A/N: This one has been on my mind for a while now. Had to write it down.

Based in the time that Sam hasn't come back yet but after they injected him with the stuff that fixed him. I can't remember what it was called.

Disclaimer: Don't own Shiver.

Grace's POV

With Sam gone…

Those words didn't even belong in the same sentence. Sam. Gone. He was never gone. He was there. In the woods. Staring out. Yellow eyes. Trained on me. He was gorgeous while he was human and when he was wolf. He was the most amazing person I'd ever met to go through life the way he did…

Wolf. Human. Wolf. Human. Wolf. Then finally, human for that one last time, the time he spent with me. Wolf. Gone.

I couldn't live without a wolf. I'd moped in my room long enough, waiting for a glimpse of him. So I left, grabbing my jacket and throwing myself into my car. I needed wolves.

There was this store. On the far side of town. There's always a store where no one shops unless you know the owner. It was one of those places. But it was a Minnesota Native American shop. And everyone knows Native Americans. They love animals.

Especially wolves.

As I parked my tiny car outside, I stared in through the window, statues catching my eye. Eagles suspended over water standing behind the darkened glass of the shop's display. Then a large horse galloping through a field of daisies, the sun shining off its glossy chestnut coat. Then a ferret with black paws coming out of a hole, eyes dark as it's stare continued off into nowhere. A tiny pup laying across the grass, ears attentive to its surroundings of a camp of teepees.

Then my gaze caught that wolf. Dark fur. Yellow and golden tinted eyes. Strong haunches. Underlying muscles. That face. Oh the face just stopped me in my tracks, and I thought I was about to break down right there. Right in front of the shop without even stepping inside. That wolf… It looked just like Sam.

I had to go in. I had to buy it. No matter what the cost, I needed that wolf.

Sam was life. Sam was wolf. Sam was me. Sam was Sam. And I needed Sam. Knowing that, I kept my stride normal even though my entire body was shaking with that haunting image of the statue burned into my vision. It blocked out everything else. It took extreme focus just to get to the door and work my hand to open it.

A soft bell rang over my head, to alert the clerk to a customer.

Eyes bore into my skin. "Hello," a man greeted me with a slight wave. He had long dark hair pulled into braids around his face and a smile that was yellowed, but nice enough that I trusted him right away. Why would I even need to trust him? He was some random guy. I looked a bit closer to find Native American traits running through his weathered and tan skin. Kind face.

I missed Sam so much it hurt. "Hi," I said back, my voice sounded choked and hollow in this room that made it echo so much more. My loneliness echoed too. My heart was empty without Sam to fill it.

And with that, it all fell silent again. Only some music played in the background along with Indian chants.

This was really getting tiring. I miss Sam. I hurt over Sam. I beat myself up over Sam. I wish I had Sam. He is my Sam. I want my Sam.

I made my way through the store, touching the blankets covered in the patterns of the Natives. They told stories and tales of myth and legend to the ones who could read them. I obviously couldn't. The fabric was soft against my fingertips. The wolves looked stunningly beautiful even on cloth.

More statues sat in the back, each wolf with a different coat. One had a tufty reddish coat, streaked with mud and sopping wet from a swim in the river which was beyond the beach he stood on. Another possessed a lofty pose, staring straight out at the viewer with chest puffed proudly, white fur gleaming. Then came one with these blazing orange and amber eyes. These were my favorites out of the thirty that stood on this one shelf.

There was this throbbing pain in my head and I wondered if Sam was thinking about me. I was always thinking about him. Always.

Sand flowed through a thick liquid, creating patterns in the fine crystals of the beach's shore. Green and blue and silver and orange fell through this designing everything and nothing at the same time. I turned them all over and gravity dragged them back through the fluid once more. And a different design was born each time.

Silently, I floated through the rest of the store like a ghost, forms of eagles catching my eye. They soared over the land, wings unfurled to the full length, each feather carrying the details of a million eagles. I wanted one of those too, but I needed that wolf in the window.

I needed Sam.

My fingers traced the pattern of a dream catcher that was hung on the wall, large and worn from tanned hides, but the delicate feathers hung from leather strings laced with beads of every color. Native Americans were so creative with the world. What went wrong? Why wasn't the world like this now?

