Page 17 of The Healer and the Wolf, Part One

17

VANESSA

I floated up to consciousness gently in rolling waves that were happy to let me take my time—so unlike the normal rocketing to wakefulness whenever my alarm clock shrilly demanded I rise immediately for a work shift.

Slowly, I let my eyes slide open ever so slightly. Through the crack in my curtains, I saw the rain had stopped and that it was the next day. Very early, but still after the dawn, nonetheless.

I sat up equally slowly, but even with my careful and lackadaisical movements were, my muscles twinged. Oh, yeah. I was sore, but I liked it.

Apparently, I was learning all sorts of things about myself.

I glanced over my shoulder. Leo was out cold, head tilted back on the pillow, snoring lightly. Some people would be turned off by that, but I found it very cute. Domestic in a way. It was hard to believe that not all that long ago Leo had been stuck in the body of a wild animal, and I had been completely alone.

Funny how things changed.

As quietly as I could, I slipped out of bed and went to my dresser, sliding out the second drawer to grab one of the oversized T-shirts I liked to sleep in. They were surprisingly hard to find considering I was a tall, plus-sized woman, so I treasured and hoarded them. Once I was the barest requirement for decent, I went downstairs. I waited until I was in the kitchen before I began to hum, lest I accidentally wake Leo up before he was ready. I wanted him to sleep however long his body needed.

“Hey there, babies,” I cooed as I fed my cats.

Surprisingly, none of them seemed ticked at me over the fact that someone else had taken over their usual spots in my bed. Well, Mudpie was purposefully looking out the window rather than giving me her normal morning headbutts, but for her, that was a rather low-key display of chagrin. Chagrin I knew would ease with a full bowl of food.

Well, that and maybe a couple of treats.

Once my furry trio was taken care of, I went about cooking breakfast. Normally, I would just eat whatever leftovers I had from the night before, but I figured it had been ages since Leo had a full brekkie spread, so I went all out.

As all out as far as I could afford, anyway. Feeding Leo in his wolf form had wiped out of a lot of my funds and all of my frozen protein, and his human form wasn’t exactly easy on my budget, either. Still, even though I was broke, I could make a ton of great pancakes with a cheap box-mix plus added vanilla extract and brown sugar. Eggs had come down in price enough for me to fry up nearly a whole carton. Frozen sausages went on sale more often than not, too, and I still had two small boxes of them.

No bacon, sadly. I’d been spoiled by a roomie in college sharing thick-cut bacon with me before I dropped out, and now it was the only thing that would do. Unfortunately, it was insanely expensive considering the average price of most of the things on my grocery list, so that would have to wait for another time. Perhaps after my tax return?

Granted, that was a long way off, considering I’d filed as soon as I could and used it to expand the garden. Sure, while a lot of the stuff I bought was a heavy investment, it saved money in the long run since I got a lot of food out of it. Especially since grocery prices, particularly fresh produce, kept getting higher and higher.

Even without delicious bacon, though, I was pretty proud of the plethora of pancakes, eggs, sausage, and greens. Even with his crazy wolf appetite, I couldn’t imagine that Leo would still be hungry after the meal. If he was, then... well, was it possible for a wolf shifter to be on food stamps? Otherwise he was going to quite literally eat me out of house and home.

Government assistance or not, I plated up everything on two of the largest platters I had, then hunted through my cabinets until I found the serving tray I’d bought when I first moved in, hoping to have multiple guests for tea and garden hangouts. While that had never panned out, I was certainly glad to have it now.

From there, I got the rest of the plates, utensils, and accoutrements that we needed, even grabbing the expensive maple syrup I only used on the most special occasions. It was from upstate New York and incredibly expensive compared to the cheap artificial syrup, but it was worth it.

