Harper touched the heel of her foot to the lake. Finding it adequately freezing, she plunged her entire foot in to just past her swollen ankle and then moaned. For a full minute, all she could feel was the stinging cold, until little by little, the throbbing pain returned. 

It reminded her of when she was little and had burnt her finger on a hot ember. She'd spent the better part of the morning soothing it in cold water, only to remove it and find that it was still stinging. Sarah had finally put a stop to it, advising her that if she just kept it out of the water and suffered the pain for a little while, it would stop hurting sooner.

Leaning back on her hands, she tilted her head to the side and regarded Shan. Or rather, his wolf. He was laying on his stomach with his head resting on his leg and his eyes closed. She didn't trust that he was actually sleeping. A while back, she had issued a small sneeze and his green eyes had sprang open in an instant. 

Neither of them had gone back to sleep after the night before. Shan had tried talking to her not long after she'd woken, but she'd been trapped too far inside of herself to acknowledge him. At sunrise, he'd left to get breakfast for them, and Harper had used the time to collect herself. When he'd returned, she'd been prepared to talk to him about the nightmare, but by that point he seemed to have given up trying to converse with her and had instead opted to give her space. They'd eaten in near-silence until Harper had asked if he could take her to the lake. Any hope she had of them talking on the way was dashed when he'd taken his wolf form. He'd remained in it all afternoon, alternating between dozing and staring at her with his inscrutable wolf's eyes.

Spending her day by the lake wasn't as boring as it might have been to her a week ago. She had already gone through her smartphone withdrawals and no longer had the compulsion to reach into her back left pocket. She did miss her music, but had discovered that she was capable of playing her favorite songs in her head and enjoying them almost as much. She could even re-watch her favorite shows and movies in her mind, though she could only remember the exciting parts in vivid detail. 

Harper passed the hours by alternating between all three and dipping her ankle in and out of the water to relieve the pain. Occasionally, other thoughts managed to burrow under her wall of distractions. Some were stickier than others. 

It was easy enough to push aside thoughts of her nightmares, both because they scared her and because it felt as if their hold over her would tighten if she gave them too much mind.

It was far harder not to contemplate her relationship with Shan, both because he was right there and because he was a constant presence in her mind these days. 

She had never been so conflicted about something as she was about him, and that was saying a lot, given the life she'd led. When thoughts of him inevitably entered her mind they went one of two ways. She'd spent hours plotting detailed plans on how to escape him. Some of them were actually plausible, though they involved leaving Ian and Jo behind and having a working ankle.

Of course, she'd spent just as much time—perhaps more—imagining what her life would be like as his mate. From what she'd learned about his territory, she had a shaky image of what life in his pack would be like, and going solely on how he'd treated her thus far, she had some ideas of what sort of mate he would be.

Life in his pack would be pretty boring, though she didn't think she'd be like a typical mate. Shan wasn't a typical alpha. He wasn't a leader, he was a ruler, so she fancied that she'd be something akin to queen of the wolf shifters. When she was feeling silly, she imagined everyone adoring her, doting on her, and hanging on every fascinating word that she had to say. Also, his pack would have high-speed internet and a Netflix subscription.

When she was being more realistic, she recognized that her status as Shan's mate was more likely to be isolating. She would have to contend with jealous females, some of whom might have been former lovers of Shan, which would wreak havoc on her possessive streak. If Shan did try to include her as he'd once promised, her sudden presence in his inner-circle would be met with resentment from those who had fought to gain their places there. If he failed to include her, her life would be boring and unfulfilling. 

The only bright spot was when she considered having pups. The prospect of motherhood had always been complicated for her. As a girl, she'd believed with unwavering certainty that she'd one day have a handsome, strong mate who would give her no less than five pups—four daughters and one son. She would often pass the time imagining what she'd name them, or which stories she'd read to them.

Her dream of being a mother had ground to a halt around the time she was ten, when Sarah had sat her down and had “the talk.” It still amazed her that Lotus hadn't burst her bubble sooner, given how often Harper would rant about how much better her life would be once she had her own pack. 

