He is Ghost

Part 2 - Bitter

Neira hadn't shifted into her human body in over four weeks. The last time had been just outside a shitty town somewhere in Canada. It had been so cold, so utterly freezing up here that Neira had decided to treat herself. She had crawled into a fancy heated horse barn and slept in the rafters in her naked human skin for over 20 hours.

She hadn't changed back since.

Apparently, she had forgotten what the world was like in the north, where her mother's pack lay nestled in the mountains. Neira had avoided it; she couldn't face her mother now, she probably thought Neira was dead. How could she walk in there now, alive and with no solution to her never-ending problem? Her mother would fall over and die. She was sure of it.

It had been roughly six months since her heat had ended and she'd left Judd standing in the trees. Six months of checking the northernmost settlements of the continent for healthy males not only strong enough to keep her down, but that could maybe offer her something more. She couldn't be sure of Judd, she wasn't sure. Sure the attraction was there, who wouldn't be attracted to that.

He was thick with muscle, strong with resolve and tanned from the summer sun. Sure they might not know each other too well, but she knew enough. She hoped she knew enough. Somewhere deep down in her soul, she feared her feelings for Judd were all a hoax, a lie twisted into her skin by his mark. Perhaps now with the snow, he would be pale and ugly.

No dice, not for her.

His skin had that glowy southerner skin. The bronzed skin that always looked like it had just the right amount of sun. Neira knew that even if her skin was naturally rather dark, it wasn't her northern blood that made her so. Her father had given her the tanned skin and dark hair. The reddish-brown hair.

She always looked far more like her father than she ever did her mother. Even if her mother was the one with the dominant gene pool. Perhaps it was evolution's way of hiding her long-forgotten useless title.

The only thing she could clearly see being from her northern heritage was the icy blue eyes. Twins to her mothers.

Something bumped into her shoulder, more like brushed against it. It always knew when she was distracted, thinking about her parents or Judd or who knows what else. But every time it knew.

It had reappeared that same night she had left Judd's territory. Apparently, her little hunch about it being attached to that place was wrong because it had come with her all over the north. Wherever she went, it followed. It appeared in no pattern, some days it never left her side and sometimes she didn't see it for days at a time.

But it always came back.

She growled in its direction, her tone playful. The shadow simply bounded away, darting around the trees. She shook her head, ears hitting the sides of her face.

Over the time she had been on her own with this thing, it had become some sort of companion, a friend even. It warned her when something was coming her direction way before she would have been able to detect it. It sometimes left her food, a grouse or a hare, its neck crushed.

She didn't have anything to offer in return, and when she had dared to ask once it simply disappeared. She had come to dislike when it wasn't near.

Neira slowed her pace; reorientating herself. She told herself one more, one more pack, one more try and then she would have to go home. Her mother would know how to get her into Russia.

Neira had little faith in this plan, to be clear she had exactly zero faith in it. She was ready to start swimming to Russia if she had to. She didn't know if the kingdoms were still established on that side of the world, but perhaps they would take kindly to a long-forgotten queen of the north.