An hour after I drifted into a state of euphoric indifference, at least I thought an hour had passed, I opened my eyes. My time perception was as fuzzy as my vision, with no idea how much time had passed since my eyes were last open.

Time, like the entire Eastern territory pack, escaped me.

Hands.

I looked down at my hands. My fingers doubled, then tripled and returned to normal. Thoughts muddied, like a thick mental fog invaded my brain, and even one attempted thought felt too difficult for my brain to comprehend.

At least I think they're mine. They're mine, right?

I lifted my arms in front of my face, wiggling my thirty fingers.

Definitely my hands.

A lopsided smile tugged half of my mouth up as I watched how fingers waved back and forth in front of me. Lifting and lowering them in succession, the mesmerizing movement stirred an odd sensation of happiness in me.

My eyebrows pulled together as confusion overwhelmed my senses. I stared at my hands for what felt like an infinite amount of time, until my fingers blurred into a set of white furry paws.

Did I shift?

I blinked and the human form of my palms stared back at me.

Weird...

My eyes squinted as my hands shifted again, back and forth, until they narrowed down back to two. Then they blurred back into Lumi's paws.

I squeezed my eyes shut, took a deep breath, and balled my hands into fists. When I opened them again, my surroundings were back to normal. Except they weren't.

Bright blue eyes, as clear as in a cloudless morning sky, stared at me. Surrounded by white, flowing fur, the eyes were piercing and beautiful. Fur so pure white, I swore I stared at undisturbed snow.

I gasped at her beauty, natural, raw, and unbridled.

"Lumi?" I blinked my eyes and reached out to touch her as if she were in front of me.

The last time I saw her separately was my first shift, when I looked into a mirror.

This time, I reached out and she disappeared, vanishing into the thin air where my fingers extended. I frowned and skimmed my eyes over my unfamiliar surroundings. I stood in the tattoo tent, black cloths draped over the walls with all the sample drawings hung up like portraits. The edges fluttered up, releasing a soft flapping sound.

This time I was alone.

Am I going crazy?

Blinking, I saw her again. Not right in front of me, but a white, fluffy tail disappeared out the back of the tent. I stumbled a few steps forward, clenching the black leather headrest on the large barber's chair to steady myself. Rows of silver ink guns blurred and sharpened, but I pushed past.

When I got to the back, I didn't see Lumi.

What I saw was far more confusing.

Bright, clear blue eyes stared at me. My eyes. Eyes of a different shape but the same color refused to blink. A person, not Lumi and not my reflection in a mirror, stood tall. A regal, stoic projection of energy hit me, stumbling my feet..

Who is he?

He was taller than me, with hair so pale that resembled corn silk... like mine. Stopping in a blunt cut at his broad, lean shoulders, his hair looked recently cut. A few scars that resembled small scratch and puncture wounds dabbed the pale skin on his face and neck. Clear, familiar aquamarine eyes, the color of the most beautiful morning sky, stared so intense that shudders erupted down my spine.

I cocked my head sideways and stared at him with wide eyes. Curiosity, sparked by an air of familiarity, threatened to burn me alive.

I know him.

This strange, handsome man was familiar. He looked familiar, and he felt familiar.

But why? Who is he?

Then, I made a mistake. My eyes blinked. He vanished, taking whatever part of me we shared with him and leaving an empty hole in my heart.

My ankles wobbled, stumbling me in the dark with my hands outstretched. Stepping forward, I found nothing but an empty grassy area and a giant pile of disappointment behind the tent.

Either he's gone or he was never there to begin with.

I'm going crazy.

I pressed my palms into my forehead as if that relieved my confusion. My vision blurred with my thoughts as I blinked to clear myself from this mental and visual fog.

"You are crazy," a male voice, ragged with familiarity and very smug, called out.

His brown hair hung over his forehead, less wild than I remembered. His brown eyes looked at me with a dark sense of amusement hanging behind his pupils.

He wore a long coat left open and unbuttoned in the front. As he rolled up his sleeves, my eyes caught the flash of black ink and I gasped. The mark, his tattoo, was a black as night against his tan skin. The pattern was so similar to the pendant stuck to the damp skin on my neck, yet different.

