Changeling Dream by Dani Harper Read Free Book Online

after the humans left. Jillian’s stomach reminded her once more that it was empty. She straightened, blinked, and realized she’d been squinting at the prints. The light had faded considerably. It was past time to leave.
    She put the camera away quickly, fastened the errant water bottle to her pack, and set off down the hill the way she had come. As much as she wanted to hurry, the thick brush wouldn’t permit it. The game trail was narrow, crisscrossed with other narrow trails and fallen trees. Nothing looked familiar in the fading light and she had to concentrate to choose the right direction, focus to place her feet carefully. One wrong step along this steep, rugged path and she would have a lot more to worry about than the dark.
     
    What kind of woman runs after a wolf?
    James was no closer to answering that question than he had been many hours before when he had paused in the clinic loft, two bounds away from the open window, and listened to the human calling after the white wolf. He had been startled to find the woman up and around so close to dawn, but more surprised by her reaction when she spotted him. She should have been terrified, should have been screaming. Instead she had stopped still, remaining quiet until he melted back into the darkness—then had plunged forward in a vain attempt to follow him. She acted as if she knew the wolf, but how could that be? There was something else too; something in her voice had almost compelled him to—what? Answer her? Reveal himself? He didn’t know. The woman had gone from room to room then, switching on every light, searching.
    He wasn’t surprised when she didn’t check the loft. After all, it was fifteen feet above the ground floor and accessible only by a vertical ladder. A wolf couldn’t climb it, and she had no way of knowing that what she pursued was not a wolf and that the ladder was no impediment to him at all. The stack of bales outside, from which he had initially leapt, was more than thirty feet from the loading door of the loft. Only a very large tiger might cross such a span. Or a Changeling.
    James felt a strange disappointment tugging at his senses, almost a regret that the woman had not found him. Who are you? Why do I know you? Within his lupine body, James chuffed out a breath in frustration. And why do I care? The angle of the fading light told him it was time to hunt, that deer would be on the move. Weary of human thoughts and human concerns, he relaxed into his wolf nature and disappeared beneath it.
     
    “What a tourist I am!” Jillian berated herself for not bringing a cell phone, for not paying more attention to the time, for traveling in the bush alone, for not packing at least a chocolate bar. Two chocolate bars. Maybe three. The energy bars she’d brought tasted like wet cardboard. She made a long mental list of the things she was going to do to be more prepared for the next hike, because as difficult as the trail was, she simply had to go back to that rocky plateau, had to see if the wolves would return. Was it part of their territory or were they just passing through?
    The sun was long gone. Stars were pinning a deep indigo sky, and a full moon was floating just above the horizon. It had climbed enough to glimmer through the trees and lay a broad swath of light over the surface of the river when Jillian finally found the marked hiking trail. Compared to the goat path she’d been traveling, the graveled corridor was like a wide paved highway, level and free of overhanging brush and fallen logs. It promised easier, faster travel in spite of the darkness. She was still two and a half, maybe three, miles from the truck she had borrowed from the clinic, but at least now she had a direct route.
    The flashback broadsided her without warning.
    It might have been the crunch of gravel beneath her feet, the rustle of leaves in the trees, or the scent of the river, but whatever the trigger, she was suddenly on another trail by another river.