It would be so easy to give up, to give in. Why am I alive anyway? All life has ever brought me is pain and loneliness. It’s not like I was ever going to belong anywhere. It would be so easy to end it all. Yet here I am, still conscious when I have no reason to be. I haven’t even blacked out from the pain and the blood loss.
In fact, it doesn’t hurt so much anymore. I’m starting to go numb, I realize. Maybe I’m actually about to die—I’ve heard people say they don’t hurt anymore just before they die, but was it only in movies that I heard that? I don’t even remember if I’m pulling my information from reality or some scripted movie. I can barely form one thought before another pushes it out of the way.
Then Dexter bends down and takes me by the back of the neck, pulling me up until I’m almost sitting upright but with my full weight leaning against his hand. “Still clinging to life, are you?” he snarls. He’s sweating, his eyes narrowed into slits, and I think I hear a touch of frustration running through his words. Like he genuinely doesn’t understand how I’m still alive.
If I had the strength to speak, I would tell him I feel the same way. I don’t get it, either. It’s almost enough to make me laugh, though when I start to, I only end up gurgling blood. He’s broken me up inside worse than he ever dared before. Because this time, it’s for keeps. I’m going to drown in my own blood while members of my own pack watch.
I wish I would die and get it over with. It’s going to happen anyway, so why all the suffering?
“A freak till the end, huh?” He punches me in the jaw, and my head snaps around, and everybody laughs, urging him on, demanding he do more. Voices I’ve heard my entire life. The last sounds I’ll ever hear. That would be my luck, wouldn’t it?
But something else cuts through their voices. It even cuts through the smell of my own blood, thick enough that it threatens to choke me.
Him. The wolf from the lake, the alpha’s son. He’s here somewhere. I smell him.
It’s enough to make me open my eyes as much as I can, and that’s when I see him. He’s standing in the circle along with the other one, his twin. There’s plain horror etched across his face, and I can understand why. I don’t feel so good and can’t look much better.
He goes from taking in the sight of my blood-soaked body to looking me in the eye, and his gaze locks on mine like it did back at the ceremony. Instead of curiosity and even a little humor, I see shock. Disgust. Even anger.
And that’s when it happens. The last thing I ever would have expected.
They shift. Both of them. I have no idea how many shifts I’ve witnessed. Hundreds, thousands? But there’s something different about it this time. They’re howling as they do it, the instant they go from men to wolves, piercing the air and cutting through the shouts and jeers. It’s not the normal howling of wolves, at least not like anything I’ve ever heard before.
They’re enraged, both of them, and ready to kill. Two jet-black wolves with golden eyes, almost the same shade. Eyes that glow and burn, and even though I don’t know them, I know why they look the way they do. They snap their jaws, saliva dripping from their fangs as they growl menacingly at everyone around us.
It’s the funniest thing. Am I hallucinating? Or are my big, strong bullies falling back in fear now?
I would, too, if a pair of enormous wolves like them growled at me the way they are. They’re furious. They’re hungry. They want to taste blood.
And…
And…
So do I.
It starts deep in my gut. The fire I felt before, when I thought I would burn up from the inside out, even stronger now. Hotter, more intense. It rushes through me all at once, turning to ash every lingering bit of pain still present in my broken body and turning it to searing heat. It’s going to kill me. It’s killing me now.
All I can do is scream as it consumes me.
But I don’t die. No, instead, there’s a rush of euphoria that makes me scream again. Not in pain, but in something like ecstasy.
This time, I break free of Dexter and roll onto my stomach without meaning to, without trying, my body acting on its own. My body begins to rearrange itself, my bones snap, mending themselves, my tendons stretch, and my limbs lengthen. It all happens at once, yet I’m aware of every last moment and change that takes place. It doesn’t even hurt—no, it’s bliss. The inexplicable sense of finally coming home. Of becoming… me.