Page 1 of Into the Grasslands

Chapter 1

A Dream of Two

NIKA

“Nika!”

My name was whispered on the wind as I stood at what appeared to be a crossroads.

No. That wasn’t right. I stood on a tiny piece of land surrounded by water. There were two land bridges that ran toward paths on either side. One led into the forest of my pack’s lands.

Home.

The second trail wound through the grasslands on the opposite side, toward a strange forest I had never seen before.

“Nika!” A different voice this time. The previous one had been self-assured and possessed an ache to it that I could taste in the words. This voice whined with desperation, and maybe a hint of apology in the notes. It was odd that I could taste a word – the flavor of a name. There was no one on either side of the island. The voices seemed to call from each forest. I had a choice to make, but I couldn’t for the life of me understand why.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

My hand flew up to swat away what I thought was a fly, but the disturbance caused a ripple in the vision before me.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

No! Not yet. I haven’t chosen!

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

It was too late. Everything drifted away, leaving me with an unfulfilled, sinking sensation that was historically followed by receiving bad news in my waking life. My alarm trilled out the annoying buzz sound once more, and finally awake enough, I reached over and smacked it and quickly threw my legs over the bed and sat up far too fast.

I waited out the dizzy sensation before huffing into the too-chilly morning air of my dorm room. My roommate had left her window open again; despite the cold front I told her would be coming through last night. Did she listen? No. Would she care that she froze me out? Also no. Guess where my roommate hadn’t slept last night? That’s right, in our freezing ass dorm room.

It was still winter. We would be heading home next week. She was off to big things in Boulder, Colorado. I would quietly head home to my pack with the degree I had earned. Since I had finished two-years-worth of college courses while still in high school, and added a heavier load in college, I graduated early. There would be a smaller ceremony for the few of us graduating in the winter semester. We were told that we could also walk for the large, full graduation ceremony with everyone else in the spring, but I didn’t plan to do either. There was no point, since I had no one to watch me earn that achievement.

My last assignment had been turned in three days ago and all my exams were finished. Technically, I could have already gone home, but my impending birthday was the reason I stuck around. The big two-oh. That meant exactly two things. I was no longer a teenager in the human world. And likewise, there was a milestone for the shifter community as well. No longer would I be a novice wolf after my birthday. My final transition wouldhappen much like my graduation from university – with no one else to witness it and no fanfare to speak of.

The last time I wore unsettled feelings draped around my insides like a cloak of impending despair, I lost the only people who would have cared about any of my milestones, graduation from university, turning twenty, and becoming a full-grown wolf. I closed my eyes and whispered the prayer for lost souls.

“May your soul be reborn, that you should walk this land again, your mate by your side, and fate in your hands.”

That evening, with my bags packed into my Jeep, I headed to the national forest area that had been the place where my wolf was allowed to run free when I felt too cagey to keep her in any longer. I parked my car in its usual spot, near a trail head, and then moved further into the forest on my human feet. It was imperative for me to move as far off trail as I could before giving into my shift.

My first shift, when I was thirteen, had been just as awful as the elders of our pack had warned it would be. Back then, I felt every bone crack, reform, and push into a new place. Everything felt different after years of shifting. The itchy tug of course fur sprouting through skin, that moments before hadn’t been equipped to hold more than the dainty dusting of hair normal to humans, was unnerving but bearable in comparison. Hands quickly disappeared, reshaping into paws. My face shifted to accommodate my snout, senses sharpened, and eventually I was all wolf. The only exception was my mind. That was the one place where the human and the wolf were left to a fight of dominance.

We were one and the same with two distinctly different thought processes. My wolf side thought more in pictures while using instinct to guide her. My human half thought through words and logic. During the first shift, we battled for control,and that too had come with its own form of pain – the mental version of bones breaking and reforming.

We still wrestled for control sometimes, though we had come to terms with our respective positions over the years. According to the elders, when a shifter wolf turned twenty, the melding of minds took place and became a true and permanent change within us. After my next shift, there would be no more battles of will between my wolf and human sides. Instead, we would act as one being, able to call up the abilities of either side of our nature as needed.

There were some wolves who never truly melded with their humans. They would always be the lowest members of the pack because they were the hardest to deal with and the weakest link due to their indecisiveness. Since there was always an internal battle with them over what to do, the lower ranks were usually cantankerous shifters to deal with. This was the reason I opted to stay at school a little longer and have my shift in private.

After the dreams I’d been having lately, where I was being pulled in two different directions, I thought maybe it was foreboding that I would not handle melding with my wolf well. The only question then was if I would become one of the tainted or a wild one. The tainted favored their human side while the wild ones shifted to paws and never really reverted.

I shook off thoughts of my first shift and the anxiety that had weighed me down all week. “Are you ready for this?” I asked aloud, even though my wolf side knew I was speaking to her. The itchy, tightness of my skin as I disrobed let me know that my shift would happen momentarily, whether I was ready or not. Up until this day, my shifts had always been ruled by the moon. After, if everything went well, shifting would become something we could do at will and with ease.

“Here’s hoping,” I mumbled as I crossed my fingers in the human version of a good luck charm. Then, without a momentto spare between one thought and the next, I stood on four paws and stared out at the forest through my wolf’s eyes. A sniff of the air later and the picture of a rabbit appeared in my mind, instinct told us to follow the trail, so we did.

Little snack was fast, darting through underbrush, sliding under fungi-covered fallen trees, and skittering to-and-fro to avoid capture. We were amused by the chase and hungry for little snack. Too hungry. It had been nearly a month since we ran and hunted. For a moment, the chase was lost as wolf and human souls snapped at one another, then the moon’s light filtered through the trees and bathed us in all her glory. The inner battle was lost to peace as both sides agreed they had missed the hunt and would no longer deny long, playful runs through the forest.

Little snack darted out, confused by the pause in the chase, and our paw smacked down across its back. Just as we got ready to chomp down and shake little snack to break its neck, a voice called out to us.

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