Chapter 11 - Elias
At first, I didn’t know what had woken me up. Then, I felt an overwhelming panic seeming to cloud everything else, nearly drowning out my thoughts.
Except I could tell the panic wasn’t my own. It was Emma’s.
Panic mixed with confusion and desperation. Something had happened.
I sprang out of bed, barely taking the time to throw on pants as I hurried out the door. I heard soft voices coming from the bathroom, along with what sounded like pained whimpers.
I knocked on the door. “Emma? What’s wrong?”
A long pause. I half-expected her to tell me to leave. However, a moment later, the door swung open. Emma’s panicked face greeted me.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said, her voice strained. “Grace is…” She trailed off, turning to look behind her, expression still filled with worry and concern. Behind her, I saw Grace hunched over in the water, her knees curled against her chest as she cried and whimpered.
“She’s started pre-transformation,” I said.
Emma nodded. “After you left to fight the wraith. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to have to worry about it, and I thought it was over for the night. But then a couple of hours ago, she woke up and said it hurt even more.”
That explained why Emma had seemed so preoccupied. Before I could ask any other questions, she started babbling again.
“I’ve never done this,” she said. “I have no idea what to do or how to help her. All I can do is keep the water hot, and I think that’s working a bit, but…
” She trailed off again, swallowing as she glanced behind her at the tub.
I could still sense the raw panic radiating through the mating bond.
All I wanted in that moment was to soothe that anxiety.
Without realizing I was doing it, I placed my hands on her shoulders. “It’s okay,” I said. “I can help.”
She looked up at me with wide, frightened eyes that flickered with hope at the words. “She’s in so much pain,” she muttered, glancing back over her shoulder at her daughter. “I didn’t realize it was this bad.”
I gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze, my thumbs tracing along the line of her collarbone.
“It’ll be okay,” I muttered to her. “I can help her, if you’ll let me.”
“You can make it stop hurting?” Emma asked.
Behind her, there was a soft, wolf-like whimper.
“No,” I said, not bothering to beat around the bush with that subject. “I can’t make it stop hurting. It’s going to be an unpleasant night for her. But at the very least, I can help sort of coach her through it, if that makes sense.”
Swallowing, she glanced over her shoulder at Grace. I watched her features contorting in guilt and motherly love. Gently, I took her chin in my hand and tilted her head so she looked up at me.
“It’s going to be okay,” I promised her for the third time.
I stepped past her. Emma sat hunched over in the water. I crouched next to the tub, fingers on the rim. Hot water splashed across my fingers.
“Hey, Grace,” I said, keeping my voice low. “How are you holding up?”
She sniffed, drawing her knees into her chest. “What’s going on?” she asked.
Emma came to sit next to me. The fingers of one hand dipped into the water.
The other rested on the lip of the bathtub.
Anxiety still rolled off her in waves, and my wolf paced anxiously, not liking that his mate was stressed or that his mate’s cub was in pain.
Without thinking, without realizing I was doing it, only that I wanted to give Emma some sort of comfort, I reached out and wrapped my fingers around Emma’s hand, squeezing gently.
I might have imagined the sharp, surprised intake of breath, but I didn’t pay much attention to it as I focused on Grace.
“So, you know how some of us can shift into great big wolves?” I asked, keeping my voice low and, I hoped, soothing.
How the hell was I supposed to handle this?
I’d never guided a kid through these pre-transformation pains.
I remembered my own, and I tried to remember what my parents had done for me.
“Well, you’re one of the people who’s going to be able to do that.
Right now, you’re in the early stages that always happen before you shift for the first time. Think of them as growing pains.”
Just way worse, I didn’t add. I could see her features contorting in pain, and I remembered those unpleasant sensations, like my bones didn’t fit right in my body.
“It hurts,” she groaned.
“I know it hurts,” I said. “This is the worst time. As you get older, it stops hurting once your body gets used to the changes. And I know you’re tough. Get through tonight, and it’s all downhill from here.”
Steam rose from the water. Not boiling hot, not tepid—a perfect heat. I could still sense Emma’s worry and anxiety rippling off her. I squeezed her hand as my thumb started making lazy circles on the back of her hand. Eventually, I heard her heartbeat slowing, her breath growing even again.
