Rebel Reborn

Chapter Eight: You’ve Changed

Rebel

The morning sun came in through unfamiliar curtains, and the body I'd inherited greeted it with unforgiving agony. My neck had stiffened overnight into a swollen fence post that refused to turn. My shoulders ached. Deeper than that, there was a bruised soreness in all my muscles, like the body was just now remembering exactly what had been done to it.

I lay still and took inventory. Then I reached, carefully, for Lily's wolf.

She was there, curled into the far corner of my consciousness, yellow eyes half open. In my old life I'd shared a body with a wolf who came when I called, who poured her healing energy into every wound, every scratch, every broken part that needed mending.

This one did no such thing. She watched me reach for her, drew herself a little smaller, and gave me nothing.

Fine, I thought. You don't trust me. I wouldn't trust me either.

Most wolves would have shaken off a night like the one this body had survived and been fine by breakfast. But I was going to have to heal like a human — slowly, stubbornly, one sore morning at a time — until the animal in the corner decided I was worth her trouble.

I struggled to sit up anyway. Lying in bed feeling sorry for a body was a luxury I'd never indulged in.

Tamara came in within minutes, as if she'd been waiting at the door.

"Good morning, Miss." Her eyes did their quick, careful sweep, checking me over, lingering on my bruised and swollen neck. "Did you sleep?"

"Badly." I swung my legs over the edge and let the room finish tilting before I trusted it with my weight. "I need clothes I can move in. Not these." I nodded at the wardrobe, which I'd already learned was full of fragile, decorative things, silk and synthetics, garments built for beauty not utility. "Something for training. Shorts. Sportswear. Flat shoes. Clothes for people who actually sweat."

Her eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. "Training, Miss?"

"The camp starts next week. I'd rather not humiliate myself in front of a yard full of ranking wolves on the first day."

That was the version I gave her. The truer one was that this body was soft and weak. Lily was under-fed, under-used, raised to be ornamental. I was not comfortable sitting inside a body I could not rely on.

If I was keeping it, I was going to make it work.

"And breakfast," I added. "A real one. Eggs, meat, fruit. Whatever you can find in the kitchen. Bring enough for two and eat with me."

That stopped her cold. "I couldn't—"

"You could." I held her gaze until she looked away, flustered. She turned and left.

She came back with a tray of food that could have fed a small army and a set of plain dark training clothes folded over one arm, still creased from storage.

I ate like I meant it. The original Lily had apparently run on resentment and lettuce. I had no intention of fighting anyone, human or wolf, on an empty stomach.

When I'd eaten and dressed, I had Tamara take me out to the garden.

It was the one part of the pack estate that hadn't been arranged to intimidate anyone. Someone had let the edges of it grow a little wild. Tamara set a small table beneath a flowering tree and poured tea, and I sat in the morning sun with my aching body and let myself simply exist for a moment.

I was alive, and I was grateful. But I'd lost my wolf, the other half of my soul, during this body swap, and that made my heart ache. I wondered if Lily's wolf was feeling that same bittersweet sorrow.

Then a shadow crossed the path, and the moment was over.

Adrian.

The beta came up the path with his hands in his pockets and his jaw already set. It seemed he had rehearsed something on the walk over, because he opened with it before he'd fully stopped moving. "I wanted to make sure you were recovering."

I sipped my tea and stared up at him. "How considerate."

He stood there, and I did nothing to offer him comfort or reassurance. In Lily's memory he was the sun the whole sad little planet of her had orbited. The yearning in those memories was so complete it had its own gravity.

But I felt none of it. What I saw, watching him in daylight with his scarred hands and his careful frown, was a man who had hurt a girl badly and wanted to feel better about it without doing anything as inconvenient as an actual apology.

"You look well," he tried.

"I look like someone who got cut down from a rope yesterday." I smiled. "But thank you. You look like you're sleeping fine, too."

A muscle worked in his jaw. "You've changed," he said, and it came out almost as an accusation.

"Near death experiences do that to people. Or so I'm told." I set down my cup. "Was there something you needed? Because if you walked all the way over here to confirm I'm still breathing, consider it confirmed. You can go and tell whoever sent you that the embarrassment survived."

"No one sent me." A crease appeared between his eyebrows.

"Then you came on your own." My smile widened. "That's worse, isn't it?"

He had no answer for that. I watched him search the garden for the woman who would have wept and clung and begged him to reconsider, and I watched him fail to find her. And I enjoyed his confusion far more than was strictly dignified. He left without finishing whatever he'd come to say.

Men like Adrian always assumed there'd be a next time to say it.

After he'd gone, Tamara refilled my cup without being asked.

"Tami." I watched a bee work the flowering tree. "Where do the women here go for fun?"

She considered it. "There's the Purple Unicorn," she said slowly. "It's a women's nightclub down in Rutberg. There's music. Male dancers." Color rose in her face. "It's a human place but a lot of werewolves like to go there."

"Have you been?"

"Maids don't go, Miss," she said, ducking her head.

"This one does. Tonight." I stood, slow and careful, the body filing a complaint with every inch of it. "Find out what a person wears to a place like that. Something of Lily's that isn't a wedding dress."

The ghost of a smile crossed her face. "Yes, Miss."