Page 80 of Bear Facts

“You didn’t have us then either,” Matt said. He pointed to the wolf on the bed. “She’s a Lupine, one of us. We’ll fix her.”

To Freya’s alarm, the two boys immediately swarmed up on the bed and knelt on either side of the sleeping wolf. Matt reached out a hand to stroke her side.

Freya readied herself to grab them, certain the woman would wake and strike out, but nothing happened. The wolf slept on, and Matt and Kyle glided hands gently along her fur.

“You’ll be okay, now,” Kyle assured the wolf. “Being feral is like having a bad dream. It will go away soon.”

His childish optimism touched Freya’s heart. Had she been that trusting once upon a time?

The wolf abruptly popped open her light blue eyes and jerked, snarling.

Freya started forward, but the wolf blinked, fixed her gaze on the boys, and stilled. Freya saw her deliberately control herself as they continued to pet her, the cubs not alarmed at all.

“Let Zander do this,” Shane commanded them. He reached for the cubs to lift them off the bed, but Matt and Kyle evaded him, laughing, like it was a game.

The wolf lay still through this, as though she had just enough awareness to keep her from hurting cubs.

When Zander stepped to the bed, however, the wolf came upright and sent him a warning growl. Then she saw Rae, the Sword of the Guardian glinting on her back, and the growl became a long, terrible snarl.

Shane tried once more to grab the cubs, but they twisted from him, leaping fearlessly over the wolf to hide behind her.

“You’ll be okay, wolf.” Matt told the wolf. “Zander thinks he can heal you, but you’re already fine.”

“Let me be the judge of that. Rae isn’t here to send you to the Summerland,” Zander told the feral, his tones quiet. “She’ll help me heal you. I promise.”

The wolf rose slowly and stiffly on the bed, red tinging her eyes as her fangs showed under rippling gums. Matt and Kyle, undaunted, climbed right onto her back.

“No!” Freya lunged for them. The wolf sprang at Zander at the same time, and Freya, the wolf, and the cubs went down in a tangle.

They landed on the mattress, just barely. Freya tried to shove Matt and Kyle out of harm’s way, expecting any moment to feel raking claws on her skin and teeth on her throat.

Instead, the Lupine howled and then trailed off into a series of whimpers.

“Oh, poor wolf.” Kyle pet her as the wolf fell on her side, wide-eyed and panting.

Freya lifted herself away, Shane’s strong hands helping her to her feet.

The wolf’s fur shimmered, her claws and fangs receding as her human form took the beast’s place. Kyle and Matt, in contrast, morphed to wolf, leaving their clothes empty and surprisingly whole.

The cubs cuddled into the wolf-woman’s sides as she became human, and her arms went instinctively around them.

She gazed wildly up at Freya, Shane, Rae, and Zander, but the red tinge had gone from the woman’s eyes, the primal rage she’d shown in the woods replaced by confusion.

“Oh, Goddess,” she said in a perfectly lucid voice. “What happened to me?”

“You have any idea how she got cured without me touching her?” Zander demanded of Shane after they’d emerged upstairs and into the kitchen.

Freya and Rae had remained downstairs to help the wolf woman bathe and dress. Matt and Kyle, still wolves, had ignored all commands to leave with Zander and Shane.

“No.” Shane yanked open the refrigerator and grabbed two bottles of beer, handing one to Zander. “I thought you would. One second, she’s feral and about to tear into us, the next, she’s back to sanity.”

Her name was Keira Vaughan, she’d told them. She was from a Shiftertown in northern Idaho and had only a vague idea of how she came to be running around the slopes of Mount Charleston. She wore no Collar—the scar around her neck showed it had been removed.

“Ferals don’t heal themselves.” Zander moved to the living room and threw himself onto a chair. “Ah,” he said after a sip of beer. “It’s nice to visit a houseful of bears. You have right-sized chairs.” He stretched out his booted feet and made himself at home.

They were alone up here. Nell, Brody, and Cormac must be next door arguing with Eric about what to do with the feral wolf.

Who was feral no longer. Keira now knew exactly who she was, who her pack was, and where she’d grown up, everything until the time she’d left her Shiftertown in the middle of the night. Things had gone fuzzy after that.

---