Upon sight, I recognized my holding cell neighbor, the rogue from the Northern Territory. He looked similar but different. His filled in skin wore a healthier shade and his eye craters were missing. With his ragged appearance cleaned up, his appearance was... handsome?

The same smirk played on his lips as his eyes traveled over me shamelessly, heating with a recognition as if he -

No. He didn't miss me.

"What -" I started when a pair of hands grabbed my shoulders from behind.

As I snapped my attention behind me, my head moved in slow motion as my neck stretched to see who was behind me.

"Zara, you're not safe here," a foggy voice washed over my ears.

The world spun as the hands directed me through the marketplace tents, morphing the lake area into a confusing, scream-ridden chaos. People pushed, shrieked, and ran around me. My eyes half-closed and out of focus, I opened and closed them until two words screamed repeatedly into my ears trickled into my mind.

Rogue attack.

I needed several slow eye blinks until I comprehended what the frenetic activity around me meant. My feet moved too fast for my own movements, my mind clicked at a reduced speed, and I succumbed to the direction I was shoved or dragged in.

Whoever guided me from behind me pressed me past the tents, past the struggling fights, and past the lake. Fleeing to the packhouse became a jumbled mess of blurry shapes spinning around me. Light and dark collided together into chaotic incoherence.

Reaching the packhouse's entrance, my eyes blinked one last time. Weak from moving under another's direction, my knees buckled and I crumpled into blackness.

"Ohhh..." I blinked my eyes open, to a white, unfamiliar ceiling.

An odd smell, thick, stale, and musky, soaked through my nose as I took in a slow, deep breath. The scent was both intoxicating and suffocating for my senses. Even though I woke up, my body felt heavy, drained, and like I hadn't slept at all. Only my mind was operable, focused on where I was.

As I took another breath, I closed my eyes again and realized my body flushed warm. Tingles radiated down the back of my neck, across my shoulders, and down my forearms. When it swirled in my belly, I gasped.

Oh no.

The rising warmth inside me was the start of my next round of heat. The verification I needed was the warm ache pulsing below my navel. It coiled lower until throbbing an independent heartbeat between my legs.

I squeezed my eyes and legs together to suppress the unfortunately familiar warm, pulsating sensations that trembled my lower lip. The pressured movement swelled my sensitive area with ache, so I flipped my eyes up and whooshed an exhale out between pursed lips.

Blinking, I stared at the ceiling and searched for any recognizable details. The ceiling in my room was textured like the one staring back at me, but instead of the neutral gray walls, dark navy blue ones surrounded me.

Not my room.

I stretched my arms out, brushing the pads of my fingers over a soft and silky texture. The same sensation cocooned my legs as I extended them. The feel of blankets wrapped around me didn't soothe the inferno of throbbing sensations built up between my legs.

Flitting my eyes, I took in the obvious.

Not my bed.

My eyes sprung wide and I rubbed the grogginess out of them with my fists. Strained tension rose in my forehead as I looked down and noticed my bare legs brushed against a set of silver satin sheets. I turned my head over both shoulders and breathed a sagging breath when I saw empty sheets next to me. Although they were a bit matted on one side, the lack of a bed partner released another sigh from me.

I didn't have much time to think about those matted sheets, or who matted them, because a warm hand clamped down on my opposite shoulder.

"Zara..." A pair of warm hazel eyes greeted me with a masculine voice, husky with what I hoped was sleepiness. "I can help you with that heat problem. Say the word."

"Ahh!!!" I screamed into Torak's face and clenched my stomach.

I wasn't sure what startled him more, my screaming or morning breath, but he stumbled back a few steps, tripped, and landed onto his butt.

"You scared me," he accused me with a lazy grin, dragging both hands through his tousled curls.

As he steadied his palms on the carpet and stood up, my eyes widened at his half-dressed appearance. He adjusted a pair of gray sweats pants around his waist, thankfully, although they dipped quite low under his lean, toned abdominal muscles. The visual of him half-naked sent my body into a warm buzz.

"Me?" I propped up on my elbows. "I scared you?"

