Awakening the Wolf (4 page)

The only reason he was with Jalisa was because it was expected of him to take a mate among his own kind. Her family was powerful within the pack and had trading connections with other packs outside of their territory. His father wanted him to cement a union with her so that they could expand their horizons. For the last year, Jalisa had been hanging off him, trying to claim him for her own. But he kept her at arm’s length, indulging her pawing over him. Christopher realized now that one of the reasons he had put her off for so long was because he loved Illiana. He had never wanted to admit it to himself. Having Illiana against him was almost a dream come true. Her hair had smelled like vanilla. Her lips had been soft, and even though the kiss had only lasted a second, he would never forget the taste of her. And then Jalisa had interrupted them.

“Are you mourning for that bird girl of yours?” Jalisa cooed.

He lifted his head and stared at her. According to pack standards, she was beautiful. Unlike the ravens, the wolves were more diverse and did not resemble one another. Jalisa’s hair shimmered in the moonlight, and her skin was tan. She would have been a great catch for someone who truly wanted her and could put up with her attitude. But Christopher also needed someone to put up with his short temper. At times he said things without thinking, and this had been one of those times. Jalisa had gotten him all riled up, and he knew Illiana had been hurt seeing the two of them together, plus she was making a show of it to get Illiana going. The smug grin on Jalisa’s face caused his wolf to growl.

“You had no right to act the way you did just now.” He got up and dusted himself off.

Jalisa snorted. “Why do you care so much about her? She isn’t even one of us. What is it about her?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“I know the sob story. You’ve known her since you were kids, and she was there for you when your mother died. You’ve felt like you need to protect her because everyone else sees that she’s an outcast, even among her flock. Who cares about all of that?”

Christopher suppressed the urge to snap at her. All he envisioned was wrapping his teeth around her neck, but he could not do that. That was his temper talking. He took a deep breath and reined in his anger. “I care about all of that. I understand that we’re supposed to be mated eventually, but you have to learn to respect my friends. Remember that Illiana is the daughter of the leader of the flock. She’s supposed to be next in line to lead, and with me being alpha, I am going to have a relationship with her.”

Jalisa shrugged. “We don’t need the ravens. Once we’re mated, we’ll have the other packs’ resources and won’t have to worry about the birds.”

He shook his head. “You don’t get it. We trade with them, and some of the wolves have friends among the flock. We can’t just cut them off.”

“Maybe not, but you can certainly cut off that bitch. If I see her around you again, I’m going to tear her feathers off. You’re mine!”

“You might think I’m yours, but you have no idea who I really am. Illiana does, and because of you, I’ve just screwed up the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Go away and leave me alone!”

Jalisa was going to say something else, but he growled and gnashed his teeth at her in a show of his dominance. She backed away and dashed off into the forest. Christopher waited until she was gone before sniffing the air to catch Illiana’s fading scent. When he found it, he raced into the forest and slipped into the shadows. He followed it deeper into the woods and realized it was moving east. He didn’t know how many miles he ran, but he stopped because he lost Illiana’s scent. It was an odd thing because he could still smell her, but it was different. It had changed and had the musky fragrance of the wolf mixed in with it. Christopher presumed another wolf had come across her and that changed the aroma. The only thing he was certain of was that Illiana had shifted because he found her dress.

Christopher picked it up and brought it to his nose. He inhaled her aroma and felt his heart break. She was nowhere to be found. His words and actions had driven her away. Now he would never see the woman he loved again. Some part of him died in that second.

“Illiana,” he cried into the night, but no answer came back to him.

