Soul Bound

Chapter One

Chapter One

The moment air hits the bottom of my lungs I know that it's coming. And it's too late to stop it. Wolf has control.

I skid to a stop, throw my head back, and howl at the night sky. My hands slap over my mouth, cutting the yowling off.

My breath is heavy against my palm as I crouch under a cover of brush to listen for anything upset by my loud mouth. An owl screeches in the distance. The whirring of cicadas stops. Then there's only a quiet rustling as various little animals scurry away.

Jeez, you're impatient, I snap at her.

She storms around in my mind as a migraine, her eagerness making my temples throb and my fingers twitch even as I try to keep them still. Wolf's so close to the surface, out here in the forest, under a full moon, in her element. She wants complete control. But it's my body, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna let her do what she wants with it.

Out, she commands.

Beads of sweat bubble up on my forehead as I keep my feet firmly planted, resisting her control. It's always a fight over control.

Haven't you ever heard that patience is a virtue?

No, she growls.

Well, apparently it is.

After a moment, the woods return to their normal state of night. A hot breeze rattles the leaves and brush around me.

Wolf begrudgingly relinquishes all the control back to me, her influence disappearing from my lungs and vocal chords. Satisfied with her submission, I carry on with our daily patrol of our territory.

My stride is long and quick; my footfalls silent, swift and light as a deer's. I don't need Wolf's instincts or the lupine abilities that I can borrow from her. I know exactly where I'm going. I always know where I'm going. This is my forest. My territory. Not an inch of it is unknown to me. Every fruit, flower, and weed; every branch, root, and log. We belong to each other.

The ground is so moist and soft that the slapping of my bare feet on the forest floor is muted. It feels good; the aching, the sweat, the rawness of running, it's all a sweet symphony to my body. Running is natural. It's feral. It's freedom; freedom from concrete and brick, the small talk and insincere pleasantries, and the technological dependency of the world next to mine. The only rule that exists in the woods is to survive.

Here, we are untamed.

Energy from the Earth passes from the ground into my feet, teeming with life that I can't see but can feel around me. I know in my heart that I am one with everything, one with the souls of the animals and trees that I share this forest with.

It's a connection all soul binders have. It's why I have Wolf, why our souls are bound together. I've never known my body or my mind without her. She's been a pain in my ass, and my best friend, since the beginning, since before I have memories.

But mostly she's a pain in my ass.

No sooner do I think the thought, she pushes my foot too hard to the ground and I go sprawling forward into the dirt.

None of my thoughts are safe.

Falon. Pain. My ass, she declares.

Fine. Fair enough. We're both real catches, I laugh.

I assume all soul binders have this kind of relationship with their other soul. I've never met another one, but I know they're out there somewhere. And I've got to hope that I'd get along a lot better with them than I do humans. Sharing my mind and body with a wolf, shapeshifting—it's a lot of weird to try and cover up with normal. And I am not good at it. Especially when Wolf's mind mixes with my own. Trying to explain to my third grade teacher my need to mark the trees on the playground as my territory didn't go well. Neither did growling at anyone who came to close too my lunch.