Once I was sure I had everything we could possibly need, I headed upstairs. It wasn’t exactly a smooth journey. The plates I had stacked on the tray rattled slightly with each step up the stairs, but I figured if I accidentally woke Leo, he couldn’t be mad for too long considering I was bringing him food. I also took special care to watch out for my pets. The last thing I wanted to do was to trip on one of them and send everything in my arms spilling onto the floor. While I liked to think my trio were remarkably well behaved, sometimes cats were just going to cat, and it was better to be cautious than to pay the price for hubris.

Thankfully, I made it up to my room with the tray intact. I said a silent thank you to myself for leaving the door cracked enough so I could push it open with my foot rather than trying for the doorknob. I was pretty sure if I tried to pull that maneuver off, the tray and all the food would be on the floor. That would be a true tragedy.

“Mmph?” Leo murmured, face half-buried in the pillow. In my absence, he had rolled over to find me, his arm stretched across the space where I’d slept. He had his nose buried in my pillow. Such a simple little thing, but it made my stomach flip. Had he missed my presence so much that his unconscious body had tried to seek it out? That made my heart soar.

“Hey there,” I said softly, just in case he wasn’t actually ready to wake up yet. “I got some food if you’re hungry.”

Normally, I was very much a no-food-in-the-bedroom girly, if only because it was so easy for me to rot there when I was depressed and build up huge piles of gross garbage, but there were exceptions for everything, and this definitely seemed like an appropriate time to make one.

“Hmm?” Leo said a bit more clearly, rolling over and cracking his eyes open. It was quite amusing to watch them go from bleary and half-lidded to wide open the moment he realized exactly what I was holding.

“Is that what I think it is?”

Goodness, his voice had that early-morning, low rumble that some people had right when they woke up, and it made my toes curl in the slippers I had put on while cooking—fuzzy things I only wore because my kitchen floor was freezing.

“Well, it is if you think it’s a full breakfast spread. I figured we could have a lazy day today and enjoy ourselves. I don’t have work, and I’m sure the storm flooded the garden enough that we’ll need the sun to be out for a bit longer before any part of it is workable.” I couldn’t fight the blush that crept up my neck, but I kept speaking anyway. “Besides, I figured we’d kinda, sorta worked up an appetite, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to load up on carbs right now.”

Leo sent me a slanted grin and tilted his head to the side. It should have looked goofy, but with the way his eyes roved up and down my body, I couldn’t help but feel the temptation to try for round two. “I do think my appetite is greater than ever.”

Fuck, this man was going to be the death of me. Eventually, I would either vaporize or sublimate in an instant, and it would be all Leo’s fault. At least I would die smiling.

Probably horny, too.

“Hey, keep it in your pants,” I teased, trying to remind myself that just because we’d slept together once didn’t mean Leo wanted to build something more. Besides, we really should eat something before we got up to anymore athletic shenanigans. “I didn’t cook all of this for it to go cold.”

“I’m not wearing any pants,” Leo reminded me with a wicked grin.

I sputtered something, torn between wanting to keep to my nice gesture of bringing him food and very much wanting to see if a second go-around could be just as fun, when a horrifying and hilarious gurgling sound issued from his middle.

I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing at the sitcom-level of timing. Leo joined in, the top of those strong cheekbones flushing ever so slightly. I had to admit, seeing him blush for once was quite endearing and made me feel… closer to him? That probably didn’t make sense, but it felt like the right sentiment.

“Okay, maybe you’re right. We should probably get some food in us.”

“I’m glad you came to your senses,” I said primly, carefully placing the platter in the middle of the bed before I sat beside him.

It was somewhat precarious, and we probably would have an easier time eating in the kitchen downstairs, but sometimes it was okay for things to be a little inconvenient, especially since I wanted to be close to Leo at the moment.

Normally, I would be a bit anxious about eating next to someone I was still getting to know—especially in a rather intimate setting and in a state of undress—but with Leo it felt so natural. After last night, with the way he’d looked at my body, touched me, tasted me, it was hard to believe he’d be put off by me fueling the very body he’d enjoyed.