"A little," he admitted as a smirk curled up the corners of his mouth. "Despite being tiny, you can be quite intimidating."

"Can you put a shirt on please?" I shielded my eyes from his naked chest and abdominal muscles.

"I would, except..." He waved a hand at my sheet-wrapped body and sat down a few inches away. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm..." I pressed my palms into the sheets and struggled to sit up, but realized that my legs were naked. My eyes looked down in horror to see that I wore only a gray t-shirt. After a few more seconds, I recognized it as Torak's T-shirt from last night.

Oh. My. Gawd.

With an inward curl of my wrists, I yanked the sheets up to my chin but they got as far as my chest level.

That explains the smell... and oh eww, it's all over me.

My skin itched to remove his shirt, but that would cause other problems. Dipping my chin under the collar, I breathed a sigh when seeing my bra and underwear both intact.

"Are you alright?" Torak clamped his hand outside the sheets, rubbing my leg.

Drawing my knees up, I slid away like he was a venomous snake. "I am anything but okay! Where are my clothes?"

"Would you hit me if I said I'm not sure?" A cringe squeezed his alluring eyes half-closed.

My jaw dropped. "What do you mean, not sure?"

"I think you took them off halfway between the lake and the packhouse," he explained as one of his hands scrubbed his chin. "I wasn't paying attention, it was too chaotic."

"Oh, that's - Wait, I took them off?" My expression didn't change and dryness coated my tongue. "What happened?"

"Rogue attack." His eyes darkened as he looked at me. "Right at the end of the ceremony... that you walked out halfway through."

"Back up." I waved my hands in the air and dropped the blanket to my lap. My brain operated three thoughts behind Torak in this conversation. "Why do I not remember any of this?"

He fell silent at this question, then stood up and paced in front of me.

"Torak!" My eyes narrowed and tracked him like I watched a tennis match. "Walk me through this, please."

"You were a bit... out of it." He cleared his throat, ran a hand over the back of his neck, and offered an apologetic look. "Must have been the pot-laced doughnuts."

"You... gave me... pot-laced doughnuts!?" I screeched as my fists balled up the sheets. "I should rip your throat out!"

"I didn't know they were," he sounded remorseful. "If I knew then I would've stopped you at one. I had no idea you'd be that... reactive to it."

"I had that much of a reaction from two doughnuts?" My jaw dropped. "How much pot did they put in there?"

"You had two before the reaping ceremony." His eyes dragged down and he rubbed at his chin again. "You wandered off halfway through it. I found you five minutes after you left and you'd eaten the rest of the bag."

"I had that reaction to food-based pot?" I frowned. Last night was my first dip into any recreational drug pool and I had no plans for a repeat.

"I..." As he paused, his look of guilt deepened. "...I suspect, but don't know for sure, that they were also laced with fungus ergot."

"Fungus what?" My wide eyes blinked. "What kind of mushrooms are you growing in that greenhouse that would make me that crazy?"

"Not mushrooms..." His voice dropped past a guilty mumble level. "Not from our greenhouse but it's lysergic acid. Plant-based of course but you might be more familiar with its conventional pharmaceutical name, LSD."

My first reaction was an incomprehensible squeak. At the sound, Torak added, "I don't know for sure but assume that's what it was based on your reaction."

"LSD!?" My vocal cords strained with how loud I screamed in his face. "I mean, you-you knew? Why did you buy them for me!? What were you -"

"No, we suspected." He raised his palms. Using slow steps, he moved closer, until his knee grazed the side of the bed. "Trust me, once more important things are settled, Alpha Stephan will investigate it further. He went as far as had the entire stash confiscated last night."

"No wonder I can't remember anything." I hugged my knees close to my chest and buried my face in my hands. "I'm afraid to ask... What happened next?"

He sat down on the bed next to me with his trademark knowing smirk spread across his lips. "I found you behind one of the tents. You'd taken your skirt off by that point, gazing at nothing and mumbling 'it's you' over and over."

Lovely.

Even with my face buried in my palms, my cheeks flushed warm. The bed dipping down signaled Torak sat for up close delivery of embarrassment.

