I wander from the pack immediately.

My animal side takes over, just like before. It’s why Katarina died, because once I’m wolf, I’m not half myself as my parents are, as the parents before them were. If I change, I become the wolf. If I die, I wouldn’t even feel the death.

I do remember much later, but in the moment, it’s as if I’m asleep. The memories will tumble back unexpectedly afterward.

As soon as I transition, I head for the wood line, but the wolf doubles back. Before transitioning, I’d been seeking to be alone, and the wolf follows suit. I can sense the wrongness of where I’m heading, but the wolf pushes on never-the-less.

What I can recall next is waking - naked and bleeding.

I’m against the walls of our castle trying to hold chunks of myself together, blind with a pain I’ve never felt before.

Bites have been taken out of me.

I try to yell, but can’t summon the energy to do more than whisper.

A growl makes me flinch, huddle into myself, and I stare into the wood, waiting for the monster that did this to show themselves. To finish the job.

Three wolves watch me. Just blinking eyes before they come into the growing light. Their markings are ones I cannot recognize. They must be from the furthest parts of our kingdom. The large black one strides over and I wait, breath held, ready for them to attack.

If a wolf could look offended, this one does.

It sets back from me and raises its beautiful face to the sky. I’m realizing this is a sweet she-wolf, elegant and pure. And from the color of her coat, to the bright blue tinge of her eyes, she’s got noble blood.

She howls. A loud, mournful sound. A cry for help.

The doors to the kingdom spring open. Riders on horses thunder out to us and the wolves remain. We are one people.

My guards lift me to the saddle and I let go of the consciousness and sleep the sleep of a dead man.

Staccato memories pepper my brain before I’m even fully awake. They come back unbidden and out of order. I’m in a fever, and the infection’s settled deeply into my wounds, perhaps even my bones. The razor-sharp claws of an apex predator had sliced me in so many places that I’ve lost count. The rents sizzle with heat, and the sweat burns the edges of the torn flesh.

Every move I make is agony.

The wolf had led me to battle this time. But why? And where is this enemy now?

I know I’d been in a warm place when it happened. I remember feeling the sun’s warmth sinking in, like hot fingers through my thick fur.

That I’d left the cold, a home I’ve always known, and run straight into the warm blaze of Summer, shows how far from the pack I’ve become. How distant and alone I’ve turned.

“My son.”

“It’s okay, Momma,” I murmur to her blurry outline. But I’m not convinced. Surely this fever and blood loss will end me.

My mother presses a rag to my forehead, something she’s done since I was a cub. “What have they done to you? My sweet boy.”

“Elisa.” My father’s stern tone makes me try to turn my head, but it hurts to move. “Don’t coddle him.”

“Why won’t you stay with the pack, Noble?” she says, ignoring the King. “Why must we keep having these terrible things happen to our family?”

My mother often blames happenstance on bad luck. Ill omens and things of that nature. I was starting to see her point. If there is any wolf in the realm that’s cursed, it’s this one.

“Shhh,” I say, closing my eyes. And later when I wake, I realize I’d dozed off again mid conversation. I find that they are still in my room, arguing.

I try and say, “I’m sorry, don’t fight.” But my voice is too weak. They give me water, and it revives me some. The heat dissipates long enough for me to try to sit up.

My mother’s drawn face tells me that I look as bad as I feel.

“Who did this?” I whisper.

My father, who’s stormy eyes are narrowed on my biggest bandages like he cannot believe what he’s seeing, says, “Lion.”

My father’s voice is almost breaking. I’ve never seen him like this. He clears his throat, returning to the gruff speaker and leader we know him to be. “We’ve already sent a dispatch to Summer. They’ll send us the one who’s done this. If they don’t answer, hell to pay, my boy. Hell. To. Pay.”

He touches my shoulder, but realizes the pain it’s causing, and lets his hand fall away.

“Lion?” I say, not remembering anything. Not yet.

And when I do, hours later, I wake suddenly, pushing straight, despite the pain.

The memory shifts something inside of me, not the attack, that was brutal---the lioness had been relentless, furious that I’d caught her---but what…what had she been doing?

Then it returns in flashes, images of a blinding summer, the prairie set afire by golden grass and a pond, blue amid the yellow, but something’s caught the wolf’s attention. Satiny skin touched by the sun, baked golden bronze, leagues of it. Water sleuths down long legs, drips from wheat colored hair that’s wet and shaped to muscle and softness. A balance of each. Perfection.

The wolf had been trying to get a drink, but it’d watched her---he’d stalked her, as water ran rivulets down her naked body. He’d waited, not out of lust, he’d been there over hunger.

He’d seen her as prey.

But she wasn’t a Spring girl who’d merely shifted into a bunny, no, she was a lion, and when she’d turned and saw me---him, the yellow eyes widened with fury, and the full view of her nakedness, even now, brings fever to my body.

Something about her, even distantly looking through the wolf’s memories, strikes me to the core.

Ferocity.

She’d shifted in an instant and chased me back the way I’d come. Relentless in her pursuit.

The wolf fled for Winter, his tail between his legs, and then, once cornered in the prairie, he’d turned to fight. He would die with honor. Even alone. Knowing without his pack, facing a full-grown lion would be a lost cause.

But she hadn’t been behind him anymore.

The prairie had been empty---or so it had seemed. And when he’d flicked his ears forward, sniffed the air, relaxed his guard, seeing no predator, she’d pounced.

I close my eyes, and cringe, reliving the ripping of my coat, then my skin, sinew and muscle.

She’d pinned me and paused.

Her yellow eyes were the same as before, but now catlike slits watching me, thinking, clearly able to still be both girl and beast. Then she hesitated. She’d given me my life in that second.

A gift of another chance.

No pack would have done that for a lion this far into our realm without invitation. There would have been nothing left of her had she been the one here in our wood instead, running loose, and without protection from us royals.

I lay back on the bed and throw my arm over my eyes. I fight the urge to search the memories again and again. Not the lion. Though, she was beautiful in her form.

The other when she’d turned to face me, baring her form, chin up, shoulders back, wet and bold, and stricken with anger.

I fight the battle of invading on her privacy… and give in so many times, that I lose count.