Chapter One
Kyle
My shirt fluttered to the ground as I kicked off my shoes and worked the button on my jeans. I still couldn’t believe I was doing this. It had been too long since I shifted…as in years, and the last time really sucked. I learned from that mistake and came alone. Still, I was nervous.
My new job in the city didn’t give me the time to destress and relax. Fresh air? What was that? Quiet? Wasn’t that fiction? I tried the normal stuff they always tell you to do in articles, everything from exercising, only eating whole foods, and drinking herbal teas. None of it worked. I was officially out of ideas, except for this one that had me driving an hour away from home to let my maned wolf out.
The travel time sucked, but I couldn’t exactly blend in if I shifted in the city. I might’ve been able to if I were a squirrel or a dog, even a raccoon. People would expect to see me, but most people, when they saw my beast, would have no idea what they were looking at. I looked more like a child’s drawing than an actual animal.
Maned wolves might sound like big ferocious beasts, ones that were tough and could take down the most predatory of local critters. If only I looked like my name sounded. Instead, I looked like a fox on stilts, something I’d constantly been reminded of from the time of my first shift.
I was a “lucky” one. I lost my parents young—that wasn’t the lucky part—but when I did, the woman at the foster agency sensed immediately that I was a shifter and made sure that I was adopted into a pack. So many shifters ended up with unknowing human families, and that rarely ended well.
At the time, she didn’t know what my beast was. I could’ve been a bear, a gray wolf, a dragon, heck, I could’ve been a goose. It wasn’t until I turned thirteen and my beast first showed himself, that any of us knew I was nothing as wonderful as any of those options would’ve been.
A shifter’s first time taking their fur or feathers or scales was a rite of passage. It was a time to honor the goddess and become one with our beasts. It was a time to celebrate with those who love you.
That was not how it worked for me. My first shift was an utter nightmare. My pack mates laughed, mocked, and looked down on my animal. I got nicknamed Stilts by the alpha’s son, and it stuck. My beast was shunned by the others, and when I shifted back, the torment only got worse.
That was the first time I swore off shifting. And I kept to that for years, not considering such a risky move again until I was well off packlands and living on my own.
In college, I had a boyfriend. I knew he wasn’t my always-and-forever mate, but I loved him. And at the time, I wasn’t sure I even believed in fated mates. I was still on the fence, but I liked him enough to consider it love, and that had been good enough for me. When he asked me if I wanted to go for a run, it took me a while to agree.
I kept reminding myself that he loved me. I loved him. It was all gonna be fine. I’d been so wrong.
Instead, he told me he couldn’t see a future with anyone he couldn’t have kids with, and he refused to allow his children to be born with stilts for legs.
To say I was crushed would be an understatement. Breaking up with him for any other reason would’ve stung, but because he couldn’t accept my beast, that opened all the old wounds, leaving them as raw as they were from my first shift. Since that day, I’ve kept my beast in, not wanting to risk sharing with anyone else.
My beast didn’t like it.
He put up with it.
I put up with it.
We dealt with it.
That was until today, when he said enough is enough. He didn’t care that I was in the city. I didn’t care that my life was surrounded by human friends or that your pack is far away. The only thing he cared about was getting out.
Still, I attempted to keep him at bay. That was until I realized I couldn’t. During a random all-hands meeting, he nearly broke out. That would’ve ended horribly and was why I now stood in the state park, freezing my ass off as I took my clothes off, ready to let him free for the first time in years and the third time ever.
Being in a state park, off-season, a time when people didn’t really camp or hike because the weather was just a little too harsh, but not harsh enough for the true winter hikers, the ones who had to prove to the world that they were tough, gave me a sense of safety. Silly me.
My beast took his fur and bolted into the woods. We ran and ran and ran. He picked up the scent of a squirrel and decided that would be our snack. It became his focus, chasing that blasted thing. I didn’t mind. It kept him focused and burned off his aggression he’d built up for years.
It was going great.
Until it wasn’t.
A sound I never wanted to hear echoed through the woods, far too close to me…a gunshot. There weren’t supposed to be hunters here…ever. The state parks here prohibited hunting of any kind, but that didn’t stop this guy.
I froze, trying to come up with a plan, ultimately opting to shift back, the cold air slapping my bare skin. My clothes were miles away, but it would be easier to say I was in some sort ofa hazing event if I ran into the hunter than to have him see my beast and decide to take another shot.
I walked, my feet blistered and bloody, hoping I remembered the way correctly. Finally, I saw the clearing where my clothing was. I was close. So very close.
A scream told me I wasn’t alone. A young couple, hiking in the off-season, probably thinking they were going to have a sweet little date, ran into me in all my naked, battered glory.
The man told her to call for help and ran to me, asking if I was okay. It was a blur from there until I was being questioned by the EMTs. I said it was a dare, thinking that a dare wouldn’t get anyone in trouble but me.