When Sarah had told her that she'd never be able to have babies of her own, she hadn't taken the news well. One of her most mortifying memories was from the very next day, when Sarah had left Harper to watch her newborn while she'd taken a nap. Sarah had returned to find Harper attempting to breastfeed her pup. At the time, she'd been convinced that if she could somehow make milk for a pup, it would prove that Sarah was wrong and that she could have pups of her own one day.

With her dreams of having a mate and pups dashed, it took her a while to reorient herself. In the end she'd done what most females of her kind did and she'd instead imagined a future in which she was part of a new pack. She knew that her brother Caim would be alpha of his own pack one day and it was easy to picture herself as a member of his pack. She could become friends with his mate and help them to raise their children. Her new dream hadn't been nearly as fulfilling as the old one, but it had been the most she could hope for, given her physical limitations and her narrow view of gender roles.

Then, when she was thirteen, she'd found out that she wasn't a shifter and that she could have children. She could vividly remember the evening she'd found out and the days that had led up to that night. 

It was winter and bitterly cold. She'd been at the Whiteriver den for so long that she'd almost forgotten she was a prisoner, rather than just another member of their pack. The week before, Silas had decided that the lower level—dungeon—he'd been keeping her in was too cold and that she should sleep on a separate pallet in his room, where he could keep an eye on her. His concern did not seem to extend to Lark, her father's pack mate that was also being held captive, and Harper had suspected that his real intention was to spend the mornings talking her ears off.

She hadn't minded. She never minded listening to him. Captor or not, Silas had been seventeen and, to her memory, the hottest guy she'd ever seen anywhere. Her assessment was probably colored by the fact that there weren't any boys her own age in her pack, save for her brother. There had been a few boys around her age in neighboring packs, but none had had the gravitas that came with being an alpha male.

They'd gotten to know one another over the long winter. She'd confided in him things that she'd never told another living soul, not before or since. In turn, he'd opened up to her as well, confessing his insecurities about being an alpha, as well as his fear that he would never be worthy of having a mate. So often when he confided in her, she'd found herself wanting to close the distance between them and wrap her arms around him, but she'd been afraid that he would see the gesture as patronizing and take offense.

One afternoon, long after the pack had fallen asleep, they'd still been awake exchanging stories about their parents. It was while Silas was recounting the death of his mother that Harper had finally given into her impulse and crawled over to his pallet to put her arms around him. She had only meant to comfort him, but in retrospect she could see how he might have misunderstood. In an instant, he'd pulled her into an embrace and kissed her—really kissed her. She'd still been recovering from the shock of being kissed when he'd begun fondling her breasts and pressing his erection against her pelvis.

"Snow."

The sound of him groaning her name in his deep, mature voice could still make her shiver, and not with fear. She'd been nervous, but not afraid as he'd undressed her and lavished her body with kisses. She had even nodded shyly when he'd paused and looked at her with uncertainty, his fingers hooked on the seam of her pants. Of course, what she remembered most was when he'd tried to enter her, and all of the awkwardness that had followed.

Silas hadn't known she was a virgin, nor had he known how old she was. During their early conversations, she'd lied and told him they were the same age. It had been an easy lie, given that he had no clue how old her father was and between her height and generous cleavage, he might not have believed her if she'd claimed to be any younger. Also during their conversations, she'd insinuated that she'd had sex plenty of times, because she wouldn't want her captor to think she was uncool.

Once he'd found out the truth, he'd sprang from her as if her skin were made of acid. They'd had an intense argument wherein Harper had alternated between blaming him for starting it and begging him to just keep going, all while sobbing with humiliation. 

Silas had not had sex with her that day. He'd barely even looked at her for a week, though he had allowed her to continue sleeping in his room. She had tried several times to make conversation with him, but her attempts had been met with stony silence.

The morning that everything had begun to change, he had returned late. She had already been in bed for hours, tossing restlessly as she tried not to focus on her empty belly or her anxiety about her nightmares. Silas had been in a foul mood when he'd entered the room, as evidenced by the crease in his brow. He was like that every morning when the hunt had not gone well, and she'd learned better than to complain about how hungry she was. 

