Page 16 of Scarlett's Wicked Wolf
Abend.
Chapter 7
Scarlett
The fever breaks like glass.
Not gone, just… different. The sharp edges stop sawing through me and settle into a hum that lives under my skin, bright and restless. Reid sits sentinel in the chair, forearms braced on his thighs, eyes steady on me like he can will the next breath into my body.
He hasn’t left. Not once.
Every time the waves hit, he counted me through. When my hands shook, he gave me something to push against that wasn’t him. When my throat went sand-dry, he tipped water to my lips like I was something precious.
My throat tightens. I don’t do helpless well. But I can recognize care when it’s dressed as practical kindness. He’s not hovering. He’s anchoring me. There’s a difference.
“Reid?” My voice is papery.
“Here.” He’s already leaning forward, offering the cup.
I sip greedily. The water has a strange metallic taste, as if my body is recognizing the separate elements of hydrogen and oxygen. His palm hovers near my temple, not touching, but I could tilt a millimeter and be under it. The urge to do exactly that is unhelpfully loud.
“Smell and taste are going to spike,” he warns softly. “Sound next. If it gets too bright, close your eyes and use my voice.”
“Bossy,” I whisper. “You’re a great doula.”
One corner of his mouth lifts.
Then the world tilts.
The change doesn’t ask; ittakes—a new center clicking into place as my joints loosen and the seams of me… slip. The air contains a thousand scents: smoke and iron and pine sap and the salt of his skin. The crackle of the fire is too loud. The cloth against my forehead becomes a boulder. My breath stutters, then races.
“It’s okay.” Reid’s voice threads through the noise. “You’re safe. In for four?—”
“Out for six,” I gasp, but the numbers break apart as my bones light with white heat. Something in me rears—terrified and wild—while something older opens like a door.
The wolf steps through.
It starts in my spine, my vertebrae shifting like beads on a string, then sweeps out along my ribs and wrists and the fragile hinges of my fingers. Pain, yes, but sharp and clean, the kind that announces newness rather than ending. My hair prickles, pours over my shoulders, andmultiplies.Then I’m all senses: the tasteof the air, the clockwork thud of his heart, the low song of the wards thrumming in the walls.
“Scarlett,” Reid says, voice close, careful. “You’re doing it. You’re beautiful. Breathe.”
Beautiful. The word lands like a balm. He thinks I’m beautiful.
My skin isn’t big enough—then it is, and it’sdifferent.Fur ripples along my arms and across my back, a red-gold rush like autumn leaves. My hands—no, not hands, paws—hit the wooden floorboards as I tumble from the bed onto all fours. The enhanced sensation under my pads is a revelation.
I blink, and the room blooms into scent and sound more than sight. Reid smells like everything I’ve ever wanted—cedar and musk and the specific heat that ishim.
The ache splits me open.
There’s no more room for breath or thought or human noise. The magic I’ve been holding back—my old magic—snaps its tether and floods me, not to stop the change, but to meet it. To merge. My wolf doesn’t force her way through meShe Itrises, like something I’ve always been meant to wear but never dared to touch.
My fingers curl, bones reshaping, body bending, cracking—not in pain but inrightness.
A low growl escapes me. It doesn’t sound human. It isn’t.
I meet Reid’s gaze—wolf to wolf, soul to soul—and the bond between us sings a rhapsody.
Then something else pulls.
