Deepwood Weald we can't all sing in our cages

Caged. The shewolf's chest was too small for her heart to beat inside - each pump of blood made her throat feel tight, but Mannoah had never cried. Not since she was a tiny thing, too young to remember what it was to be vulnerable; to feel it. She'd been raised with the belief that growing up meant growing out of vulnerability when the opposite was true. To grow was to accept it.

To be alive is to be vulnerable.

(Well, then, she must have been doing something else.)

The dark shewolf paced through the woods, hating the way the trees closed in above her even as she refused to venture back out onto the beach. She'd passed dirt and field and wildflower to get to this place, but none of it was home to her. There was no home for the wolf that she'd become.

Her belly swelled. Her eyes blazed. Her chest tightened.

Mannoah stalked on.