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Sounds rumbled around Cole, noises lifting and dropping like a warped wave.

He struggled, trying to wake up, but couldn’t reach the surface of consciousness. His eyelids felt made of lead. His body was one big ball of pain, especially on the left side from his face to his feet.

Gray Wolf rumbled inside of him. Hurt. Must shift.

Cole agreed. Why hadn’t he shifted to heal? What was ...

Drowning in agony, he went under again, releasing his fragile hold on consciousness.

Time ceased to exist.

He floated through darkness until light appeared far away. As the light became brighter, he realized he was running for pleasure in a forest with Gray Wolf running at his side.

Had he died?

That was the only way he could be running with Gray Wolf. There was no end to forest or sky. Cole’s body was perfect. No pain. Everything was vibrant from the green trees and undergrowth to the bright blue sky peeking through the leaves. Up ahead, an energy began to grow. It emitted a vibrant joy that called to him like a starving man drawn to an endless feast.

Cole wanted to let go of everything and just be.

No, Cole, a gentle voice said in his mind. It’s not your time.

Why not? He knew he’d find peace in that light.

Go back, Cole. Your journey is not finished. You must mate first.

Who are you?

I am Vercane, the Gallizenae druidess who gifted your ancestor with the powers you possess. I will be here for you when it is time, but your time has not yet come. I refuse to lose another Gallize to the mating curse. You are strong. Go back and take your place with a mate.

Words of anguish screamed in his head. I have no mate.

Yes, you do. Go to her. The light faded to a tiny dot that blinked out of existence.

Darkness swallowed him and Gray Wolf until nothing remained but misery.

Cole’s mind drifted along, unable to latch onto any one thought until someone interrupted his respite from agony.

Light flashed in his right eye.

He squinted hard to block it out. Who would do that to a shifter with sensitive vision?

The irritating glow went away.

Maybe that hadn’t been intentional. Maybe he’d just opened his eye at the wrong time. What about his other eye? He couldn’t open it or move either arm to lift his hands and feel his face. He couldn’t move his legs either.

What had happened?

His mind threw jumbled visions at him. He swam through the confusion, hunting for something he could grasp.

Slowly, it started coming back to him. The warehouse. Sonic. The bomb.

Damn. He might be too fucked up physically to fix.

How long had it been since the explosion?

Where was Gray Wolf?

Cole’s head pounded and his damn skin was on fire. His claws extended. Maybe he could shift.

Sharp points pricked his skin and he was hit with a load of electrical power. Pain shot through every part of him. He howled, then drifted into oblivion again.

The next time Cole surfaced, agony and aches shuddered through his body with every beat of his heart.

He’d been taught how to endure pain. Where?

The military. Back when he ran missions with his team.

He sucked in a deep breath.

Oh, fuck, that hurt. Stick to shallow breaths.

Gray Wolf came alive inside him. Making sounds, but not making sense. Still, Cole could tell Gray Wolf was worried and wanted to heal him. That was a welcome change from his beast’s constant battling against him of late.

Cole didn’t have the ability to fight his animal in this condition. He needed to shift and heal, but he didn’t want Gray Wolf running free with no way to pull his wolf back from harming someone. So Cole just lay there like a corpse and waited for the change to come over him once Gray Wolf realized he could force it. Cole hoped he’d regain consciousness quickly once he shifted and had a chance to prevent Gray Wolf from tearing into someone.

Seconds passed.

Nothing happened.

His wolf gave a little push, then gave a mournful howl when he couldn’t break out, then just stopped trying.

Why wasn’t his wolf mad with rage and taking advantage of Cole’s inability to stop the shift?

Back during the first year with Gray Wolf, Cole had no chance of preventing the change when he’d been badly injured in training. Gray Wolf might be difficult, but he had never failed to take over and heal Cole in dire circumstances.

This definitely qualified as dire.

With the unstable condition his wolf had been in right up to the explosion, Gray Wolf wouldn’t be slumbering now.

Cole waited, fighting to stay present and breathe softly.

His wolf ... was subdued.

Gray Wolf had never been what anyone would call calm from the moment Cole had first shifted, but now? His beast had settled down significantly.

This was monumental, but was it a good thing or a bad thing?

Could the explosion have altered Cole’s mating curse?

That didn’t make sense at all, but he wouldn’t complain about the pain if getting a grip on his wolf again was a side effect of almost dying.

He could figure it out once his head stopped feeling like someone was using a pile driver on it. Worse than that was the searing pain in his face that had him wanting to claw the skin off.

