was peeking out and my same blue eyes peering at me. I looked down at my paws, admiring the fact that they were a majestic silvery color. I’d never seen a wolf with silver feet before. I picked up my right front paw and cocked my head as I examined it closely. My fur was practically glittering. That was freaking cool.
We’re beautiful, I thought to myself.
Damn right, my wolf agreed.
My head shot back, and my wolf let out a howl that surely reached the moon goddess herself. It was laced with freedom and thankfulness…and joy. I didn’t know how this had happened, but I rejoiced in the fact that my wolf was finally with me. That I could finally be who I was always meant to be.
And then I was off, my wolf desperate to run, to feel the wind through her fur, to experience what we’d both been missing. The breeze danced through my fur, and I wondered how shifters didn’t do everything they could to stay in their wolf form and experience this.
Everything around me was magnified, my sight clearer and crisper, my nose almost overwhelmed with all the new scents around me, my hearing discovering a cacophony of sounds that blanketed the air around me.
How could I go back after this to a reality where I knew this all existed, but where I couldn’t experience any of it? Maybe I’d just stay a wolf forever.
My wolf snorted at my dramatics.
A branch broke behind me, and I whirled around, my teeth bared as I searched my surroundings for any threat. I got distracted though when I saw my footprints in the ground behind me, illuminated clearly under the moonlight because they looked like they’d been sprinkled with silver glitter. I watched as the wind blew through and the footprints disappeared as the silver imprint was carried away like ash in the wind.
Well, I hadn’t ever heard of that before.
A branch creaked again, and my attention was temporarily diverted from the strange sight. My wolf sat back on her haunches when a rabbit timidly made its way out of the underbrush.
Dinner.
I launched myself at the unsuspecting creature, grabbing its neck in my mouth as I yanked my head back and forth to break its neck.
Not sure how I knew how to do that, but I guessed it was instinct. I gulped the rabbit down in what seemed like one bite, and then my wolf was off.
And this time, she kept running. So fast that the world literally melted around us, looking nothing but a blur. At times, she would slow down and I would see unfamiliar canyons and ravines and untraveled roads. I was in the background while she moved, a passenger just along for the ride. I wanted to run forever, to feel this peace where I allowed instinct to take over without care for anything else that existed in the world.
We dashed up the side of a mountain, every step landing smoothly and gracefully in a complicated dance I knew I’d never have been able to accomplish in my human form. We reached the peak where the entire world seemed to be laid out in front of me, and then my wolf crouched down…and we jumped.
I woke up with a gasp, my hands clawing at the sheets desperately as that roller coaster like feeling faded away. I wasn’t falling. I was in my room, in the inn.
My heartbeat was threatening to break out of my chest, and I stared at the ceiling and counted the tiny cracks I saw as I tried to calm down.
Just a dream.
It was just a dream.
If it was just a dream, it would explain why I felt like I was dying. Like something had been taken away from me. Disappointment was an understatement for how I was feeling as I collected the pieces of the dream that I could remember.
I’d dreamed I’d shifted. I didn’t know whether I was grateful that I’d gotten to experience my wolf for a second in my sleep, or if I was devastated because it just pushed the knife in more now that I was back in reality and without her.
“Shit,” I whispered as I finally sat back and went to wipe the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand. Except right before I did, I noticed that my hand was streaked with dirt. I stared at it, uncomprehending how that had gotten there. I slid from my bed when I realized that all