Lyra
I began feeling conscious in pieces, not all at once. Not the sharp sudden return of someone startled awake. It came slowly, reluctantly, like something being dragged up from a very deep place against the resistance of whatever was still pulling it down.
My wolf's senses asserting themselves before the rest of me had caught up. Cold stone. Damp air, sharp metallic iron and beneath all of it the layered unmistakable scent of wolves. Many of them. Recent. The kind of density that came from a crowd having occupied a space and left their presence behind in the air like a signature.
I was not in the study.
The study smelled like old books and cedarwood and the specific mineral quality of polished stone that had been the same temperature for years. This was nothing like that.
This was open, cold, public in a way that pressed against my returning awareness with a weight I couldn't immediately explain.