Usually, when she saw that crease, she would immediately seek to distract him from his worries. They played the same game almost every morning, where she would tell him about her day, peppering her story with increasingly absurd details until he finally cracked a smile. Then, he would counter with his own story, which would be equally ridiculous. 

Ever since their almost-sex, he hadn't allowed her to pull him into their usual banter. That was why it was so surprising when he'd hung in the doorway that morning and asked, "Where have you been today?"

Having had all week to plan her story, she'd sat right up and attempted to regale him with her trip to Disneyland—which, back then she'd believed was an actual country governed by a mouse shifter. Silas had cut her off almost at once.

"No. Where have you been? You smell...different."

Wind knocked from her sails, Harper had glumly recounted all of the three places she'd been since waking that night, and had been unable to resist a dig, adding, "And I certainly didn't eat anything strange. Or anything at all, for that matter."

The words didn't even earn her a scowl, which was weird. Food was a touchy subject around Whiteriver, especially for its alpha. Silas had seemed almost cautious as he'd approached her and fell to his knees beside her. With the way he was staring at her, she thought he was going to kiss her, but when his head had fallen it had been to the crook of her neck. He had sniffed her for a long time, long enough for her to sneak her arms around his neck. When he'd lifted his head, he hadn't detached her.

"What is it?" she'd asked.

"I... I'm not sure. You just smell different."

The strange interaction had been enough to bridge the divide between them. They'd spent what was left of the morning talking, and when it had come time for them to sleep, Silas had told her that she could sleep next to him. As she'd lain in his arms, he'd given her a chaste kiss and apologized to her for the way he'd been behaving. He'd told her that he wasn't angry with her, but with himself, and he told her—not for the first time—that if she asked him to, he would let her return to her father. And, for what felt like the thousandth time, she had told him that she wanted to stay.

The room had been pitch black when she'd woken, but she hadn't been afraid, not of the dark, or of Silas who was on top of her, his mouth on hers and his hands roaming over her body. Not a word was exchanged between them until he was preparing to enter her. He'd paused long enough to tell her that it might hurt and he would stop if she asked. She had told him that she didn't care and that she didn't want him to stop until she was his. She still had no fucking idea what she'd meant by that, but Silas had seemed pleased.

She had expected it to hurt, but not nearly as much as it did. The only part of the experience that was enjoyable was knowing that Silas was enjoying it, though that ended the second she began to cry. After trying in vain to soothe her, he'd pulled out and then held her for a long time, nuzzling her head and murmuring apologies. She'd continued to cry for a while, not because it still hurt but because she'd been embarrassed all over again and her inability to handle such a basic rite of passage felt like yet another massive failure in her blundering existence.

The night might have stood as the worst in her life, if not for what Silas told her once her tears had subsided.

"I think you're fertile."

It was strange, being where she was now, to think back to that night and how profoundly those words had impacted her. In an instant, her entire life had realigned back to her original vision, only now it was clearer than ever. She would become Silas's mate, and in doing so their packs would be united and her father would have to end their feud and allow Whiteriver to hunt in the valley.

She had spent what was left of the night trying to convince her seventeen-year-old would-be mate to get her pregnant. To this day, she was grateful that he hadn't capitulated. Instead, he'd informed her that he was going to return her to her father. He'd cut through her vehement protests with a promise that had seemed deep and sincere at the time. He would wait for her, and when she was older and his pack was stable, she would return to Whiteriver and become his mate.

"You'll always be mine. We'll be together again, no matter what. I love you."

She had believed him, and had held fast to the dream of becoming his mate, even when confronted with all of the wonders of the human life she'd soon had. A life that was full of abundant possibilities, where she could do and be things she'd never dared to imagine. For over two years she'd clung to the dream of becoming Silas's mate. When she'd returned to the valley just before the start of her senior year, she'd had no intention of returning to her human life. As soon as she could get out from under her father's thumb, she'd find Silas and show him how much she'd grown and matured. She'd make him accept her as his mate.