I moved on. A huge painting of a wolf hung on a canvas. The foreground was filled with a cliff face with a dark shadowy form standing on the craggy edge. Each rock bore scratches and scrapes of territorial markings. Then the wolf's fur hung down, shaggy, but that wasn't why. The hunger was portrayed with the thin wiry frame that shouldn't have been on a wild animal of glory and beauty such as that. Starvation was an aspect. Then in the background, you could see the ghostly shadow of another wolf's face coming out of it, a forest behind it. Coat full of pride and health and deep hazel eyes full of a hope of forthcoming fortune. It was the haunting image of a perfect life as the scrawny wolf was the desperation of the wilderness.

The smell of this store was wild itself. Leather and herbs dominated with traces of smoke here and there in the darkest corners of the room. Walls of wood paneling and logs made up the majority of things along with most of the shelving. Wood. We used iron and steel and brick now. I looked and found how much things had changed in the world.

Just like Sam had changed on me.

I drank in some air, needing to fill my lungs to bury the reverberation of this pain. Sam. Gone. They didn't belong in the same sentence.

The chants of the music grew softer for a moment and the beat of the drums changed. Then the mantra picked up again as if it had never left off. I wished Sam would come back that way.

Wolf. Wolf. My mind trained itself on that wolf. Then back to my real wolf. Haunting yellow eyes that I had loved so much on human Sam. That dark fur with the scent of forest soaked into it. The way it was so rough on the surface, but silky and smooth in the undercoat. He was beautiful and haunting and gorgeous.

I had to get it. But I got distracted by a simple pelt hanging on the wall. If it was a wolf, I would've run away right there, but it was a bear. A huge fur of a bear. Coarse fur to fight off the cold. Thick muscle to keep the heat in.

I prayed each night that Sam hadn't been shot and skinned. I prayed he wasn't hanging on a wall somewhere like that poor animal. I couldn't imagine his eyes with that dull and lifeless glaze to them. It was too painful to think of and I had to take a step back to find my state of mind recovering from the image of my wolf, dead.

Sam wasn't dead. He wasn't gone either. He was there. He was alive. In the woods. Howling.

I missed him so much. My poor Samuel Roth. Stuck as a wolf that wants to be human. He wants real skin. He wants to shed that fur. He wants to stand on two legs. He wants to be with me. I can hear it in the long wails he unleashes each night as I cry myself to sleep.

Keeping the silence the way it was, I turned on my heels to find a pair of yellow eyes boring into me. I gasped, my thoughts instantly sparking to Sam. Until I saw they were perched into the skull of a stuff owl, beak poking out of its feathers and precariously hanging off, making the animals seem so old against its oaken brown feathery down.

Making my way to the front counter, I ran my fingers along each blanket, each bag and each shirt, feeling it soft. But nothing felt like Sam.

"That wolf. The statue. In the window," I started blurting out, leaning against the counter to keep my balance. Then I needed to pause for a minute. "How much for it?"

He looked up to me, dark sunken eyes watching me. "Girl, there are many wolves in that window. You'll need to be a bit more specific."

"The one with the yellow eyes."

That piqued his curiosity. He put down the newspaper he was reading and got up off the stool on which he had been perched like a hawk. "That one. That one is special. Wolves are rare to have those glowing yellow orbs for eyes. That one doesn't know how lucky it is."

I felt a sob making it's way up my throat. Sam didn't know how special he was to me. "He does," I croaked. "He does."

No questions were asked, but I felt him grow tense for only a second. Then his muscles shifted back to relax and his face smiled once more, replenishing that feeling of kindness in the air. "I'm glad," he said, not questioning a thing.

For a few moments, I forgot we were talking about the statue. My thoughts were trained on Sam. His shaggy dark hair. His strong chest that I loved to bury my face in. The way his arms just decidedly wrapped themselves around me. His eyes. God, his eyes were so strikingly beautiful I wanted to cry every time I remembered I would live the rest of my life watching those golden eyes from the woods, so far away. Too far away. "I am too."

There was this lingering silence. Just hanging in the air, waiting to be broken, but my voice was still buried deep after those last three words.

"Here." He was the first to speak up, realizing I was too distraught to keep talking. "You can have it." The man's hands wound their way through the display to grab that wolf. That wolf. "Free of charge." His face softened towards me.

I couldn't find the words again. Sam just left me so alone… I didn't have Olivia anymore… It wasn't the same without either of them. "Thank you," I finally managed to stutter, sounding high and squeaky the whole time. I was a pathetic wreck. "For everything." The man had done so much more for me than he truly realized. He'd given me a tiny piece of Sam.

Nodding, he stepped back behind the counter, picked up his book and looked on as if nothing had ever happened.

