by Eden Beck
Sabrina
There are only two more full moons before the eclipse now, and I’m happily surprised when Romulus says it’s okay for me to come and watch one of the transformations.
It won’t be the first shift I’ve witnessed, but it will be the first time I’m allowed to watch on the night of a full moon—when they can’t help but change over into their wolf forms.
I know this is some sort of recompense for these last weeks—for Vivian, for the boy’s abandonment—but I’ll take what I can. These are the things I hold on to, the little bits of their lives that I’m allowed to grasp at like straws.
Since it’s only the boys, him, and Lydia, and since this moon is apparently not the strongest; Romulus agreed that it’ll be okay for me to come just this once. Vivian is gone for now, though I’m sure I’ve not seen the last of her. I’m sure she’ll be back when the full moon has passed, her presence temporarily banished in favor of mine—a fact that Romulus doesn’t seem at all pleased about.
I can tell that the boys probably pressured him to let me come until he caved. Like they do with everything.
Nothing ever comes easy where Romulus is involved.
Lydia brings out a tray of teacups as we are all sitting outside on the wide porch of the mansion, waiting for the moon to reach its fullest. I never thought I’d be anxious, but Vivian’s words run over and over in my mind, unbidden, and I feel a new fear nagging at the edges of my thoughts.
I reach for the cup closest to me, hoping something hot will still the shaking in my hands, but Lydia puts her hand over mine to stop me from taking it.
“Here,” she says as she hands me a different cup instead. “That one is for Romulus.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Lydia says with a smile that should be reassuring, but instead makes me feel even more on edge. Her kindness can be too much sometimes, like it keeps me feeling like a guest rather than family. “The root tea keeps him from transforming during the full moon. It would have tasted disgusting to you.”
“Not to mention poisonous,” Romulus mutters beside me.
I look at Romulus as he sips the tea that she hands him.
“There’s a tea to keep that from happening?” I ask, surprised. “If it’s that easy, why don’t you all just drink the tea when you want to skip a transformation?”
I think back to all the times I’ve been forced to leave, forced to hole up in the cabin for sometimes days at a time, thanks to these transformations. Before I can begin to work myself up too much, however, Romulus answers.
“It only works on me,” he says bluntly. “I’ve been a shifter for a very long time, so I have a great deal of control over my body, even during the shift.”
Lydia goes back inside to do something, and the three boys stand up and pull their shirts off. I feel immediately flushed and especially awkward sitting next to Romulus as I can’t help but stare at the bodies of his sons. Even when I try to focus my gaze ahead, I can see them out of the corners of my eyes.
“Where’s Vivian?” I ask as they get ready to hop over the patio railing and onto the snowy ground, hoping to steer the conversation towards something that keeps my cheeks from growing red as rubies.
Kaleb overhears me, his wolf hearing once again picking up something I didn’t mean him to. He turns back and grins over at me from where he stands at the edge of the railing.
“She’ll be in the woods,” he says. “Far away from here, just to be safe.”
“Are you jealous?” Romulus asks.
The blunt question stuns me, pulling my attention back to the boys’ father here by my side. I look at him for a minute with my mouth hanging open and wish that Lydia were here to reign him in, as she so often has to.
“Of course, she’s jealous,” Kaleb says with a smirk, despite the elbows digging into either of his sides from Rory and Marlowe. “Vivian’s a badass in wolf form.”
A far-off howl echoes through the trees, and all attention turns towards the ridge of mountains in the distance.
The boys all jump the railing and fall into the snowy garden, their hands digging into the snow to form snowballs while they wait for their shift to come. I know Kaleb didn’t mean that comment the way that I took it. It was just the usual way they banter about their old friend, but he should have known it would hurt me, especially after everything I told him inside the tree not so long ago.
And then again, after our conversation at the cave.
Sometimes I feel like they don’t listen to me at all. They only hear what they want to, not what I’m really trying to say.
Stupid boys.
Stupid wolves.
I set my teacup down on the arm of the chair. I want to feel the cold again so that it can help dissipate the rising heat of anger growing in me. Fortunately, overhead, the glow of the moon means the start of the transformation.
A welcome distraction.
The transformation itself is by far the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. One minute the boys are standing in front of us, bare-chested and pitching balls of snow at each other, laughing and smiling and teasing about who has been working out the most. The next minute, their bodies look like a molting shell that gives way to the beast inside them. I am both enthralled and terrified.
It’s different from the shifts they’ve shown me before. More … feral.
It’s faster, more graceful, like the girl in the woods the first time I saw a shifter transform.
“Does it hurt them?” I whisper to Romulus, my eyes still glued on the wolves stretching and pawing at the ground down below. I can’t take my eyes off them.
“No more than that of a muscle being exerted,” he says. “The first few shifts are painful because one doesn’t know what to expect. The mind is a powerful thing, and if it lets fear preside over things, the expectation of pain contorts the sensation. After the unknown is no longer feared, the body and the mind work in unison and there is no more pain.”
