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Misha shook his head against me, but he let me kiss him for a long, lingering moment. “I assume your clothes aren’t magically shifting clothes?”
I rolled my eyes and took a step back. “No. Just toss them somewhere they won’t get wet.” My hands went for my shirt first as I used my toes to tug my shoes off. The night air felt perfect against my skin, which was starting to ache with the impending change. I turned my face up to the sky as I dragged the rest of the fabric from my body, and I barely registered Misha at my feet, gathering them up.
For a moment, he faded into the background with the rest of the world. He was another heartbeat in the sea of all the life surrounding me. My eyes were wide, straining for the stars I’d never see again, but the moment was just a pulse of grief for what I had lost. I could feel the moon. She was so nearly full, and it felt like food and drink after being deprived for so long.
The moment stretched and lingered, and I was reminded of my first voluntary shift. I had been terrified that I wouldn’t be able to do it. My mother had been just outside of my reach, saying nothing, but her presence was enough. She believed in me, and though my wolf was just as terrified to disappoint as the rest of me, it had been braver too.
This moment felt the same, and I had a sudden rush of missing my mother—all of the family I had known.
This was for them, I reminded myself. Regaining my power, regaining my status, this was for them and the rest of my kind who had fought for freedom and deserved more than just the illusion of it.
The first crack of bone was more startling than anything, and then it came upon me in a rush. My last coherent, human thought was of Misha and wondering what he must be thinking as he watched my body break apart and reform into something entirely new.
* * *
It was always difficult to describe what the shift was like to humans—not that many had ever asked me, but before the fighting began, some were curious. But it was impossible to describe the dual nature to someone who didn’t have one.
In the first shift since my return, I went in with a vague, quiet hope that something would change. That somehow the nerves would heal. That I would be graced with a miracle. Instead, it was the endless sea of nothing, and behind that, the overwhelming sensations of my other senses on an almost painful alert.
I whimpered, my nose close to the ground as I took in the space around me. I wanted to run, but the fear of not knowing what was beyond the small area around my body was too profound. I crouched low to the ground, then growled when I heard a footstep until I caught the scent of my mate.
Misha’s hands gently explored me—running through my fur, over my snout, thumb caressing my fangs without even the slightest hint of fear. He was there—he was with me. He had promised not to leave me alone, and he hadn’t.
“Kor,” I heard him say, the words a little meaningless, but I knew my name on his human lips. “Walk with me. I won’t let you get lost.”
Had the animal side of my brain been capable of understanding irony, I might have chuffed a little at the idea that he was my guide dog in this form. But he urged me to follow, first at a walking pace until we made a massive circle around the clearing of trees, and then faster. Then faster after that as I began to trust my senses. My paws dug into the dirt, claws tearing at the grass as I ran. I passed him—again and again I passed him—as I felt my wolf merging once again with the man.
My heart began to beat as it had before, my lungs drawing in breath without weakness. I was as whole as I would ever be, and even sightless, I felt as whole as I had ever been. I had been saved.
I came to a stop somewhere in the center with my mate not far, and I tilted my head up to the sky, a howl bursting from my chest. It echoed, and though there was no answering one, I knew I didn’t need to hear it. I was with my people.
My pack.
My mate.
I heard him approach, so I rolled onto my side and let him shuffle in close. His heart couldn’t beat as fast as mine. I turned over and pressed my snout into his neck. His laugh rumbled through me as I dragged my face lower. He didn’t smell like a human, but he was no Wolf. He was something Other, and that something Other was mine.
“I love you,” he said—or I thought he said. Words were always strange to me in this form, but I felt the meaning of it pushed through our bond. I chuffed, licking the hand that caressed my chin, and he pressed his face into the crook of my neck and held himself there.
It was good.
Until it wasn’t.
Danger floated across just moments before the shot rang out. And then a another, followed by the human’s sharp cry. I smelled blood, then heard a howl from one of the Betas. For a moment, panic seized me. I was in unfamiliar territory and I couldn’t see.
Then I smelled the blood. I heard the soft groan and realized that Misha had been hit.
I didn’t even consider the shift back, it just happened. He was in my arms the moment my bones were back in place, and I ran fingers all over him. “Where?” I asked, my voice raspy and panicked. “Misha, where?”
“My leg,” he gasped.
For a single nanosecond, I allowed myself relief. His leg was not immediately fatal. “How bad?”
“I can feel the fucking bullet. It’s in my thigh,” he said through clenched teeth.
I bared my fangs, rising onto my knees when I heard footsteps coming through the grass. I was prepared to strike, prepared to kill, and then I caught Biggs’s scent. “Who the fuck…?”
“Sanderson,” he said through gasps of air. “Sanderson fucking… Mitchell has him right now. He took him down.”
