Page 55 of Eternal Light

No one to run their fingers through his hair and tell him he is good.

It breaks Rowan into a million pieces, and in the next instant, he is out cold.

The phone is ringing when Rowan comes back to himself, but it cuts off immediately afterward and stays silent. There isn’t the luxury of memory loss about how he ended up on his side in a dirty alley. He doesn’t know how long he’s been out, either, but the pain has lessened, and that place in his heart where Jay has always existed is once again pulsing with his alpha’s energy.

Thank fuck.

He must have fallen hard because his body aches all over, although he’s sure he was already sitting before he passed out. Rowan tries to sit up and reach for the phone to finally call Finn. He has to know for sure if Jay is alive—or if he’s deluding himself out of grief.

But when he reaches out, it’s not his long-fingered hand—

It’s a paw.

A large, reddish-brown paw.

Rowan looks down at it, frozen, his brain in a weird sort of disconnect.

Is he dreaming?

Has the loss of his alpha caused a psychotic break?

The phone rings again, and Rowan uses his sensitive nose to turn it over in the folds of his ripped jeans—which are lying on the ground of the alley and very much not on his body.

It’s Finn again, and it soon cuts off while Rowan just looks at it down his long snout.

Holy shit, he’s a wolf.

Nimue had been right—heisa fucking wolf. He’d thought it was hyperbole. Or history. Or a magical fairy tale…

Wait a minute…

Rowan clambers to his feet, all four of them, and checks for himself. There, attached to his doggy butt, is a wagging tail.

Why are we wagging our tail?There is decidedly nothing to be happy about, Rowan grumbles, while the wolf just keeps wagging it.

No.

He’s not doing this right now. He needs to be a person, not a wolf in the middle of downtown Clearwater. He has to find his mates, and the longer he sits on his ass here, the farther away they get.

Change us back, right the fuck now, dumbass.

Of course, nothing happens.

Why he thought the Wolf would—or could—change them back is crazy.

Now that the dumbass is free, he’s not going back without getting what he wants—and he wants Nix and Luca.

He notices that his nose is even stronger in this form. On the heels of that thought, the scents hit him from all over the alley. They force him to his belly as waves of vertigo swirl in his head.

Shit.He’s not going to be able to navigate finding Nix and Luca like this, and it’s not like he can hail a cab or order an Uber this way, either.

Mates, the wolf growls.Hurt.

Yeah, I know, but we need our alphas.

Rowan climbs to his feet again and manages to press his nose to the screen. There’s a text there from Finn:Jay in surgery for GSW. Where the fuck are you? Answer the phone.

GSW? Gunshot wound.