Page 3 of Planet Wolf

What was happening? “I don’t understand.”

The one who’d shaken me before grabbed his ear. He pounded on it for a second and then made a face. My ears were still ringing, so I couldn’t understand what he said or even really hear sounds.

I only realized that the man holding me was running after he’d been doing it for a bit. This was too much. Just too much.

I closed my eyes.

The next time I opened them, I wasn’t confused. I knew where I was—on Planet Wolf. A cool breeze struck my face, lifting strands of my hair as I considered my circumstances. I was with three strangers, but for some reason, I wasn’t dead.Yet.Why wasn’t I dead? Had there been a tree on me?

One of the men—it was hard for me to keep them straight—squatted in front of me. He stretched out an arm, then placed his hand on my side and smiled. He said something, his lips moving in a way that implied speech, but I couldn’t understand him. Not one word. It sounded like mixed words—clicks, noises. Nothing that resembled language came from his lips, and I struggled to make sense of things.

“I… I don’t know what you’re saying. Something is wrong with me.”

The man pointed at his ear and then shook his head. I stared at him as it dawned on me. The explosion knocked out my translator, so I couldn’t hear him in my language. Although they worked like magic, I usually didn’t give mine much thought since it just stayed in my ear all of the time. Scientists had solved the problem of communicating across language barriers between countries and even worlds, and their methods kept things seamless, allowing us to see people speaking while understanding their words. Well, ninety-nine percent of the time, it worked like magic. Some things didn’t ever translate or remained slightly off, meaning the listener needed to use context clues to figure out connotation. Even so, everywhere we went in the universe, people were able to communicate easily.

Yet without a translator, I survived the explosion without any way to communicate with my saviors. Assuming they were saviors, of course, and not kidnappers. Who were they? What kind of shifters were they? What was happening? “Can you understand me? Is it just me who is broken?”

He stared at me, no recognition in his gaze. My companion looked over his shoulder. How bad did I look after surviving an explosion? The one who sat with me rose and said something to the other two men. They all started making the noise I couldn’t decipher—obviously some kind of conversation—and then stared at me.

Okay, I had to move, to do something. I couldn’t lie there prone forever. I pulled myself to a sitting position, and all three of them jolted, their hands suddenly on me as they urged me to do… what? To stay where I was?No, sorry, boys, that isn’t happening.

I got up. I was wobbly but up.Fuck. Just fuck. Fuck a duck.No, that’s not nice to say about the duck. Ooph.

I wasn’t okay.

I limped forward. I had to think. My cousin was up there in space, circling somewhere. He would hear that something exploded, and then he would come get me. Great. Help would be coming. That was good news.

Right then, as I forced positivity into my tired brain, it started to rain. Hard. Cold and miserable rain pattered down with wet splats, instantly soaking and chilling me to the bone. Shock made me squeal, the chill awakening pains from the explosion I didn’t realize I’d even gained. I rushed back under the tree I’d just left in time to see the man who cared for me shift into a Wolf form. The one to the left, the one wearing the t-shirt, also transformed. Their clothes went flying, and when they did, my mouth fell open.

Well,thatjust happened.They’d shifted and it had been really,reallycool.

The man in the middle didn’t shift. Instead, he looked up at the rain, letting it hit him in the face. A large gash crossed his forehead, and his clothes were torn. After a second, he dropped his gaze and walked toward me, gravel crunching with his every step.

I swallowed. Something about him struck me as very intense, a ripple of sheer power thrumming through his every motion. His movements were smooth, like he always knew exactly how he wanted to present himself, like a predator on the hunt. I backed up as he stalked toward me, my steps not nearly as confident or sure. When a big strong man whose intentions I couldn’t fathom charged toward me, my natural instinct was to back the heck up. Fight or flight?Flight, please.

I hit the tree. He pressed against me, forcing me up against the bark. His hands flattened on either side of my head, essentially trapping me against his body. The two other Wolves pressed on either side of me as I caught my breath. Thunder boomed through the sky as lightning strobed, and the temperature dropped ten degrees in what felt like seconds. I was wet, the spatter of raindrops making me blink fast to try to see past the downpour. Even under the tree, I couldn’t keep the water from hitting me and sluicing down my face in tiny rivers. It would have been worse if they hadn’t caged me in, taking the brunt of the water and keeping me warm with their bodies.

They were protecting me, I realized abruptly. I blinked. Yes, that was what they were doing.

That was really… decent of them?

It had been five months since I had a seizure. Two months since I’d fainted, but all my other symptoms were still alive and present. If I could just keep it like this, I could survive until I got help.I could do this. These men were being really kind to me so far, despite my inability to communicate with them. They could have just left me there to burn to death after the explosion, since I never would have woken up.

The one still in his human form stared at me, the strobes illuminating the nearness of his face. His dark eyes were deep, penetrating, and his gaze called to me, asking me not to break eye contact with him despite the intimacy of our positions. One of the Wolves—the one who had worn the t-shirt—bumped my leg.This is okay.It was… It was…

A deluge of water fell from the sky, slicking my hair and running into my eyes.No, this isn’t going to work out.We were all going to die, to drown standing there. People couldn’t survive so much water falling at once. The man who blocked me in, the one with the gash on his forehead, hugged me against him. I hugged him back. If we were all going to die, then we should go out in an embrace.What a wonderful way to go.Better than in the hospital, which was where I’d expected to die.

No sooner than the water started, it stopped once more. The hugger let me go, and the Wolves shifted back into their human forms. The noises I couldn’t understand started again, so I took a deep breath.

And realized they were naked. The ones who’d shifted stood around me, very naked and very human looking.

“Ooh, you’re naked,” I said, stating the obvious before I dramatically covered my eyes with my hand. If I could have evaporated or burst into spontaneous combustion in that moment, I would’ve been very okay with the outcome.

A few seconds later, one of them tapped my arm, so I peeked out from under my hand. The guys wore pants, despite that leaving their chests gleaming and perfect.Well, that’s something, at least. Where had they gotten the pants? Then I spotted their bag. The one who’d been with me when I awoke carried it slung over his shoulder, and I wondered what it contained.

He nodded toward the mountains and then at me. Finally, he pointed. They wanted to go to the snowy mountains? Were they out of their minds?

I shook my head in what I hoped was the universal sign forno. I wasn’t going there. I was staying here because I wasn’t crazy. Someone would come for me, and my chances were better on my own than in those mountains.