Maria jerked awake.

Naked and cold, wet and shivering, and alone in the forest. She lifted her hands into view and saw that they were stained red. She tasted the tang of blood on her lips and felt grit under her fingernails. A gut-wrenching cry ripped from her throat and rose into the forest canopy.

Birds broke through the branches, taking to the sky in a shriek and flutter of wings. She gasped as she looked up through the tears streaming from her eyes. The damp leaves and pine needles below her bit into her naked flesh. This was one of a dozen times she'd found herself here in the last two weeks. She thought it was two weeks. She’d lost track of the days.

She sniffed the air, using her new shifter senses to determine where she was in the forest. Maria could make out the faint scent of her mark and the scratch of her claws on the trees nearby. This was her territory, what she'd come to call her home.

She drew herself up to her feet, taking a deep, shuddering breath. This was her life now, the naked, cold, and confused world of a feral shifter. She squeezed her eyes closed and let out one last sob, wrapping her arms around her chest for comfort. Her hair hung in long muddy strands around her face. Her life felt raw and unreal. All she could do was put one foot in the front of the other and walk back to her cave.

Dark thoughts of her past swam in her mind as her bare feet crunched over the cold forest floor. Her breath blew out before her and her skin pricked into goosebumps. It was early summer on Fate Mountain, but the air was still cold at this elevation, especially in the morning.

When she made it back to her cave, she pulled on her big knit sweater, a pair of sweatpants, and her fur-lined boots, sighing with relief.

Everything she had in her cave, she'd scavenged. That was how she spent the few lucid hours her beast left her with between shifts. Maria never remembered the shift fully, just bits and pieces, like a fever dream.

After dressing and wrapping her muddy hair into a messy bun at the top of her head, she started a fire in her fire pit. The cave she’d chosen was located deep in the forest. It was a good natural shelter that provided ventilation for her campfire. She started her flame using flint she’d found at the campground and got the fire roaring with snapped dry branches. Finally, she put her scavenged tea kettle on the metal rack over the flames.

As she waited for the water to boil, her thoughts drifted back to the night of her first shift. She remembered being bitten. She remembered the pain of the first shift, just nothing during those terrible moments when her crazed lioness had taken over. She’d woken up in her dorm room, everything she owned slashed and broken. When she came to, she remembered what she’d been doing right before the incident.

She’d just signed up for Mate.com.

Her phone was under a pile of torn up clothing and papers. She grabbed the phone and made the hardest text of her life. Then she ran into the wilderness. Naked and barefoot in the night, she decided she would never go back home.

The feral lioness had taken over her life. Almost every day, the beast broke from inside Maria and ravaged the forest, feeding on whatever animals it could catch, tearing apart trees, howling, and screaming. The sounds of her feral roars were one of the few things Maria remembered from those lost hours. It haunted her dreams when she slept, cold and alone in her human form.

Maria had resigned herself to this life. She was broken beyond repair. All she could do was spare those she loved from seeing her like this. It was what she deserved.

She thought of the picture of her mate, Saw Bear. She'd seen him on her telephone screen. The picture he’d uploaded showed a solidly built man with broad shoulders and open, loving eyes. Everything about him called out to her like he was home.

She wanted him so badly she could taste it over the lingering flavor of blood on her lips. A man like Buck did not deserve a creature like her. She tried not to weep again as she poured the water into her tea cup over a handful of tea plants she'd gathered.

Maria had been learning botany at the Bright Institute. Her skills had proven useful in her every day quest to survive. She had once dreamed of running a nursery: growing flowers, cuttings, ornamental plants, even vegetables or medicines, anything her green thumb would grow. She had discovered her love of plants at the Institute. She never would have imagined it, growing up in Los Angeles.

Her sister Rosa had come to Fate Mountain looking for her, following her gift of knowing things without really knowing them. That's when Rosa met her mate, Heath. He was on the Bear Patrol, Fate Mountain's Police Department. The guys called him Cadet Bear, but he'd been on the force for a long time now.

Rosa and Heath had been good enough parents to her, but part of her always felt like they were too busy loving each other to really love her. Not the way she needed. Not after everything she’d been through. It didn’t help that Maria had always felt like she’d disappeared into Rosa’s shadow.

A lot of people told cute stories about how they’d come to Fate Mountain. But Maria’s story was anything but cute. It was a permanent black mark on her soul that she still hadn't been able to shake. Since being turned into a feral animal, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was defective. She'd been marked by fate to be broken, and she had to accept it.

She poured more water over her tea and drank down the warm brew. Her stomach was full of whatever kill her beast had made the night before. After finishing her tea, she stood. Today was a good day to scavenge.

Maria left the cave, taking in a deep breath of the morning air, letting it fill her lungs to capacity. She let the breath out and told herself again it was going to be a good day. She was determined to find something special at the campground that would make the trek worth the energy. She started off down the deer trail on the border of national forest land in a secluded part of the mountain. She wasn't sure exactly who owned the land or where the boundaries of the park were, but she was almost positive no one would ever find her in her cave.

The hike down the mountain was treacherous, but with her new shifter agility and strength, she made it to the campground with the speed of a trained athlete.

She crouched at the perimeter of the campground, hiding behind a stand of crowded willows by a stream. At this time of day, many of the campers were leaving. She could look through the things they had left behind.

She stood from her crouching position and walked around the thick bushes to skirt the edge of the campground. She walked behind the sites and glanced up the trails that led to each one, checking to see if the campers had left yet. The first two campsites she passed were still occupied, so she continued until she found one that was empty.

Jogging up the trail, she felt a rush of excitement that she might find something good. She didn't want the campground authorities to know of her presence, so she had to be careful. Maria hurried to the cabinet the campground provided to protect food from animals and swung open the door. She gasped, unable to believe her luck.

There was a can opener and four cans. One can of corn, two of beans and one of peas. She quickly grabbed each item and shoved it in a pillowcase she’d scavenged on a previous trip.

Maria quickly closed the door and left the campsite. In the next several sites she checked, she found a damp towel, a bar of soap and a muddy wool blanket. The wool blanket was so filthy and heavy she was afraid she might not be able to carry it back to her cave.

She rolled it up and slung it over her shoulder, determined to make it work. The trek up the mountain to her cave took longer than the trek down, but she made it home before the sun faded into evening. She flung the towel and the blanket over a taut line of rope she used for laundry and let them sit there until she could wash them out later.

Maria arranged the cans on her stone shelf and admired them for several moments before turning to start her fire back up. She had a rusty cast-iron pan that she had spent an entire day washing out and curing with fire and deer fat. She set it over her fire and opened a can of corn.

It had been a while since she'd had carbohydrates. Her body craved it and her stomach grumbled. After she'd heated the corn in some deer fat, she scooped it into her mouth with a wooden spoon with a broken handle. It was delicious and filled her stomach with warmth. She felt a mild sense of satisfaction rise to her chest and she sighed.

A smile curved on her lips and for a moment she felt kind of okay. Then her mind wandered back to Saw Bear. She knew she could never have him. Her small victories helped her make it through the day, but they also reminded her that she could never let herself get too comfortable. Happiness and satisfaction only led to wanting more. More love, more acceptance, more hope. But Maria no longer had any hope.