Page 7 of Shifter's Homecoming

He lay still like he was dead.

5 - Dying Again

Slowly, numbly, a little at a time, Trent felt ground beneath him. He was on his back on cold packed dirt. His eyes were closed. His body was cold. His limbs did not want to move.

…

He collected himself.

Trent opened his eyes and stared upward. He was flat on his back on the forest floor, a dark sky above. Trees towered overhead, moths flitted around in the stillness of his death. The trees swayed, but Trent could not hear wind or leaves rustling, only a strange mechanicalhummmm. Above him, unfamiliar constellations and a sick-looking moon hung.

Trent stared at three stars directly above him, fashioned in a line, looking much like the belt of the constellation Orion, back home. That’s the constellation ofthe Great Wolves,he thought, even though he’d never heard of such a constellation in his life. A swimming, doubling feeling of familiarity, of déjà vu, took him over for just a moment, as he barely remembered a dream he’d once had about a story ofthe Great Wolves, Orion, Cassion, and Passion. The feeling passed. His brain seemed to jolt in his skull, and what he once thought of as a dream, reslotted itself in his mind as a… amemory.

The hummmm in his head stopped, and normal sounds flooded in around him. The drone of night-bugs. The creep of predators. The silence of night. A feeling of coldness enveloped him. His life’s blood actively drained onto the ground from a hole he could feel gaping painlessly in his thigh.

Trent tried to look around. The tendons in his neck seemed to creak, seeming to want to hold him in rigor already.What had happened to him?Or rather, what had happened to this other Trent? He had no memory or knowledge of it. He scented nothing but the metal smell of this body’s blood, of his own blood. There were no other people about, no other shifters, no big animals at all…

Questions rapid-fired through his brain. Could he stand? What had gotten him in the first place? Why was he dying on the ground?

He could not die! He had to get up, he had tomove, he had toget the vaccine…he… he… Trent’s brain stuttered, not wanting to work right. His thoughts did not come clearly. He strained to remember his mission.Get the vaccine, get the vaccine from her.

Trent muscled himself up onto his elbows, a low gasp forced from his throat as this body screamed in protest. The pain in his leg exploded, demanding his awareness. Trent clenched his teeth together. He was a man dying on the ground wearing that same nondescript uniform as before. It was the uniform of this Trent, this body, this world. The gun was on his hip. The badge with no department name was on a chain around his neck… This was him.Hewas him. Somehow, he was both himself and not, all at the same time.

He could feel pain in this human male form. He was somehow alive again, somehow in a body that did not quite belong to him, but he didn't have time to think about how long, why, or what for, because he wasabout to bleed out on the motherfucking forest floor.

Trent heard heavy work boots thudding on the ground to his left. Someone big was coming in fast. Trent tried again to stand and couldn’t. He tried to roll onto his belly and couldn’t. He dropped the weight of his head to the ground, unable to even hold it up anymore, completely at the mercy of… whatever was coming.

A big male skidded in next to him, dropping to his knees, his expression screwed up in alarm. His hands went straight to Trent’s thigh, digging around in the bloody hole there. Trent screamed.

The male lifted the leg and muttered. “The bullet, where’s the bullet?”

Trent’s vision went gray, then came back sharp. The big male dug hard and came out of the hole with a smashed and bloody bullet.

He shoved it in Trent’s face. “I got the bullet, Trent, shift!” he shouted, brown hair hanging in his face. “Shift, motherfucker, SHIFT, you’re fucking dying here!”

It was his very own brother. It wasTroy. But Troy… did Troy exist in this world? Trent tried to think of what Smokey had said…

You have a life and a family here. You have been in this world before. You have been in this body before.

Trent almost remembered the other life …

He couldn’t remember … and he wasdying again.

Troy grabbed him by the shoulders and physically shook him, bouncing his head against the ground. “Shift!” he shouted in Trent’s face.

“My wolf, I don’t have my wolf—” Trent tried to say. He was cold. He was tired. His voice didn’t want to work.

Trent lost himself.

***

Trent floated. Conscious. Unconscious. He couldn’t tell. Voices came from all sides. A truck rumbled underneath him, a loud diesel engine luring him to sleep…

Troy shook him, anguish in his voice. “Stay with me, Nipper,please.”

Trent’s eyes flew open at the nickname and he grabbed for his brother.

Trent oriented himself. He was in the back of a work truck, laying down on the long seat, his head on his brother’s lap. Someone else spoke. It was a gruff male voice, possibly whoever was driving. Trent could not make out what he said. The truck bounced and the back end fish-tailed, as the guy with the gruff voice drove it too fast.

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