Page 17 of Chaos At Second Sight

CHAPTER FIVE

YVAINE

After the boar feast, I decided to wolf out. Time for Lucien and my wolf Zelda to get acquainted. And my brain needed a break—she hadn’t stopped yelping since Lucien had shown up.

“You can’t mark her.” I’d repeated it dozens of times and then some. Lucien waved me away, as if he were deviating a crow’s fly.

“No marking, no mating, no sniffing inappropriate places. Lucien got it.” His impatient grumble only made me laugh.

Since he didn’t believe I could walk on my own, he carried me down a slope to a small clearing. After a Turn around and Don’t peek, Lucy, I stripped off my now two-day-old clothes and proceeded to fold them over a flat rock that seemed almost there for that purpose.

Eyes closed, I drew in a deep inhale and let my wolf spirit out. The shift overtook me, seamless and instinctual.

I dropped to all fours midstep, my feet shattering into hazel-brown paws. Canines surged from my gums. Muscles knotted and rewove like living things and bones popped and crunched, ones unnatural for humans. Fur burst free into the rushing wind as my breath ripped from my muzzle.

The shift was barely finished, my fur still sprouting to its full length, when my overexcited wolf yipped and launched herself to her mate, beyond eager to spend time with a lycan. “My lycan,” Zelda said.

Lucien was sitting on a boulder, elbows on parted knees, very Logan-like again, looking as innocent and peaceful as a gargoyle of a gothic cathedral. Perking his ears and tipping his head, he looked up at Zelda. Immediately, his eyes filled with so much adoration I wondered if I could keep just Lucien forever and return Logan and his inevitable headaches.

My wolf took full control. I feared that she would force Lucy to mark her, mate her, and start a family with twins or triplets—the genetics for those a certainty here. I slapped a hand over my eyes as Zelda yipped and, at top speed, tore circles around a stunned Lucien. Is she greeting her mate or performing some shamanic wolf fertility dance? Hard to tell.

“Lucien mate,” he said in absolute awe, gawking at her with parted lips, like he just walked into a form of lycan nirvana. Lycanvana.

For the rest of the morning, Lucien and Zelda played and chased each other, forgetting about everything else, with Lucien also on all fours though triple her size. I watched them like my favorite movie.

My wolf harassed Lucien the whole time. She ambushed his hind legs, bit his tail, hanging from it with all four paws when he tried to walk, then pounced onto his back with no warning and tackled him to the moss. Meanwhile, Lucien accepted every blow and let her do anything, so long as she remained under his radar. I was mesmerized by his saintly patience, considering he had purred through the entire ordeal.

No rogues or wild animals disturbed us; either we’d gotten lucky or the predators simply avoided us.

When we reached a pond in the canopy, stopping for a well-earned drink, I sighed, content. This was a place where time forgot to pass. Somewhere gnomes and woodland spirits would hide from modern progress.

The forest breathed around us, full of birdsong and visions of green. The peace. The absence of humanity. It felt like I was seeing all of this for the very first time, like someone had removed a blindfold made of work, packed schedules, and city life from my eyes.

I had forgotten it. I had forgotten what it meant to be wild, and free, and myself. My true self. A creature of the wilderness, where boars defended their young. Where predators prowled. Where you felt moss under your feet instead of shoe soles and smelled rain instead of matcha lattes.

I’d become civilized. Too civilized. The realization settled over me with surprising weight.

Back in Montana, I had barely shifted into my wolf. I hadn’t forgotten how to be a wolf. I had forgotten that I was one.

Somewhere between working to be who I wanted to be and becoming who I needed to be, I’d left part of myself behind. The wild part. The part that understood freedom wasn’t the absence of responsibility—it was remembering who you were beneath it.

But the forest hadn’t forgotten me.

It had simply been waiting for me to come back.

And I was going to enjoy it.

Suddenly, without warning, Zelda shuffled backward, then charged like a battering ram. Caught off guard, Lucien toppled into the water, causing a miniature tsunami. Before he’d even resurfaced, Zelda was already tearing through the thistles like a bat out of hell…with the devil himself on our heels.

I tried to stop her, scold her, lightly threaten her, but her perfectly functioning ears weren’t listening to me.

The growl that erupted behind us might still be echoing all throughout Scotland.

If he marks us now, we deserve it.

The futile attempt to outrun a lycan was, well, futile.

One moment, Zelda was crouched behind a fallen log, camouflaged beneath mud, leaves, and what looked suspiciously like a rotten bird’s nest, complete with ticks. The next, a giant pair of furry arms scooped her up. “Caught you.”