Liam did a kind of head bob thing which could have been interpreted in a myriad of ways. “When you’re Changing,” he said, switching back to the original subject, “imagine you’re pulling strength from the ground and air into your body. We steal energy from our surroundings during the transformation. Mentally opening yourself up to those energies relaxes your body and makes the Change easier.”
As far as logic went, it was pretty sound. “Thanks,” I said as I stepped around to my side of the rock.
“Scout.” I stopped, if for no other reason than it was the first time he ever called me by my name. “Good luck.”
***
A year ago, I was a normal girl living what I thought was a normal life. That all changed when Liam and Alex Cole moved to my hometown of Timber, Kentucky. Alex, Liam’s younger brother, was the living embodiment of perfection - smart, funny, and so hot you worried about spontaneously combusting in his presence. It took me all of five seconds to fall head-over-heels, which wasn’t surprising. Everyone loved Alex. The shocker was that he loved me back.
Alex was the one to introduce me to the world of Shifters and Seers, but I soon realized I had been living smack dab in the middle of it my whole life. Thanks to skills I learned from watching too much Veronica Mars, I discovered Jase, my step-brother, and Charlie, his cousin who I’d loved since my idea of quality TV included a singing purple dinosaur, were also also Shifters. Not only that, but my best friend, Talley, was a Seer who could See a person’s thoughts and feelings with a touch.
Finding out everyone I trusted made it a daily practice to keep elephant-sized secrets from me wasn’t one of my better moments. I may have done a bit of property damage as a result.
In April, Alex died in a horrible accident. I was devastated and heartbroken, not to mention sporting some major injuries of my own. I thought things couldn’t get any more complicated.
I thought wrong.
Thirty days after Alex’s death my world changed again. That night I became a Shifter, Changing into a wolf under the light of the full moon.
It shouldn’t have been possible. For one thing, I’m a girl. For another, my father isn’t a Shifter. Since the ability to Change is passed from father to son, my newfound abilities were met with some not so pleasant feelings, most of which came from me.
At that moment, crouched down in Middle of Nowhere, Kansas, I welcomed the Change for the first time. It wasn’t just because I was going to get the use of my hand back thanks to the Change’s tendency to heal injuries - although that was a big, shiny gold star bonus - but I yearned to be wild and free. I was tired of being pinned in with only the crappy thoughts in my head to keep me company. Human Scout was more than ready to hand over the reins to Wolf Scout.
Maybe that’s why the Change went more quickly than ever before. Or maybe it’s just one of those things that gets better with practice. It could have been that Liam was right and the whole pulling energy out of the ground thing worked, but I didn’t want to jump to any crazy conclusions.
Once I emerged from behind the rock I found myself staring into the eyes of a gray wolf. Not just any gray wolf, my gray wolf.
Being trapped in a car with his scent for hours on end hadn’t dulled its impact on Wolf Scout. Her nose kept nuzzling into his neck, confirming he was really there. There was a period of time when Human Scout had questioned the gray wolf’s existence, but Wolf Scout never doubted. But she had never seen more than a glimpse, had never been able to actually touch him.
The part of my brain that was still human, the part that used logic instead of instinct, knew this was the same Liam who hated cheese and was completely unfamiliar with the concept of smiling. Wolf Scout didn’t care. She only knew him as the friend who had always been there for her when she was in need, as the one who came to her rescue time and time again.
Liam nipped at me, and I nipped back. Then, he was off. I caught up with him quickly, but only because he let me. We ran together, our sides rubbing against one another as we went. Eventually, Human Scout faded out completely; leaving Wolf Scout at peace with the one person on earth she trusted above all others.
Chapter 2
Before, when I was just a naive teenage girl who knew nothing of the real world where magic was possible, I paid little attention to dreams. I rarely had any and thought people who wanted to analyze them or believed they were passageways to something mystical were idiotic. That all changed once I became involved with Alex.
Although he was a Shifter and male, Alex had a few Seer abilities. While he couldn’t do the whole non-verbal, in-the-brain communication thing Seers are capable of, he could Dream Walk. He had developed the ability as a child, although it only ever showed him one thing: Me. Once we finally connected in the real world, I started participating in those dreams. For months I dreamt of a place on the lake with a rocky patch of beach shadowed by a cliff. In April, I found myself at that very spot. It was the place where Alex and I had our first date, and where we were attacked by my brother and Charlie.