Silas hadn't waited. 

Just a couple of months before she'd returned, he'd taken a mate. Even if she hadn't taken everything from her, Harper would have hated her. Carly was a high school dropout and had already had a kid from a one night stand before she'd met Silas. She talked about herself incessantly, laughed too often and too loudly, and she needed hand gestures to accompany every other word out of her mouth.

The entire day she'd been forced to endure Carly's company, Harper had watched her in stunned disbelief, wondering how Silas could have chosen Carly over her. The thing that bothered her more than anything was that Carly wasn't even pretty, which meant that compared to Harper, she might as well have been a sewer creature. Harper knew that looks weren't everything, but she couldn't help but wonder what was so wrong with her, how terrible could her personality be, that Silas would choose Carly over her?

As an adult, she could now reason that Silas's decision had been vastly more nuanced than simply choosing Carly over her, but at the time those feelings of inadequacy had sunken into her core. 

When she had left the valley, she had cast off all notions of ever returning. After a period of depression, she'd sloughed off her dream of becoming Silas's mate because it was just too painful. In the process, she'd also given up on ever having children. It wasn't as if she could have kids with a human man. Regardless of what she was, her father was still a shifter and there was no telling how that might affect her offspring. 

She knew that her desire to become a mother had never gone away entirely, but it had been compartmentalized for so long. Taking it out now and exploring it felt like trying to squeeze into an old dress. No matter which angle she looked at it from, becoming a mate and a mother over pursuing her career goals felt like settling for something less.

As her mind swirled with thoughts of her old life and what the future might hold, Harper had undressed and slipped into the lake. The afternoon was warm, but not enough to penetrate the dark water. She waded out until the water came just past her hips and then sank down to her knees, submerging her body.

She stayed under for a while, until the water no longer felt like needles pressing against her skin. Instead of rising up right away, she kicked forward with her good foot, propelling herself farther into the lake. When her lungs began to burn, the water was deep enough that her feet no longer touched the ground. She broke through the surface, sucking in a deep breath of crisp mountain air.

Her peace was jarred by a sharp bark. She looked back to the shore to find her sentinel wolf pacing anxiously at the water's edge.

“Did I wake you?” she asked, not bothering to lift her voice. “Sorry, but I need to wash up.”

He issued several barks in varying inflections. Harper didn't speak wolf, but she knew the sound of an overprotective male fretting. She smiled at him and told him she wouldn't be long, and then plunged back under the water.

After briefly enjoying the sensation of weightlessness, she set to the task of cleaning herself. It had been two weeks since she'd had anything close to a proper bath and given all her body had been through, it amazed her that she didn't smell downright repellant. 

Lack of soap didn't bother her. They'd never used body soap when she was younger, and when she'd tried using human soaps later in life they made her skin dry and itchy. She'd always just washed up with water, though she did miss her scented shampoos and conditioners. 

Harper came up for air and then plunged back under several times before she was satisfied with her cleaning. She'd vigorously rubbed every inch of herself, save for her right arm. 

When she came up for the final time she lifted her injured arm from the water and gingerly unwound the bandage. The sight of the stitches over pitted skin would have made her queasy on anyone, let alone herself. As a child, she'd been so cautious and careful in everything that she'd done that she'd escaped with only a handful of scars, all of which had faded to near imperceptibility since she'd reach adulthood. Now, over the course of a week, she'd been permanently mauled. 

“I imagine these aren't the sort of stitches that dissolve,” she said, holding her arm up higher so that Shan could see.

“We'll have to return next week to have them removed.”

He'd approached her quietly after shifting, but she had a unique awareness of him that was a tingling on the back of her neck. 

When his arms came around her to rest on her belly, she leaned into him without hesitation, resting her weight fully against him. He took her arm in his hand, his thumb lightly brushing against one of her stitches.

“I won't let anything like this happen to you again.”

There was an implication in his words that should have alarmed her, but when she tilted her head back to look up at him, all she could feel was a rush of affection for him.

