Blood & Wine

15 | Dasher

Becoming a werewolf was not something for the weak.

The snarl that ripped through me the second the moon reached its highest peak in the sky vibrated through my entire body. It joined everybody else, a simultaneous calling to the moon.

It was eight of us Changing for the first time tonight. Six men, two women. All of them over the age of twenty-one like me. We all looked as terrified as we felt, not prepared for the pain Fynley and Jagger had promised us.

Not prepared to be something else in a few minutes.

Daggers of pain shot through me, a hot fire washing through my veins.

My bones and joints popped.

The alcohol they had given me had not numbed the pain nor my worry.

All the spells Calla and Eden had casted hadn't done anything for me. It seemed they has bounced harmlessly into the atmosphere.

I screamed, falling onto my knees. My back arched as the hum of a thousand voices coaxed my body into this Change.

My joints popped and crackled.

Another vicious snarled vibrated through my chest as nose elongated. My teeth got longer, sharper.

My nails extended into claws. I dug them int the dirt to release some of this pain, some of this agony ripping toward me.

Another scream left my throat as hair arrived in patches over my body.

I looked up, across the yard at Eden, my cousin. She sat by herself, reading and trying her best to ignore us. For a second, her eyes flashed to mine, but then I looked away—I had to look away. I had to—

The final shift hit me like a sledgehammer.

My body turned into a full wolf, and the second it happened, those feeling I had been feeling disappeared.

The angst.

The anger.

The agony.

The aggravation.

All of it disappeared as I tilted my head back and howled, guided by some primal instincts.

Then a voice in my head said, Welcome to La Luna.

Someone was standing next to me.

Run, wolf.

I ran.