She’s not human
22: 22.
She’s not human Aria
“Are you sure?” a booming voice says.
“Yes. Her body, she tried to shift. Three times, but it was like something was stopping her, and then she passed out,” says another.
“What happened before that change?” That voice was her brother’s.
I groan.
I was on fire.
Ache seemed to meld onto the unbearable heat, and my eyelids were so heavy I had to force myself to open them.
Liam’s face is blurry in front of me.
“Li,” I croak.
“Shh…It’s okay,” A comforting hand strokes my head.
“I’m here. I’m right here.”
I tried to clear the blurriness from my eyes and caught rough outlines of male figures behind him.
“How are you feeling?” Ronan’s voice says more softly than she thought him capable.
“Hurt. Hot..” I squeeze out, trying to use the smallest words I can manage.
“Give me some space,” Theo says, kneeling.
“I’ve got to cool her down.”
“Do you have any ideas why she wasn’t able to complete the shift,” Kade says.
“What?” I ask, confused.
“No, but until it happens, her body is in danger of overheating.”
Suddenly, I was floating, the quick movement giving me a flash of vertigo.
I groan with the movement.
“Turn on the tap,” Theo says.
“Aria, I’m going to take off your clothes. We need to try to bring down your body temperature.”
Theo’s voice is soothing, clinical.
“What do you mean by shifting?” I ask as he starts tugging off my clothes.
“You almost shifted earlier, but you didn’t complete it.” Kade’s voice is soft and filled with concern.
The cold air is a relief.
“No… that doesn’t make any—” my words drop off as the need to get out lumber through my thoughts.
My heart beats faster.
A voice that’s not mine gets louder.
Out.
Out.
OUT!
Another groan.
I want to hold my head, but my arm could have easily been to cinder blocks.
When I am picked up and put inside the cool water of the tub, I almost don’t notice the heat at my back.
I turn my head and see Theo’s chin.
Huh.
One bare muscular arm wraps around me, and another wraps around my wrist, thumb pressing softly against my pulse.
The scent of pine tickles my nose, that and… something deeper, something…
I inhale.
It’s instinct.
I can’t help myself.
Musk.
Mint… and Theo.
The way he smells is all his own.
Sensual and warm.
More clear than any other smell I’ve smelled in my entire life.
And then it fades.
Like it’s being sucked backwards into something I can’t reach.
Into me.
“Breathe, Aria,” Theo’s voice is authoritative, firm.
I push out a heavy breath.
“That’s it.” He coaxes.
“Nice and even, just like that.”
I look around and meet Liam’s eyes.
“It’s not possible.”
“I know you’re scared, but try not to fight it.”
“I can’t!” I scream as a spasm of pain shoots down my spine.
“You can,” Liam says.
There is a loud snap, then pain so intense a flare of white light blinds my vision.
My body twists, bends, strains under skin that doesn’t feel right.
A voice I don’t recognize lets out a yell so filled with agony it makes me dizzy.
Then my body is released from the full-body muscle spasm.
Theo is right there, wrapping his arms around me.
I gasp for breath.
“Do something,” Liam says.
But I’m not sure who he is talking to.
A loud bang rings in the room.
“Status,” Ronan snaps, agitation making his voice hard as nails.
“Marcus found something. On Lorain,” Barric says.
Something in my stomach swoops at the sound of my mother’s name.
“She’s not human.”
With those words ringing in my ear, my body jerks.
My consciousness is ripped from me so violently that the entire world goes black.
***
The room is spinning.
I haven’t even opened my eyes yet, and the tilt-a-whirl nausea has a grip on me that was so firm it felt like I was choking.
I take a few purposeful breaths, attempting to steady the spinning enough to risk opening an eye.
“You’re awake.”
Ronan.
“Don’t try moving. Just give your body some time to adjust. That last attempt was a rough one.”
The day started coming back to her, and she remembered what the men were so worried about.
She was…shifting.
Or, at least trying to, according to them.
“My mom. What did you say about my mom?” I ask, remembering Barric’s words.
