Hazel woke in Aldrien’s body and for a few blissful seconds forgot everything that had happened the day before.
Then she shifted her weight and felt the unfamiliar bulk of shoulders that weren’t hers, and the whole nightmare came crashing back.
“I hate this,” she groaned into the pillow.
A voice answered inside her head, dry and entirely too familiar.
You hated him before this happened.
Hazel sat bolt upright so fast her borrowed spine cracked.
Silence followed, thick and strange, and then the voice came again.
Are you going to stare at the wall all morning?
Her wolf.
Her own wolf, speaking from somewhere inside a body that wasn’t hers at all.
“You’re here?” Hazel whispered.
Obviously.
Relief flooded through her, warm and immediate, until her wolf added, Unfortunately, I’m still stuck with his scent, in a tone that made it clear exactly how she felt about that arrangement.
Hazel rolled her eyes.
Apparently some things followed a person no matter whose body they were wearing.
She was out the door and down the hall before she’d even bothered to fix her hair, and she pushed into Aldrien’s room without knocking.
He was standing in front of the mirror, staring at her own reflection like it owed him an explanation, and he looked like he hadn’t slept at all.
“Did you hear her?” Hazel demanded.
He turned, confused.
“Hear who?”
She realized he hadn’t discovered it yet, and she was about to explain when his expression shifted, his eyes narrowing in a way she recognized instantly.
A voice rumbled out of him, deep and controlled.
She’s here.
“Your wolf?” Hazel asked.
He nodded slowly, and the wolf added, unbothered, I don’t like her.
“Excuse me?” Hazel folded her arms.
Aldrien looked genuinely irritated on someone else’s behalf.
“He said he doesn’t like you.”
“Your wolf has terrible taste.”
And yours has terrible judgment, the wolf said, immediate and flat, and Hazel’s jaw dropped while Aldrien fought visibly against a smile.
It didn’t take long to see exactly how different the two wolves were.
Hazel’s wolf was bold and sharp-tongued, always the first to push her toward standing her ground, and she’d never had much patience for Aldrien or his carefully controlled everything.
Now she was stuck inside his body, and she was making her displeasure known at every opportunity.
Aldrien’s wolf, by contrast, was stoic and blunt, disciplined in a way that mirrored his human counterpart exactly, and he seemed to have run out of patience for Hazel’s wolf approximately the moment they’d met.
Your wolf is boring, Hazel’s wolf announced.
Your wolf is obnoxious, his answered.
Thank you.
That wasn’t a compliment.
I’ll take it anyway.
Hazel burst out laughing before she could stop herself.
Aldrien looked at her.
“What’s funny?”
“Our wolves hate each other.”
I don’t hate her, his wolf corrected immediately.
He absolutely hates me, hers shot back.
I tolerate you.
That’s worse.
They spent the next while testing what exactly had happened, and slowly worked out the shape of it.
Their wolves could talk to them, sense each other, nudge their instincts here and there, but neither wolf could actually take control of a body that wasn’t theirs to begin with.
Hazel asked hers whether she could shift, just to see, and immediately felt claws pushing through her fingertips before she could brace for it.
“Don’t,” she snapped, and the transformation halted mid-motion, leaving her hands trembling.
Aldrien watched with something close to alarm.
“Your wolf nearly shifted.”
“I noticed.”
She’s unstable, his wolf remarked.
“I can hear you,” Hazel said.
Good, came the reply, entirely unbothered.
They tried practicing again after that, Hazel attempting to hold herself the way Aldrien did, straight-backed and unreadable, and her wolf ruined it within seconds.
You should smile, her wolf said.
“No,” Hazel muttered.
He looks prettier when he smiles.
Hazel froze completely.
Aldrien’s eyebrow lifted.
“What did she say?”
“Nothing.”
Tell him, her wolf pressed.
“Absolutely not.”
She thinks you’re attractive, Aldrien’s wolf supplied helpfully, apparently deciding loyalty to Hazel wasn’t his concern.
“Traitor!” Hazel hissed at her own wolf, face burning even though it wasn’t technically her face at the moment.
Aldrien smiled, slow and entirely too pleased with himself, and because Hazel was currently wearing his face she got to watch the exact mechanics of that smile from the inside, which felt like an entirely unfair kind of intimacy.
“Don’t,” she said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
Later, once things had quieted slightly, Hazel found herself curious enough to ask his wolf directly why he disliked her so much.
Because you make him careless, the wolf said.
Hazel went still.
“What does that mean?”
The wolf didn’t answer right away, and when he finally did, it landed with more weight than she expected.
He thinks about you too much.
“That’s enough,” Aldrien cut in sharply.
Hazel looked at him and found him visibly uncomfortable, which was rare enough that she couldn’t resist pushing at it.
“You think about me?”
“Don’t.”
“How often?”
“Hazel.”
“Interesting.”
Very often, his wolf added quietly, and Aldrien closed his eyes like he was praying for patience he clearly didn’t have.
“I hate both of you,” he said.
Hazel laughed, genuinely this time, and something about the sound seemed to settle the room.
Eventually the chaos wore itself out, and they ended up sitting across from each other with their wolves gone quiet for once.
Hazel wrapped her arms around herself, still not fully used to the size of the body she was borrowing.
“Do you think they’ll stay with us until we switch back?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
She hesitated before saying the next part.
“I was scared when I couldn’t feel her this morning. Before she spoke.”
“I know,” he said, and something in his voice told her he meant it, that he’d felt the same fear in the seconds before his own wolf had answered him.
For a moment neither of them said anything else.
Their entire lives had been turned inside out, bodies and identities and even their wolves disrupted by whatever had happened at that altar, and there wasn’t anything remotely amusing about that when she let herself actually sit with it.
Aldrien seemed to be thinking the same thing.
“We’ll get them back,” he said finally.
“Our bodies?”
He paused, and something in his expression went a little more honest than usual.
“Everything.”
It was the first thing he’d said since the wedding that actually made her feel steadier.
Then her wolf growled, low and sudden, cutting through the quiet like a blade.
Aldrien’s wolf answered a heartbeat later, and both of them went alert at once, some old instinct passing between wolf and human faster than either of them could think it through.
Aldrien moved without seeming to decide to, stepping slightly in front of her even though he was standing in her body and she in his, some deeper part of him apparently unwilling to unlearn the habit of protecting her.
Hazel noticed.
She didn’t say anything about it.
The knock came a second later.
“Alpha?” Wystan’s voice, low and familiar through the door.
Hazel and Aldrien looked at each other.
“We need to talk,” Wystan said.
He knows, Hazel’s wolf whispered.
Her stomach dropped straight to the floor.
Not yet, Aldrien’s wolf answered, calm as ever, though it did nothing to slow the panic building in Hazel’s chest.
She stared at the door, at the shape of Aldrien’s beta waiting on the other side of it, and understood they had an entirely new problem now.
Somehow, they had to convince the one man who knew Aldrien better than almost anyone alive that the woman standing beside him wasn’t actually Aldrien at all.