My body registers the impossibility before my mind catches up. One second: drowning in the Pacific, lungs burning for air. The next: gasping on solid ground, water streaming off my torn drysuit.
The shadow realm.
I recognize it the instant my bare feet touch ground, even though no Hayes has set foot here in living memory. The stories passed down through generations of guardians paint this place in whispered warnings—the twisted mirror of our world, the space between dimensions where broken ley energy pools and festers. Where nothing living should survive.
Everything is grey. Shadowed. Fundamentally wrong in ways that make my scientific mind recoil. Light comes from nowhere and casts no shadows, because shadows would imply something solid and real. This place is neither.
My other half thrashes inside me, trying desperately to shift back to our human form, but the transformation won't stabilize. We flicker between states—human, grizzly, something caught in between. Pain lances through every nerve.
Control it.The thought cuts through the panic.You're a Hayes. You're an alpha. Control your bear.
I force the shift back to human through sheer will, gasping as my body finally settles into one form. What remains of my drysuit is shredded. My equipment is gone. I'm barefoot on stone that feels simultaneously freezing and burning hot.
And the shadow corruption starts.
Not slowly. Not gently. It slams into me like a riptide, seeping through skin, muscle, bone. Black veins spider across my forearms. My blood thickens, turns sluggish. The grizzly—my constant companion since I first shifted at thirteen—whimpers and retreats deeper inside me, trying to escape what we both know can't be escaped.
I stand slowly, testing my balance, assessing my situation with the same methodical approach I'd use for any research problem.
I force my mind to work like it does in the field. Assess the situation. Trapped between dimensions? Yes. Convergencepoint malfunction? Clearly. Shadow corruption spreading through my system? Already feel it turning my veins black. But I'm breathing. Thinking. Still myself.
That's what matters.
Most importantly: I'm not dead.
Which means there's a way out.
I test the air, trying to sense the ley lines the way Calder taught me. They're here—faint golden threads that look sickly and pale compared to the vibrant energy back home. But they exist. They connect this realm to mine.
If I can disrupt them from this side, someone might notice on the other side.
The determination settles into my bones like ballast. So I'm trapped—fine. Poisoned by shadow corruption—I've dealt with worse in the field. Stuck in a dimension that shouldn't exist with no equipment, no supplies, no clear exit—just another research problem to solve.
I'm a Hayes. We protect our territory. We guard the ley lines. We don't quit when things get hard.
And now I have something more. That flash of her face—my mate, the woman I didn't know existed until the moment I lost any chance of meeting her—burns in my memory like a North Star.
I start searching for the barriers between worlds, mapping the places where ley lines intersect. Each convergence point I push against weakens me, feeds more corruption into my blood. But each disruption sends a pulse back through the network—a pattern Calder should recognize if he's monitoring the flows.
A message in the language of energy:Still here. Still fighting. Come find me.
Days blur into weeks, maybe months. Time moves wrong here—stretches and compresses like reality itself is corrupted. I map this realm. Because every time I push against the barrierbetween worlds, I feel her. Getting closer. Moving through my world while I'm trapped in this twisted reflection of it.
And then—finally—I find it. A weak point where the barrier thins to almost nothing. Where I can taste salt air and smell redwood bark and feel solid ground instead of this nightmare's shifting stone.
I press both hands against the barrier. It gives slightly, like flesh over bone.
On the other side, blurred by dimensional walls but unmistakable, she stands. Not a vision. Her. Real. Moving through my world.
My mate.
She can't see me through the barrier. Not yet. But she will.
The barrier trembles beneath my palms. After pushing against it for what feels like eternity, feeling the corruption spread while I refuse to give up, sending systematic disruptions that screamI'm still here—I've finally found my way back.
She's close enough now that I catch fragments of her scent through the thinning wall. Salt spray and something sweet like honey. Something uniquely hers that makes the grizzly surge with renewed strength despite the corruption eating at us both.
My fingers sink deeper. The barrier stretches. Warmth bleeds through—real warmth from the living world. From home.