Yeah, that would convince everyone he was stable. Suck it up. Mind-over-matter exercises, Cavanaugh. He’d been taught how to focus through pain in the early days of training to control his wolf. He should concentrate on his chest and shoulder injuries first. They weren’t as demanding of his attention as the pain in his face and left side. He tried to curl his fingers and call up his wolf to heal, but his hands were wrapped.

Bandaged?

Now that he took inventory of his body, his head was wrapped up, too. Left eye had been completely covered. The other felt too swollen to open.

Why would anyone wrap up a shifter?

He could heal faster with no bandages.

Couldn’t he?

Was he so close to death he couldn’t shift or heal?

Gray Wolf, Cole silently called to his animal.

His wolf began vibrating inside of him and Cole finally realized the wolf was not in a normal state, but ... stressed about Cole. Had Cole’s inability to shift frightened his animal?

Or ... shit ... had he forced his wolf to stay inside for so long he’d damaged both of them severely?

The Guardian had warned all the Gallize shifters about making time for their animals to run free. That hadn’t been a possibility for Cole in the past two weeks, because he’d feared Gray Wolf breaking free of Cole’s control and attacking anything he perceived a threat.

He forced his breathing to smooth, focusing on how he wanted to feel, instead of the fact that he hurt all over. After a bit, his headache dropped from DEFCON One to DEFCON Four.

Better.

Now he could force his mind to work on other issues like his surroundings. He started listening and searching out scents beyond the antiseptic odor of an infirmary. It actually smelled as if all the scents had been wiped away. Even so, if he could get down and sniff closely, he could still pick up the scent of anything living that had passed through here.

Hold everything. An infirmary?

Hot damn. He had to be in one of the Guardian’s facilities, which also meant Cole’s team had gotten him away from the scene.

His heart took a badly needed break at that realization. If the Guardian thought Cole needed bandages, then so be it, since the Guardian was the pinnacle of shifter knowledge for the team.

As a massive, sea eagle shifter who had flown over the world for three centuries, the Guardian guided all of them through the ups and downs of being Gallize shifters.

At the sound of a door swishing open, Cole jerked back to the present. Damn. Fighting the pain must be wearing him out, because he’d been drifting again.

Gray Wolf came to sharp attention, but with no hint of wanting out. Curious.

If Cole couldn’t shift, his wolf couldn’t harm anyone. He wanted to give in to the heaviness weighing on him and the need for sleep, but a scent tickled his nose.

A sweet smell he recognized.  

His mind gave up on sleep, because this scent had belonged to a human. Someone from long ago. Pain of a completely different kind seared him now.

At one time, he’d associated the smell with good times, great sex and plans for his future.

Mate. Gray Wolf had the same visceral reaction to the scent, but his wolf was wrong. Cole had thought of Tess many times while learning how to shift. When the word ‘mate’ was tossed around, he’d immediately think of her and spreading her favorite lotion across her amazing skin and making love to her.

Gray Wolf persisted. Mate.

Cole couldn’t explain why that wasn’t possible to his animal. The wolf associated that scent with the woman Cole had obsessed over during his early days with Gray Wolf. That had been back when Cole first met the Guardian, their powerful leader who’d called up Cole’s wolf, then proceeded to teach him how to be a shifter.

That was also when Cole realized the woman he’d loved in college could never be in his life.

Not a human woman.

That particular woman wouldn’t be anywhere around the Guardian, which meant the scent did not belong to her. His boss did have some humans in the operation, but they’d been with the Guardian for decades before Cole showed up. This person was probably a female medical specialist who liked the same lotion. Not an easy product to find, because it was made in France and sold in the US by a small cosmetics group.

His throat ached when he swallowed, remembering how he’d tracked it down and wrapped the pretty bottle as a birthday gift. The memory threatened to drag him away from consciousness again, back to a time when he’d been happier than any man deserved. In college with her.

He’d never smelled that fragrance on another woman.

His heart twisted at the memories.

He could deal with the physical pain and healing, but one deep breath of that scent and he suffered an emotional pain that drilled deep into his chest.

Gray Wolf moaned a sorrowful sound.

More than ever, Cole needed to shift and run hard.

Go anywhere to get away from the reminder of all he’d had at one time and lost forever.

Mind over matter.

Screw this. He pulled inside himself and let the darkness suck him into a deep sleep again. He went to a place of peace where he was alone without his wolf.

The place he’d been taught to access when suffering the most excruciating pain.

No physical injury had ever equaled losing her.