For the rest of the weekend, he didn't want to talk to anyone. He didn't even want to see anyone. Theron only got thirty more minutes of sleep before he had to get ready for work on Saturday. Then on Sunday, Kitra was home, but he avoided her because he got her text about Frank approving her project and didn't want to hear about her good news when all Theron got was condemnation. He arrived home at the usual time, at 4 AM early on Monday morning, and didn't stay home.
The pre-dawn sky was dull. Theron arrived at his favorite launch spot, pleased to find it empty; it was a common choice among his packmates, the parking pad outside of Little Mountain Park. The dog park was a large public space with a trail leading through woods and a field siding up against a rocky hole filled with water and crayfish. Across the road from the park, outcroppings of brush surrounded another pond and stretched far into a field overgrown with purple wildflowers. Theron turned off his headlights, sitting in the darkness and stillness, alone. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, feeling as restless as he was sleepy. There were so many things he couldn't get off his mind. His life was falling apart.
As he stepped across the road and into the bushes, Theron watched dark blue burn in the eastern sky. He climbed into the tall grass and made his way to a clearing sheltered by trees littered with the artifacts of himself and his packmates. Having left his phone in his glovebox, Theron stripped naked and packed his clothes into a camo-patterned bag. He stuffed the bag among the leaves of a low shrub, high enough to sit off the ground, but low enough to evade attention if anybody somehow looked this way. Then he stood back, enjoying the crisp morning air on his skin, wet with dew and warm with the first peeking rays of sunrise.
The transformation began.
Theron grunted, folding over as his framework rearranged. His skin grew taut over the churning muscles in his back, bones in his arms and legs crackling as they condensed, rotating in their sockets. His spine throbbed, moving under his skin like a snake as extra vertebrae ruptured from his tailbone. His nails broke off in the dirt, hands and fingers shortening, contorting, puffing into animal toes. Black nails grew into his bloody nailbeds. Teeth rattled from his gums. His hair shed completely, loose clumps of onyx and fine fields from his arms and chest and belly. He was left a writhing, naked poltergeist of a man, mutating on the ground as everything within him twisted. This was the usual process. It always hurt, but it never lasted more than seven or eight minutes.
As his bald body took canine shape, he regrew dense, dark fur. Immediately, plush patterns resembled the swoops and points of his human hair. Wild blue eyes rolled into place, paws scraping the ground. It was Theron, only now he was entirely jet black, and his teeth were sharp, and he abandoned accountability for what he was going to do until he was human again. He rose as a wolf like midnight overtaking dawn, predator wearing nothing but his skin and a snarl.
Theron slunk into the grass, hiding under the darkness in pursuit of revenge. Against who, it didn't matter. Somebody had to pay for this week's death of his soul.
YOU ARE READING
BLOOD DREAM (Ongoing)
Paranormal24-year-old Theron was the spoiled brat son of a wolf shifter Alpha--until his fated mate, a puma shifter named Sadie, murdered his father. As the consequences of his abusive behavior, Theron lost his friends, girlfriend, and the respect of his pack...