Illiana woke with the first rays of dawn warming her flesh. It stirred her from the dregs of sleep and the dreams of running through the woods. When she opened her eyes and sat up, Illiana realized she was naked. The thunderous waves below alerted her she was near the sea, lying on a cliff. Hundreds of feet below her was the ocean. The shrill cries of gulls filled her ears, and the whipping wind did not have the same personality she was used to in the woods. Here, at the coast, where the land met the shredding waters, ripping away at the land, the air currents mixed together. They merged in a shrieking gust she was unfamiliar with. She reached out, feeling the ebb and flow of the squall. It began to warm to her, and she found she could still control the element. Illiana wiped the sleep from her eyes and stared at the whitecaps frothing the ocean’s surface. All kinds of seabirds flapped and glided on the breeze, using the air currents to dive and circle until they went headfirst into the cold water and came up with a fish. Among the regular fowl were hawks and osprey grazing the water with their claws until they came away with their prey. Sometimes she wondered if it would be easier to be a regular animal. There would be no need for her humanity. It was rare, but it did happen among the shape-shifters. Sometimes the animal was too strong and took over. Watching the raptors, she saw their pure strength and elegance as they danced in the air, doing nothing but what they were built for: searching for food for themselves or their mates. Osprey mated for life. They gave no care to emotion or protocol.

Christopher’s words repeated in her mind once more. The rage and hurt they stirred brought hot tears to her eyes. He was the one person she never thought would betray her. After she had laid her heart out, he had taken and twisted it into something she did not recognize any longer. He had torn it from her chest and stomped on it. Had all their years of friendship been a ploy to gain her trust, leading up to the moment that he knew how to hurt her? The cold chill of the wind cut across her skin. She could not believe that Christopher felt nothing for her. The words had almost come from his lips, the three words she had yearned to hear and confessed to him, but he was frightened to admit it to himself. That had to be it.

She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to warm up. Her stomach rumbled, and she did not know the last time she had eaten. The day before she had to fast until the feast, but she had not joined in that. The place where she was branded stung a little as she passed her hand over the newly formed scabs. Illiana had to return home and get some clothing. If she did, she would have to tell her mother where she went and explain what had happened. She would have to face Belik again and risk running into Christopher. There was no other choice. It was her home. Nevertheless, when she turned her back to the sea and tried to get her bearings, she could not see the tree line of her beloved forest. All that stretched before her was ragged cliffs. Beyond that, it was the grasslands of the plains. If that were the case, she had run or flown all night and gone hundreds of miles without even knowing it. Illiana tried to recall what had happened after her argument with Christopher, but it was mostly a blur. She remembered moving swiftly, but she was not in the air. She was close to the ground, traveling on all fours.
That can’t be right.
Illiana glanced at her hands, and they were whole. Her feet did not feel torn up from running. It was obvious she had changed sometime during her flight because she was naked and her clothes were nowhere around her. All that answered her question was the shadowed part of her mind. Focusing on that, Illiana felt another presence in her thoughts, another animal presence that had not been there before and yet it was familiar. She tried to reach out and access it, but it would not show itself to her. But she knew intuitively it was lending her strength, the way her raven side did when she needed it.

What is going on with me? What’s inside of me?
Dread flooded her mind. She paced along the cliff’s edge, trying to hold onto rational thought. “Okay. Don’t panic. Breathe, Illiana. Maybe this is something that happens after initiation. Maybe it’s a test to suss out some feral side. Oh, no! Maybe I’m losing myself to the animal. No. I don’t feel any different. Mom would have told me to expect something. Or maybe she didn’t want to because she’s the leader. Coret would know. She’s our spiritual leader.”

Illiana stopped and drew in a deep breath. Her aunt would have the answers. Coret had needed to talk to her the night before, so maybe this was what she needed to talk about. That meant Illiana had to return to the flock. She inhaled the sea air and let the salt settle on her tongue. Panicking would not get her anywhere. Once she had some answers to what had happened to her, then she could worry about Christopher. The hurt would remain, but right now she was not ready to face him. Even though he said all of those upsetting things, she knew he cared for her. The knowing went deep into her gut, and she was not going to give up on her friend.

Illiana reminded herself that nothing else mattered, other than her figuring out what had happened to her. Maybe she was losing her mind. Maybe wild with grief, she had somehow blacked out and run all night. It could have happened. Maybe it was worse than that and the animal inside was becoming more prominent. Or maybe it had something to do with her unique ability to feel and use the air. No one, not even her, understood how she did it, but it was second nature. The ability appeared when she was a child. She would talk to the wind. It imparted feelings, impressions of the environment, weather patterns that were coming in, and sometimes if there were predators coming. It was not an exact knowledge, and it did not always talk to her, but she could always control it and fly upon it with her wings or without them. Her mother didn’t appreciate her using that particular skill. Her mother did not like that difference in her daughter, and Illiana wished she was like everyone else.

