Page 676 of Love Bites

“Fine.” I sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

“Focus on yesterday. Everything you can remember. Try to picture it in your mind as you do.”

“Okay.” I put my thoughts to the day before.

“After the public make-out,” Sunny said.

I blushed hotly. I hadn’t meant to go back that far, but wow, it was hard to forget climbing up my man in a public eatery. “You saw that?”

“Along with half the town.”

Oh yeah. I’d forgot about the recording.

Sunny kept her eyes shut. “And while it was very exciting, it’s not going to help us find the bad guys.”

“Does this mean your gift is working?”

“It’s like I’m watching TV with an old UHF antenna, everything is grainy, and I’m only getting a partial picture, but yes, I see bits and pieces.”

“Gotcha.” I tried to only sift through the memories after entering Sunny’s Outlook. The sharp prick in my neck. Waking up in the back of a truck. The rough roads leading into the woods. Brother Wolf.

Do you need something, little sister?

Oops. I hadn’t meant to call him. He had been a major part of how I’d managed to escape.

A strange look passed over Sunny’s face. “Who is Brother Wolf?” she asked. “Does Billy Bob have a brother?”

“No,” I heard the doc say. “He is Chavvah’s spirit guardian.”

“Huh. I’ll expect a full explanation later,” she said. “But keep thinking about the Brother Wolf dude. I am getting a stronger signal when he’s in the picture.”

I couldn’t help but think about when I first started hearing his voice while kept in a cage. Brother Wolf had been a way to escape the metal bars. He’d help me escape the pain.

“Oh, honey,” Sunny said. “It was so awful for you.”

“What do you see?” Billy Bob asked.

“The cage she was kept in at the lodge.” She held up a hand to silence Billy Bob’s next question. “I can see a shadowy figure in a stretch of green pastures and blue streams. The sky is the color of sapphires, and the clouds are ridiculously fluffy and white as if giant cotton balls levitated in the air.

“He is a giant wolf. Black as night with eyes that are the color of white diamonds.” She took a deep breath and held it for a moment. “I can hear him talk to you, Chavvah. I hear him tell you that you are not alone. That you are his child.”

I wanted to cry as she spoke. I remembered that day so clearly. The hunters had broken my collarbone trying to make me turn. I almost did. Brother Wolf, even when I didn’t have a name to call him, had lent me his strength.

“Where is this place?” Sunny asked with wonder.

It is the aether, Brother Wolf said.It is the place where I exist.

“It’s the spirit world,” I told her. “It’s where my guardian lives.”

I can show you, sister. I can show you through the seer.

Yes.Without hesitation.Yes.

In the next second, I was standing in a field with Brother Wolf. I was in animal form as well now, and judging by the size of my paws, I’d appeared as the timber wolf, not the coyote. I gave my first nature a gentle apology.

I saw then what Brother Wolf saw. A curled up woman, damaged but not broken, on the ground in front of him. He could see me in the cage, but he couldn’t see the cage. He could see the result of the physical abuse on my body, but not the attackers. I understood now why he couldn’t have guided Billy Bob to my location. We were in a realm where time and place didn’t matter.

“Is this the past?”

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