Embraced By Darkness (Riley Jenson Guardian 5)

Only patience had never been one of my virtues, and I was getting more than a little pissed off at being shot at so much.

I blew out a breath, then scrambled to my feet and ran on up the steep slope. The thick lushness of the island's interior was giving way to a wilder, scrubbier look, and the wind was stronger, battering its way through the trees and finally reaching through the wool, chilling the sweat against my skin. It was an almost pleasant sensation.

The rise in the land sharpened abruptly. The leg that had been shot with silver previously was beginning to not only burn, but feel weak. Like the barely healed muscles just couldn't go on. My limp was certainly getting more pronounced.

Sky came into sight, a pale blueness peeking through the trees, calling me on. To what was anyone's guess, but it had to be better than this goddamn slope and the bastards hunting me.

Another bullet burned through the air. I dropped, winding myself even though I didn't think that was possible, given my current breathless state. The bullet cracked past and disappeared into the inviting blue-ness. If I could get down the other side of this slope fast enough, I might buy myself enough time to find a way to separate them. And once I did that, the bastards were dead.

I surged to my feet and ran on, my gaze on that blue-ness and the promise it offered.

But I should have been looking at where I was going. Or rather, where the land was going.

Because I reached the crest and suddenly there was nothing underneath me.

No ground, no leaf matter.

Nothing but air.

And I was falling, tumbling, down into that emptiness. I'd only been a pup when Blake had thrown me off the cliff. But even now, I could recall those moments clearly, simply because the world around me had suddenly seemed to slow. Oh, the wind had battered me full force and the ground had rushed toward me, filling my vision, filling my world, forever embedding itself into the worst of my nightmares. It was just time itself that crawled. The falling seemed to go on and on and on. The ground rushed toward me and yet never seemed to get closer. I'd screamed, I'd quaked, I'd fought to grab something, anything, to stop my fall or to at least break it. To no avail.

But never once in any of those long minutes had my life flashed before my eyes.

Maybe it was because I'd been so young, had done so little.

I was older now.

And as I fell toward the sparkling blue of the ocean and the jagged rocks that lined the cliffs base, images of my past reeled drunkenly before my eyes - the flashes almost too fast for me to even see them. Mostly they were memories of good times. With Rhoan, with other people I'd cared about, and boyfriends of old. And there was Quinn, who could have been something more had he only played it fair.

But with all those memories came something else. Something deeper. Stronger.

Regret.

For all the things I hadn't done, for all the steps I hadn't taken.

And the biggest of those regrets was Kellen.

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.