Factors of Change

Chapter 1

Disclaimer: The originally R-rated chapters of this story, simultaneously published on another website, were edited so that it could sport a PG-13+ rating on Wattpad, but it some chapters could still contain some sexual and/or violent material that might not be suited for some readers.

Chapter 1

I wasn’t born a werewolf. I was Turned, unwillingly. It happened 30 years ago. On August 19th, 1984, precisely, but taking a month or two out of the years won’t bring my old life back.

I was 24 years old when it happened. I was attacked by a crazy, rogue werewolf during a summer camping trip with friends in Banff National Park. We had expected bears in the Rockies, but not aggressive wolves. Two of my friends died that night, but I survived the bite. A third friend of mine came out of it unharmed, if a trifled shocked. She had sent the wolf away by slashing a kitchen knife at his face and was the one who drove me to the hospital in the middle of the night. We had both been sobbing the whole way but she bravely managed, through her tears, to get to the hospital in Banff without flipping us into a ditch. Her name was Nina. She got married three years later, and I was invited. That was the last time I saw her; I heard she bought a house in Columbus and raised her three children there. Her eldest is apparently a resident in medicine, but I only gathered that information through the branches of social connections – I haven’t seen Nina in 27 years.

Actually, I don’t see anyone from my old life anymore.

It hasn’t to do with the fact that I turn into a wolf at will or that the beast lives in my mind and I hold private conversations with her (though it would be awkward if I did so out loud, I guess). But aging ten times slower than normal humans, while good for my complexion, became a problem after I turned 35 or so. Even now, nearly three decades after the incident and nearing 55 years of “real” age, I still look freshly out of college.

So at 35, I left my job, sold my apartment, and disappeared to travel the world. I still send birthday cards and postcards to my aging father regularly, but haven’t gathered the guts to call him in the past 10 years, unsure if I can stand hearing him ask me to come home once more. How could I possibly explain my appearance, my lack of aging? I’m not even allowed to. Even werewolves have rules to obey, and revealing themselves to humans isn’t only one of those, but the first one.

You will not let humans know about werewolves.

Sort of like a commandment, right? Actually, I like to think of them more like Asimov’s robotic laws.

I knew there must have been other werewolves around me at the time, though I had no desire whatsoever to find them. My only experience with them had resulted in my near death, and until I knew for sure that they wouldn’t hurt me, I would stay the hell away from any other specimen of my new species. It might have been simpler, I guess, to build a cabin in the middle of the woods and stay there, because werewolves are a damn organized sort, and you stick out like a sore thumb when you stumble upon their territory.

That’s the second rule: protect the pack. They’re pretty obsessed about it, actually.

The first time I met another wolf was in New York, in 1995. A beta male sniffed me out on the street and was unable to identify my scent as one of his pack. He quite boldly followed me back to the restaurant where I lead him, breaking down with nerves, in a desperate attempt to stay in a crowded place. He had been cordial enough, though, and apparently believed me when I explained that I had no idea I was on anyone’s territory. He had turned stone cold when I explained my story, though.

It turned out that while they are tolerated, and even fully accepted and considered equals in certain packs, Turned wolves aren’t generally considered too well in werewolf society. Being former humans, we’re smaller than pure-blooded werewolves, have black-colored (thus ill-omened) wolf forms, and are therefore condemned to the lowest ranks in pack hierarchy. Upon learning I hadn’t been willingly turned, though, the reactions I’ve been getting over the years in various territories have ranged from cautiousness to pure fear, to the extent that I have feared for my life more than once.