New Territory Read Online Free PDF Page A

garnishes they added made each meal taste new and delicious, giving Keva an extra reason to look forward to staying in the pack with Cian.
     
    By the second day, Keva was comfortable around her newly adopted pack, and Kara decided it was time to focus on changing her form. She began by asking herself out loud, "So… how old are you, I wonder?" Keva answered in the only way she knew how. I have seen two winters pass , she answered. Kara gaped at her, and Keva tilted her head in confusion. "You're a telepath! And you're only two years old!" She began to giggle to herself. Keva watched, perplexed, as Kara jumped up and grabbed a calculator. "Okay, so you're half true wolf, and true wolves only live about twelve years in the wild… you have lived one-sixth of your life as a wolf. But lycans live about 100 years or more, so one-sixth of 100 is... about seventeen. I'm going to assume your human form will look between seventeen and twenty." Keva nodded, and asked, What does a seventeen-year-old human female look like? Kara stared at Keva again, but shook her head and grabbed her laptop. "I'm never going to get used to that talking in my head stuff," she mumbled as she began typing. She pulled up an image of a young blonde female with average proportions, and turned the screen towards Keva. "Something like this," Kara said. Keva nodded slowly, trying to imagine herself with two arms and two legs. I don’t know, Keva said. It doesn’t seem like that body would feel right to me.  Kara looked at the pretty white wolf and sighed. “It’ll take time, but you’ll get used to the idea, just like I had to get used to the idea of being a wolf. When I first turned, I was sixteen years old. I began to feel really restless, like I had to get out and run. When I went running in the woods, I ended up changing form and coming back to camp as a wolf. Perhaps something like that must happen before you can shift. You still have five more days before the elders force you to leave, so don’t worry. We’ll figure this out.”
     

 
     
    Because Keva was still considered a “single female,” she stayed in Kara’s cabin, a separate cabin from Cian and Liam, who shared a cabin. Elder Garr, had a whole cabin to himself, except when the Council visited.  Cian visited Keva in Kara’s cabin often, sometimes coming as a wolf so they could run together in the woods. The third day after her arrival, he showed her his cabin.
     
    Opening the door, he let Keva pace in, and smiled as she sniffed the air. The whole place smells like you and Liam, she observed. How can you live confined this way? Cian smiled, and pulled off his sweatshirt, accidentally pulling up his undershirt and exposing the rippled muscle of his abdominals. “It’s best when it’s raining,” he said, his voice somewhat muffled by the sweatshirt. Keva watched, fascinated, as he turned to pull his undershirt back down. He smiled at her rapt expression. “Do you like what you see?” He asked, gesturing at himself. I’m not sure how I feel, she admitted with a wolfish grin. These feelings are so new to me. He grinned at her admission, knowing she felt exactly like he did. “Kara told me that you’d be approximately seventeen or eighteen years old,” he continued. “When I first had to change, around eighteen, I used a meditation technique one of the elders taught me. Would you like to try it with me?” A slight wag of Keva’s tail confirmed her interest in the idea. Of course. Let’s try it.
     
    Cian brought a candle into the spare room, whose wood floor gleamed from recent polishing. The window in the room was large, facing west. The sunset slipped in through the window, giving the entire room an orange-and-yellow glow. Cian lit the candle and had Keva sit across from him. “Okay, sit there, and I’ll be right back,” he said, and he disappeared out the door. Keva waited nervously for him to return, staring at the flame of the candle, which danced back and forth in