AYLA’S POV
Morning hit me like a punch.
I jerked awake tangled in my blankets, breath coming in fast, shallow bursts. My heart pounded hard enough to shake my ribs. Sweat dampened the sheets. My hair stuck to the back of my neck. My whole body buzzed with leftover heat, with the echo of something wild still clawing at me from the inside.
For a moment I did not know where I was.
My room blurred into focus slowly. The window. The dresser. The faint smell of pine from the candles I used to steal from the kitchen. All familiar. All normal.
But nothing in me felt normal.
The last thing I remembered was running. Not as a girl. Not on two legs.
As a wolf.
Wind in my fur. Snow under my paws. The world sharper and brighter and louder. The forest stretching around me like an old memory I had
