Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 131137 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 656(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 437(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131137 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 656(@200wpm)___ 525(@250wpm)___ 437(@300wpm)
“No, no, it’s fine.” Recovering from her brief moment of shock, Shaya pointed behind her. “Just follow me to my bedroom.” Once inside, Shaya closed the door behind them and gestured to the bed. “Take a seat.”
Gingerly, Roni perched herself on the end of the bed and gave Shaya a slight smile.
“It’s nice to meet you properly.”
“Yeah,” chuckled Roni—it was a rusty sound, suggesting she hadn’t made it for a while. “If I’m honest, I hadn’t thought about shifting back to my human form until you talked with me a couple of weeks ago. The things you said stuck with me, played on my mind over and over.”
Shaya couldn’t figure out whether Roni found that a good thing or a bad thing. If she was anything like Nick, the girl was the type to hold her cards close to her chest. “You and Nick really do need to talk. He thinks you stay in your wolf form a lot because you’re haunted by the memories of what happened—it breaks his heart and makes him feel awful. But it’s not that, is it? You’re haunted by a senseless guilt that you’re responsible for the downward spiral his life then went on.”
“Perceptive,” said Roni, catching the hairbrush that Shaya threw to her. “I didn’t realize he felt guilty. That’s stupid.” Dragging it through the tangles, she continued, “How could he think I was anything other than grateful for what he did for me?”
“Nick’s not exactly great with understanding ‘feelings.’”
Roni nodded her agreement. “He never has been. I’d be bad with emotion too if my wolf had surfaced so early. His mind wasn’t anywhere near ready for it, was introduced to a stage of life that his development simply wasn’t equipped to deal with. Can you imagine that? As young as he was, he found it hard to cope, and his wolf was so angry and cold. Having to deal with that at any age would be hard. I know because my wolf became so angry after what happened that day in the woods, but she healed.”
But Roni hadn’t, Shaya knew. “Nick’s wolf didn’t heal?”
“With my wolf, the anger was tangled up with trauma. With Nick’s wolf, it’s not trauma. He was born in anger, and it shaped his personality. You can’t ‘heal’ someone’s personality. You can change it to some degree, but not heal it.”
Shaya retrieved a long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of jeans from her wardrobe and laid them gently on the bed. “They should fit you fine.”
Roni fingered the soft material of the white top as she quietly confessed, “I’m nervous about going downstairs and facing all those people.”
“How long has it been since you were last in this form?”
“About six months.”
Wow. “And that’s by choice? Your wolf doesn’t hound you to stay in wolf form?”
“Oh no, she’s quite happy to stay in that form for months at a time, but she doesn’t fight the change. She understands there has to be a balance.”
Right now, it wasn’t a very good balance in Shaya’s opinion. There wouldn’t be one until Roni healed. “The lingering guilt…it’ll get better…but only if you want it to. Sometimes we cling to the guilt because we think we deserve to suffer. That’s not the same as being truly guilty of something, is it?”
Roni frowned thoughtfully, but she didn’t answer.
“It’s not that you need to forgive yourself. It’s that you need to realize there’s nothing to forgive.”
“Have you forgiven Nick for not claiming you in the beginning? It wasn’t that he was abandoning you. If you had seen the state he was in when his cognitive functions started degenerating…It was horrible. We all panicked, scared we’d lose him. I remember the day he first met you. He came home that night, and he was in the foulest mood. He told me about you, about how it had killed him to leave you behind. I’ve honestly never seen him look so upset—not even when he was sentenced to time in juvie. Not even the times we went to visit him there. When he met you, he was in the middle of his healing sessions and his future was so unsure; he didn’t want to be your patient. I think he also worried that if he claimed you and then slowly became someone you didn’t even know—worse, someone who didn’t know you—you would then hate him.”
“Idiot.”
“Yeah, but Nick’s a good person. The best. He’ll drive you insane sometimes because he’s stubborn and likes having his own way, but he’ll do everything he can to make you happy.”
Shaya couldn’t deny that—he’d been doing it since he first turned up, wanting to claim her. He guarded Shaya with a ferocity that was more than protectiveness and possessiveness. It was in his tone, his posture, his gaze, and the way he liked to tuck her into the cradle of his shoulder, sheltering her while communicating “mine.” The intensity of it all made her feel totally safe and secure while still not stifling her on any level. And although Nick wasn’t, by any means, soft-shelled and could be quite cool and remote in general, he could be indulgent, thoughtful, patient, warm, and unselfish with her. He was safe and solid—exactly what a submissive wolf needed, exactly what Shaya wanted. “I have forgiven him. How could I not?”