Embraced By Darkness (Riley Jenson Guardian 5)

I should have given him the time he wanted. Should have given him commitment.

I should have shoved the fear aside, and made a grab for my dreams. He'd been right in saying that I was never going to find what I was looking for if I didn't occasionally stop looking and take a damn chance on someone.

Dammit, I didn't want to die!

Not now, not when there was finally someone in my life that I loved, someone who showed every sign of being the one. And even if it turned out that he wasn't my soul mate, then at least I could say I gave it a go. At least I'd know the fear of being left broken hadn't stopped me living life to the full.

I twisted around, grabbing at the cliff as it rushed by. My fingertips scrapped stones, finding no purchase on the slick surface. There was nothing here, nothing at all, that would stop my fall. No grasses, no branches, no tree roots sticking out of the sandy soil. Nothing but slick rock.

I swore and continued grabbing at the cliff face, refusing to give up, refusing to believe that this was the end. But the ocean and the rocks were rushing ever closer, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, I could do to stop it.

I closed my eyes, not wanting to see the death that was speeding toward me, The best I could do was hope that either fate was kind, and made it a quick one, or that by some miracle, I missed the worst of the rocks and somehow found the ocean.

God, how I wished I was a bird. Wished I could just shift shape and fly like the seabirds that drifted around the cliffs. Wished I had wings to ride the breeze, skimming the rocks and riding the wave-tops to freedom rather than splattering myself all over them.

Even as the thought crossed my mind, the tingling of shapeshifting ran across my body. Panic surged and I desperately fought to stop my body shifting shape. My wolf form would have even less chance on the rocks below, her bones more delicate, more easily smashed.

But the shifting would not be denied. It surged on regardless, heedless of the danger, reshaping flesh and bone, until what was falling was something other than human.

Only it wasn't my wolf.

This form felt lighter, freer.

I looked at my arms, saw red-tipped wings - feathers - instead of paws.

A bird, I was a goddamn bird.

Oh God, the drug. It was changing me, as it had changed the others who'd taken it.

No, I thought, no,

Then I shoved it all aside. Shoved aside the fear. I had no time for it, not if I wanted to live. I frantically pumped my newly formed wings up and down. But having a bird shape didn't exactly mean I knew how to fly. Obviously there was an art to it, because I was flapping for all I was worth and still falling. I didn't even think my speed was slowing.

I cursed fluently, but it came out as a weird croaking cry. A cry that sounded an awful lot like that of a sea-gull.

Great. I was going to die in the form of a creature considered little more than a winged rat.

The rocks were so close that the salty droplets of sea spray was splashing up from them and hitting me. There was little time - so little time - for a miracle.

And yet, it came.

The sea breeze hit me, battering me sideways, and momentarily lifting me upward. In desperation, I stopped pumping and spread my wings wide. The wind caught underneath, feathers fluttering as I was lifted up, away from the rocks and out into the deeper ocean.

There the wind dumped me. I landed chest-first in an ungainly, unsightly, and very un-birdlike way. It didn't matter a damn.

I was alive.

I felt like flapping my arms and dancing for joy on the rolling waves. Against all the odds, I was alive.

But it was an exuberance that was short lived.

I might be alive, but the means by which I'd survived had been a dramatic one. The ARC 1-23 drug given to me over a year ago had finally stopped making little changes and started making big ones.

I could take on other shapes, and that was the one thing I'd been absolutely hoping would never, ever happen. Because it meant that my hopes of escaping the Directorate and my role as a guardian were ashes. I was Jack's girl now, like it or not. My only other choice was being sent to the military to join the other half-breeds who'd been affected by the drug in the research centers.

There was no way in hell that was going to happen. At least with the Directorate, I could have some semblance of a normal life - even if my job there could in no way ever be considered normal.

But at least not all my hopes were dead. When it came to Kellen, the how of survival didn't matter. I was alive, and now had the chance to give him - to give us - the commitment we deserved.