Chapter 16: First Shift

Orla's POV

My mother and I ran until the pack house lights were gone behind the pines.

She had not run in eighteen years, and she did it with her skirt hiked in one fist and her jaw set.

I had not looked back at the kitchen door, and the not looking sat heavy in my chest.

"He'll be all right," my mother said, breathing hard. "Hester will see to it."

"You don't know that."

"No."

We came out into a clearing on the ridge above the creek, a flat circle of moss with a split boulder in the middle.

The moon was low and white.

My wolf stood up in me, so fast it knocked the wind out of my lungs.

"Now," she said.

"Now what?"

"Now you stop asking me to wait."

My skin went tight.

I dropped to my knees on the moss, and pain ran up my spine in a single bright line.

"Orla!"

"It's her," I gasped. "She's coming."

My mother's hands closed on my shoulders, and her voice came down level and low.

"Don't fight it. Eighteen years of powder in your blood, and she's strong enough now to break it. Let her through."

"It hurts."

"I know. I did it at fourteen."

"Does it stop?"

"It stops."

My bones began to move.

I will not say it was beautiful.

My back arched, and my arms bent wrong, and something tore along my ribs and settled into place.

I heard myself cry out, and the sound came out of my throat as a howl.

My hands hit the moss, and they were not hands.

I lay there panting, and the world came in all at once.

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