“How long?” Grace asked.
“Not much longer,” I said. “These early aches are just trying to get your body ready for shifting.”
And normally, you’re three or four years older and can understand better what’s going on, I thought, again biting back the words. None of them would help Grace, though.
Again, I searched back, trying to recall my own experience. “I want you to do something that you’re probably trying to resist without realizing it,” I said. “I want you to listen to your wolf.”
Grace peeked one eye open, the bright blue showing confusion. “Why?” she asked.
“One of the reasons the early transformations are so painful is because you instinctively resist your wolf at the beginning,” I said. “Your human body doesn’t yet get that it’s a part of you. Have you felt your wolf yet?”
Emma nodded. “Last year.”
“Most kids get several years to get used to their wolf before they start shifting, and even if they aren’t ready for those first transformations.
Your wolf is a strong part of you, and she’s going to want to come out.
Your human body and brain are resisting on instinct.
Until your wolf and your human part are able to work in harmony, that resistance is going to make shifting a lot harder.
So I want you to listen to your wolf. I know you probably don’t have a whole lot of practice with it yet, but it’ll help with some of the pain. ”
Grace bit her lip, sniffling. Water sloshed around her as she tried to get comfortable. Hot water lapped against my fingers as it rose up the side of the tub. I watched as her face scrunched. Not in pain, this time, but in concentration. Her chest rose and fell, whimpers still escaping her mouth.
“Relax,” I said. “I know that isn’t easy to do right now, but the more you relax, the less it’s going to hurt.”
Hesitating, she peeked one eye open. “How do I talk to my wolf?” she asked.
I cracked a grin. At this point, that was instinctive. He was as integral a part of me as my heart or lungs.
To my surprise, it was Emma who answered. “Search inside. She’ll be in your subconscious, but she’ll be wanting to talk to you. She’ll make herself known once you start looking.”
I blinked, momentarily distracted as I looked at Emma. She raised one amused eyebrow, and the expression drove me wild. Something about the sassy streak that had developed in her only drew me to her rather than infuriating me.
“I may not be able to shift, but that doesn’t mean I can’t reach my own wolf,” she said, as if reading my thoughts.
“Right,” I said, then turned back to Grace. “So, go looking for her.”
Grace’s face screwed in concentration, then relaxed, her eyes closed. Her body loosened a little, and she hunched over a little less.
“Okay, now I need you to take several deep breaths,” I said.
Grace listened. Her body eased more.
“Better?” I asked, and Grace nodded. “Good. Now talk to your wolf.”
“She says she senses bad things coming,” Grace muttered. “She says it’s getting worse. That’s why she wants to come out.”
Gritting my teeth, I didn’t glance over at Emma, even as I could sense her stiffen behind me, could feel her shock and worry through the bond.
“Tell her we know about the danger, and we’re going to fix it,” I said.
Grace’s body loosened further, and she opened her eyes. “It still hurts,” she said. “But not as bad.”
Emma let out a relieved breath behind me, then she came to crouch next to me. Her finger touched the water.
“It’ll pass, sweetie,” Emma said as the water steamed. “For now, just relax a bit.”
***
The pain came and went for at least another hour. It was after 2 a.m. before the aches subsided enough for Grace to pass out from exhaustion. Emma bundled her up and carried her to bed before coming back out to speak with me, giant bags beneath her eyes.
“She’s asleep,” she said.
“Good,” I replied. “When she wakes up, it should be back to normal. Are you all right?”
“Shaken up,” she admitted, hugging herself. “I didn’t know what to do. But you did.”
“You did great,” I said. “I just helped a bit.”
Emma hesitated. A moment later, she flung her arms around me, holding me tight.
“Thank you,” she said.
I felt the gratitude through the mating bond, her relief, and the ebbing panic that still lingered in the back of my mind. I wished I could take it away from her.
“It wasn’t just me,” I said, raising an eyebrow as I studied her. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I didn’t think you would be able to describe how to talk to your wolf that easily.” At her weary look, I held up my hands. “I was impressed. That’s all. I thought it was admirable.”
