Wolf Rising

It was time…
Unleashed, her inner-beast emerged.
The wolf she kept buried deep under her bones, like pirate treasure.
She shed the suburban skin taped around her like a cardboard mask.
Escaped her concrete cage.

And Rules:

Those choke collars uncountable as leaves?
Stripped from her life in a decisive leap from the old reality into the new.

She landed for the first time on four paws, toes curling into the crisp, new snow.
Sabled stalks swayed and crackled as she crept from the lowlands of politics and property,
up the tree feathered slopes of Wolf Mountain.

Seeking the snow line, she leveled up from the land of tiny paychecks and monster mortgages.
Summitting to nothing. Nothing owned but frost-laden air filling her lungs and an eagles cry in her ears as it dove from a nest to patrol the shore below.

She raced on, trading Tinder swipes, cutesy texts, and polite lovemaking entangled in linen for this world’s wilder blend
of chase-me-through-the-woods and tumble-me-in-the-snow.
This wolf craved love nuanced with rogue licks and nips, spiked with a bite here and a scratch there, backed up by the music of growls and whimpers.

Pausing at the peak, she contemplated comforts lost, the uncertainties, the risks. Lost those threads as the sinking sun turned ocean mists to fiery fog and waves to curling flames.
When night blanketed the fire show, it smothered remanants of doubt. The wind set surf thundering against the cliffs, thrumming like the earth’s heartbeat, vibrating through her bones and belly.

The moon rose, lifting the first feral howl from her soul.
When the last echoes died, she listened for an answer in baritone.
Breathless, she waited to discover if she was the lone wolf.

Was there another lupine soul who would trade living large for living?

The opening from the WIP for the next book in my Pantherian Tales series.