“It was my fault,” she told him. “I shouldn't have... Well, there were a lot of things I shouldn't have done that day. Sometimes when I'm mad I say stupid things and I act in ways that aren't in my best interest.”

“I've noticed.”

His hands moved to her hips and he turned her so that they were facing. She wasn't sure if he kissed her or if she kissed him, but in the next instant their lips were connected.

It had been days since they'd kissed, but there was nothing tentative or uncertain in the way their mouths moved. She kissed him with a hungry ferocity and he matched her intensity, claiming her lips, her mouth, and her tongue as his own.

In the water, their height made no difference and Harper was able to push herself up on his shoulders so that he had to tilt his head back to keep kissing her. Heat blossomed in her belly, spreading across her body until even the lake wasn't enough to cool her. Her arms wrapped around him, her hands gripping his long hair as she pressed herself to him as tightly as possible.

Within moments, the ache between her legs felt like more than she could bear. She began to lower herself down his body, until she reached his erection. Stiff and rigid with an upward curve, he aligned perfectly with her entrance and she knew she could lower herself onto him with minimal assistance on his part.

She wiggled her hips, trying to work the thick head of his cock past her outer folds, and Shan's grip on her hips tightened at once. She expected him to accept the invitation and sheath himself inside of her, but instead he pulled her back and held her firmly apart from him.

“Harper.” His voice was strained as he spoke her name. “Not now.”

Lust and need hampered her brain cells, making her response whiny and inelegant. “Please? We can be quick.”

She went to kiss him again, confident that she could sway him with her mouth, but Shan pulled his head back and said one of the few things that could stall her.

“The next time I'm inside of you, I'm biting you.”

Harper blinked at him. “Like, you want to mark me?”

He didn't answer her immediately. His green eyes turned analytical as he seemed to weigh his next words.

“When we had sex, I didn't take it lightly. I don't take sex lightly, period. And when you bit me—”

“You told me to bite you!”

“Don't interrupt me,” he said sternly. “My instincts don't give a fuck about how you're rationalizing the bite. They also don't give a fuck about your human life, or the fact that you lied to me, or made me look like a fool in front of my pack mates.”

The heat drained from her body. Harper had the sudden urge to flee, but Shan's hands remained clamped on her hips.

He went on, “You have no concept of what this is like for me. While you're vacillating and weighing your options, my mind is already made up. The next time we fuck, I'm biting you and that's it. You're mine.”

Harper looked him up and down, her eyes narrowing. “If you want to bite me so badly, then fine. Do it. But I don't become yours just because you sink your teeth into me.”

Shan released her. She hadn't been expecting it and she dropped down quickly, only catching herself after she'd inhaled water. Once she'd coughed it up she started to issue a complaint, but her mouth slowly closed when she took in Shan's expression.

Harper wasn't easily intimidated, but seeing anger on Shan was unnerving in its subtlety. It was the second time she'd seen it. The first had been by the river when she'd yelled at him. Both times his spine straightened and his shoulders went rigid. His chin lifted and his face angled slightly away from her, so that he was looking down at her from the corners of his eyes. As if he wasn't already making her feel small in gesture, when he spoke his words were slow and patronizing.

“For someone raised among shifters, you really don't understand anything about our kind.”

Harper wanted no part in arguing with him. Tearing her gaze from his, she swam around him in a wide arc and headed back towards the shore.

When the water became too shallow to swim in, she was reminded of her ankle. The cold water was still dulling the pain, but she knew it would flare up again once she began walking on dry land. She resolved herself to push through it and not allow Shan to carry her back. It had less to do with her pride and more because she wanted to spite him. Even with her oh-so-limited knowledge of shifters, she knew that seeing her in pain would screw with his protective instincts. 

Coming ashore, she realized that she hadn't fully thought through her bathing plan. She'd brought nothing to towel herself off with and was now faced with the dilemma of air drying or having damp clothes. While she considered her options, she noticed Shan's glossy, chocolate-brown pelt lying on the ground not far from her. She looked over her shoulder, wanting to judge how far behind Shan was, and if she could get to his pelt to towel off before he could stop her. 