“This is incredible,” he said, grabbing one of the plates and loading it up. He put three pancakes, two eggs, and three small sausage patties on it. That seemed a conservative amount considering how much I’d seen him eat before, but before I could urge him to eat more, he handed the plate over to me.

“Is this enough? Or would you like more?” There was that faint blush again, making me want to lean forward and brush my lips against it. “I have to admit, I don’t really know how much humans eat.”

“You made this plate for me?” I murmured, well and truly surprised.

Maybe it was a stupid thing to get caught up with, since it wasn’t particularly difficult to put some pancakes on a plate, but I had heard with my own ears just how hungry Leo was, yet his first thought had been to feed me. The non-shifter. The one who needed way less food than he did.

“Of course.” Then uncertainty crossed his features. “I didn’t mean to offend you if this is rude to do, but as an alpha, it’s my job to look after my pack.”

“It’s not rude at all,” I said, willing my heart to slow down before he heard it. I didn’t want him to think I was a dork who got emotional over breakfast. Still, I couldn’t even remember the last time someone had put me ahead of themselves. It was... nice.

The buildup of everything inside my chest was a bit too much, though, so I desperately sought for a way to change the topic of conversation. That was when my mind latched on to the last part of what he’d said.

His pack.

While I obviously didn’t know much about shifters, I didn’t need an introductory pamphlet to know how important a pack was to a wolf. Leo had basically just called me his family, called me one of the most important people to him, and he said it like it was a casual fact no one could doubt.

No one had ever treated me that way, except perhaps my mother. Even my own aunt had made it clear she only looked after me out of obligation to her dead sister. I was a relative, but I was never family.

Yet here Leo was, calling me pack like it was the most normal thing in the world.

“Hey, are you all right? I can smell you getting stressed.”

Holy shit, I was not about to cry into my breakfast. That would be mortifying. Instead, I grabbed onto the opening that Leo had unknowingly presented.

“Where do you think your pack is?”

It was blunt and sudden. Leo blinked at me in surprise, but thankfully, he didn’t question it.

“I’m not sure,” he admitted as he loaded up his own plate.

Satisfaction rolled through me as he put about eight pancakes on his plate, five eggs, and nearly a dozen sausage patties. The wolf needed his protein. “I can’t remember exactly, but I’m sure they’re also cursed. I think I was trying to protect them, but I couldn’t. As far as I know, they could all be dead or scattered across the continent, locked in their animal bodies.”

Although I could tell that he was trying to keep his tone casual, I heard the heartbreak beneath it. Damn it, in my efforts to change the conversation for my own sake, I had inadvertently soured the mood. I hadn’t meant to be selfish, and yet...

That was all right. I could still fix it. It wasn’t irreparably lost. I just needed to change it again, although perhaps this time a bit more gently.

“I mean, your curse broke, so maybe theirs did too.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because none of them are here,” he answered as he poured a generous amount of the syrup over the pancakes. Normally I’d be way more conservative since it was so damn expensive it was, but Leo deserved a little decadence after everything he’d been through. Also, he needed the calories.

“I don’t follow.”

“In order for you to break their curse, I think you’d have to interact with them. I suppose there’s a small chance that somehow you broke the entire thing when you broke mine, but I should be able to sense that. When I reach out for my pack, there’s just nothing there. When I dream of them, their faces are distorted, like something’s trying to keep them from me.”

As horrifying as that was, I couldn’t help but get stuck on one particular part of it.

“Wait, you think I broke your curse?” I asked as Leo stuffed his mouth with a truly impressive forkful of syrupy and buttery pancakes. I waited for him to chew and swallow, but the entire time he was looking at me like I was strange for questioning that.

“Of course, you did. I would have thought that much was obvious.”

“Obvious, how?”

