AARON
I waited until Winter was safely inside the hidden door before I let the bear run, and when the storm took me, it did so gladly.
Snow closed over my tracks almost as quickly as I made them. The lake fell away behind me, pale and dangerous beneath the darkening sky, and every instinct that had held still for her sake finally broke loose through muscle and claw.
Run to her, the bear demanded, while the chief answered just as sharply: stay away. Between them, I crossed the snow like a wound that refused to close.
I shifted in the outer grove where the pines grew thick enough to shield the change. Bone broke and remade itself with a pain old as my blood; fur withdrew, claws became fingers, and the world narrowed from scent and heartbeat and ice-pressure to skin, breath, and cold s
