The Afterlife

Chapter 2: Confusion

Allie squeezed her eyelids tighter as the light forced its way through them. No matter how hard she tried, the sun was very bright, and she could feel its rays beating down on her face.

Where in the Goddess's name am I? she wondered. She tried to remember what had happened. She rolled over, noticing that she was on some sort of grass of some sort.

She tried to feel the ground beneath her.

Paws? Why do I have paws? And where are Sienna and Wayne and ...

Opening her eyes reluctantly, she blinked a few times as her eyes adjusted to the light. She looked around at the scene, and then down at herself -- yep, she was definitely in wolf form. It was slowly coming back to her: being separated from Wayne and the others, then being separated from Sienna and Yuki while they were just out on a run. She'd gotten lost... maybe. And she had been attacked... maybe. But she didn't even know what had attacked her, or who...

"Shit," she said aloud to herself as she remembered something important had happened. She'd looked into a pair of dark brown eyes. As... she was... dying. Dying? But I'm fine now. How could I have been dying? And as she'd looked into his eyes, she'd said something. Something important....

Allie searched her mind, her memories. She knew it had to be important, because she would never forget those eyes or how it felt when she looked into them, as if they were somehow extremely hard to forget.

What time is it? What about my patients? How long have I been out? Is Sienna okay? A series of worries flitted across her mind, taking her mind off those brown eyes for a moment. She automatically thought about using her watch, but was only greeted with a large golden yellow paw when she moved her wrist. She sighed. Of course, she had to wake up as a wolf with no clothes or any of her belongings. She needed to go home and get some clothes. She didn't dare shift back without clothes, even though everyone reassured her that it wasn't a big deal. She didn't know why, but she'd always been self-conscious about her body, and it'd only gotten worse when she'd turned eighteen. Normally, wolves weren't self-conscious and nudity was normal, but Allie was an anomaly. She loved her friends, but Allie had always felt like an anomaly, like she didn't really belong.

She tried to reach out to Sienna and the others in the mind link, but was greeted with silence. She was clearly not anywhere close to home, or she would have been able to use it. So she was out of luck, and she needed to figure out how to go home on her own, without the help of her friends.

And those brown eyes in her mind? She tried again to wonder what it was about them that was so very important. What had she said to them?

Mate, her wolf whispered in their mind, as if it was the wind. That was your mate. We need to get back to him!

Shit, Allie thought again. She'd almost died and met her mate, and then she could have even died for real. So how was she still very much alive? And where the heck was she?

Allie had always wanted a mate, but she had never been in any rush to find it. When Sienna and Yuki had found their mates in each other, she'd rolled her eyes and supported them wholeheartedly. They were her friends after all, and her friends were her first priority above all else. But now she had a mate to deal with -- contend with. Her mate was supposed to be her first priority.

She could feel her wolf's urgency in the back of her mind. Mate... mate... mate... She didn't even know his name. Was it even a man or a woman? She couldn't remember. She looked around at the eucalyptus surrounding her, and the brownish-green plants under her paws. They seemed like the Californian native plants that Yuki was always trying to identify. Perhaps she was in California. The heat of the sun made it seem so.