“Because I was completely consumed by the curse until I met you. It wasn’t until you saved my life that day that I even began to inch toward being myself again. And the more I hung around you, the easier it was to remember bits and pieces of who I was. Honestly, before that day in the woods, I wasn’t even capable of actual thought. It was all animal instinct. You changed that.”

While that was an incredibly sweet thing to say and it made my stomach swoop again, it couldn’t be true. “Leo, I’m human. How could I possibly have broken the curse?”

“I don’t know. I’m not really magically inclined.” What a wild thing for a werewolf to say. I knew what he meant, but still. “Maybe true love’s kiss?”

“ True love’s kiss?” I tried not to sound absolutely shocked and failed entirely. Was that really even a thing? Any other time, I would have said it was the stuff of fairy tales, but it was pretty hard to definitively declare that when I was staring at a man who could transform into a wolf at will.

“I mean, it would make sense. You kissed my nose, and the next thing I knew, I had my human form again.”

Oh shit, that was kind of how it had happened, wasn’t it? I’d been so startled and terrified at the time that my brain hadn’t exactly computed the order of events like that. But it was true. Thinking back, I remembered leaning toward his wolf head—something that was rather inadvisable to do with a wild animal—and giving him a gentle little peck like I would with my cats.

Still, what he was saying just couldn’t be true. “How can it be true love’s kiss when I didn’t even know you?”

Leo tilted his head again, although this time it was less adorable and more troubled. “Were we not friends?”

I didn’t expect the hurt in his voice, and my heart squeezed. Goodness, I was really fucking things up without even trying. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t have any close friends.

“Yes. I mean, I did feel like we had some sort of connection, even if it didn’t make sense. I definitely enjoyed your company and looked forward to coming home and talking to you, even if I didn’t know you understood.”

“Honestly, I didn’t understand a lot of it, but what I did told me you were a safe person. And something about you—actually, many things about you—made some part of me want to find all the pieces of myself I had lost.”

“I… I did all that?”

Man, those pesky emotions and tears pricking at the corner of my eyes had come back in full force. I’d spent so long living at the periphery of so many people’s lives, never being important, never being of any significance, but the way Leo talked about me made me sound so incredibly important to him. It was overwhelming in the best possible way. I felt so seen, even if it was intimidating—no, scratch that, terrifying— to be so visible to someone.

“Of course, you did,” Leo said, smiling ever so softly. The hurt was gone from his voice, but not the vulnerability. I actually felt as though I could ask him anything and he would tell me the truth without a doubt. “Even if you didn’t realize it.”

Not for the first time, I didn’t know what to say to Leo, so I stuffed a sausage patty into my mouth and made an affirmative sound. Leo chuckled, then busied himself with his own food.

Fortunately, my little trio decided to come run interference. They all knew they weren’t allowed to beg directly from my plate or get on eating surfaces when humans—or kind of humans—were using them, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t lower themselves to staring at us from their various perches around the room.

“Am I allowed to give them anything?” Leo asked.

“Protein and egg yolk only, but you need to throw it on the floor. Sometimes I’ll let my cats smell something from my plate if it’s something new and they’re curious, but they are not allowed to eat directly from it.”

“Interesting. Why is that?”

“I loved cats, but when I was growing up and went to other people’s houses, too many of them had cats who would be a real hassle while eating. Not only is it really annoying for the people who visit, but also it’s really unhealthy for the cats themselves. People don’t realize how much being overweight can affect a feline. Some are meant to be bigger than others, like Goober, or Russian Blues, but most aren’t.”

“Ah, I see. You really care about them don’t you?”

“Of course, I do. They’re my pack.” I didn’t go into the fact that cats really seemed to understand me. A lot of people tended to dislike felines because they didn’t understand the language and social rules, especially when they tried to use dog logic on cats. That was like trying to teach a Mandarin speaker how to drive a car for the first time while speaking Arabic. Yeah, maybe it was a little dramatic for me to feel camaraderie with my pets, but it was what it was.

