Chapter 5: The Border Stones

I shifted at the edge of the pines without deciding to.

It had been twenty years, and it did not hurt.

My bones turned, my nightgown tore away, and the cold ground came up under four paws.

Then I ran.

I was big, and I was gold-white, and I was fast in a way I had forgotten a body could be.

The ridge fell behind me.

The wind poured through my coat, and every smell on it was sharp enough to taste: sap, snow, fox, wet stone.

I had been quiet for so long that I had stopped missing the noise.

I climbed to the top of the north ridge and stopped among the border stones.

There were seven of them, tall and grey and older than either pack, and I had never been allowed to stand here.

Something dark came up the slope behind me.

I turned with my teeth showing.

A huge black wolf stopped ten feet away, put his head down, and waited.

My wolf knew him before I did.

She stepped forward and pushed her face into his neck, and he made a low sound I felt in my own ribs.

We stood there until my legs began to tremble.

Then I did what I had not done in twenty years, and I shifted back on the open ridge, under a clear moon, with nothing on.

The wind cut across my skin.

My knees gave, and strong hands caught me under both arms.

"Easy," Alexander said.

He was human again, too, and equally bare, and he turned me away from him and wrapped a heavy wool coat around my shoulders.

He had left it in a cache between the stones.

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