Chapter 13: Rory

The water closed around my waist, and then the man holding me wasn't a man anymore.

I felt it happen.

His arms went thick and rough, and fur crushed up between my fingers.

I was in the river holding on to the back of the biggest wolf I had ever seen.

He was copper brown and as broad as a horse, and when he turned his head, his eyes were gold.

He dipped one shoulder, and I understood.

I got my arms around his neck and hauled myself onto his back, belly and all.

A cramp took me, and I locked my fingers into his ruff.

My crooked hand screamed at me.

I held on anyway.

He pushed off from the bank, and the river took us.

I had spent my life afraid of this exact thing.

Water over my knees and the current pulling hard and the dark green rushing past.

But the water didn't pull at me.

It parted around his chest.

I felt it lift under my legs and carry us, steady and smooth.

"Don't let me go," I said into his fur.

He couldn't answer.

He swam harder.

Rain beat on my back and the contractions came one on top of the other, and somewhere in the middle of it I stopped being afraid of the river.

I was afraid of being too late.

Ten minutes, he had said.

It was nine.

He came up the mud bank below the lodge in one long surge, and the healer was already running down the lawn with a blanket.

Bram shifted so fast his knees hit the ground.

He caught me before I slid.

"Now," he said, hoarse. "Inside, now."

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