“They’re lucky to have such a good alpha,” Leo said with another soft smile before inhaling his last pancake. “You know, Ricky would absolutely love your cooking.”

“Ricky? Who’s that?”

It was the first name Leo had mentioned to me. Were more memories returning? That was wonderful. It was so good to see the curse have less and less of a grip on him.

But then a voice in the back of my head, soft and insidious, started whispering. What would happen once he remembered everyone who had been left behind? He was a wolf, so of course he would want to be with them. And once he had his pack back, he wouldn’t need me anymore .

Whoa, whoa, I’m getting way too ahead of myself.

I buried those thoughts into the deepest part of my mind and focused on what Leo was saying.

“I… I’m pretty sure he’s my beta.”

“Your beta?” I questioned.

“My righthand man.”

I frowned. “Are you saying shifters have a pack structure like the one by Dr. Mech that’s been debunked for years?” Not everyone knew it, but the man’s premise had been flawed from the start. He had theorized that wolf packs were led by an alpha male and female who fought for that position of dominance along with a whole bunch of other erroneous things.

It wasn’t his fault, though; he hadn’t known his research would be completely skewed by studying captive wolves. Also, it had been many decades ago. Science and animal knowledge had improved by leaps and bounds since then, especially with the technological advances. In fact, I remembered Dr. Mech had released a paper refuting his old book a few years ago, but unfortunately, most people never really wanted to learn anything past the basic concepts they were taught in school.

“I’m not familiar with the name, but I know what you’re talking about. Shifter wolf packs do follow a hierarchy of alpha and beta. In a perfect world, the alpha would be either a matriarch or patriarch of the pack—gender doesn’t really matter—and everyone within the pack would be either related to or adopted by them by blood or by oath. The beta also can be of any gender and is generally the alpha’s total support. Kind of like a vice president. Occasionally, there’s romantic entanglements between alpha and beta pairs, but more often than not it’s simply a deep, platonic bond that existed even before either part of the pair expressed their designation.”

“Designation?”

“That’s what we call alpha or beta status.”

“So, it’s a genetic thing?”

I greatly appreciated that Leo never seemed annoyed when I peppered him with questions, because I certainly had a lot.

“Dunno. Might be. Might be magic. It’s hard to say with the whole shifter thing.”

Yeah, that did make sense. “You mentioned in a perfect world that the alpha is related to everyone in their pack either by blood or oath.”

“I did.”

“Well... We don’t live in a perfect world.”

He let out the tiniest huff of a laugh, dry but not entirely bitter. “That is certainly an understatement.”

“So, what happens when things are imperfect?” I had a feeling I was brushing up against a topic Leo didn’t really want to speak about, and if he told me he didn’t, I would stop. But I couldn’t help my natural curiosity. Leo was a walking mystery made flesh, and I wanted to learn so much about him.

“Lots of different things. Sometimes awful things happen. We shifters heal fairly well, but sometimes sickness will wipe out an entire family line. Infertility can stop a bloodline in its tracks, especially if they’re purists who don’t want to adopt.”

I wrinkled my nose at that. It figured that even in magical societies there were still douchebags who cared so much about a person’s biology, they’d rather have their family line end than adopt. “And sometimes, there are coups.”

“Coups?” Now, there was a loaded word if I ever heard one.

“Yeah. Some alphas aren’t good people. They try to take over other packs. Occasionally, this is done diplomatically between two groups with dwindling numbers or resources, but some alphas try to force it.”

“Why would someone want to do that?”

“Power. Greed. Having a large pack is a status symbol. It means you’re strong and a good warrior, that you can provide for a lot of shifters, which is becoming more difficult to do, what with humans expanding and improving their tech.”

Part of me whispered that I should drop it, especially with the serious tone in his voice, but I kept going. “Is that what happened with yours?”

“I think so. It’s not very clear. I remember being very young and having to fight, but I can’t remember who or the circumstances.”

What an incredibly heavy burden. I gently squeezed Leo’s shoulder, hoping he’d take some comfort from it.

