As we stepped outside crossing the shimmering barrier between the gym and the forest, we were confronted with a dense forest.

Deep ravines and random towering walls of packed soil and stone rose fifteen feet high, creating an intricate maze that wound through the trees. Roots and vines clung to the earthen barriers crumbling in a bunch of places, as if the forest had been trying to reclaim this structure for centuries rather than hours. The scent of damp earth and vegetation was wildly overwhelming to my borrowed wolf nose.

"Damn," I muttered. "Fern doesn't do things halfway, does she?"

"Nope," Candace replied. "Earth and Plant Elementals have been busy. This is hell-a elaborate."

I took a tentative step forward and nearly face-planted into the dirt as the elevation rapidly descended. The digitigrade legs were going to take more getting used to than I thought.

"Easy there, Bambi," Candace laughed, grabbing my elbow to steady me. "Left paw, right paw. You got it. It's not magitek science."

"Try walking with completely different leg joints and tell me how that goes," I grumbled, leaning on her for support as we approached the labyrinth entrance.

"You're overthinking it," she said. "Wolves are born to run. Just let the body do what it wants to do naturally."

"Mkay." I tried to relax and let the borrowed muscle memory take over. It helped, though I still moved with the awkward gait of someone who'd had too much to drink.

As we entered the maze, the walls closed in around us. I could hear Candace's breathing, the soft pad of our paws on the ground, and not much else. Thankfully, my wolf eyes adjusted very quickly to the dim labyrinth.

"You smell that?" Candace broke the silence.

"I smell about a billion things right now," I replied. "Be specific."

"That sickly sweet scent to the East," she said, nodding her wolf head in that direction. "Like sweat and wet fur? That's fear. The 'monsters' are scared shitless of something in that section of the maze."

"Fern, probably," I guessed.

"Most likely. Which means that's probably where the treasure is."

I nodded, impressed by her deduction. "Then that's where we'll head. Lead the way."

We navigated through the winding passages. Despite my initial clumsiness, I was gradually getting the hang of walking on wolf legs. The body's natural instincts were indeed beginning to assert themselves, making movement less of a conscious effort.

We turned another corner, finding ourselves in a small clearing within the maze. Candace stopped, her ears and nose twitching as she scanned our surroundings. There was a fire elemental hovering above the clearing, but it didn't target us at all as we moved under it. It seemed that our body snatching had fooled Fern.

"Coast is clear," Candace said after a moment. "No others nearby."

I nodded.

"You know what I just realized?" A mischievous glint shone in her wolf eyes as we crossed the clearing, entering another labyrinth section.

"What?" I asked, wary of her tone.

"We're all alone in a big scary forest maze," she said, sidling closer to me. "Just you and me. No Kristi to get all huffy. No Nessy to give the sad puppy eyes. No Adelle to make unhelpful commentary."

"So?"

"So," she drew the word out, "this is basically a date."

"It's not a date." I nearly tripped over my borrowed paws at her words. "We're on a mission."

"A mission date," she countered, wrapping her tail around me. "The best kind. Danger, adventure, borrowed bodies. Verrrry romantic."

"There is nothing romantic about this situation," I protested.

"Speak for yourself," she winked. "Two souls trapped in borrowed bodies, seeking treasure in a magical maze... It's like the setup for a really kinky romance novel. Mmmm… so many roots I could trip on… for a big bad wolf to ravage me."

I shook my head, wondering for the hundredth time what went on in Candace's mind. "You really don't have any boundaries, do you?"

"Boundaries are for people who lack imagination," she replied cheerfully, squeezing my hand.

"Or maybe they're for respecting other people's comfort zones," I suggested, following her down another earthen corridor.

"There are no boundaries in the Astral ocean, only limitlessness." She commented.

"We're not in the Astral ocean,"I pointed out.

She suddenly stopped, turning to face me with a serious expression. "Have you actually set any boundaries with me, wolf-tato? Because I don't recall you ever saying 'please stop doing X' or 'I'm mega uncomfortable when you do Y.'"

I opened my mouth to retort, then closed it again.

"I did tell you that I'm not interested in a relationship with you in the hotel yesterday," I finally said after a moment of consideration.

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"On the account that you were pining after a particular tail. We've had much more bonding since then and I've totally helped you get your doggo back," she reasoned. "Are you… interested now?"

I hesitated, the question hitting me more deeply than I expected. Was I interested? Candace was beautiful, confident, hilarious and wildly unpredictable—qualities that would normally be appealing. But something held me back. Perhaps it was the fact that she held me as her friends beat me up, perhaps it was something else entirely.

"I don't know," I admitted. "You've helped me and our pack in a bunch of ways as Binder, but..."

"But what?"

"But I'm not sure IF you actually helped me 'get Nessy back' like you're implying," I said. "It feels like you're taking credit for something that was going to happen anyway."

Candace huffed. "Yes, yes, you're bound by some cosmic bullshit, always were. That's not what I mean…"

We turned another corner in the maze, finding ourselves in another small clearing patrolled by a wind elemental. Candace paused, checking for threats before continuing our conversation.

"Yo doggo is clearly a virgin," she whispered. "Those crafty human-hating friends of hers, plus the Krishna temple, plus her deep dreams caused by the Dagaz loop between you two built a giant wall around her emotions. I'm helping her tear it down, helping her express her feels. Ain't I the bestest wingbae?"

I snorted, slowly navigating around a large twisted root with my oversized, claw-capped legs. "Who appointed you as my official matchmaker?"

"I don't need an appointment! I'm a self-starter. Just… like… Urgh, come on, I'm literally throwing myself at you, and you're just... deflecting. Gimme some juice!"

"Juice?"

