AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ignoring Tallin’s protests, I eyed up my next jump, scanning the trees and their branches. In a matter of seconds, I spotted just the right one that would support my weight. With a series of quick steps, I launched myself off the tree I had been resting on and leapt through the air.
“Princess!” Tallin squealed, but I could barely hear him over the rush of wind past my ears.
It was euphoric. I felt weightless, like a leaf on the wind, the cool breeze caressing my face and shoulders as I soared through the air. A quick couple of heartbeats later, I landed exactly where I had intended to, grabbing hold of the branches and using them to climb rapidly down, toward the ground where Tallin was waiting.
“There,” he said, rushing up to me and bumping his black nose against my foot. “I caught you. Can we go back now?”
“That’s not how that works, and you know it.”
Smiling widely, I turned on my heel and went racing through the forest, sprinting past the thick, dark trees and gliding over the snow under my feet. Tallin groaned, but he gave chase, the little Sprite shooting through the forest like a bullet after me.
Despite his complaints, Tallin was at home in the woods, and after only a couple of moments, I couldfeelhis intensity begin to rise. It wasn’t long before I knew, simply by glancing at him and seeing the concentrated look on his face, that he was enjoying this as much as I was. It was that same intensity that was starting to give him the advantage.
He was gaining on me.
My smile turned to a grin as I took a couple of skipping steps over a series of boulders and leapt high into the air. My muscles flexed, my breathing slowed, heartrate quickened, and I shut my eyes as I hurtled over a ridge. By the time I hit the ground again, I was no longer running on two feet, but four. Thick, fluffy, silvery fur covered my body, and the world widened in an explosion of sensory input.
There was a time when changing my body’s shape was difficult, uncomfortable, and even painful. In the beginning, I had barely been able to handle all the new smells, the sounds, the weight of my new, wolf body. My human side slowed me down, made it difficult for me to adjust to changes which should have been natural. But I overcame those challenges the same way I dealt with everything else life threw at me.
With the hard head my father gave me.
I trained, and I practiced, and I pushed myself further than I was supposed to at times. Even when I was sore, and hurt, and I felt like I couldn’t take another step—the steps I took beyond that point were the ones that made all the difference, because they were the ones that forged the woman I was today.
“You’re going to have to run faster than that, Tallin!” I called back.
“And you aren’t as fast as you think you are,Princess!” he yelled.
Putting my head down, I raced deeper into the woods outside of the city. I leapt over fallen trees and boulders, skirted around pools of frozen ice, and ducked under low-hanging branches, all the while doing what I could to pick up speed.
I knew this forest well. It was the forest where my mother first encountered one of theWenlow, a wretched beast that killed and ate the hearts of whatever poor Fae were unfortunate enough to cross paths with them. Though another Wenlow hadn’t ventured this close to Windhelm in over twenty years, this forest was still considered dangerous ground, and generally off limits; especially the deeper, darker parts… like the one I was heading into now.
Here, the ground began to slope, the trees started to slant, and the branches and leaves grew so thick they choked the light from the bright Arcadian sun. Shafts of sunlight were all that remained, pinpricks of light that shrank, and grew anemic the deeper we went.
Unsurprisingly, Tallin had something to say about this.
“Must we go down there?” he called out from behind me. He was panting, and short of breath, but keeping up with me.
“Scared, Tallin?” I asked.
“No. But if you get hurt out here, I’ll be the one that gets in trouble.”
“Relax. I’ll tell them it was my idea.”
“That’s not going to hold up in court!”
“Must you worry about everything, Tallin?”
“One of us has to!”
I spotted another ridge not far from where we were. It looked steep, treacherous, and a little foreboding. It was alsonew,which was a weird experience. I had raced through this forest many, many times before. I was used to its scent, its nooks, its crannies, and its crevices. I had never seen this before, though.
Instead of blindly going over it, I slowed down as I reached it, coming to a gentle trot as I came up to the edge. The slope was steep, as I had expected it to be, but there were many brambles, boulders, and logs along the way that shrouded the bottom. I couldn’t see it from up here.
Tallin came up behind me and wasted no time in smashing his snout against my hind leg. “There,” he said, exasperated. “I’ve caught you. Now, can we go back?”
“What’s down there, Tallin?” I asked.
The Sprite groaned. “I’m choosing not to take offense to the way you keep ignoring me.”
