Chapter 6: White

I had shifted only a handful of times in my life.

My wolf first came when I was nineteen, in the dark, in a clinic bed, small and silent, and I had spent three years keeping her that way.

Dane called it being slow.

The pack said I shifted politely, and slowly, and as little as I could.

I stepped away from Kellan's hand and walked down the back steps to the creek.

The old dog followed me and sat on the bank.

"Devon," Kellan said behind me.

"Don't talk," I said. "Not yet."

The sun was going down behind the ridge, and Cold Creek ran shallow and gold over the stones.

The water was loud.

I took off my shirt and folded it over a rock, then my jeans, then everything else.

It was cold on my skin and I didn't care.

I heard him turn his back and move off along the bank to give me room.

I closed my eyes and let her come.

At the packhouse I had always held on.

The Alpha's rule is that you shift at a run, in company, on someone's signal, and my wolf had learned to wait for all three.

This time there was nobody to wait for.

The change went through me from the spine outward.

My hands hit the stones as paws.

My vision flared, and every smell on that bank came up at once: wet fern, old smoke, the dog, the cedar, a man's skin.

I stood up on four legs and the creek was shallow around my ankles.

The old dog whined.

I looked down at my paws, and they were white.

They were huge, white as snow with grey pads, wider than my face had ever been in my own mind.