I jolt up in my bed, covered in sweat, with tears in my eyes. It was just a dream. Of course it was, I won't be Alpha for a long time, not until my dad starts to get too weak to lead, and at just 47, he is still very strong and capable.
I look around my room, but it is still dark. I call for Snow, my Soul Guardian. She lends me her eyes so that I can see around my room, but I don't see anything out of place. I sigh as I sink back into my bed and pull my covers over my head to hide from the cold Alaska air that finds its way into my room, no matter how hard we try to prevent it. My fire has also died out, but I'm too shook up to restart it. It can wait a few more hours.
"Are you okay?" I hear Snow ask from her quiet corner of my mind.
"Yeah, I'm okay, I just had a bad dream." I reply quietly. I hear her rumble in my mind, and I can feel her tension as she fights the urge to take over. She knows that taking over won't do anything right now, there is no actual danger, but still, she can sense my fear.
"What worries you? We are strong, and I will keep you safe." She tells me with confidence.
I smile as I listen to her reassurance. Of course everything will be okay, she will always be here to protect me, and she is the strongest Soul Guardian to have existed in quite a long time. There have been very few Alphas in the history of my pack to have Kodiak Bears as their Soul Guardian, and that's what Snow is.
I close my eyes as I remember how we met. She came to me earlier than normal. Normally we find our Soul Guardian at 12 years old, but she came to me when I was 9. I had fallen out of a tree while hunting, and the tree happened to be sitting on the edge of a small cliff. I fell probably about 40 feet and landed on my left side on some jagged, uneven rocks. I'm pretty sure I shattered my Shoulder and my hip, and broke a few ribs, but I know for sure that I had broken my leg in a few different places because the bone had been sticking out. My femur had pierced my skin right above my knee when it snapped, and one of my lower leg bones was obviously broken as the bone shards pushed painfully against my skin.
I had laid there for hours crying out for help, but no one heard me. I was healing a little, because of my Shifter genes, but it was very slow, and I wasn't able to move to reset my bones, so they were healing wrong. My little 9 year old mind had been terrified, and as the sun got lower and lower the temperature kept dropping. I never had much immunity to the cold, and it got extremely cold here in Kodiak Alaska, especially at this time of year. As the sun was finally completely gone, each breath got extensively more painful as the cold air burned my lungs. I struggled to take in each breath, and I felt my heart begin to slow as the hypothermia began to win the battle. I tried to pull myself into a ball, but my body was too broken, I couldn't move. I felt a few tears dry on my face as I accepted that I was going to freeze to death. That's when I heard her.
"Don't give up, we can do this." At first her voice was such a quiet whisper that I wasn't sure if I had actually heard it.
"Who's there?" I say quietly out loud. My voice cracks with the effort it takes to speak, and my eyes look around frantically in the dark for the source of the voice.
"My name is Snow, I am your Soul Guardian, I want to help you, can I please have control?" She says with a slightly stronger voice this time, she is settling into my mind.
I gasp as I take in what she just said. My Soul Guardian. It's too early, she isn't supposed to find me for several more years.
"Yes, you can have control, please help me!" I tell her desperately.
I feel a tingling feeling over my entire body, and I feel my bones painfully move and change shape, but I'm too cold to care. When the shifting stops I'm still laying on my side in pain, but I can feel a heavy fur coat begin to trap in heat that my body is now creating. I can also feel my shattered bones begin to pull into their correct place and heal in earnest. Finding Your Soul Guardian is supposed to help with your healing abilities, but I hadn't known that it would be this fast.
Within a few hours I am able to start moving. I pull myself up, and that's when I first notice that I'm not a Yukon Wolf as I had originally assumed. I look down at my paws, and I recognize the paw of a bear. But it was bigger than I had thought it would be for someone my size. My fur was a dark golden brown with hints of silver. I had never seen someone with a Kodiak Bear as a Soul Guardian.
As I was busy finding out what shape Snow had allowed me to take, I began to hear voices yelling through the trees. I couldn't tell who the voices belonged to, but I heard my name being called, and I desperately tried to find a way back up the cliff to them.
" I am going to help you shift back now so that you can call back to them," Snow tells me, and her voice instantly makes me feel calmer as the panic I was starting to feel fades. "I'll always be here for you whenever you need me. All you need to do is reach for me in your mind, and i will be here to help you, or to talk." And with that I feel her presence sink into the back of my mind and my body begins to tingle again and I begin to shift back into my human body. The pain of my bones breaking into place is more painful this time since my body isn't numb with cold.
I hear the voices calling for me again, a little bit closer this time.
"I'm here! Please help me, I'm here!" I shout as I run to the side of the cliff and begin finding foot holds to climb up. My bones are still sore, but I seem to be completely healed. My feet slip a few times as I pull myself up the 90 degree rock face, but just as I reach the top and begin trying to pull myself over a group of my packs warriors nearly run over the cliff as they burst through the trees.
"There you are princess! What happened? How come you never returned from your hunt?" Beta Roland asks me, concern and irritation lacing his voice. He wraps a blanket around me, and lifts me from the ground, then begins to carry me back towards home before I can even answer. He is moving at a swift jog, while the other warriors follow close behind, flanking him in case there is any danger.
"I fell from the tree and down the cliff," I tell him. "I broke some bones and I couldn't move, but they are healed now."
"How in the world did you manage to heal so fast, especially in this cold?" He questions, glancing down at me, his face pinched with concern.
"My Soul Guardian found me." I tell him quietly. It seems so unreal still.
He looks back down at me in shock and stumbles a little before picking up his pace as he runs back to our camp.