Time Mends(7)

He released me and I scrambled away from him, my body shaking for an entirely new reason. I barely made it to the tree line before I started retching. I grabbed onto a limb to keep from collapsing onto the ground. I looked at the contrast of my hand against the dark bark and remembered how just an hour before it was a paw. I leaned more heavily against the tree as darkness began encroaching on the outer edges of my vision.

“Scout…?” Talley stood just behind me, her hands hovering in the air behind my back, wanting to comfort, but afraid to touch.

“I’m fine,” I said, slowly pushing myself back to an erect position. It wasn’t a complete lie. Other than a throat raw from its recent acquaintance with stomach acid and some sensitive skin issues, I was physically fine. In fact…

I ran my hand over my stomach, surprised to discover my wounds completely and totally healed. I rotated the wrist which had been encased in plaster until it turned into a foreleg. It moved as if it was never broken.

“The Change repairs any bone or muscle damage,” Talley said. “It puts the cells back where they’re suppose to be, not where they were. You should be back to where you were before the accident.”

“I have scars.” I could feel the ridges through the thin material of the cover-up.

Talley’s eyebrows knitted together. “Really? That’s not supposed to happen.”

I let out a bark of laughter. “None of this is supposed to happen! Did you miss the part where I grew a tail and ran around on four legs eating rabbit tartar?”

“I know this is hard to understand —”

“Hard to understand?” I shook my head in disbelief. “It’s impossible to understand. I’m not a Shifter, Tal. I’m Scout, normal girl, remember? Unless my dad is a Shifter and you didn’t tell me,” which was exactly the sort of thing they would do, “or I’m adopted,” which I doubted, “this completely defies understanding. I mean, do you have an explanation? Can you tell me what is going on? Because if you’ve got so much as a theory, I’m all big, wolfy ears.”

Talley’s fingers were wound up in her hair. “I… I’m not sure.” She looked to Jase and Charlie for help, but they didn’t have any to provide. “We’ll figure it out, though. We’ll take you to Toby and he’ll get the answers.”

This caused another sardonic laughing fit on my end. It was nice to be able to do so without feeling like I was being split in two. “Oh, I feel all kinds of better now I know that Toby is going to figure things out for me.”

“Toby is the Pack Leader,” Jase said as though that really did make everything all better.

“So?”

“So it’s his job to protect and care for his people,” he explained. “He’ll take care of this. Promise.”

I wish I could be as confident. “I’m not part of his Pack.”

“Of course you are. You’re family.”

“Really? Whose?”

“Mine. You’re my sister, remember?”

I automatically touched my stomach, still surprised to find scars instead of stitches.

“How are going to explain this?” I asked, refusing to acknowledge Jase’s statement about our sibling bond. “What am I supposed to tell Mom when she goes to change my dressing?” The thought of her face when she lifted my shirt to find a whole stomach...

Oh crap.

“We have to call Mom! She’s going to be freaking out!” Ever since the accident Mom checked on me regularly through the night. “The police are probably looking for me.”

Talley shuffled awkwardly. “She knows where you are. We called her as soon as we realized what happened.”

“She knows what? That I decided, despite my inability to get out of bed, I would go camping?”

“She knows you Shifted,” Jase answered. “She knows everything.”

That stopped me cold. “Everything?”

For quite possibly the first time in his life, Jase looked uncomfortable. “Everything.”

I worked hard to keep my voice controlled. “How long has she known everything?”

“I don’t know. Since my dad died? Since I was born?”

Of course she knew. Everybody was in on the secret. I don’t know how I managed to still feel betrayed by it all.

“And my dad?”

“She was supposed to tell him last night,” Talley answered. “Parents of Shifters are the only normal people who know about any of us.”

I tried to imagine how that conversation went. My practical, no-nonsense mother explaining to my just-the-facts-and-nothing-but-the-facts father that his daughter developed the ability to transform into a wild canine when the moon was full. I’m sure it went over really well.