Page 10 of Shifter's Homecoming

“Look,” the doctor said, his hands up, pleading. He looked like a pleasant enough, normal-enough guy to Trent. “I can't treat him. I don't know what will help him. Your kind doesn't need the same things we do - no doctors, surgery, or medicine. None of that. There's nothing I can do.”

Troy got in close to the doctor, looking like he was about to grab him by the collar. “You know who we are,” he said, his voice tight, controlled. “You know we are Human Rights League.” His voice strained. He gestured emphatically to Trent in the chair. “He was fighting for you, he took a bullet foryour kind.”

Trent held his breath. Human Rights League… He’d heard that before, from Crew and his mate Dahlia. Could this really be the same world that Crew used to travel to, the one that Dahlia spent one fateful night in before she sacrificed herself and Crew found her, alive again in another world? Of all the things he and the others had expected, that had been low on the list.

The doctor shook his head, but pointed them to a door. While Trent focused on not dying, they hustled him through the door. Trent had the sense of an open area and much humming equipment.

“Right there,” the doctor said. “Put him in that bed. Get his clothes off of him.”

Troy and Rocko lifted him from the chair and put him in a bed surprisingly gently. Trent’s head lolled to his shoulder, he couldn’t keep it on the pillow. Troy grasped it with both hands, placed it on the pillow, then held it there.

Trent sensed others in the room. There was sound and movement and urgent talking about him … about how he was dying.

Trent fought, he held on … and still he could not keep his consciousness.

His sight went red, then black.

***

Trent opened his eyes. He was flat on his back in front of the dinosaur doors again, in the meadow again, but this time, someone else was there, too. Trent jumped to his feet, ready to fight.

But it was his wolf. Trent was overjoyed to see him, but he stood quietly, not knowing how to greet his own animal.

His wolf turned from him to the over-sized, impressive doors. His wolf barked one time. Trent’s reality doubled over on itself. That was his bark.

The doors swung open silently on ghost hinges, revealing a dark path beyond. A massive gray timber wolf stood directly in the center of the path, his muzzle high, his back straight, his tail out.Majestic, was all Trent could think.Awewas all he could feel. For a moment, he wondered if this wolf could be Rhen herself. It would make a whole lot of things make a whole lot of sense… but then he caught the wolf’s strong scent. Male. Not Rhen.

He knew who this was: the wolf guardian.

Trent did not know the story of the guardians well, and in fact, he’d never quite believed the pieces of what he had heard could have basis in fact.

Shiftenkept their history through verbal stories told from generation to generation, usually from parent to pup or grandparent to pup, but they were allowed to write down nothing. Trent had never heard the full story because when he’d been a pup, after the demon had poisoned every female of the species, the males who had been left with pups to raise hadn’t told many stories. Trent’s childhood had been a quiet, sad time. His father had told a few stories before he died, but never well, and never in their entirety.

He knew there were three guardians though, a wolf, a catamount, and a bear; just as there were three actual statues on the roads leading into Serenity, a wolf, a catamount, and a bear. Trent knewshiftenwho believed the guardians were frozen inside the statues and they would come to life to protect the town if Khain ever showed up with an army.

Now he knew the truth. Rhen’s meadow was real and the guardians lived in it, not in the statues.

Trent’s own wolf got up and trotted away from him, past the timber wolf, then turned and sat directly behind and to one side of the paragon wolf. Trent could not even be upset. He wanted to go and sit on the other side, but knew he would not.

The wolf waited.

“Trent Burbank,” Trent said, loud and strong.

Admitted,the wolf said solidly in his mind.Take nothing. Disturb nothing. Kill nothing. You may keep your shoes and your memories.

The wolf was no longer on the path and Trent did not know if he had run into the forest, or just… disappeared. Only Trent’s wolf was there, staring at him, waiting for him to enter.

Trent looked beyond his wolf. The forest was inviting. It was beautiful. It made him drop his eyes to the ground, but only for a moment, and then he was running, heavy boots hitting hard in trail dirt with each stride.

His wolf jumped for him, a true leap through the air, and when his extended paws hit Trent’s chest and they were about to go over, they merged instead.

Trent shifted into a wolf immediately, not thinking, just running. He ran for the sheer joy of having his wolf back. His paws and his claws ate up the dirt trail. He veered off the trail into the forest. He wound his way through trees at a speed that should have been impossible. He and his wolf, they climbed a tree together, just to prove that they could. They jumped to a low branch, then shimmied onto another, then leapt down to the ground. They would have climbed another, but wolves don’t belong in trees and so they went around— and they ran.

They ran until they tired, until they both were convinced that they were together again.

Trent flopped to his side on the slim path he’d found, and he slept.

7 - On his Own

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