27

27
ALICIA
“Can I babysit for you today?”
I look up at Kayla, who’s leaning against my door frame. “I’m not going out today, I’m still tired from the errands I had to run yesterday,” I say, mystified.
“You should go out,” she says. “It’s the nicest day we’ve had all summer.
You should take advantage of it.”
“You say that, but I don’t see you going out,” I point out. She waves a hand dismissively. “I went out last night.” “Why are you being weird?”
“Oh, why are you arguing with me?” She comes into the room and flops down onto my bed. “Go out. Have fun. How long has it been since you just had a day to let go and relax?”
It’s been a while, I’ll give her that. Years. It is tempting. But even so… “I feel like I’m taking advantage of you,” I say. “You’ve been babysitting a lot lately. You shouldn’t have to do that.”
“I don’t feel like I have to,” Kayla says. “She’s my niece. I want to get to know her.”
The implication hangs in the air. Kayla wants to get to know Emmy now,
because I haven’t given her the chance before.
Honestly, it’s a fair request.
But even so… “I don’t know where I’d go,” I say. “I don’t want to go to the bar in the middle of the day.”
“Just go for a walk,” Kayla says. “Enjoy the day. Or hey, better yet, go for a run. How long has it been since you’ve had the chance to really embrace your wolf side? I’m sure you can’t do that in the city.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Wouldn’t it be good to take a wolf day? You could run down to the river, like we used to do when we were kids.”
I’m hit with a burst of nostalgia. I haven’t even thought about wolf days in so long: days where I’d just give in to my animal self and run free in the woods around the Greystone territory, sometimes with my sisters and sometimes on my own. Nothing in my life has ever matched that feeling. Even though escaping the pack when I did was liberating, the human world couldn’t hope to live up to the pure freedom of being my wolf self.
And I realize Kayla’s right. I really want to do it.
She grins. “You’re going, aren’t you?” she says. “I can tell by the look on your face. You’re going to do it.”
“I think I am. You’re sure you don’t mind watching Emmy again?”
“No one could ever mind watching Emmy,” Kayla says. “She’s a little sweetheart, aren’t you, Em? We’ll have fun today until Mama gets back.”
“Thank you, Kayla,” I say sincerely. “You don’t know what this means to me. I haven’t had a run in a long time. A very long time.”
“Enjoy it,” Kayla says. “Don’t hurry back. Sleep out in the woods if you want to. I’ve got her. Make the most of this.”
I smile. She really is a great sister. “I will,” I say.
I pause in the kitchen. It’s second nature to me now to think about my basic biological needs from a human perspective, because I’ve been living that way for so long. A human going into the woods for the day would pack a picnic.
But I haven’t forgotten how to hunt.
I want to make this a real wolf experience. Besides, I need to get back in touch with this side of myself, because it’s starting to emerge in my daughter, and she’s going to need my guidance.
So I head out with nothing but the clothes on my back. I run about half a mile into the forest, and then I lose those too, hanging them over the same tree branch where my sisters and I used to leave our clothes when we did this in our youth.
I close my eyes and breathe in the familiar scent of the woods around me.
My woods.
This place hasn’t been home in a long time, but right now, being back here feels amazing. I wouldn’t trade this moment for anything.
I’ve kept the wolf repressed for a very long time, so it takes a few moments for it to rise within me. I feel it coming on slowly, not ripping its way out of my human self the way it did when I was younger. I wonder if this experience is common among shifters, if others have noticed the wolf changing as they’ve gotten older. It’s not that the animal is any less powerful or dominant-I feel it coming on. It’s just that it’s not as frantic as it was when I was young. It’s like it’s stretching its way into my body instead of bursting out of me.
I flex my fingers and feel their shape change. My neck bends down, and my head dips toward the ground. My shoulders curl forward and my hips lift backward.
My senses are flooded with new information.
I have good vision, hearing, and scent no matter what form I’m in. But holy shit. I forgot how much it’s possible to take in with the ears and nose of a wolf. It’s been so long since I perceived the world this way.
I stand still for a moment and just breathe, filling my lungs with the clean air of my woods.
And then I start to run.
I move slowly at first, stretching out, rediscovering muscles that I haven’t used like this in years. It’s not difficult, though. The muscle memory is there, and it comes back to me as if my last run was yesterday. Before long, my strides are lengthening and I’m covering big swaths of ground with every step.
I dig my paws into the dirt and push myself to run harder, faster.
My lungs don’t start to burn the way they do when I run as a human. My muscles don’t ache. My joints aren’t sore from the pounding. This body was designed to move like this.
And it feels wonderful to be wolf again.