But I’m not like everyone else.

She sighed and focused on her raven half. It was so much easier to give in to something she knew, something that was a second skin. The feathers were her comforting blanket. Her wings would bring her back to the safety of her flock and to the answers that she sought. Concentrating on her animal self, she felt her form shrinking, shifting into something more compact and able to cut through the air with more precision than her human form could. There was some pain to switching her shape, but it felt more like her bones were melting into one another. The updrafts still spoke to her in bird form, but her ability was more focused so she could actually see how the air twisted. The breezes, mixing together along the ocean’s coast, wove together and appeared to her as different widths of ribbon. The smaller ones were light currents that could not carry her. The thicker ones would propel so she could move up to the higher atmosphere. The ones above were frayed—those she had to avoid. Those were the turbulent ones that constantly changed and that had storms blow in on. They could easily shred her wings and throw her off course. Those were the angry gales that did not enjoy being ridden. They bucked and bounced her until she found another current to ride.

Illiana ruffled her feathers as she got the feel of her changed body. The breeze seemed to know she had transformed and darted underneath her, tickling her downy underside. She opened her wings and allowed it to lift her up. The gale pushed her along until she found the right current to ride. For now, she shifted from one thread of air to another, bobbing and weaving, pushing her wings until she flew ever higher. Illiana circled the cliff until she found herself over the ocean. The breeze steered her a little more out to sea than she liked, so she had to weave between sea gulls and other sea birds until she was back over land. When she finally settled into the most comfortable current, she did not have to fly so vigorously. The wind pushed her along, helping her conserve energy for the long flight back to the roost.

Everything faded away while she flew, tucked away in the back of her mind. It was so easy to lose herself in the rhythm; the steady beat of her wings slicing through the air was something she could count. She scoured the plains below her, watching the deer scatter because a wolf was preying on them. It was far enough from the forest that she doubted it was part of the pack. Maybe it was not even a shifter. She observed it for a few minutes, wondering if there was another somewhere in the tall grass lying in wait for the deer. But there were none. If it were truly a lone wolf, then it had an arduous life ahead of it. Roving the prairies alone, fighting over bits of territory they could barely defend, and getting scraps for food. It was a solitary existence without a pack to watch their backs. They were doomed to a short lifespan and roaming until the wolf was old or found some place to fit in. Illiana understood the pure loneliness of the creature because she would never find a place to truly fit in among the flock. Her heart cracked for the lone wolf, and it pulled a cry from her throat. It echoed over the meadow long after she had left.

Finally, Illiana found herself on the edges of the forest where the ravens ruled the air and the wolves reigned over the land. The trees spired high into the sky. Their tips were obscured by the fog, and the branches reached ever higher. It was in those high branches that the priests tried to touch the very heavens and get closer to the spirits who watched over them. Illiana never really put much thought into the spirits. Whether they were long-dead ancestors they should revere or gods they should worship. Her aunt had told her the great spirits who protected them were more than anyone could truly explain. They were beings who comprised everything. And when Illiana had asked her aunt to suss out what that statement meant, Coret stated that one day Illiana would understand. As she flew into the heart of the Corvus territory, so many things ran through her mind at what she would ask her aunt. Coret might not even be there. Maybe she was with the other priests still celebrating. Illiana circled the highest tree, which was the oldest, where they had gathered the night before for the large ceremony. She slid between the branches, keeping her wings close to her body. Leaves brushed along her underside, and twigs threatened to stick in a wing, but she was too savvy for that and rolled when she was too close to one of the boughs. Other birds sat on the limbs and observed her. She could feel the weight of their gazes. Their caws and chirps echoed through the forest. If she listened she understood what they were saying, but today she concentrated on one thing. High in the tree was where her aunt’s house had been built. Most others who lived in the community were connected by bridges, branches, or walkways, but her aunt lived separate from the rest of the flock.