If only that was the feeling that stayed with me.
I’d thought I was sleepy, full of food and awash with good feelings of being warm, comfortable, full, but as I stood up, things went sideways, almost literally. I heard Fen’s whines first, followed quickly by an incredible wash of dizziness. “Whoa…” I said, my hands flying out to steady me, but how?
It felt like the world had lost all solidity, tipping to one side, then the other, sending me staggering after it. Paws raked across the metal security grill of my screen door, the sound like a cacophony inside my head, but that was quickly drowned out by the rapid skitter of my heartbeat in my ears. Sweat broke out all over my skin, forcing my fingers, my claws to slice across my clothing, ripping it into shreds, but freeing my body didn’t help. There was a crash as a body slammed into my door, then another, right as I pitched forward onto my hands and knees, and then I knew what the fuck was happening.
“Nooo…” My voice was distorted, part cry, part howl, coming from a throat no longer entirely human.
Because that was the thing about power—it always came at a cost.
“Now, I realise this will be a distressing sight for many of you,” my lecturer said. Can’t remember what his name was, just that he’d been wearing a thick Arran knit jumper, the collar of his white shirt poking over the top, along with a pair of tweedy pants. “But we can’t shy away from uncomfortable things in our field. What is usually an almost magical confluence of physiological and psychological forces, the shift into wolf form.”
He’d turned to the screen, where we saw a naked man on all fours. The video slowed down then, showing what was usually a swift transformation from human to wolf form, instead giving us a blow-by-blow view of the process. Of bones snapping and reforming. Of fur sprouting from hair follicles. Of muscles shortening, lengthening, shifting with the man to become that of a beast. Finally, the clip sped up again, showing a panting wolf where a man had been.
“Sometimes, that gets disrupted. The person in question is missing the key elements of a successful shift, yet feels impelled to try by instincts we’re still trying to understand,” the lecturer continued.
He pressed the button on his clicker so a new slide appeared on the screen, and then we were treated to the sight of the same transformation, just in a very different process.
The woman’s lips were pulled back into a snarl before she even went down into a crouch, her teeth bared as every muscle locked down. If you’ve ever seen fasciculations before, they are strange things. The muscle seems to jump on the body without any conscious effort from the person themselves, twitching and jerking in response to something else altogether, and that was what happened here. Her flesh seemed to…ripple? There was no better word for it. A wave of fur appeared, then disappeared, bones cracking to initiate a shift, but then reverting back.
The only thing that seemed to progress was her pain. She screamed at the start and kept on screaming, a small titter of defensive amusement starting up in the lecture theatre, but the lecturer didn’t bother trying to calm us down because the video did the work for him. We were watching some kind of torture porn as part of a learning experience, her agony apparent as she fought and fought to try and make the change, only to end up collapsing down onto the floor, and that silenced everyone. We all watched the woman fight a battle she could not win.
When the medical staff came forward and injected her with a sedative, we all let out a sigh of relief. I just wished I had something similar right now.
I was sucking in oxygen in great noisy gulps, my sides heaving like a bellows. I wanted to cry and scream as the first shots of pain started, my fingers becoming claws as they dug into the floorboards. My first shout came out choked off and mangled, my head thrown back as my throat warred between human and wolf form, my tongue feeling too big in my mouth, then too small as I did, but that was minor compared to what was happening to my body. It felt like someone was systematically breaking every one of my bones, then when I managed to reset them, they went back and broke them again. Agony, so much agony, flooded my body, narrowed down my focus, and locked me down inside a dark hole I knew now I’d never escape.
Everything I’d ever feared was coming true. Trapped in my body, I was forced to admit the truth—I was a latent. I didn’t possess all of the elements of a successful shift, which was why my beast had always been a weak presence inside me. A true wolf shifter’s beast made itself known, springing forth on call or when it decided it needed to intervene, and mine had done little more than whine in my ear, just as she did now. I heard her anxiety, her fear, but it was a grinding sound, further emphasising that I was fucked. I might become locked like this, always reaching for my beast and unable to find her, my mind racing faster and faster until…
The slams on the door stopped because he burst in, wearing human form now.
“Shift!” he ordered, using his alpha bark to command me, every muscle in me straining to do exactly that and failing. “Shift, Riley! So fucking help me, you have to get out of her way. She’s trying to come through, and you keep fucking blocking her. Your fear, your anger, your…” He paused then, something I meant to ask him about later, but always forgot. “Jesus Christ, shift, now!”