He was already clearing the shallows in long strides, but she wasn't entirely disappointed. She had not yet seen him fully naked in the daylight and she found it impossible to look away. 

Nearly all shifters, male or female, were impeccably muscled. It was a side effect of regular shifting, which burned through fat cells with enviable efficiency. Shan's muscles were exceptionally impressive, particularly on his torso, which was longer than the average male's. Harper especially liked the sharp V where his hips curved into his pelvis. 

He was still every bit as hard as he'd been when they were kissing. The sight of his erection—long, thick, and uncut—made her mouth go dry. She still couldn't believe he'd not only fit it inside of her, but had also given her a vaginal orgasm, something she'd been certain was a myth.

He was breathing heavily as he stalked up to her and seized her by the hips. Pride made her slam her hands against his chest, but before she could protest his mouth came down hard on hers. Harper knew that she was still angry with him and that she didn't want to give into him so easily, but at the same time she wanted him so badly that it hurt.

She remained tense and unresponsive for all of two seconds and then she was kissing him back, her hands greedily taking in the contours of his chest, shoulders, and arms. There was no windup, no slow burn. In an instant, her skin became hypersensitive, her nipples stiffened, and her body was throbbing with the need to have him inside of her.

Afraid that he would stop at kissing her again, her mind turned calculating. She considered grabbing his cock and guiding him into her, but she knew that it would leave a narrow window in which he could stop her. What was more, she'd learned that he had issues with control, and she didn't think he'd let her get away with that, even if he was intent on screwing her.

She would have to make it so that he couldn't resist her. It was a tall order, considering he'd just shot her down in the lake. She hadn't known it was possible to be turned down once a man's cock was nearly inside of her. If stroking him, grinding her hips against him, and pouring her soul into kissing him wasn't enough to keep him hooked, then she had to change tactics.

As her hand ran over his shoulders on a journey to his hair, her thumb brushed against the mark at the junction of his neck. It had been several days since she'd bitten him, and in spite of his assertion that it might scar, it had almost completely healed. She might have missed the twin indentations entirely, except that when she touched them she felt a tingling sensation pass through her thumb and up her arm. 

The sensation spread throughout her body, affecting her differently in each area. As it spread through her chest, her heartbeat accelerated and her breasts felt fuller and heavier. In her belly it felt like hot honey, incasing her insides with heat and pooling in her groin. In her head, it felt like she'd been shot with a heavy dose of hormones. Her mind fogged over and she briefly lost control of her body. An inhuman sound rose up from a foreign space inside of her, a guttural, growling sound of need.

Her reaction might have disturbed her, had Shan given her any time to contemplate it. Within seconds of her issuing the strange noise, he responded by lifting her hips and impaling her onto his cock. Harper cried out at the sudden invasion, her fingers digging into his shoulders. Shan's reply was a bestial sound that was frighteningly similar to the one she'd just issued.

Harper was only distantly aware that he was walking before Shan bent to lay her down on his fur. He was careful to remain planted inside of her, but broke their kiss so that he could maneuver her onto her knees.

She had never enjoyed being taken from behind. It was a submissive position and one that gave her little control or view of what was happening. Coupled with the threat of Shan's bite, she felt uneasy and wary of him, but neither feeling was enough to ask him to stop, or even to turn her around. 

At first Shan was still, except to run his hand down the curve of her spine, his index catching a little on each ridge. Then his hands fanned out to trace the contours of her waist, her ribcage, and the slopes of her shoulders. Rather than balk at the strange and intimate gesture, Harper closed her eyes and allowed herself to simply feel him feeling her.

She became so engrossed in the intimacy of his touch that it caught her by surprise when he began moving inside of her. Slow and gentle at first, his thrusts rapidly accelerating until they were both panting from the exertion. Her climax came swiftly, hitting her with startling force. She cried out his name, her hands clutching his pelt in tight fists. 

While her body spasmed with sharp peaks of pleasure, she felt Shan's mouth close around her neck. He sucked hard on her flesh, his fangs digging in, but not quite puncturing the surface layer of her skin. She remembered what he'd said in the lake and knew that he'd make good on his words if she didn't stop him.

