I pressed harder, testing.
It seemed that I was healed, or at least mostly healed anyway. There was still a residual soreness, deep and bruised, as though I’d been trampled by a horse and lived to complain about it, but the damage was gone. The lycan bite that should have ended me was nothing more than a fading shadow beneath my skin.
A quiet, startled laugh slipped out of me.
The laugh turned into a gasp as something inside me surged upward, fast and demanding. My muscles tightened. My spine arched slightly. The heat flared again. It wasn’t painful, but urgent, like a tide slamming against a locked gate.
I needed to shift.
The word wasn’t a thought so much as a command.
I swung my legs off the cot and stood before my brain could catch up, dizziness flashing briefly through my vision. I steadied myself on the edge of the bed, breathing through it.
The pressure intensified.
Every instinct screamed at once—move, hunt, run, now.
Staying here felt impossible. The walls felt too close, the ceiling too low, the air too thin. I needed space. Trees. Dirt under my paws. Blood on my tongue. The wind whipping through my fur.
I slipped out of the med bay barefoot, moving fast and quiet down the corridor.
The door to the outside loomed ahead.
The moment I pushed through it, the world exploded into color and scent.
Pine. Wet earth. Old leaves. Rabbit. Deer. Fox. Water.
My breath caught as the pressure finally broke.
I didn’t fight it.
I let go.
The shift rolled through me like a wave I’d been waiting for all my life. Bones stretched and reformed, muscles bunching and releasing, skin prickling as fur rippled into place. It wasn’t gentle, but it wasn’t violent either. It felt… right. Like my body was finally finding its proper shape after years of being slightly off.
Four paws hit the ground.
I shook once, hard, the world snapping into a sudden stark focus.
Everything made sense like this.
I took off at a run before I could second-guess it.
The forest swallowed me whole, branches blurring past as I moved faster than thought. My lungs expanded greedily, pulling in cold air, my heart pounding with a steady, powerful rhythm. Each stride was a release. Each leap carried me farther from walls and memories and pain.
I discovered real freedom then.
I ran until the pressure eased, until the heat settled into something manageable inside of me.
Then I slowed.
Listened.
The forest spoke to me in layers now. Wind in the canopy. The distant rush of water. The skitter of some small critter in the underbrush. I turned my head, nostrils flaring.
I smelled rabbit and it was close.
Hunger coiled in my belly. I lowered myself into the brush, body flattening instinctively, every movement silent as the grave.
