By the time I got to Whiterun, I could feel the change coming on quickly. I made a quick excuse about going for a quick hunt because I needed the meat and fur. It has a partial lie… I was going to hunt… just not animals. This change was unusual though. I controlled when I shifted, this one was beyond my control.

When I got to spot I deemed safe, I collapsed. For some reason, my wolf was starting the change but refusing to finish it. It was painful. It was like being stabbed over and over again in a poisoned knife and then scratched by a Frost Troll.

I curled into myself on the forest floor and groaned in pain. I just wanted it to end. I looked up, painfully, when I felt someone put a gentle hand on my shoulder. It was the red-headed Nord woman. For some reason she didn't seem as hostile towards me as she had been when we last met.

It seemed like she was looking through me and at my inner wolf. Her eyes narrowed a little and then my pain stopped. I let out a sigh of relief and slowly rolled onto my back.

"Feeling better, Sister?" she sounded and looked concerned. I don't know why. I did threaten her after all…

I nodded, "Thank you. What did you do anyway?"

"I showed my dominance to your inner wolf. Normally it would not work but your wolf recognized that I am more dominant in this area." Interesting; that was something that my father had done when one of my brothers got out of line. It had never happened to me before.

Aela helped me up, "Come, I think Skjor is waiting for you. You are the Archmage of the College in Winterhold, are you not?" she asked.

"I am. I would have stayed longer because my apprentice is going through some hard times but this needed to be dealt with." I explained and she nodded. The gates of Whiterun came into view and when we got into the city, I sold some weapons that I no longer needed to the smith near the front gates.

"Do you have any family?" she was trying to make small talk, to get out of this awkwardness.

"I do; an older brother who should be in my place as Alpha of the Riften pack but he disappeared before our father died so the title fell to me." I told.

"What is his name?"

"We always called him Shadow; I don't know why… he picked the name and stuck with it." I told her. Talking about my brother was a little hard; I missed him greatly.

"How long has he been gone?" Aela questioned.

"A little over three years. He vanished a year before my father died but our mother and younger brother had been dead for three years by that point." We walked up the steps to Jorrvaskr and I followed Aela into the building and down some stairs and down a hall, turned left into another hall and then turned left again into a bedroom. I could already tell this was going to take a while; all I wanted was to go back to Riften and the Guild… and maybe eat a sweatroll…