Right?
With no answer forthcoming and lacking any better ideas, Zio left the safety of Emma’s tree and tracked Devan to the bungalow. The front door was open, as though Devan had expected Zio to follow him. Zio stepped inside, shut the door, and leaned against it. Devan’s scent ambushed him from every direction, and he closed his eyes, fighting the heat that rose through his resolve, searing the sides of it. Melting it.How the fuck did this happen?Even for shifters, this shit was unreal, and he couldn’t help wondering if he was stuck in a nightmare. If his subconscious was playing him with the cruellest trick.
Devan was in the living room, sitting on the couch, his back to Zio. He didn’t look up as Zio entered the room. “Are you okay?”
It was the dozenth time Zio had been asked that question since he’d returned from his city adventures but coming from the soul who’d upended his mental equilibrium so entirely was more than Zio could handle.
He turned on his heel and stalked to the kitchen. The fridge contained nothing but beer and the cans of sickly sweet pop Emma drank. He grabbed a beer and twisted off the bottle cap, then he gathered the cans and dumped them in the rubbish bin.
In the living room, Devan shifted on the couch, leather creaking beneath his light frame. Zio pressed his head against the fridge, then forced himself to re-join him. “Where are you from?”
Devan kept his gaze on the pile of papers that smelt of Emma.
He’s been in her room.
Zio didn’t know why it mattered so much. For the foreseeable future, it was Devan’s room. But it did matter. It mattered a lot.
“I live in Slovakia,” Devan said. “At the healer’s commune in Bratislava. Emma was there once. I never saw her, but I recognise her scent. And her handwriting from the research papers she contributed to while she was there.”
“It’s like a monastery there, Z. No computers or phones. Every resource they have is handwritten.”
“It was ten years ago.”
Devan hummed. “Before my time then.”
“You weren’t a healer ten years ago? I thought you were born into it?”
“I wasn’t born a shifter, but I was a healer ten years ago, just not in the commune. I was still in Finland, which is perhaps what I should’ve said when you asked where I was from.”
Devan finally looked up. Up close, his eyes were even bluer than they’d appeared outside, and they bore an intensity Zio had never seen in a wolf. The blue of his irises were ringed with a fiery glow and made him terrifyingly beautiful, if his attractiveness hadn’t terrified Zio already. “When were you changed?”
“When I was eighteen. Dash intercepted me outside medical college. He offered me a new life and gave me a few years to think about it, but it didn’t take that long. I found him a few weeks later and asked him to change me.”
“The only humans I know who’ve ever asked to be changed have been mated to whoever changed them.”
“Well, that wasn’t the case for me or other Shadow Clan I’ve come across. Perhaps wolves are more sexually compelling.”
“Sex and mating aren’t always connected.”
“Indeed.” Devan held Zio’s gaze for a long moment, then cleared his throat. “Just as changing isn’t necessarily connected to sex or mating. It certainly wasn’t for me.”
“I was changed when I was a baby.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Devan held up a folder with Zio’s name scrawled on it. “Emma told me.”
* * *
Zio bolted from the room. The front door of the bungalow slammed, and Devan winced as the impact rattled through the old bungalow, shaking the windows. Wolves weren’t known for their subtlety, but until that moment, Zio had been impossible to read. Dark, gorgeous, and brimming with anger and grief, he was everything Devan had feared he would be.
Beautiful.
Troubled.
A mournful howl pierced the air.Zio’showl. Devan pictured him as a wolf, roaming the forest that surrounded the compound and township, and itched to join him, even though Zio had shifted to escape him and had likely never run with a shifter of a different kind.He’s probably never seen one. But Emma had, and speaking her name had driven Zio away.