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night, but no answer came back to him.

Chapter Three
     
    Illiana woke with the first rays of dawn warming her flesh. It stirred her from the dregs of sleep and the dreams of running through the woods. When she opened her eyes and sat up, Illiana realized she was naked. The thunderous waves below alerted her she was near the sea, lying on a cliff. Hundreds of feet below her was the ocean. The shrill cries of gulls filled her ears, and the whipping wind did not have the same personality she was used to in the woods. Here, at the coast, where the land met the shredding waters, ripping away at the land, the air currents mixed together. They merged in a shrieking gust she was unfamiliar with. She reached out, feeling the ebb and flow of the squall. It began to warm to her, and she found she could still control the element. Illiana wiped the sleep from her eyes and stared at the whitecaps frothing the ocean’s surface. All kinds of seabirds flapped and glided on the breeze, using the air currents to dive and circle until they went headfirst into the cold water and came up with a fish. Among the regular fowl were hawks and osprey grazing the water with their claws until they came away with their prey. Sometimes she wondered if it would be easier to be a regular animal. There would be no need for her humanity. It was rare, but it did happen among the shape-shifters. Sometimes the animal was too strong and took over. Watching the raptors, she saw their pure strength and elegance as they danced in the air, doing nothing but what they were built for: searching for food for themselves or their mates. Osprey mated for life. They gave no care to emotion or protocol.
    Christopher’s words repeated in her mind once more. The rage and hurt they stirred brought hot tears to her eyes. He was the one person she never thought would betray her. After she had laid her heart out, he had taken and twisted it into something she did not recognize any longer. He had torn it from her chest and stomped on it. Had all their years of friendship been a ploy to gain her trust, leading up to the moment that he knew how to hurt her? The cold chill of the wind cut across her skin. She could not believe that Christopher felt nothing for her. The words had almost come from his lips, the three words she had yearned to hear and confessed to him, but he was frightened to admit it to himself. That had to be it.
    She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to warm up. Her stomach rumbled, and she did not know the last time she had eaten. The day before she had to fast until the feast, but she had not joined in that. The place where she was branded stung a little as she passed her hand over the newly formed scabs. Illiana had to return home and get some clothing. If she did, she would have to tell her mother where she went and explain what had happened. She would have to face Belik again and risk running into Christopher. There was no other choice. It was her home. Nevertheless, when she turned her back to the sea and tried to get her bearings, she could not see the tree line of her beloved forest. All that stretched before her was ragged cliffs. Beyond that, it was the grasslands of the plains. If that were the case, she had run or flown all night and gone hundreds of miles without even knowing it. Illiana tried to recall what had happened after her argument with Christopher, but it was mostly a blur. She remembered moving swiftly, but she was not in the air. She was close to the ground, traveling on all fours. That can’t be right. Illiana glanced at her hands, and they were whole. Her feet did not feel torn up from running. It was obvious she had changed sometime during her flight because she was naked and her clothes were nowhere around her. All that answered her question was the shadowed part of her mind. Focusing on that, Illiana felt another presence in her thoughts, another animal presence that had not been there before and yet it was familiar. She tried