Page 3 of Shifter's Homecoming

The cave went dark.

2 - The Running of the Wolves

Trent rose up out of his body with the finality of death, moving fast. There had been no pain and no fear, only swift, hard, and spinning confusion.

There below him was his body on the ground, a black wolf with a brush of white on the tip of his tail, another on his chest, and the number 8 in white on his left shoulder. The patch of white fur that looked like a number 8 was hisrenqua, the piece of Rhen the goddess, inside his own body. Hisrenquawas his connection to her.

Trent rose quickly upwards through the cave, through the ceiling of the cave, through the cool night air, the trees, the atmosphere, the stars and the world, all that time with his eyes cast downward, staring long after his view of his own body was obscured.

He had died.

…

It had happened.

Had he really, really believed it was going to happen?

Yes, he had,but still, the moment jolted him, it grabbed him by the throat and made him reconsider everything he’d ever known. He looked around with fresh eyes and a new attitude, too blinded by the experience to see anything yet.

He had died.

Yet, he still existed.

His very next thought came hard and fast and merciless.

His family.He had not had an opportunity to sacrifice himself. Was he dead for good? His family needed him, but it looked like they would not have him.

He had hidden the fact that he knew this was going to happen because he didn’t want to worry any of them. What good would it have done? None. So he’d kept quiet and sworn to secrecy anyone who did know his death was imminent.

His brother Trevor had two young. They were tiny littlewolfengelpups, only a month old. Trent’s heart hurt at the thought of never seeing Track and Treena again. Emotions and thoughts rushed at him, making him lock them all down.

All at once, he realized he wasdifferent.

He was still himself, but he was now aman. His wolf was with him, but even though he’d spent his entire life as a wolf with a man inside, he now was a man with his wolf inside.

It was enough to distract him completely of thoughts of his family. He’d never seen himself as a man before. He’d never been a man before.

His body wasinteresting.Down the front of him, Trent could see much of his man-self as he floated/rose to whatever came next. He examined his bare arms first. Thick forearms twisted with veins ended in actual hands with fingers. Trent clenched these hands into tight fists, pleased as hell when they responded. Trent closed and opened his hands a few more times, then moved on to look at the rest of himself.

He was a man.

He touched his very own face, feeling a thick but trimmed beard. His body was relaxed and floating. His surroundings came into focus for him. He was… being moved swiftly through the dark-time sky, but he could not pay it much attention because …

Because he was a man.

Trent had always been a non-shiftingshiften, a human who could turn into his animal, a wolf, in Trent’s case, but because he was non-shifting, he had never shifted into a man during his entire 31 years. He’d lived his entire life as a wolf. Most humans thought he was a really big dog, and that was all. None knew he had a full name, a bank account, investments, a badge number at the Serenity Police Department. None of them knew he worked to protect them from a demon they were blissfully ignorant of.

Non-shifting, when the animal couldn’t shift into the man form, or the man couldn’t shift into the animal form, was something that almost never happened toshiften,but when it did, sometimes there were reasons for it, and sometimes there weren’t. In Trent’s case, the circumstances of his birth had been a mess, and then shortly after he’d been born, all of the females of the species had died at once. They’d been murdered by the demon, Khain, and because of the mess that had happened since, Trent didn’t know what to believe about why he was non-shifting. By the time he’d become an adult, he’d fully accepted his fate, fully accepted his status as a non-shiftingshiften, and so none of it had mattered anyway. At that point, he had devoted himself to nothing other than protecting his family and his pack, and doing his job of protecting humans. Until the day he died.

Like his brother Troy, he’d been a man stuck in a wolf’s body for all of his 31 years. Except Troy had shifted five days ago and they still didn’t know what had caused it, although it seemed like their nephew Track’s first (late) shift from babe to pup had something to do with it. Troy had been napping with the boy, but he’d done that countless times before and Trent had tried it since and still did not shift.

That was fine, he’d never expected to.But now … now, here he was. A man.

He examined himself closer, wondering why he felt solid, and not… ghostly. He looked solid. His probing fingers touched his own flesh, hand to arm. He wassolid. His belly was flat, his legs felt and looked thickly-muscled under uniform pants. His man-body felt strong and good to him. He wiggled, then pointed his toes in his boots, flexing his calves hard. He wore black boots, a black web belt, and had a badge around his neck and a gun strapped to his hip. Being clothed surprised him, but what surprised him more was that the uniform he wore was not a Serenity P.D. uniform; it wasnotthe uniform of the police department he worked for.

Maybe he would have another chance at life after all.

“I’m ready,” he said out loud in the dark to nobody, surprising himself with the fluidity of the words, and the ease with which he spoke them. He had expected it to be harder to speak the first time.

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