Afterwards, I realised what I’d been going through was like banging my head over and over against an invisible ceiling. I couldn’t see the barrier keeping me stuck, so I couldn’t fight past it, not until Fen reached down and yanked me through. Everything happened so fucking fast now, my body shifting, changing, breaking, and remaking until…
I stood there now, on my own four paws, panting frantically as I tried to catch my breath, my muscles shaking with the effort. Slowly, so slowly, I came back to myself, flicking my tail, then throwing back my head and letting out a godawful howl to mark what I’d just been through.
“Riley girl,” a voice said, dragging my focus back to him. “You’re beautiful.”
Chapter 41
For a minute, I just was in a way only animals can be. I breathed, existed, my new form hit from all sides by stimuli. I’d never realised how harsh the detergents I used on my tile floor smelled, and drool formed in my mouth at the ripe scents of my pizza box, even as my stomach informed me very clearly there would be no more consumption of food without consequences. The tiles felt too hard, too smooth under my paws, my claws having nothing to dig into for traction. The artificial breeze from the fan slowly cycling above ruffled my fur and pushed wafts of different scents at me in waves that were confusing. Then there was him.
My head jerked up, my eyes taking in the tall man above me and then the mess he’d created of the barrier into my den. Then he made the mistake of crouching down, close, too close, a low growl forming in my chest as a result. He ignored that with an arrogance that just made my anger flare hotter, harder, that had me shying away when he reached out with a hand, snapping at the air when he persisted. With my fangs and my snarls, it became apparent what I thought of his offer, until finally, he pulled his hand back. I moved restively then, seeing the silver light rise in his eyes, eyes that looked just like mine, I was willing to bet. His beast stared at me, and I stared back, making it clear nothing had changed.Stay away, leave me, my gaze said clearly, and I didn’t look away for a second until he did just that.
“I’m going,” he said. “Text me in the morning, or I’ll come back, assuming you need help to shift back.” Fen nodded then, his eyes scanning me with a kind of possessiveness that had me growling again, but he didn’t attempt to get any closer. “You wanted evidence? It’ll be coming your way in the morning, via your workplace. You’ll want to be there for it.”
My wolf couldn’t relax until he was out of our space. Fen was too big, took up too much room, his scent perfuming the air, filling our nose, and he hadn’t earned that right. In this form, I wasn’t exactly clear about the complications that had me unhappy with him, I just knew I was, and when he walked out, shutting the front door behind him, my muscles unlocked. So why did we trot over to the entrance, scrambling to place our paws up on the front windowsill to watch him go? He turned when he reached the gate, noting this with a smile before leaving.
Left to my own devices, instincts roared up now and my nose went to the ground as soon as I put my paws down, snuffling at the tiles until I had trotted back to the bedroom. I was up and on the bed in one smooth leap, pawing at the blankets, pushing some aside with my nose and others into a pile until I formed a loose kind of nest. I took a long whiff of the fabric I had approved, smelling him there, seeing that massive body, those dark eyes in my mind for just a second before I circled around and around, three times in total, then settled down in amongst them.
Sleep came easily. I hadn’t had enough lately, and the deficit was weighing heavily on me. Wolves didn’t experience insomnia, so as soon as I closed my eyes, I was sucked down into slumber, into a darkness as black as a wolf’s throat.
But not forthe entire night.
Fen wouldn’t be needed in the morning, I quickly realised, right as I woke up. I was in my human body, I got that first, then it all came rushing in. I stiffened, shaking with the pain that ripped through me, my screams stifled behind clenched teeth. If he thought finding my human body was going to be the issue, he was much mistaken. Losing fur was easy, but this?
I’d thought I was doing OK, thought I had this under control. I hadn’t taken any of the medicine I’d used last night, nor availed myself of Colt’s homemade remedy. No, I’d lain down a wolf and awoken with a body on fire. I’d had period pains in the past, so intense, it had honestly felt like a knife was slowly being inserted into my uterus, but not like this. It felt like everything inside me clenched down, like it was trying to expel my insides out, and at that thought, waves of nausea did rise. I couldn’t throw up though, not yet, not while I was panting, sucking in air frantically.
There was nothing lonelier than being crushed by pain on your own. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t cry out for help, and there was no one to help if I did. I couldn’t call someone, Candy or even 000. I couldn’t do anything but be pummelled by wave after wave of punishing pain. I couldn’t do anything other than feel this agony, without a soul to at least mark the occasion. Then, as if summoned by that thought, by my frantic aborted howls, as I was strangled by my straining body, they came.