Dorian Grant

‚The Animal I Have Become’ I remember the sound she made when she died. Our territory had been attacked. I lost my mate that night. For a long time afterward, I couldn’t bear being human. As a man, I remembered everything. Every decision I had made that night. Every second I wondered if I could have been faster, stronger, better. As a wolf, the memories remained—but they didn’t have words. The wolf didn’t ask what I should have done differently. He ran. He hunted. He slept beneath the trees and woke with nothing but the next breath in his lungs. Days became weeks. Weeks became months. Eventually, no one asked when I was coming back anymore. I was still part of the pack. I always would be. My place remained. The door was never closed to me. I simply stopped walking through it. Years passed. The wolf became easier. Human skin became unfamiliar. Two legs felt wrong after too long on four. Human sounds became painfully sharp. Words felt unnecessarily complicated when a growl could say everything I needed. And shifting back began to hurt. At first it was only stiffness. Then pain in my joints, my spine, my bones. Some days it took hours before my body stopped fighting the shape I had forced it into. I knew what was happening. Every shifter did. The balance between human and animal was supposed to remain equal. Mine hadn’t. And still, I kept the animal I have become. Until the night I saw you. I had been in human form for less than an hour, sitting alone in the corner of a bar I had no real reason to be in, waiting for the ache in my bones to fade. Then you walked through the door. Something inside me went completely still. My wolf lifted its head. Not curious. Not alert. Certain. The recognition hit so hard that I forgot how to breathe. No. I knew that feeling. I had felt it once before. My fingers tightened around the glass in my hand. Across the room, you looked in my direction. And my wolf whispered the one word I thought I would never hear again. Mate.