Quietly, clutching the wolf to my chest, I went to my car, running my fingers along the hood. Suddenly, I missed the forest smell of that store and the gorgeous feathers of the eagles and owls around me. The wood was so welcoming and warm… I wanted to live there. If Sam and I… I would want to live somewhere like that.

I wrapped up that wolf in the passenger seat, never wanting to lose it. I never wanted to lose Sam, but look what happened to him. A stupid deer had ended his final year.

But now I'd brought a bit of him back. I'd gotten a memory of my sweet Sam. His fur. His eyes. His smile. This warmth. That wild feel around him. The way he loved me. The times we'd laughed. The times we'd cried. When he left… I fought back those tears again.

Only this time, I'd lost the battle.

My next stop was at the candy shop. It was so quiet, so sweet. And my eyes were all red when I walked in.

"What happened?" the girl at the counter asked, seeing me, her eyes going wide and voice clearly concerned. "Did you and that boy break up? I thought I told you two to never change!" She turned around to make me some hot chocolate, probably out of pity.

I needed it. "Sam…" There was no excuse that worked. He was so… It was hard to explain that he was a werewolf and I was a human and that was what tore us apart in the end. She wouldn't understand. She never would. Not unless she was a werewolf herself. Odds of that were slim to none. She was too nice and "…he just had to leave."

The mug was pushed to me across the counter. "It's alright. We girls have to stick together, you know? So don't forget I'm always here." She was a comfort, the girl who shared my pain.

We sat, just in this reassuring silence. I liked it. She embraced it.

And to think that we didn't even know each other's names. Well, the nametag kind of helped me out on that one a little bit.

Sliding into the driver's seat of my car once more, I looked over at that wolf in my passenger seat and let a whole new wave of tears fall, crashing down on my jacket like a waterfall and sliding down onto my hands, feeling like ice against my flesh. It hurt so bad… Everything did. Anything was pain without Sam.

I heard the bell above the door jangle its tune and no one was around. Lucky for me. I was able to sneak upstairs to find the book. The one Sam had read out of. His book of poetry. Somehow, I could recall exactly where it was and where he had left it to find it again someday. Or maybe for me to find it.

I let myself fall into a crouch, running my fingers over each book to feel that soft binding beneath my skin. It was like touching him, but there was no loving heartbeat beneath it. Nothing but paper and ink and poetry that he'd read, making it sound like true art and making me believe that he would never leave me. Too bad he had to.

Stupid Minnesota weather.

In my room, I posed that wolf statue right on a shelf next to my window. It would be safe there. I traced my fingers across the finely detailed muscles under the fur of it, each rivet lining with another to keep going until I reached its paws and started again, running it over the rough texture. The eyes were seemingly made of a yellow gold like lightning flashing across the sky. The muzzle had the most perfect details, black and muddy.

Sighing, I stared out into those woods, seeing those glowing gold eyes staring right back out at me. Lost and alone. Pack full of family. But there was no Grace out there for him. Only Shelby and Beck and Olivia and his other members. I'd heard the name Salem mentioned once or twice. And maybe Paul. I couldn't remember. All the times he'd talked about them were distant and all I could remember was the times it was just me and him, sitting in silence and talking about the rest of the world. The normal world. Without werewolves. Without bites. Without danger. This world that we lived in that knew nothing of the paranormal behind each bush and each leaf, there was another, waiting to spring from the darkness and surprise another unsuspecting victim.

So I paced outside, watching those gold eyes. "Sam," I breathed, loving the way his name found a way to roll off my tongue sounding beautiful and unique in the most common of ways.

There was a week that passed before I found him in my room again, a smile on his face as we were reunited once again. Him, human. Me, Grace. We were back to those days where we could do anything again and focus on normality.

Of course, his eyes scanned that forest right outside my window, then as the pane of glass ended, he found his yellow gaze caught on my little black wolf statue, sitting there innocently, muscles bunched and ready. He raised an eyebrow, his questioning gaze. He looked so cute like that I wanted to squeal like a stupid fangirl. I loved Sam and everything about him.

"I just missed you," I explained before rushing over to give him another huge hug and bury my face in the smell of pine and bark that he always gave off.

Sam was back.

A/N: this took me forever. I was so insistent on the perfection level of this… I still don't think it's good enough, but I tried soooo hard and I skipped out on writing a couple other fics that I really should've had done by now, but they're not finished yet… so yeah. Review, please!! I really want to know what people think of this!!

~Sky