THE SHE-WOLF AND THE RAVEN
Prologue
He did what she never expected him to do. In a shimmering waterfall of green light, he transformed before her eyes. The white fur melted away to reveal layers of metal and leather. He stood tall on two legs instead of four. A shower of black hair tumbled down over the layers of long, antiquated green cape. In his pale hand, he gripped a dagger as he snarled at the footprints, now empty of the feet that made them.
In a clear, eloquent, accented tone, her mate shouted in a voice she had never heard, "Be gone. You are not welcome here."
As he turned to face her, their eyes met and she could not escape the weight of recognition that rushed over her. The oceanic depths of those eyes-eyes that roiled with an ancient sorrow-met her own and she knew him, though she had never seen that face before. While the form he inhabited was now decidedly humanoid rather than lupine, by the power emanating from him like invisible tidal waves, she knew he could not be purely human.
She rose to her full height before him, now clothed in her own human form. Her own dark eyes lifted to meet his and a look of surprise fluttered like a shadow across his strangely familiar facial features.
"What are you?" he whispered as he drank in her face for the first time.
"I should ask you the same question," she replied.