that were still shaky, because I wasn’t used to walking on four of them, and butted my head against his chest. It wasn’t much comfort, but it was the most I was capable of at that moment.
I didn’t imagine he’d want me to lick his nose, that was for sure!
Eli’s smile deepened, making the tiny lines at the side of his eyes crease. The sight made me happy, and I yipped and bounced slightly on my toes, which was the wrong thing to do. Like I’d reared up instead of just jumping slightly, I toppled to my side like I’d fallen off a pogo stick.
His laughter, when it came, was just as gentle as his smile. I felt no humiliation or mortification at his amusement. Sure, it was at my expense, but it was different. And with my past? I knew the difference.
Eli crouched down, placed one knee on the loamy ground to support himself, then reached over and helped me stand. When his hands moved over my body, it felt good, which was somehow stranger than anything that had happened to me today.
I’d woken up as a wolf, but the weirdest thing was that I appreciated this stranger touching the wolf’s body.
I knew that sounded odd, and though it assuredly was, there was just something right about his touch. Like I knew him, knew his touch, even though I definitely didn’t. I’d never seen the guy before in my life, and if he was from this area, then that made sense. I’d never been to Washington before, never traveled this far northwest. My family was based in the South, and the carnival I’d hooked up with three months ago had been traveling down from Canada into the States. So, even though there was no way I could have known the man, my body disagreed.
“You need to take it slowly,” the guy cautioned. “Normally, you’d be asleep for a long time, until your body was ready to deal with this. I’m not sure why you’re not resting,” he said again, like he was looking for answers, but I couldn’t give them to him.
He looked, I realized, puzzled. More than that, he appeared genuinely concerned.
Why?
Because he felt the link between us? Or was he just a decent man?
I’d known decent men before, knew how they could be like gentlemen, knew that they could have big hearts and warm souls. I felt that in this man. Felt it and, as I stared at him, I saw that even in this form, I could see his aura.
There were greens and blues fading into one another, merging like they were two different rivers flowing into the one source. I felt his ambition, saw his desire to strive for more, but I also saw his goodness, saw that he cared.
It was when I saw the overshadowing gray that I recognized he was in pain. Hurting from something. The notion had me shuffling forward, carefully because I was still wobbly on my feet, until I could push my snout into his chest.
He laughed softly, but he didn’t push me away. If anything, he let me lick the underside of his jaw and allowed me to stand so close that it was kind of awkward. For a second, both of us just enjoyed the moment, enjoyed the strangest, weirdest moment of my life, then I felt it.
More pain.
A mass kind of darkness that made me whine a little.
It didn’t come from him. It was too large. Too—
My whine deepened.
Hundreds of people’s pain.
It wasn’t physical. Exactly like this man’s. It was emotional.
Loss.
Only the loss of someone beloved could cause this amount of pain. It had to be grief.
And though I was strongly empathetic, not as much as my sister had been, but strong enough, why did I feel it in so many people? Normally, I could pick up on the emotions of those around me. Nothing more, nothing less. But this, now, numbered in the several hundred. It was weird and made me feel kind of hollow. Like there was no room deep inside me for anything other than these feelings.
His hand scrubbed over the curve of my head, and when he scratched my ear, I grunted with delight. I wasn’t sure if he’d distracted me on purpose, if he could feel this overwhelming sensation too, or if he just wanted to touch me—to touch me as much as I wanted to touch him.
But when he scratched me, distracted me, I forgot about the other people, about their