"At some point, while I was half-dragging, half carrying you back to the packhouse, your... shirt came off," he piled on the details. "At least it was off by the time we got back here."

"How do you half-drag, half-carry someone?" I peered through my fingers.

"You kept running away from me and laughing, told me you were playing hide and seek." His smirk widened with his confession. "So I carried you over my shoulder, with your skirtless -"

"I get it." I held up a hand and groaned at the image of my underwear flashing. "And you brought me here? Is this... your room?"

He nodded then dragged his eyes away. "Despite how it might look, regardless of what you attempted, I slept on the floor here last night. Wolf's honor."

"I'm afraid to ask..." My cheeks and neck now flamed with what I knew was a deeper shade of red.

I blushed during this entire conversation, but the more he revealed, the warmer my face, chest, and neck flamed. With the tingles bubbling up under my heated skin, I knew soon I looked like I broke out in hives.

"You were mumbling about rogues, white wolves, and blue eyes." His eyes met mine, drawing my hands down. "It didn't make any sense, then you grabbed me and -"

"And?" I cringed, scrunching my shoulders up to my ears.

"I think you know that part." He leaned forward, reached out, and smoothed some of my messy hair over my shoulder.

In one breath, his index finger traced from my ear down to my chin. My lips parted in a silent gasp when the pad of his finger swiped over my lower lip. The featherlike contact reignited the burning pulses between my legs.

"And I kissed you," I filled in.

He nodded and, by the burning look in his eyes as they focused my lips, he enjoyed that last night.

"And that was it," he promised in a low voice that was suggestive he didn't mind if we picked up where we'd left off. "Contrary to what you might think of me, I'm not desperate for girls who are buzzed out of their minds and hallucinating. Heat relief however, I'm happy to be of service."

"Hallucinating..." As I repeated the word, a sense of calm washed over me. "I-I'm actually glad you said that."

He looked at me, flickers of brown intermixing with his hazel eyes. After I sensed his confusion, I offered, "I thought I was going crazy with what I thought I saw. Did I shift?"

"No," he smiled widely and exposed his perfectly-straight teeth. "Although more than once you threatened me that you would."

"So, you..." I couldn't remember staring at someone for so long before in my life, but this conversation shifted into comforting. "You... saved me?"

My heartbeat quickened as his gaze lingered on my lips. "You could say that," he whispered and lifted his eyes up to mine.

I was hyper aware how his fingers now stroked my cheek and even more aware when I leaned into the sensation.

"Torak..." I studied his eyes for a reaction. "You know we're not mates."

"You didn't have a problem with that last night," a flash of interest gleamed in his eyes as a teasing tone slipped into his voice. "I think your human side has been pretty beaten up lately, literally. And you're obviously uncomfortable in heat, so why not have a small... indulgence."

"I..." I stared, mesmerized and trapped, into his eyes. My hesitation and thoughts dissolved into a single realization.

He saved me.

My fingers needed that one invitation to move on their own. Ringlets of his soft curls brushed over my knuckles as I tensed my fingers into the cords of his neck.

Waves of heat and arousal washed over my body, flaming me hot from the inside out, and pushed small trembles all the way into my fingertips.

Before my movement registered in my brain, my lips were on his. Or maybe his were on mine, I wasn't sure who made the move first. After a soft, unmoving press, he molded his lips over mine and pressed harder.

He tasted warm, sweet, and intoxicating.

Moving his mouth in rounded O-like kisses, each tug and push on my lips was addictive. Knowing we weren't mates felt naughty, like indulging sips of fine rich wine when I was underaged. My heart pulsed in my neck as I nipped back, deepening the kiss. Fluttering my eyes closed, tiny twinkling stars lit up like fireflies in the blackness of my mind.

With an inward roar, an avalanche of emotions collided and crashed into those twinkling sensations. The collision froze my spine. My hands pushed roughly into Torak's chest until we parted. A burning sensation pricked my eyes, like dryness, and two words flooded out of my mouth.

"Not mate."

My lips moved and my voice box vibrated as I pushed the words out, but I hadn't said them. After I drew a few slow breaths, my thoughts settled back into focus and I realized what happened.

Lumi was back.