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Shaking his head, he stood and looked around, then reluctantly shifted back to human form.

He sighed. This kept happening. He couldn\'t sleep and had to be outside because when he was inside his body felt so tight his breathing constricted. Everything about that house felt unnatural to him, and though he spent many hours inside during the day, when the night fell he had to be free. The land around the Big House was large and rolling and despite the strangely manicured gardens, it felt better to be on the grass and under the trees. But none of it smelled right. He ended up running circles, patrolling the wall of the property every night until he grew too tired to take another step.Â

But no matter how weary he was, he always ended up back here, in sight and sound of the former portal.

Normally once he woke, he shifted back to human and stayed that way until the next night. But today he was so tired.

With no one around, and weary of fighting the urge, Aaryn shifted back and used his wolf to pad closer to the portal.Â

He didn\'t let himself think about how the hours he spent in his wolf were growing longer and longer, or how it was an act of discipline to make himself shift back—yet becoming his wolf was as simple as breathing.

It shouldn\'t have been that simple. He\'d watched and listened to so many training sessions with Anima who could shift. While he hadn\'t experienced it before, he knew that for El, being in beast form was a fight for dominance. With him shifting for the first time as an adult... he should have struggled. Elia had struggled when she did it—desperately! And he also knew that while he was in his beast he should have had some distance from his own mind. He shouldn\'t have complete control and know himself so clearly. And yet, he did.

The whole thing was disturbing on its own—was his beast different from El\'s, or the other wolves?—but it got worse. Thoughts of his mother always trotted on the edges of thoughts of his beast form and he was terrified of where they would take him if he let himself explore them.

Aaryn snorted the air from his wolf\'s nostrils and walked slowly towards the boulders.Â

Everything he\'d heard about the other Anima and their time in their beasts was wrong. He\'d been told that being in the wolf separated him from himself somewhat. That being in the beast pushed the human heart and mind to the background. Yet, here he was, pacing in his wolf body, all human thoughts and feelings just as clear, just as powerful as they were in his flesh.

It was so unfair.

His chest ached like he wanted to cry—but as a wolf, it seeped out as a piercing whine. The thought of crying—again—made him want to go to sleep and never wake up. The grief made him angry, the anger made him tense and hot, then left him exhausted when he erupted, venting the rage until he tumbled back into grief.

He was almost at the former portal. Closer than he\'d come to it since he found his beast form. Even though he was drawn out here every night, he hadn\'t touched the rocks, or even stood in front of them. He\'d kept his distance, nose always to the wind, but never again catching that hint of death and decay so unique to the traverse.

Aaryn sighed as he passed it again. He wasn\'t ready to go back to the house yet. It was too… busy.

The humans had been so consumed by the earthquake and the damage done to the city by it, that apart from feeding and clothing him, Aaryn had been left alone, which suited him. But during his nightly patrols, Aaryn had twice interrupted other humans, ones that didn\'t live in the Big House or its surrounding properties, trying to climb the wall—humans who didn\'t seem surprised to find a wolf on the grounds.Â

Then last night he\'d been warned by the housekeeper that they\'d had some strange phone calls.

She might not know exactly what Aaryn was, but she\'d worked with the now-defunct Guardians long enough to understand that he was different. And desirable to a certain corner of her society.

She\'d called him over after dinner and put a kind hand to his shoulder. "If you can, you should go, I think. Find a new life. There are some people in the city, and they\'re looking for… people like you."

Aaryn huffed the air from his nose again and turned to pace in the other direction. He knew she was right, that being here only put him in the path of those who were likely still a danger.Â

But something within him refused. This was the closest place he knew to El. And no matter how pathetic that might be, the thought of leaving, just walking away… he couldn\'t do it. It was like accepting that he\'d never see her again. He just couldn\'t.Â

  As he approached the boulder pile where the portal had once been, his beast instincts tugged toward it—the reason he didn\'t usually come close. But he was so tired. With a rolling groan, he let himself pad toward it, brushing the boulders with his body.

Though there was no smell of the portal, Aaryn\'s gut twisted in the same way it had when he\'d been about to pass through the portal before. As if there were some residual power still nestled amongst these rocks.

Turning his snout to the boulders to sniff, a flash of blue light flashed.

The shock was so intense, he shifted back.

All sense of the light and that gut-wrenching tug was gone.

Heart pounding and sinking at the same moment, Aaryn examined every inch of the rocks. But there was nothing. Had it only been his imagination? A wish?

The thought that he might be tormented for the rest of his days by hopes bred only by his imagination was a gut punch. Aaryn shook his head to rid himself of the image and as tears threatened, he gave up and shifted again.

And his wolf went utterly still as the blue flare of light came again—there, between two of the boulders. He didn\'t take his eyes off it, and though it pulsed, it never disappeared.

He whined and pawed at the boulder, afraid to hope again. He wasn\'t sure he could live through another disappointment of that magnitude.

Barely breathing, he shoved his nose between the rocks, then edged in, forced to sink on his haunches slightly to make it between the massive rocks.

The blue light didn\'t disappear.

There was no scent of the portal, no decay, no dusty death. But there was… air. And it wafted out of the glowing blue space just wide and tall enough for his beast. Aaryn inhaled deeply, testing the air and he caught the faintest trace of the damp stone of a cave. And air that smelled like the WildWood.

Breath rushing out of him, Aaryn shifted back to his human form but was left squatting under and between massive rocks, with nothing more than rocks and dirt in front of him.

A sob broke in his throat, and he shifted again, whining when the blue light immediately appeared. Without hesitation, he poked it with his nose—and his nose passed through to find more of that welcoming, damp, clean earth and wet stone, and the scent of the Great Trees…