I’ll never forget how it resembled the most perfect layered cake, the frothy falls white like icing as the water flowed down the ever-widening expanse of rocks before crashing into an otherwise-calm basin.

I’ll also never forget how Lori took one step, slipped on a moss-covered stone and fell on her butt into the ice-cold water. Or how she’d climbed out, shook off and shoved me in face-first to get even with me for mocking her.

The undercurrent of laughter shook my shoulders, and I smiled as warm magic twisted around me. The stirrings of the change contracted my stomach, tensed my muscles, and that flicker of amusement vanished with the first hard cramp. I gasped through clenched teeth, locked my elbows and held tight. Being compressed into the body of an eight-year-old made me painfully aware of every inch taller and wider I’d grown since Lori passed. My essence, tamped down into that tiny container, stretched me taut until my new skin threatened to burst.

The roller coaster of agony lasted forever, and when I could breathe again, I sensed Graeson standing outside the bathroom door.

I stretched out my arms. They were chubby with baby fat that Lori never shed. The platinum fur was gone. The razor edges of my claws had dulled and shrunk into plump fingers with chipped purple nail polish adorning the tips. The jeans and boots I’d worn earlier had vanished, replaced by a nightgown sprinkled with fat moons and grinning stars that brushed my bare ankles.

A sink basin sat next to my elbow, the compact shower stall beside that. If I had guts enough, I could stand in front of that counter, stare into that mirror and see Lori’s face reflected as mine. But her smiles and mannerisms were her own. There was no copying those. All I accomplished by studying her was refreshing the mental pictures I kept that would never fade so long as I had a means of punishing myself by wearing her skin.

“I told you to wait outside.” Soft and breathless, chest wound too tight, I sounded like a kid panting through a hundred jumping jacks challenge. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

Had he not been there, I realized, I would have looked into that mirror. I would have gripped the metaphorical knife lodged in my heart with both hands and twisted until I couldn’t stand and collapsed on the floor.

“You were screaming.” His muffled voice held an edge.

Had I cried out? I couldn’t remember. So much of the change was mental, it was hard keeping up with the physical.

“I shook off the wolf.” I studied my nubby toes and wiggled them. “I need to shift back. Just give me a minute.”