She’s not human.
“Not now,” he rumbles.
“You need food first.”
Annoyance makes my fist clench against the cool sheets.
“What I need is the truth.” I open my eyes, pure will keeping them from closing again.
Ronan’s mountainous body was directly across from me.
Elbows perched on his thick thighs, he leaned toward the bed, dark eyes fixed with such precision I could feel it.
I ignore it and speak through my teeth.“This has been the shittiest fucking week of my life, and now you want me to be okay with…with…”
“Changing into a wolf,” he added unhelpfully.
“Not getting the answers I need!” A growl slips from my lips.
Not a metaphorical one.
A real one.
A wolf one.
My shock is almost as startling as the knock that sounds at the door.
“Come in,” Ronan calls out.
Theo enters with a tray in his hands.
“Glad to see you’re up.” He sets the tray beside my bed, and the smell of crispy bacon, steak with some kind of butter sauce, and over-easy eggs makes my stomach growl.
I give him a deadpan look.
“What happened to soup?”
“Meat is better for recovery.”
For wolves, he means.
I take a moment to look at him from what feels like new eyes.
Like I’m looking at the world closely for the first time.
Theo’s wavy dark hair is pulled back into a low, short ponytail.
His hazel eyes hold mine, and then his full lips pull up in a smile, revealing a lone dimple tucked right at its corner.
Without saying anything, I start eating, knowing that if I want my questions answered, I have to give Ronan a little of what he wants.
Theo presses the back of his hand against my forehead, the side of my neck, and the top of my collarbone.
“How’s the pain?” he asks.
“On a scale of one to ten?
Roadkill.”
“At least it hasn’t taken away your humor.”
“It’s the small things, really,” I snarked.
“Now, about my mom.”
Ronan didn’t show an ounce of emotion on his face.
“Your mother was a wolf. One that was in hiding.”
Hiding?
I thought back to Mom’s paranoid behavior.
How she shut down any time Liam or I asked questions about her past, about Dad.
And then Liam turned.
“But that doesn’t make sense,” I say.
“Why would she hide?
Why wouldn’t she tell us knowing…”
“That you’d eventually turn,” Ronan finished.
“We don’t know.
All I can say is that your mother had to know one day you and your brothers would emerge, and she did something to hold it off.”
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“The average shifter’s wolf emerges by age thirteen.
Since you and Liam have two shifter parents, the only reasonable explanation for Liam emerging so late and the struggle you seem to have now is that something was put in place to stop it.”
“Can that…happen?”
“It’s not common, but there are ways to do it,” Ronan says ambiguously.
I’m not human.
Mom…
“What’s going to happen to me?” I ask, fear creeping into my aching muscles.
I didn’t know much, but …if I couldn’t shift, that can’t be good.
“Nothing,” Theo says with such ferocity that the unease stops in its tracks.
“We’ll figure it out.”
The door opens again.
Liam walks through the door and right up to me.
He looks down at the plate between my hands.
“You need to eat more.”
“Forgive me for not having an appetite after learning our whole life is one giant lie after another.”
“I know, but can you put it aside for now. You might start trying to shift again, and you’re going to wish you had.”
Right.
Something must be wrong with me.
I know I should be freaking out a bit more about turning into a wolf, but I can’t muster up the ability to care right now.
Fuck, it this shock?
No, a voice says inside my head and I jump.
“Aria?” Liam says instantly on alert.
Clam down, the voice says again annoyed.
Damn, who would have known going crazy would be so bitchy.
Says the coward.
Ow.
Okay that one was a low blow.
“Aria?” Liam says again.
I focus on him.
“Is hearing voices normal?”
Relief and amusement enters in his eyes.
“Sounds like your wolf is starting to emerge.”
“My wolf?” I arch a brow at Ronan.
Why the hell do I keep doing that?
Alpha.
“Every wolf has their own personality, they are part of us but completely unique at the same time.
It will take some time getting used to.”
“Yeah well, she’s a bitch.”
Ronan and Theo’s chuckle doesn’t make me feel better about the situation.