Something flickered in her gaze, but her shoulders loosened.
“Well, when you aren’t able to shift, but you still have a wolf, you learn how to communicate with them,” she said.
“You sort of have to, because at times, they don’t understand why they can’t come out.
Honestly, you have to be in tune with them at all times, just to stop that constant need to shift and run through the desert from driving you mad. ”
My fingers twitched as I looked away, then back to her. “I never thought about it that way before,” I admitted, looking her up and down, studying my mate in a different light.
Her lip twitched upward in that sassy way once more. “You males who can shift rarely do,” she teased. Her eyes sparkled, and though there was admonishment in her eyes, there was also a hint of playfulness.
I stepped forward, hesitating just a moment before reaching out and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. My fingers trailed down the side of her cheek. It might have been my imagination, but I thought she might have leaned into my touch.
“Well, then,” I murmured, fully aware of how close I was to her, the way her breath hitched. Her scent wrapped around me, driving me insane, and it took all my self-control not to pull her toward me, to press her mouth to mine. “It seems I have more to apologize for than I realized.”
It was all I could do not to close those final few inches and press my mouth to hers. I forced myself to hold back, instead focusing on another thing I had found strange.
“There was one more thing,” I said.
“What?”
“The water,” I said.
“What about it?” She said the words casually, but something that might have been alarm flickered through her gaze.
“Nothing, really.” I kept my eyes locked on her, gauging her reaction. “But I noticed the water never seemed to go cold. We were in there, what, for an hour? Steam was still rising when we left.”
This time, alarm did spread across her face. I frowned, tilting my head as I looked her up and down, unease creeping up my spine.
“It’s not dangerous,” she babbled. “I was just trying to help with the pain.”
Understanding dawned. “You did something to the water,” I said.
Her eyes had grown as wide as saucers. I didn’t need to sense her worry through the mating bond to know she was terrified of how I might react to whatever she had done.
“It’s nothing big,” she said hastily. “I don’t know where they came from or anything like that. They’re not dangerous, I swear.”
“Magic?” I blurted. “You have magic?”
The words spun around in my head. I managed not to recoil, but I couldn’t hide the shock on my face.
Witches weren’t exactly beloved by wolves.
The fact that my mate, the pack luna, who had been determined by fate to be a witch, wasn’t going to do anything to endear her to the town that had already distrusted her.
Emma’s face contorted as she wrapped her arms around her stomach. “Hardly,” she mumbled. “I can fiddle with water. Make it hot, and maybe make a tiny wave in a tub, but that’s about it.” She gave a self-deprecatory smirk. “I’m almost as bad a witch as I am a wolf.”
I opened my mouth, realized I had no idea how to respond to that, then closed it. After another moment of consideration, I said, “I don’t think you’re being fair to yourself there.”
Tilting her head, she blinked, considering me. “That’s not exactly the reaction I expected,” she finally said.
“I told you I’d make you feel welcomed,” I said. “And I don’t have the same prejudice against witches as some of the others in the pack. But you might want to keep your powers to yourself.”
“You don’t need to tell me twice there,” she quipped.
I reached out and gave Emma’s arm a gentle squeeze, my hand lingering after, unwilling to let her go.
“I’ll let you get some rest,” I said. “It’s been a rough night.” My arm finally fell to my side as I turned to leave.
“Wait.”
Emma’s voice stopped me mid-step. When I turned, I saw her bouncing anxiously from foot to foot as she chewed the inside of her lip, either debating something or steeling herself. After a moment, she took a deep breath, coming to some sort of decision, and raised her head.
“Do you want to stay with us?” she asked. “I’m sure that Grace would appreciate having you nearby if something happens again.”
I considered pointing out that the odds of Grace experiencing another pre-transformation sequence tonight were relatively slim. But one look at Emma’s expression told me that she wasn’t just asking for her daughter, even if she wouldn’t come out and say it outright.
“If you want,” I said.
Her shoulders relaxed, and I didn’t miss the short breath that escaped her lips.
“Thank you,” she muttered.