The Lost Wolf

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Val watched them through a film of water, eyes focusing and unfocusing but never really getting rid of that blurry effect.

She took a wobbly step forward, still getting used to her strong legs, and looked around.

She could see better than before, eyes catching on every single detail, colors more vibrant than ever. Her sense of smell had doubled, tripled even. She could smell the sweat in the room, the fear, the blood—

She shook her head.

"How are you feeling?" Daphne raised a hesitant hand.

Val tilted her head and started to take slow steps around them. She thrust her head forward and took in the smell. Daphne carefully lifted her hand to stroke her muzzle and she jumped back, sneezing. Her current form was taller than her.

Zack chuckled. "The heightened senses take a while to get used to."

She lowered her head and sniffed again, walking toward him. They smelled nice.

Daphne smelled musky, like their morning pancakes and syrup, and Zack smelled like mint, with a faint sense of lime. Turning her head, she let Damian run his fingers through the fur at the side of her head and breathed him in. Leather, she realized, with another, wood-ish smell. Like the forest.

He rubbed under her ears and she tilted her head to give him more reach, a small purr coming from her lips. Zack chuckled, mumbling something about an overgrown puppy before trailing his fingers at her sides, checking for injuries. She let them, leaning into their touch.

Then her nose caught on something else. She had a feeling Daphne had done something with her magic because the previous odor covering the gym had diminished. The sweat was ignorable but the blood came from herself. Her wounds.

Her eyes glazed over. She could faintly feel Daphne caress her jaw when an image of the lake flashed in her mind. The wolves rushing at them, jaws snapping; Robin, kneeling on the grass with blood running down her arm and — her screaming. So much screaming.

She whined, overwhelmed for a moment, then she leaped back and away from all the wandering hands. Zack frowned, and she licked her lips. She remembered how the rogues had attacked them, her friends fighting them off; she remembered the little girl when she touched Ian's sketchbook, being told she was torn apart when they'd attacked; then Sam, watching with bleary eyes as her father pranced into her home.

A snarl rose in her throat, rumbling over her chest and making her whole body shake with feral need. Her tongue licked at her teeth, lips pulling back, and suddenly the scent was too strong — everywhere. She wanted to lean her head on Daphne, smell the mint on Zack, or breathe in Damian's scent. Like the forest.

She tried to move toward them but her legs wouldn't budge, her head turned to the door as the Beta took a step forward.

He didn't have the time to say anything before she spun and ran past the double doors.

She could still smell them. Hear Damian running after her, Zack tearing into his shift, but it felt like a curtain had been dropped in front of her. She wasn't the one controlling her body, her wolf was.

She gave a small rumble, as if in answer.

She had given her everything, yielded all control to her, and yet she was surprised when her wolf chose to act on that freedom.

She'd been an idiot.

Still, Val hadn't been the one to be looking at everything through eyes that weren't her own; limbs she couldn't control. Fighting over that hold now and realizing how scary that truly was, how lonely and frustrated she must have been, she couldn't really blame her.