The Shadow of White is Black

Chapter 6: Where It All Went Wrong

My body began shaking violently as the cold of the snow began creeping in all at once. I may have been an arctic but that dip in the freezing lake may have been overstepping it. My breathing became quick and shaky and it felt like the frost was biting at me.

'So much for 'the cold never bothered me anyway'' I snapped at Reyes.

'Hey, even Elsa got a cold.' Reyes argued defensively, 'And the cold really doesn't bother me. This is happening because your human side has reached its limit for maintaining function in such cold conditions.'

'And you never thought about that when we decided to bury ourselves in snow?' I said exasperated.

'Well, it was either a 50% chance of getting a cold or a 100% chance of getting killed by those black wolves. Speaking of which, what are you going to do now that you know that that wolf is Marcus?'

It was then my body felt like it was shutting down. I started to see Marcus' wolf form approaching me and behind him, the other three wolves were gone.

My body was shaking even more violently than before. The question was, what was causing me to shake more? The cold. Or my fear of the wolf towering before me. It was natural for his black wolf to want to tear me to shreds as it was for me to hate black wolves. So what game was he playing?

I tried to scurry away from him but my legs could no longer support my body. I fell on my side; my paws thrashing pathetically and my vision beginning to blur. Marcus quickly began shoveling the snow off me with his paws, his eyes set on my shaking form, and he rubbed his head against my side. I felt the friction heating me up. And I realised something:

At this rate, he'll memorize my scent!

I tried to make some more weak pathetic thrashes and the last thing I heard was Reyes saying, 'Hell no! We're screwed.'

Then I completely lost consciousness.

*******

For the first time in my life, the sun had beat me to waking; its rays beaming down on me trying to pry my eyes open but to no avail.

I shifted away from the sun reburying my head in fur. I was engulfed in a warmth much greater than sunlight could possibly produce. My tail swatted at a buzzing sound of a fly above me.

My tail?!

That's when realization dawned on me; Why was I still in my wolf form? What happened yesterday night? Where was I? What the hell was going on?

My eyes slit open and light was shining down from above but all around me, all I saw was black.

What the hell was going on?

My eyes went wide. I tried to get up but was weighed down by a black...paw? I looked back at the blackness surrounding me only to realise it was black fur. It all dawned on me now. The warmth, the paw, the black.

My body was laying between Marcus' paws with his tail and body curled around me. We were still in the forest and this was his attempt to stop the shaking by keeping me warm.

It was a kind gesture.

I slithered my body out from under him without waking him. If I didn't know any better, I would've gone so far as to say it was selfless of him. But every creature knew black wolves were anything but. So the questions still remained:

What was his plan for me?

I bolted through the snow to the random street where I left my bag of clothes, changed ad ran home.

*******

Achoo! I readjusted my large scarf, stuffed my hands in my coat pocket and sighed.

'For the first time in my life, I caught a cold. How can an arctic catch a cold? What's the point of being an arctic if we can't even withstand a cold!'

I could feel Reyes smirking at me, 'Well I'm fine. Plus the cold will only last a few more hours because you're an arctic. Anyways, think of this as another one of your extreme lengths you go through to convince everyone that you're human. Humans get colds!'

I rolled my eyes and continued walking down the empty hallways. I'd rushed to school so I could spread my scent around; I may not be able to stop him from smelling my scent, but I could sure as hell make it hard for him to trace it back to me if my scent was everywhere.

'Hey, I wonder what my scent smells like'

'Yeah, why don't you go ask Marcus'

'Don't even joke about that'

The Bell had rung for class and as usual, everybody parted like the red sea and I stayed at the back of the crowd, quaking more than ever.

But what wasn't usual was the tardiness of Marcus and his group and neither was the alert glint in his eyes nor the way he didn't look straight ahead and was this time instead frantically scanning the crowd of awe-struck students. And that's when I knew that he'd definitely caught my scent and was hell bent on finding out who I was. And I'll bend hell if that's what it took to keep my identity anonymous.

I'd soaked myself with my strongest perfumes, yet it didn't stop him from stopping directly in front of the crowd where I stood at the back. With the crowd of people filling the space between us, I dug down out of his periphery. A sneeze began to tickle my nose. I tried to stop it but . . .

Achoo!

Marcus' stare intensified and I only sank lower to the ground as he took a step closer to the crowd.

"Marcus, what's wrong? We have class."

"Nothing, I'm coming." For the first time, something other than disinterest was portrayed on Marcus' face but it was worse; determination.

He let out a growl that only humans couldn't hear but it shook the rest of us werewolves to the core. It was a warning to me.

That he will find me.