Chapter 99

Sarah POV

I had always had vivid dreams, even dreams when I knew I was sleeping but didn’t somehow care that I was dreaming. I’ve had dreams where I felt I was watching other people’s dreams, and I’ve had dreams where I was completely certain I was living that dream.

In this dream, I was in a forest. I’d been in this dream-forest before, and I was comfortable. The moonlight above me shone down and seemed to make everything sparkle. The trees and leaves were more blue than green, and the smell was of home.

I stretched out on all four and only then realized I was a wolf. I panted with laughter and then threw my head back to howl at the moon, which I was disappointed to see wasn’t full, though it was close. A voice told me that was just like the waking world, but I ignored it.

I wanted to be here. I wanted to be standing in the forest and enjoying my fur.

No, I realized. I wanted to be running through the forest and enjoying my fur.

I took a few lunges forward. The strength of my body astounded and delighted me. Everything was wonderful and free.

I put my snout forward and ran. The grown was soft and springy under my paws, and I felt like I was eating up miles with every stride.

There was something so satisfying in the feel of my movements that I was reminded of how I went to sleep, wrapped up in Zane’s arms and feeling him through every part of me, like we’d more than made love, like I’d swum in the moonlight of his arms and would never be the same again.

I laughed a wolf-laugh of panted breath and ran faster. It was as if the forest itself gave me strength and wanted me to run through it. Every snap of a branch felt like a cheer, and the stars seemed like signposts urging me on.

I caught a faint scent and knew it was a rabbit. I’d actually had a rabbit as a pet in one of my foster homes.

It had been one of the better homes. The human woman and man hadn’t acted like I was cursed or something, like most of them did, I suppose because I was a foster child, and they spent the money they were given by the state on the food, clothes, and other needs of their three foster children and probably chipped in more than a little money of their own.

The rabbit had been the parents’, and they’d love that white-furred, black-eyed little creature in a way that showed me just how to love other such creatures.

They’d told me never to bathe a rabbit in water because it could die of shock and that rabbits groomed themselves just fine. They’d made sure the rabbit, Mr. Wobbles, had plenty of fresh water and fed it hay and treats. They shown me how to pet him and how to wait patiently until he wanted to be petted.

One day, everyone had noticed Mr. Wobbles wasn’t producing his little pellets, and within a couple days he died at the vet’s office. I realized that might have been the first time I’d dealt with death in any significant way, and I remembered my foster mother telling me gently, “Everything dies eventually. The point is to have a good life until then, and Mr. Wobbles had the best life we could give him.”

Thinking back on it as I ran over the long grass and under the canopy of the tall trees, I knew I had carried that simple philosophy forward. We were all just here for a time, long or short. The point was to live well in the meantime.

I smelled the rabbit more now, and my pulse raced as I realized it was “prey.”

Now, there was an odd concept. The rabbit wasn’t a pet but prey, something to hunt down and eat.

In the way that dreams make happen, I was at a table with some faceless judges, about to rule on Grace and Chloe, and they asked me if I knew what prey was.

“I know it’s not ‘pray,’” I joked. They hated it. They surged together and wanted to kill me.

But then I was back on the moonlit grass, so sweet and perfect in my nose, and the scent of rabbit-as-prey was stronger than ever. I loped along feeling no fatigue. The night air was crisp and clean and magical.

What a great dream, I thought, and my wolf body howled in agreement.

Smelling the rabbit more strongly now, I thought about Mr. and Mrs. Gret, who’d taught me about the importance of family. How much of my own devotion to family and pack did I owe to them now? Zane and Grace had so readily fit into my definition, my parameters, of what family meant. Was it the Grets who’d prepared me?

My muzzle twitched, and I knew the rabbit was dead ahead of me. I heard its heart pounding and felt its fear. I wanted to feel pity, but I was hungry. My best effort was to make sure its ending was quick.

I realized my mouth was watering, and my paws ate up the ground in response. I had never before been so much at peace with the world around me. The grass, the trees, the moon, the stars, and the very air I breathed seemed to be urging me on. I was everything I saw, and everything was what I became.

I sped up and knew the rabbit was just ahead of me. I saw a flash of brown fur, and then I pounced. My paws swiped over its thin layer of fur, and then the creature was in my paws, and with a quick nip of my jaws, it was dead. I wanted to howl in satisfaction, but I also felt it was a small matter, a snack, and I deserved something more.

I tore into its flesh, peeling back the fur and opening up a smorgasbord of heart, liver, and lean muscle.

I was reminded that rabbit fur trappers of the past had died of malnutrition, more specifically protein poisoning, from eating only the rabbits they caught that filled their bellies but didn’t fulfil their dietary needs.

I told myself to eat a Caesar salad tomorrow as I gulped down delicious bits of rabbit meat.

I woke up. The room was dark, and the bed was warm. Zane lay next to me in his fur.

I made my brain wake up a bit more. In his fur? But yes, there was a wolf in my bed, sleeping soundly, and on his shoulder I plainly saw lines, swaths of claw marks that had swiped at his flesh.

What the hell? I thought, and my fingers flexed in reply.