maybe not. Who knew what spell Chadwicke had been summoning?

It was like the entire world had gone quiet. I knew there would be a lot of repercussions for what I had just done, but now wasn’t the time to contemplate that.

I rolled down the window. “Leo, get in the truck!”

With no hands to speak of, and probably not enough time to shift, Leo bounded over the truck and jumped into the back. At least this time he probably wouldn’t be able to smell the compost over all the blood coating him.

Finally, with both Ricky and Leo safe, along with our new ally, I peeled off toward the exit.

One brother down. Four more to go.

21

LEO

The truck slowly came to a stop, and I slithered out the back, my entire body aching and sticky. Once I was on the ground, I slowly shifted back into my human form.

It took far more effort than it should have, and panic surged through my veins. No, no, no. I couldn’t be trapped again.

Breathing deeply, I focused on calming my heartbeat, and after a few more moments of straining, I was me again.

Thank fuck.

Wow.

What a fuckingday.

It felt like I was waking up from some sort of fever dream. Was the man who had cursed my pack and stolen Ricky really dead? It was hard to remember everything that happened. All I knew was that I had been waiting patiently, biding my time and looking for the perfect opportunity to take Chadwicke out… but then he’d gotten handsy with Ven, and all thoughts of strategy had flown out the window. Everything was blood and hatred and the desire to kill anyone who might possibly hurt my family again. I was the alpha, and although I had failed to protect them before, that wouldn’t happen again.

Still... it felt so surreal.

At least until one of the truck doors flew open, and a thin, raggedy man stumbled out. I could have been blindfolded, and I would still recognize the scent that hit me square in the face.

“Ricky!” Hundreds of memories rushed through my mind all at once. The both of us betting on whether the tooth fairy was real when my first canine fell out. Us huddled in a gully under a rotten log in the woods, hiding from the man who had killed our parents and taken over our pack. When his first girlfriend had dumped him, and then when I had to break up with mine. Losses, victories, stupid little moments that meant nothing and yet everything all at the same time.

I couldn’t believe it was him.

“Leo,” he croaked.

We ran toward each other. Well,Iran, crossing the scant distance in a beat, while he staggered forward, but how we got there didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was able to embrace my beta, my righthand man, my ride-or-die, for the first time in who knew how long.

“Ricky, Ricky, Ricky.” I chanted his name over and over again, probably hugging him a bit too hard considering how frail he was. The blood covering me was getting on my beta, but I didn’t care. What was important was that he was safe, he wasfree. “It is so good to see you again.”

“You found me.” His voice was little more than a grating whisper, but I would listen to that forever because it meant he was safe. Excitement built in my chest. With Ven’s help, we would have him right as rain in no time. Really, I owed her everything. My life, and his. “I can’t believe you found me.”

“Did you think I would ever give up looking?”

I suppose that was a slightly disingenuous thing to say considering I absolutely had stopped looking when I was a wolf, but that was when I hadn’t been myself. Ever since Vanessa had broken my curse, I’d racked my brain to figure out what had happened to my pack. And while there were still massive holes in my memory, I couldn’t be more thrilled to see the man standing in front of me.

Ricky gripped me harder, and I felt wetness seeping into my shirt. He was crying, but I didn’t say a single word about it. If anyone deserved to cry today, it was definitely him. I remembered how lost, how confused I had been when I’d first regained my human form. Although he seemed to be handling the change better than I did, I had no doubt it was still pretty harrowing. Especially since he was in worse physical shape than I had been.

“How did you know where I was? And how did you break the curse? Before they took away my mind, they told you they were going to do the same to you once they made you watch all of us lose ourselves.”

“They did,” I answered.

It still hurt too much for me to really think about that fateful night. It was still so patchy and full of holes, and what I could remember was so horrifying my mind didn’t want to deal with it. I couldn’t remember how I had been defeated, only that I was.

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