Her brain struggled to form words. She was still shaking from her climax and Shan was still thrusting hard inside of her. Twice, she opened her mouth to issue a protest, but each time all she could manage to say was his name. 

It hurt when he finally bit her, but not as much as it should have. The pain lanced her neck, but was immediately followed by a sense of exhilaration that didn't feel entirely her own. Her consciousness seemed to slip back into a distant recess of her mind. 

For a time, thoughts ceased to exist and she lived on a plane of sensory information and impressions. The strongest impression of all was the feeling of connectedness with Shan. His fangs were buried in her neck and he had gone still inside of her, his body pulsing with his release. 

The feeling didn't go away when he withdrew his fangs from her, nor when he pulled out of her and turned her over so that she lay on her back. Her arms moved of their own accord, going up to caress his face and stroke his hair. It felt very important that she touch him, though she didn't understand why. All she knew was that doing so filled her with intense warmth and pleasure.

Shan fell onto his side next to her and pulled her into his arms. For once, she didn't have the slightest inhibitions about cuddling close to him. She pressed herself to him in as many places as she could, entangling their legs, spreading her palms over his shoulders, and crushing the side of her face to his hard chest. When his arms tightened around her, she let out a soft, contented sound. She was safe, secure, and where she belonged.

He's my mate.

It was the first cohesive thought she was able to string together, and on its own it was not enough to jar her back into reality. That happened when Shan began speaking to her and she realized that she couldn't understand a word he was saying. 

She tried focusing on his words. It sounded like he was speaking English, but it was as if he was far away and talking through a pipe or speaking to her while she was underwater. She tried to look up at him, but found that her head wouldn't budge. She quickly found that her entire body was refusing to obey her. This revelation was made all the more startling by the fact that she hadn't had a seizure or a stroke. She was still rubbing her foot against Shan's leg and still nuzzling his chest with the side of her face, except it wasn't her doing any of it.

Harper started to panic, but was able to calm herself almost immediately. Without a brain flooding her body with norepinephrine, stress was easy to reign in. 

After collecting herself, she paused to analyze the divide between herself and her body. She recognized that it was eerily similar to the way Shan had described shifting. Only, she hadn't shifted. She reasoned that it was some sort of perverse side effect of repressing her wolf, but in order to accept that, she had to accept that she had a wolf. Given that the only alternative was that she was finally having her psychotic break, she decided to go with the first theory.

Shan had told her before that he could influence his wolf form by sending it impressions. She tried doing this to the best of her ability, but getting anything across felt like trying to throw a stone over an ocean. 

With each second that passed, her awareness of her body grew dimmer, as if she were slowly sinking into dark water. When she tried seeing through her eyes, she perceived only a murky image of Shan's face looking at hers. He was still speaking and she wondered if he'd realized that there was something wrong. Would he even care? Why would he want complicated and messy Harper when he could have the doting and affectionate entity that was inhabiting her body? 

Suddenly, she was able to perceive pain shooting up her injured arm. She still had no control over her body, but she could see Shan more clearly than before. He looked angry, and his words moved over her in harsh vibrations.

Fear and desperation crashed over her like sheets of glass falling on her head. The feelings were debilitating in their intensity. Just when she thought she could no longer handle it, she was all at once back in her body.

Harper inhaled a massive breath and then sobbed her exhalation. Her body shaking uncontrollably, she wrapped her arms and cried without inhibition.

“Harper. Talk to me.”

It took her a moment to sputter out a response. “Wasn't me. It wasn't me.”

She felt his hand on her back. “I know. But you're all right now. You're safe.”

“Am I? How could I possibly be safe? She just... I just lost control of my body. I could see everything and feel things, but I wasn't in control.”

As she spoke, Shan pulled her into his arms. He put a hand on her head and pressed it to his chest, cradling her until she calmed down. Between his scent and the metronome that was his beating heart, her breathing quickly slowed and she grew lax in his embrace.

“What happened to me?”