"Love, appreciation, pawagery! Is it just because of the doggo? Or is there something else?" She stopped to face me directly. "I want answers!"

"Look, Ca—," I began and then corrected myself in case we got overheard by our enemies, "Yura. You've got many qualities that tempt me, sure. But—"

"But what?" she prompted when I trailed off.

"But I feel like you're not... stable."

"Wut," she crossed her arms. "Wat u mean? I'm a purrfectly stable… wolf-babe! Why won't you date me… Pi? Is my wolf tail not fluffy enough for ya?"

"I mean," I continued with a sigh at her over-the-top roleplay, "I feel that you might just vanish as quickly as you appeared in my life. You remind me of… clubber girls back in Little Rock Citadel. They'd make out with me at parties when they were slightly drunk, act like I was the center of their universe for a bit, then spend the rest of the night dancing with other guys. By Monday morning at school, they'd barely acknowledge my existence."

"Come on, babes." Her wolf ears flattened slightly. "That's not fair. I'm not like that. I'm a great… partner for ya! I bound my soul to yours extra hard, not just once, but twice now! I accepted your impossible highway quest into my heart without complaints. Wat else do you wan' me to do?!"

"Magical bindings don't guarantee emotional ones," I countered.

A hint of genuine hurt flashed across Yura's stolen features. "You think I'm just playing around? That I'd bind myself to you and then just... what? Run off when something shinier comes along?"

"You disappeared from school for months without telling anyone. You ran away from home. You joined a gang," I pointed out.

"That's different," she protested. "I was running away from being sold off to some corpo, not from emotional attachments."

"You use T-dust to escape from what you see in the Astral. You seem like someone who's mentally running from something," I said. "And I don't know if I can compete with whatever you're running toward. Or from."

She was quiet for a long moment as we navigated through more winding passages of the earth and root labyrinth. For a few minutes the only sounds were our padded feet on the earth and distant shouts of other "monsters" elsewhere in the maze.

"What if I promised to stay?" she finally asked. "What if I swore not to run from you?"

"Could you keep that promise?" I asked. "Even when things get hard? Even when you start seeing those things in the Astral that terrify you?"

"I... I don't know," she admitted. "Sometimes the things I see in the deep are so overwhelming that I feel like I might drown in them. T-dust helps me... distance myself, helps me relax."

"That's what I thought," I said. "But, I can't build a relationship with someone who has one foot out the door. I've been abandoned and fucked too many times already. I don't know if I can trust you if you keep taking T-dust. You're nice as a friend, great as a supportive packmate, but you taking that shit is my line that I will NOT cross," I said firmly, "I'm not going to date someone smoking that stuff. I've seen what it does to people and prads. You might float around longer than the average idiot because of your skill, but you're still drowning. You're still burning away any chances for a future, a family, poisoning yourself, running away."

Candace flinched as if I'd struck her. She fretted beside me and then suddenly reached out to me, grabbing my wolf paw in hers. Pulling it to her chest, she pressed it against her borrowed heart.

"Feel that?" she asked, her voice soft like velvet. "It's beating like crazy right now. Not because of the mission, not because we're in danger, but because of… you."

I felt the rapid thudding beneath my paw, strong and fast.

"I know I'm not perfect." She kept my paw pressed firmly against her chest. "I'm a mess. I'm unstable. I take T-dust. But when I'm with you..." She paused, searching for words. "When I'm with you, I feel like maybe I don't need to run anymore."

I opened my mouth.

"No, let me finish," she interrupted, leaning close, brown eyes sparkling with tears. "You think I'm just playing around, but I'm not. I might be flirty and ridiculous, but that doesn't mean I'm not serious about you. I've never met anyone like you. I've never felt this weird fluttery thing in my chest before... except when I'm with Addie."

She drew me even closer, her wolf-breath washing over my face, her eyes igniting from within with silver spirals. "Unlike the others, I SEE your tree. I see the real, liminal you in the deep. Let me be with you, let me rest under your branches! Protect me from the Folding Forest… have your rainbo-winged bae sing to me, have your storm cloud smack me when I misbehave. Save me from myself. Please! I don't think that anyone except for you could do that!"

I didn't know what to say and half of her words sounded like Astral diver gibberish. However, there was an earnestness in her eyes that made it hard to dismiss her rant.

"I can't promise I'll never mess up." Wolf-claws scraped against armor that didn't belong to me, pulling me into an embrace. "I can't promise I'll be perfect. But I can promise I'll try. I'll try to be better, to be worthy of whatever is between us. And if that doesn't work… if I'm still addicted… then…"

"Then what?"

"Then I will lead us across the Omnid dimensional gate to the Folding Forest," she hissed, eyes flaring even brighter with wild abandon, claws digging into me harder, pushing me down and sideways onto an earth-wall, her mouth frothing. "And we'll burn the Heart of all Topaz to the ground. You, me and our pack. We will destroy the Well of Severance! We'll go to the Superstore and find the crystal tree you, me, we, us… planted there. We'll get your doggo back, as she was once, full of life, laughter and love. Your silly lovable goofball with no concept of personal space, the tornado of a husky sweetheart, the song of your heart! As she was last time around, not as she is, slightly nibbled on by Astral parasites and cleaved in twain by your all-dividing sword, my Slayer!"

"W-what?" I sputtered, feeling utterly befuddled by the increasingly mad waterfall of rabid nonsense pouring out from her.

"Ahem," a sharp voice cut through our moment.

Candace let go of me, the brilliant, silver light winking away from her eyes. She blinked and wiped her wolf-mouth and we sprang apart, turning to face the source of the interruption. A patrol of raptors stood at the entrance to our little clearing, led by none other than Kirra Strand.

"Hi K-Kirra!" Candace barked. "How's it raptoring?"

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