through the narrow space, biting back the hiss of pain as my hips and shoulders scrape against the old boards on either side of the hole. Tiny beads of blood rise along the drag marks, but the moment I tumble out of the shed and onto the hard ground behind it, I forget all about the scratches.
I’m out, and now I need to fucking run.
Head thrown back, my body is already shifting before I’ve even fully formed the thought. My wolf shoves her way up as though she were just lying in wait, ready to pounce. I fall on all fours as bones begin to shift and grow, break and realign.
Fur bursts from my skin, while thick pads form on my palms and the soles of my feet. A mouthful of sharp teeth lengthens my jaw, lips already pulling back into a wolfish sneer. My vision sharpens, nose poised to scent the air, and the moment our shift is complete, my wolf takes over.
She doesn’t just run toward the trees, she practically flies.
The speed of her, the precision...I wish I could just enjoy this, but the fact that we’re running for our lives taints the moment. Still, I’m in complete awe of her as she moves, her dark gray body as fast as a bullet. She follows pure instinct as we race away, her head constantly lifting to take in the scents in the air.
Unfamiliar wolves pollute every inch of this place, and their aroma makes her uneasy. She doesn’t like the assault of their fragrance. But we stop mid-stride as something rises on the wind and practically slaps us across the muzzle. There, woven deeply within the smell of foreign and threatening wolves, there’s...something. Something that speaks to my wolf on a visceral level. She drops her nose to the ground, pulling the smell deep into her lungs, trying to decipher what it is.
It’s a musk of wild maleness that’s so strong she can taste it. The heaviness of the scent is so powerful that it lingers even though the source hasn’t tread through this area in a very long time. My wolf abruptly veers off, her nose searching, hunting, following a trail. Panic explodes through me, and I shout out at her to focus, to get us out of here. But she doesn’t listen. To my horror, she’s so in control, so deeply driven by her animal instincts, that it even bleeds into me.
It’s dizzying and addictive, this sense of feral power that radiates through her, and I fall within its temptation, sinking beneath her consciousness as her compulsions and urges snap free and wrap around us.
Instincts take over completely.
It’s all that we are. Just running and scenting, driven by the need to hunt, to dominate, to kill, to fall into every animal urge, including finding the source of this potent bouquet.
When the sound of baying wolves erupts beneath the half moon, we both turn toward it, ears pricking. They’re calling to us, and we want to answer.
Somewhere in the back corner of my mind, I know that’s wrong, that we need to escape, to run from whatever is stoking our instincts like this. But that corner gets silenced with a snap of my wolf’s sharp teeth, and then she betrays us completely by throwing her head back and howling. It’s a haunting, singular lament to the sky. The stars blink down at us as though they’re watching with bated breath as my wolf announces to the Ruin Falls pack exactly where we are.
Then she turns and runs.
Excitement pumps through our veins as we weave our way through the night-kissed trees. Bracken and soil kick up in our wake as we push our wolf body to move as fast as it possibly can. I try to make sense of the idiotic wolf logic of announcing that we’ve escaped and then trying to get away, but it all feels so good to her, so right, that I can’t seem to shove the emotions away from me. I’m enjoying this as much as she is, every single one of my senses in tune with hers, and those senses tell us one thing.
They’re coming.
We both know it, and I’m trying to figure out why this now feels like a game to my wolf, instead of the life or death situation it is. Faster and faster we fly, and then we catch the telltale sound of a snarl somewhere behind us. My fear spikes and tries to battle my wolf’s exhilaration, but