I watch the boy’s transformed bodies down below. They are so fiercely beautiful. I can tell exactly who each wolf is, even once they start running around in skirmished circles. Each has a slightly different shade of soft, thick fur, and the moon paints a slightly varying hue on each set of reflective eyes. I’m entirely captivated by them.
Who wouldn’t be?
They’re larger than wild wolves. Stronger, too. Even beneath the thick winter fur, I can see the ripple of powerful muscle.
“There are other things that can make the transformation less pleasant, though,” Romulus adds.
“Oh? Like what?
“Shifting is a physical release, much like … other things. If one is feeling restrained or held back, then it makes the experience much less enjoyable.”
The accusatory look that Romulus is giving me is unmistakable. I am the one holding the boys back. If it weren’t for me, they would be able to embrace their ravenous wildness and not have to worry about whether or not I would be safe around them and their kind.
More than that, though, I hear what else he’s saying.
What he means.
I’m causing them pain.
13
Sabrina
“You’re not the only one.”
When I glance over at Romulus, it’s as if he’s been reading my thoughts.
“To cause this sort of pain,” he adds, his voice quieter than usual. There’s none of the usual roughness to it. None of the usual growl hidden beneath the surface. “I know it might not seem like it at times, but I’m not the heartless creature you imagine.”
Normally, the right thing to do would be to deny it.
But here, tonight, I don’t.
Instead, I just sit quietly. Watching, waiting for Romulus to continue.
“You’ve heard of Remus, my brother?”
My pulse quickens, and I nod.
Down below, in the garden, the boys glance over at us one last time with their fur bristled in the cold
air and their long tails swishing behind them as they run off into the woods. Even with them gone, Romulus doesn’t stop. Maybe it’s the tea, or the night air, or something else … but I’ve never seen him like this.
He’s nostalgic, almost.
“So then?” he asks, after a moment staring off into the darkness left behind in his sons’ wake. His hand shakes ever so slightly where it rests on the armrest, and I wonder how much effort it’s taking him to resist the shift with them. “What have you been told? About Remus.”
My tongue feels dry. I have to pry it from the roof of my mouth to answer him.
“Not much,” I say. “Other than the fact that he’s your brother, basically nothing.”
Unless I’m imagining it, he seems pleased. Whatever he’s thinking behind those dark eyes, he doesn’t leave the silence hanging between us long.
“Remus and his pack are not members of our alliance. They live in peace with us just enough to keep things civil, for the most part. But my brother cannot accept turned werewolves, not even my wife. Even if they’ve been initiated into a pack and into the alliance, Remus will never again tolerate the turning of a human.”
Once again, I feel the organ behind my ribs beat at a pace that betrays me. Even without his body shifted, I’m sure Romulus still hears it.
There’s something about him tonight that looks calmer than usual, wise even. Maybe it’s the tea, or the moon, or just the control he’s exerting over himself; I’m not sure. But when I ask him what happened between him and his brother, he only hesitates a moment before saying a name: Sienna.
“She meant everything to us back then,” Romulus muses. “Remus and I both loved her together, despite her frailty as a human. I’m sure you can understand.” He looks at me as if we both share the same secret. It’s a kindred moment I never expected from him … but it doesn’t linger long.
“But there comes a point in which one must choose. Even between brothers, love is a difficult thing to share. Remus and I didn’t have any hesitation about the turning ceremonies back then, and turning Sienna was the one way to make sure she stayed with us forever. But she was unable to choose between us.”
“Choose …”
I trail off, glancing once again towards the forest. I know that feeling well. I’d never be able to choose between Rory, Marlowe, and Kaleb. Not when the other two would always be there, beside me. Choosing one of them would be like choosing one part of a whole. It would break them.
It would break me.
“But then again,” Remus continues, “as much as we loved her, Remus and I were never bonded to her.”
“So … you think it’s different for me?” I lean forward suddenly. “Do you think Remus would …”
He cuts me off, his eyes sliding over to me. “I don’t know,” he says with surprising honesty. “All I know is that I can still remember that moment as if it were happening right now in front of my eyes all over again. No matter how much I try to scrub it from my brain, it never diminishes.”
He closes his eyes as his face contorts into a look of pain. When he opens them again, he has a vacant expression that lingers in sorrow.
“The other humans at the ceremony had just been turned and were violent and unpredictable. It’s nearly impossible to control a freshly turned shifter right after their first transformation. Remus and I both tried to stop it, but by the time we realized what was happening, it was too late. Sienna was still human, and the shifter standing next to her was not. It took less time for him to sink his jaws into her and snap her neck than it took for either of us to blink.”
My stomach sickens.
They watched their own kind murder the love of their life. No wonder Romulus is so guarded; he’s been through hell.
“Remus and I didn’t return home that night. That month. That year.”
