Inside the room a low hum rose in the darkness, and from some unknown source of light the room became visible all at once, blinding me.
I squinted, letting my eyes adjust to the brightness as I took in the sight before me.
Animals.
Animals everywhere.
But they weren't wandering about randomly; they were each centered under a colored beam of light, the source once again unknown. They had vacant expressionless eyes, like statues, but they moved in small ways, breathing, shifting, scratching.
I recognized the bear first. The bear from my dreams that I had shifted into during my fight with Ryder.
Next to her hovered the hawk I'd shifted into during my recent fight. Something seemed off about her though, so I stepped closer and shuddered at what I saw.
Instead of a wing she had a human arm. My arm.
I looked down at my own wing/arm and cringed, then glanced at the other animals. My wolf, her golden coat soft and shiny, and other animals I'd never seen before but recognized at a soul level. A deer, innocent and sweet. A black panther, deadly and sleek, its dark fur reflecting a glowing purple light. A rabbit, sniffing at its own pawns, its ears twitching.
And so many more.
I walked closer to the hawk and placed my good hand on its wing. Darkness gripped me and I fell into an abyss, screaming without sound, crying without tears, my body no longer corporeal in this eternal nothing.
Talon's voice called out to me through the darkness. "She is your way back. The hawk is you and you are her. You must reconnect with her spirit and give back to her what you took so that she can do the same."
"How?" I think I screamed, but I couldn't hear my own voice, not even in my mind.
"By finding her in you."
My heart pounded, fear gripping me, my stomach no longer real but still dropping into my gut as I felt sure I'd fall forever.
I tried to find my breath, find my happy place, but it no longer existed.
So I looked for my hawk, tried to feel her in the frantic panic of always almost dying.
And there she was. A faint flap of wings out of the corner of my eye. A soft sound almost forgotten, but there if I listened closely. I put the full force of my concentration into that sound, that memory of something, and honed in, grabbing more of her. The woody scent of her feathers, the powerful muscles in her wings, the sharpness of her beak and talons. With each detail, I became more real too, my body forming and shifting until I was her and she was me.
We were one, flying out of the abyss and into the warm light of the room I'd been transported out of.
When I reached the room, I released her, and she flew with both wings back to her waiting spot.
I looked down at my two good arms and snapped back into my frozen body by the dead fire, breathing heavily, nearly unconscious, but whole at last.
TWO
Have Not We Affections
ROSE
“Have not we affections and desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?”
— William Shakespeare, Othello
I DID NOT anticipate my husband's reaction to Talon when they met, though I should have, if I'd given it any thought. To me, shifting was a new way of life, something I'd never dreamed I'd be doing. For Derek, it was his life, his whole life, and he'd been raised to believe that the forbidden ways of multi-shifting were dangerous and should never be practiced.
And now his wife was one of the Forbidden.
In light of this, his reaction to Talon made sense.
"I don't like him," Derek sneered repeatedly through the long hike back to civilization. Talon joined us, but stayed behind, a ghost in the woods around us, which didn't make Derek feel more at ease.
"He's the only one who can help me." We had stopped under a tree for a snack and the bishop, who was also returning with us, walked a few paces away to give us privacy—or maybe to give himself privacy. He still carried sadness about Ryder, even though Ryder survived. As much as I hated what Ryder did to all of us, I'd gotten to see into his soul a bit, and it softened me to him. It also softened me to the rigid and overly righteous bishop, who had just lost his son in every way that mattered.
Derek ran a hand through his dark hair, his blue eyes bright and clear. He looked so healthy it was hard to believe he'd nearly died just a few days before. "Can't you just… I don't know… stop?"
I bit off the sharp retort in my mind, trying to remember that he loved me and worried about me. "No. I can't just stop. I can't control it at all. That's the problem. I'm not trying to do this, Derek. It's happening to me against my will. Against my conscious choice. If Talon doesn't teach me to control this power, I could die from it."
There. I'd said it. I could die. Derek had to understand what was at stake if I didn't learn from the one man who could help.