Chapter 9: The River Run

Anneliese's POV

"You haven't shifted since you got here," Ewan said.

It was the second night after Tobias left, and we were on the porch steps with the valley black and silver under a waning moon, one night past full.

"The silver," I said. "It held the wolf down."

"It's out now."

"I know."

"The healer says a short run is safe for the baby."

He turned his mug in his hands.

"If you want one. I'm not telling you to."

I looked at the tree line.

For two years my wolf had paced behind my ribs, shut in by that grinding ache.

I hadn't known how tired she was until the ache was gone.

"Where?" I said.

His smile was slow and a little crooked.

"Come on."

He took me down a deer path to a bend of the Miller River.

The bank ran flat and pale there, under the pines.

He turned his back and I stripped to my skin and left my clothes on a rock.

The cold air hit my arms.

I called her, and for the first time in two years she came the whole way.

It didn't hurt.

My spine bent and my hands became paws, and the whole night opened up in smell and sound.

Pine sap and wet stone.

A mouse in the grass forty feet away.

Ewan's scent, warm and woodsmoky, coming from behind a tree.

He walked out as a big wolf, sandy gray with a darker stripe down his back, and he stood and let me look.

I ran.

I ran flat out down the bank with the water flashing on my left.

He came up beside me and matched me stride for stride, never getting ahead.

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