He pauses, one hand running along the smooth, hairless line of his jaw. For a moment, he looks so much like Rory that I nearly catch my breath.
“When we finally returned, we found out that a raiding party from a warring pack had heard about our grief and taken advantage of that opportunity to ravage our mostly undefended packs. They killed only the non-pure-blooded shifters … which was more than enough. When I looked at the men and women that I had known for years, slaughtered and strewn across the ground in nearly unrecognizable pieces, I didn’t have the heart to lead anymore.”
As much as Romulus and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye, my heart can’t help but bleed for him now as he tells me his story.
“The turning ceremony had always been frowned upon, more so by some than others. But Remus and I had never taken issue with it until that night. For my brother, it drove him into an obsession with pure-bloods. He saw Sienna’s death as an intervention of fate, something that gave rise to a delusional new purpose in which he sought to ensure that his line and his pack maintained pure from that day forward. For me, it had a different effect.”
“It made me realize that there were many lone turned wolves without packs and without leadership; wolves that needed protection from packs like the one Remus was creating. I made it my new quest to find packs that needed my help and offer them asylum with me. It was in one of these packs that I found a woman who reminded me of the girl I once loved and had lost.”
“Lydia?” I ask.
Romulus nods. “She had been turned some time before I found her and was able to soften my heart, despite myself. I fell in love with her compassion and strength, and her ability to see past my brokenness and unlock the potential that we had together. I married her and since then she has been the piece of my soul that I thought I had lost. Remus could never accept that I had married a turned woman, and I could never except his ignorant hatred toward turned shifters. We’ve been at odds ever since.”
We sit in silence for a while after Romulus finishes speaking. His story explains so much. It explains why he’s been so against my involvement since the beginning and why he’s so strict with the boys when it pertains to me.
“Why are you telling me this now?” I ask, my turn for my voice to be so quiet I’m surprised he hears me.
Romulus just shakes his head.
“Maybe it’s because Remus is nearby. Maybe it’s the tea. Maybe it’s just that …” he stops and shakes his head, his thought going unfinished. When he looks at me, his face has a hollow, haunted quality to it.
“So now you understand?” he says, after a long silence. His eyes bore into me with an intensity that would make me uncomfortable if my thoughts weren’t already racing into the forest like the boys that have long since disappeared.
Of course I understand.
But it’s also given me an idea.
It was never about me, it was about Remus. About appeasing the brother that he’d long had a falling out with.
A brother that will, very soon, be close at hand.
Romulus is a lost cause. His loyalty, his trauma, his pain—they make it impossible for him to entertain the idea of turning me against the alliance’s rules.
Lately, I thought that was the end of it. I thought I was slowly slipping into a fate without Rory, without Marlowe, without Kaleb. But now … now …
Maybe it isn’t Romulus I need to convince at all.
Maybe it’s his brother.
I try to hide the way my heart beats louder in my ears. It must be deafening by now to ears like Romulus’.
Maybe if I could convince Remus to go along with the idea of me being turned … then perhaps Romulus would be less opposed to it. Surely if Remus had once loved a human woman himself, he would understand what the boys and I are going through. He might make an exception just this once, especially for Rory at least, since they are blood-family.
I’ve seen what wolf family is … and I’ve also seen how stubborn Romulus can be. If I know him at all, and I hope I do after all these months, I somehow doubt this whole story is as one sided as he’s trying to make out.
If Romulus and his brother ever once had a bond
like the brothers I now love, then there’s hope for me yet.
Rory may have made me promise to stay away from the house when the packs are moving through, but he didn’t make me promise to stay away from the other packs. The packs that won’t be here, on Romulus’ land.
It’s an oversight I’m going to have to take advantage of.
It’s a risk I’m going to have to take.
For them.
For us.
14
Sabrina
I know it’s a foolhardy plan, but it’s the only plan I’ve got.
If I sit around and wait, I already know what’s going to happen—so on the night of the next alliance meeting, I decide that it’s the perfect time for me to see if this plan that I’ve hatched will work.
In a way, this is Romulus’ fault. He’s the one that mentioned his brother was near. He’s the one that hinted his brother—the reason I can’t be turned—might reconsider his stance due to the circumstances.
Or he might not have exactly said it, but he hinted it. And that’s enough.
It’s also Romulus’ fault that he left the maps of the local pack movements out in my favorite library, just laying out there waiting for me to take a quick photo with my cell phone. All it took was one glance, and I knew, for sure, that this is what I have to do.
To say Remus is close is an understatement. Tonight his pack will be moving through the land on the opposite side of the river, so close I imagine the shifters in this house can taste the scent of his pack on their tongues already.
There won’t be another opportunity like this.
Between the constant harassment from everyone at school and my own growing sense of desperation; I make a bold move to sneak out to the open land on the other side of the river. The boys are disappearing more and more frequently from school, and with it the rumors at school are growing ever more prevalent.
Even if I hadn’t already made up my mind what had to be done, I would have by now.
