Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
AARETH
Aareth sat on his rear haunches, looking at the impossible woman in front of him. Fear, wonder, apprehension, dread, and a multitude of other feelings cascaded through his soul as he watched the woman he’d spent a lifetime loving appear in front of him.
Brenda had shorter hair now, her body was toned like a warrior’s, and her eyes were a bit clouded, but there was no denying it was her. It was his Brenda. The same woman he had held in his arms when she died, the same woman he had dreamed about for what seemed every night since her death.
Brenda exited the manor, making her way toward him slowly, not like she was frightened by his appearance, but like she was trying to remember something before she arrived in front of him.
She was wearing boots with black pants and a black tank top. The tattoo on her wrist that matched the same one over Aareth’s heart showed clearly—ancient warrior helmets binding them to one another.
More than anything Aareth wanted to run to her. He wanted to hug and kiss her. It was all he could do to manage to stay put. To not run to the love of his life whom he had found and lost and found again was a torture all on its own.
“I know you.” Brenda took the last step toward Aareth, placing herself directly in front of the beast he had become. Her words were slow as if she were fighting a mental battle to pull them from her life long lost. “How do I know you?”
She looked deep into his eyes.
Something was happening to Aareth, something that would be beyond his understanding for a long time to come.
The presence of the wolf inside of him, the one that was a part of him now as much as the human side of him had ever been, was receding.
It was leaving now, not because it had been defeated, but because it understood it was not needed.
Brenda reached forward with the palm that was inked with the tattoo and placed a cold hand on the spot over Aareth’s heart that held his own tattoo.
At once, the internal change took on a physical form.
Dark fur fell away from Aareth’s skin. His muzzle receded, along with his paws and claws.
Dark brown skin rippled across his naked body as he changed back into the form he had known since birth.
In the space of a few seconds, Aareth stood as a man in front of his wife, as naked as the day he was born.
Brenda slowly took back her hand, still not showing any sign of recollection, but instead the beginning of understanding.
“Brenda.” Aareth spoke the word as if learning to speak English for the first time. “Brenda, it’s me, it’s Aareth. Do you remember me?”
“My name is Ashley. Ashley Brookhaven,” Brenda said, shaking her head, trying to discern fact from fiction. “I don’t understand what’s happening to me or to you.”
For the first time, Aareth felt panic. What if she couldn’t remember him? What if whatever it was that had been done to her had completely wiped away the person she had been, along with all of their memories together?
“No.” Aareth grabbed her hands into his own. “Your name is Brenda Emerson. You’re my wife. You were—you were killed and now somehow, someone brought you back.”
“I’m sorry.” Brenda ripped her hands from Aareth’s own. “I don’t remember you.”
Grief only comparable to the sorrow he felt when Brenda had first died washed over Aareth’s naked body. What if she could never remember who she had been before?
“We’ll figure this out.” Aareth looked at the black fur piled all around him, the only physical representation that remained to prove his time as a monster had been fact and not fiction. “We’ll figure out what’s happened to you and what’s happening to me. We have time now.”
Brenda’s eyes were vacant. She nodded, but there was no real commitment in her face.