Chapter 5

Caleb usually reverted to his human form while asleep,so he assumed it wasn’t as painful as the original transformation.On long nights,in the dead of winter,he stayed in the bobcat form for ten hours,more during the solstice.But spring was in the sweet Virginia air;the moon had risen late and sped across the sky in its haste to sink below the horizon.Caleb woke a few hours before dawn,some thick patches of hair still clinging to his arms and legs,but on the whole,human again.Fine,cold dew beaded along his bare skin.The first faint rays from the rising sun slanted through the trees,casting the forest in an indistinct haze.White patches of fog clung like ghosts to the branches above,distorting the light.Without his animal senses,Caleb thought the morning eerily silent.