Chapter 16: Dusk

The shift hit me on the cellar floor.

My bones pulled, my spine stretched, and my skin split open in a long hot rush.

I screamed into my arm so the guard wouldn't hear.

It lasted a minute, and it was the longest minute of my life.

Then I was on four feet in the dark, and I could smell everything.

The plum jam. The damp stone. The guard's sweat on the other side of the door.

Dusk filled me up to the edges. She was the color of a winter sky at six o'clock, and she was furious.

"Out," she said.

I hit the door with my shoulder.

The wood cracked. I hit it again, and the bolt tore out of the frame.

The guard on the stairs shouted. I didn't know him well. He had taught me to ride a bike.

He was a man, and I was a wolf, and I went past him with my teeth bared and did not bite.

Two more came down the hall. I knocked one into the wall.

The other grabbed my scruff, and Dusk twisted and put him on the floor with a snap of her jaws that stopped an inch from his throat.

"Run," she said.

It was the word she had said the night I was thrown out.

I ran.

I went out the kitchen door and across the yard.

Behind me, someone started to howl, and then another, and then a dozen wolves were in the dark behind me.

The treeline was a hundred yards away.

I ran flat out over the frozen grass, and every smell in Montana came in on the wind.

I heard them gaining. Heavy paws, hard breath.

A huge gray wolf drew level with me and swung his shoulder into mine.

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