“I'm not sure,” he said. “I know that before the first shift, the space between the two forms can become muddled. Once you complete your first shift, I don't think anything like that will happen again.”

A fresh wave of tears rolled down her cheeks. “This is really happening. I was sure you were wrong.”

The story of Shan's mother, so similar to her own, had planted a seed of doubt in her, but she hadn't really believed she'd be able to shift. The closest she had come was to believe that she might have been able to shift, had she properly cultivated the ability when she was younger, but doing so now had seemed so beyond her as to be impossible. 

Shan started to stand, bringing Harper up with him. “Let's go get your clothes.”

“Can I wash up again first?”

Adjusting to the temperature of the lake was easier when she was being held against Shan's warm body. Perversely, she wondered if her body temperature would rise after she completed her first shift, and that thought branched out into a dozen more. Would she become even taller than she already was? Would she get weird lady muscles? Would her voice change? Would she become hairier? Would she have a pelt like Shan did, and which color would it be? Black, like her natural hair color, or flaxen gold like her father's pelt?

While her mind explored question after question, Shan took up the task of cleaning her. His hands weren't enough to shake her concentration, except when he cleaned between her thighs, his fingers taking a bit too much liberty for her to ignore.

They remained in the water for a while after she'd been cleaned. He held her with his arms wrapped around her midsection, while she rested her own arms over his and her head against his chest.

“How did you bring me back?”

He seemed to think about his answer, and then said, “When I realized that something was wrong, I told her that she had to release you.”

“That's it? She listened to you just like that?”

His lips slanted. “Your wolf is vastly less combative than you.”

In spite of the grim situation, Harper managed to laugh.

Shan went on, “She listened to me because as far as she's concerned, I'm her mate.”

Harper wondered how he was able to glean all that from the mere minutes he'd spent with her wolf. Then, she contemplated how surreal it was to actually refer to her as 'her wolf'.

While her finger traced a vein in Shan's arm, she stared up at the darkening sky and wondered if her wolf could see it as well. She was almost certain that it could. When it had first taken over, she had felt so many emotions that she'd initially believed to be her own. Her wolf was a very complex creature, and that level of complexity didn't happen in a vacuum. She had seen things, felt things, maybe everything. And the whole time, she'd been trapped in the void, watching her host move from one self-destructive habit to the next. 

Imagining how awful it must have been for her was enough to make Harper want to cry all over again, but she was too exhausted. 

It's not fair.

She'd had that thought a lot lately, but it was no longer a self-pitying mantra. She knew now that the real injustice was that she had been manning their ship for all these years.

“She adores you,” Harper whispered. “I could feel it so strongly. My chest still aches when I think of how much she cares about you.”

Shan pressed a kiss to her temple. “I told you, you're not as separate as you think.”

Harper shook her head. “We are, though. I'm here and she's inside of me in that awful, dark place. And I think she's been there for a very, very long time.”

Her voice cracked. “When I was coming back to myself, there was this split second where it was like we were both here at the same time and it was horrible. She's so lonely. All she's wanted all these years is to be free, and I've just been shoveling dirt on her. She must hate me so much.”

“Did you feel that she hates you?”

Harper thought back, and then shrugged. “No? I don't know. It's so confusing.”

Shan lifted her up so that he could carry her in one arm. “You've had a very stressful experience. You're not going to make sense of any of it right now. Let's go back to the shelter. I'll build us a fire and find us something to eat.”

Shan's words lulled her into a tenuous sense of peace. He carried her from the lake, collecting her clothes first, then his pelt, and then cocooning her in the latter, despite her feeble protests. He left her wrapped in it as he built the fire, and then when he went to catch fish for them to eat. His trust in her was humbling, considering she barely trusted herself with such an intimate part of him.

Once she was alone, she finally allowed her awareness to turn inward. In the back of her mind she could feel the new pathway that had opened up. She felt along the edges, hesitant to go any farther without Shan at her side. She knew that it would lead her to her wolf, but would it trigger her shift, or would it instead mean giving the wolf access to her human body again? She was afraid to find out, but she knew it wouldn't be long before she had an answer.