“I’m sure you’ll remember soon enough.”

“I am sure as well. The question is, do I want those memories back?”

Phew, now, that was a heavy idea and, honestly, I couldn’t answer it for Leo. Try as I might to empathize, I hadn’t been and hopefully would never be in his kind of situation. It was an impossible and complex sort of issue that no doubt was pretty traumatizing.

“If they’re of Ricky and other people you love, I’m sure that getting them back will be a net positive.”

“You’re right,” he said with a nod. “I do wish I knew where Ricky was, because I’m pretty sure you could find a way to break his curse, too.”

I didn’t want to rehash the argument that I hadn’t been the one to break his own curse, so instead I just nodded. “Maybe I can help.”

“Help, how?”

“Well, I imagine you’re not the best with a computer, and I’m pretty handy with ye ol’ search engine, so maybe I could find some clues.”

Leo’s eyes widened. “Really? You would do that for me?”

“Of course! Just tell me all of the details you can remember. I’ll type it into the notepad on my phone and then see what I can dig up. It’s a long shot, but there’s no harm in trying.”

Leo let out a breath that was something between a laugh and a wistful sigh. “You really are incredible, you know that?”

I felt myself flush from head to foot. “It’s no big deal.”

“It is to me.”

Yet again, I couldn’t quite bear the intensity in his gaze, so I opened the notepad on my phone before looking expectantly to my shifter friend. “Lay it on me.”

“I don’t remember much,” he started, graciously giving me another reprieve. “Ricky’s only a year younger than me, a bit shorter, and wirier. He’s got dark brown hair and eyes.” He described him some and gave me some other general information. As he spoke, his tone shifted, like he was remembering something particularly unpleasant and trying not to visualize it.

“He was fast; incredibly so. Worked well to balance me. I’m a bit of a tank but, man , could he cover distance I could only dream of. He had a great mind for analyzing things. I always thought he’d make a great alpha, but I think I remember him saying it wasn’t for him.”

It touched my heart to hear him reminisce about his friend, yet it also filled me with dread because I knew how the story ended. At least for now. He could only avoid it for so long, because eventually he cleared his throat.

“The last thing I remember is someone putting a collar around him. I was screaming for him, but it’s like he couldn’t even understand me. Like he was just an animal.”

“So, he was cursed like you?” I asked, my heart aching for the man. He was around the same age, but he’d already been through so much.

“Yeah, I think so. They led him away on a chain like he was a pet. It was disgusting.”

“Who are they? Do you remember?”

“I… I’m not sure. I know they’re the enemy.” His voice grew surer as he spoke, as if expressing things to me or making things clearer within his own head. “Yeah, that’s what they were. The enemy. I can’t remember how or why, but I know they’re the ones who hurt my pack. Who cursed us.”

“Can you remember anything about them?”

“No, it’s all too hazy.”

“That’s all right, you’ve given me a lot to go on. You can always try to remember more later. I think it’s best not to force these things and let them come naturally.”

Leo nodded. I could tell from the look on his face that his thoughts were still quite heavy. I couldn’t save him from them, however, and it was a natural part of processing what he had gone through. We finished up our food, occasionally throwing a tasty morsel to the cats, who had never stopped attentively watching our food despite the serious conversation.

Leo and I lingered in bed a bit longer before finally deciding it was time to get out of bed and get our day started. As he was helping me carry the tray and everything else down to the kitchen, he froze mid-step, his face going pale.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?” I asked, worry swamping me.

“I remembered.” His voice was so soft, as if he was afraid he’d scare the recollection away by speaking too loudly. “I remember the name of the man who took Ricky away.”

“Holy shit! Really? What is it?” In an instant, I had my digital notepad ready.

“Chadwicke Plutus,” he said with so much derision I was surprised actual acid didn’t drip from his lips and burn through my floor. “That’s the bastard who collared my friend.”