I woke up naked.

But that was only half my problem.

I was lying naked outside, in a corn field, freezing. I could feel the cold, hard ground beneath me; my body felt as though every bone in it had been broken, at least twice. The taste of blood in my mouth nearly rivaled all my physical pains, but my brain was going through its own form of torture trying to remember why I was outside, without a stitch on in the middle of November in northern Illinois.

I cracked my eyes open. My breath came out in frosty clouds as I strove to pull cold air into my lungs as if for the first time after waking up from being pronounced dead. Above me, I could see the crisp midnight-blue sky, stars glittering coldly, like indifferent specks, making me feel more alien than I had ever felt my entire twenty-one years. I knew what had happened—the reason for all this—but I couldn’t remember what I had been doing for the last several hours. I knew time had passed because the stars were in a different configuration above me. And I didn’t see the moon, full and bright, as I knew it had been when the transformation came over me.

While I was trying to assess my physical and mental wellbeing, I heard something move close by; the brittle rustle of corn shocks that had been chewed up by farm machinery when it had picked the corn a month ago filled my ears. I was in a field, somewhere. But not alone. A dark outline of a man moved to hover over me. He was naked too. It startled me at first, being that I was a naked, vulnerable-as-you-can-get woman, but I realized right away it was Dante Badheart, shifter, lover and companion on my first night of the change. His long black hair was pulled back off his face into a thick, long braid. Memory slowly returning of those moments just before the full moon rose, I remembered we’d braided each other’s hair in the darkness on the blanket before the moon rose over the peak of a slight rise in the nearby park). He’d told me it was best to do so.

“Sabrina? Are you alright?” Lowering himself to his knees beside me, Dante Badheart’s voice became my only anchor, pulling me back out of the abyss, to my very human condition.

Before I could answer I felt bile rise, leaned over and vomited, retching a few times after I was done. This was the reason that he’d recommended our hair be tied back; it would have gotten the sick all over it.

“Oh, God,” I gasped weakly, trembling in the cold. “I can’t remember a thing.”

I felt Dante’s hands on me as he helped me to sit up, and then to stand.

“Be glad you can’t,” he said in that quiet, reverent tone that gave this a feel of some religious rite. “C’mon.” He held me for a moment when I refused to budge. He was warm—too warm for someone who was just as naked as I. Still, I shivered so violently my teeth chattered like castanets. He moved slightly, and my balance failed me as if I were a new-born fawn taking her first steps. I felt weak, vulnerable, even a little stupid. Naked in the middle of November in a corn field—that’s stupid. But couldn’t be helped.

“C’mon. This way.” He braced me with an arm around my waist, and guided me forward, through the harvested cornfield toward a black, serrated edged wall of mature white pine trees against the backdrop of slightly lighter sky, where we had begun our dark decent into a strange world. My feet felt somewhat heavy, and raw as I shuffled over chopped up corn stalks, discarded cobs, and leaves. I wanted to run to where we had shucked our clothes off, waiting for the change that came over me once the full moon rose. Dante wasn’t a Were, but a shiftchanger, and he had control over when and what he could change into. Normally he’d change into a beautiful, sleek, black jaguar. But tonight, he’d changed into a wolf, since that’s what was likely out and about on a full moon.

Who knew what I became, since I’d been bitten, not born. I was so angry over this turn of events in my life—one I had no control over whatsoever—I wanted to kill Frank Lundeen, the man-turned-wolf, who’d bitten me almost a month ago. But I was pretty sure he was long gone. I’d seen him take two thousand dollars out of his account at the bank. I overheard him say he was going on a little trip. God save him if he ever came back to my neck of the woods.

More about Lorelei Bell at http://www.frogenyozurt.com/guest-writers/lorelei-bell

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