Into Their Woods (The Eerie, #1)(29)

But face?

My hand goes up to my own cheeks, and I wonder if they’re marred by jagged black lightning bolts. A choked sob erupts from my throat as I picture everything Gannon’s saying. A wave of sympathy somehow manages to shove its way into the turbulent sea of other emotions and sensations currently swamping my senses. I can’t imagine experiencing this as a child. I hate that I’m feeling this way now.

“I don’t want this to be happening. I just want it to stop.”

“It will stop soon,” Ellery promises, like he just heard my thought. “Imogen is almost ready.”

I look at Imogen and notice she’s mixing liquids together in bowls on Ellery’s desk. Those do not look like medicines. She’s using fucking mortars and pestles, and one of the liquids glows like it’s radioactive. Immediately, I start to freak out again.

Tension rockets back through me, and three pairs of intent eyes stare at me as a wild, volatile scent permeates the space. It’s a bitter smell that makes my shoulders curl up closer to my ears.

“Shit. She’s panicking again. We need to do more. Show her, Gan. She needs to see that it’s okay. She needs to understand what’s happening,” Ellery barks, the command layered with an undertone of undeniable power that has Gannon’s features twisting with frustration.

He looks at me, anger now brimming in his gaze. “Watch, Noah,” Gannon orders. “Watch me.” His dove-gray eyes once again meet mine. I swear I see sorrow banked in them before he blinks, and his human eyes disappear altogether.

Astonishment seizes the air from my lungs as a glowing gray, animalistic iris fills Gannon’s socket from one blink to the next. The muscles in his face and neck tense and grow taut with strain before the veins beneath his skin blacken as though a shadowy poison is moving quickly through his system.

Oh my god.

The temperature in the room drops before the horrifying sound of cracking bones fills the room and Gannon starts to somehow fold in on himself.

Everything I thought I knew about the world—science, humans, and animals—vaporizes in my mind as I witness the man before me shatter, shift, and bend until he’s no man at all. He rips through his clothing and emerges as a massive black wolf whose head is level with my shoulders.

Wide-eyed and aghast, I stare into the light-gray eyes of the beast before me. Eyes that are the same color as Gannon’s. My knees give out as I take him in, his thick dark coat, the flash of white teeth in his mouth, and the long pink tongue that stretches out to lick his muzzle as though he’s trying to convince me that there’s nothing to fear. Torn scraps of what was once a T-shirt and jeans hang from his lithe form and pool beneath his paws.

Flashes from last night bombard me. Running through the forest. The unusually large wolves tracking my every step. The fight. The bite…from a huge black wolf.

Holy fucking shit, it was real. All of it.





10





GANNON





If Perth were here, he’d call this a full circle moment, one of those times in life where you revisit something that haunted you and make your peace with it. Ruger would grunt his agreement, Ellery would offer a neutral shrug at our denmate’s statement, but me…nope. Nothing about this scenario helps me make peace with anything I’ve been through as a naif.

There’s nothing warm and fuzzy about the way Noah is looking at me. The fear in her blue-green gaze, the sorrow, the distress… It’s all aimed at me.

This is a fucking disaster.

Imogen dips her finger into each of the mixing mortars and draws runes on the surface of the liquids there. Each symbol glows a different color before dissolving into the liquid and changing the hue until it matches the runes. She reaches in and grabs a plastic cup from a sleeve in her medical bag before pouring the contents of each mortar into the cup. The healer looks like a human bartender layering some cocktail.

“Here, take this, it will dissolve what’s left of the block on you. It’ll take a few days to fully break down the binding magic, so don’t attempt to shift until then.”

Noah doesn’t take the cup from Imogen’s outstretched hand. She’s too busy staring at me. And the look in her eyes is a lethal mixture of terror and disgust.

Fuck.

“Are you kidding me?” Noah asks, the retort is shaky but so loud it fills the room. “Why the hell would I do anything you say? I don’t want this. Any of it.” She gestures to herself and then to me.

The slice of her hand through the air might as well be the slice of a knife right through my chest.

“I understand that this is a lot,” Imogen counters, her eyes sympathetic but her voice firm. “But whether you want to be a shifter or not, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s happening.”

“Fuck. You.”

Noah’s thought is a yell that echoes painfully inside my skull, and I can see Ellery and Alpha Morgan both tamp down their reactions to it.

Imogen continues serenely because she didn’t just get a brainful of Noah’s pure hatred. “If you try to shift with that block still on, it will not be good. If by some miracle it doesn’t kill you, it will irreparably damage you. Don’t be stubborn. Don’t let your fear make bad decisions for you.”

Noah looks from Imogen to the cup in her hands. “And how do I know that’s not going to hurt me?” she questions, gesturing to the cup. “And don’t ask me to trust you, because I don’t trust a fucking word out of anyone in this room.” If she could light us all on fire with a look, she would.