Shiftless

by Aimee Easterling

  Although I’d immediately missed Brooke’s gentle presence after she left Haven, after my twelfth birthday, I realized that I’d taken her role in our family for granted. Without Brooke to fill the good-daughter shoes, my father was forced to turn his attention to me—and we all soon realized I was sorely lacking in that department. The daughter of an alpha was supposed to be a role model for the younger wolves, but I found it a struggle to keep my hands out of the dirt and my clothes clean, let alone to smile and help out around the village. And every time I failed, my father noticed and reprimanded me. For the first few weeks after my twelfth birthday, I hoped my father would eventually give up the struggle and focus on his new son, but instead, his rules simply became stricter and stricter, and Haven began to feel like a prison.

  Meanwhile, I’d grown old enough to change into wolf form, and the more upset I got at my father’s restrictions, the more my shifts flew out of control. I hated the fact that I’d been born a girl, without the male ability to change form at will. In contrast, those of us unlucky enough to be born with two X chromosomes had to deal with what I liked to call “werewolf PMS from hell.” At that time of the month, human women cope with bloating, aches, and grumpiness, but the same hormones in werewolves cause us to change into wolf form at the drop of a hat, no matter how inconvenient fur and claws might be. This fact, more than anything else, was the reason werewolf packs were so repressively patriarchal, because the female werewolf really was the weaker vessel in need of shielding from the outside world. And I was even worse at controlling my shifts than most female wolves, which made my father’s disdain of my weakness yet more evident.

  By the time I turned thirteen, I was flipping back and forth between wolf and human form dozens of times a month. My father was irate at my inability to control my wolf, and his frequent tirades made me shift even more often. Again, I had a hint of hope when I realized that the Chief was starting to give up on my potential to be a pack princess, meaning that I wasn’t likely to be married off to an alpha outside the pack to cement an alliance. But then I discovered that the only other alternative my father saw for me was to become the spinster daughter, hidden away in my attic bedroom for the rest of my life.

  That realization prompted me to dive into my education, and for a while, school and books became a relief from my depressing home life. In Haven, all young werewolves studied at the village school, and most of us were expected to voluntarily end our schooling a few years after our first shifts began, when we were old enough to help out at home. But if a young werewolf showed aptitude for learning, he or she often continued studying under the schoolteachers, training to become a replacement teacher in the years to come. Since I wasn’t going to be a pack princess and was terrified of turning into a replica of my meek stepmother, I figured teaching would at least let me build a place for myself within the pack. However, on my fourteenth birthday, my father killed that dream just like all of my others. Waiting for me once again at the bottom of the stairs, the Chief informed me that I was no longer a student at the village school.

  The ensuing shouting match woke Cricket and my one-year-old brother, the latter of whom soon drowned out my arguments with wordless complaints of his own. In my anger, I shifted into wolf form and fled to the woods, but I eventually came home hungry, my tail between my legs. My father was waiting at the door in his own fur form, and his reproving bite on the top of my muzzle wasn’t the ceremonial chastisement most alphas would use against an erring underling. Instead, the Chief’s teeth broke through my skin, and I picked at the scabs in human form for days thereafter.

  The scabs were what finally pushed me over the edge and made me decide to leave the pack. “A werewolf can’t survive alone,” Cricket had told me months earlier when I sobbed on her shoulder about my hatred of Haven, and I’d believed her then. But I was starting to realize that my wolf couldn’t survive within my father’s pack either. It was quite normal for young males to leave the village and hunt down another pack in order to court unrelated females, and teenage girls sometimes spent time in the outside world as well, so the possibility was there. But only if I could learn to control my shifts.

  So I began to hunt down the root of my uncontrollable changes to wolf form. Whenever I could slip away, I would retreat into the woods and practice shifting for hours, until my legs were so wobbly with the effort that they could barely carry me home. Out of spite, I maintained the illusion of being out of control around my father, but by the time I was sixteen, my wolf and I were acting more like a team and less like two duelists. As I practiced, I came to the conclusion that any unpleasant emotion could trigger the shift; even seeing a ball flying toward me out of the corner of my eye was sometimes enough to make the wolf pull out her fur to protect us both. So I worked on proving to my wolf that I could take care of myself, and I also learned to smooth over my emotions, even during that time of the month when they were especially hard to control.

  I’m sure that Cricket knew what was happening, but she didn’t tell my father, and he was oblivious to anything that didn’t impact his iron control over Haven’s pack. Just learning to work with, rather than against, my wolf gave me a bit of peace, and I drifted through my restrictive life for most of my sixteenth year, not sure I really needed to leave the pack after all. Then my father’s eye came back around to his wayward daughter.

  When I walked down the stairs on the morning of my seventeenth birthday and found my father waiting on the landing, I couldn’t resist thinking that perhaps the Chief had thespian aspirations. Why else would he always pin me down on the morning of my birthday? Unless—depressing thought—that was the only day my father could be bothered to spend a minute thinking about his disappointing middle child.

  “What now?” I demanded, deciding to go on the defensive even as I sought to still the wolf inside me. My period had begun the day before, and the wolf was more awake than usual inside my body, making the dim house seem brighter and the sound of my father’s harsh breathing louder. I reminded my canine half that I had everything under control, that shifting to fur would do neither of us any good, and she quieted, although my senses didn’t diminish.

  My father ignored my argumentative opening and merely said, “You’re old enough to give me grandchildren.” Then he turned on his heel, content in his knowledge that he’d laid down the law and I would obey his orders. But there was no way I was going to give the Chief the illusion of implicit consent by letting a statement like that stand, so I called out to him before he could leave.

  “What, you’re saying I need to get married?” I asked, my voice turning shrill despite my best efforts. “When? Today? And with whom? I assume you already have my future husband picked out?” I was livid from this latest assault on my independence, and I could feel the fur starting to poke out through my skin despite my silent requests for my wolf to settle. Even though my father hadn’t allowed me to continue studying to be a schoolteacher, I’d assumed the Chief would leave me alone as long as I did enough around the house to prevent Cricket from complaining about my laziness. Apparently I was wrong.

  My father didn’t even turn back to look at me, nor did he grace me with a reply, but I could feel my mind beginning to twist as it worked to obey the alpha wolf’s orders. The more specific an alpha’s demands were, the less leeway a pack wolf had to work around their leader’s command—our biology just wouldn’t let us disobey the alpha. It was then, while I struggled with my own body to squash my sudden urge to choose a mate, that I finally understood that while I was living under my father’s roof, I would never be able to follow my own path. So I did the unthinkable and broke the alpha’s hold over me.

  “I’m not getting married,” I said slowly and coldly, and wasn’t surprised at all when the Chief stopped in his tracks, although the pack leader still didn’t turn to face me. “I’m leaving today, and I’m never coming back.”

  The words seemed to float in the dim air for minutes while my father and I stood, frozen by my insolence.
Then the Chief began to laugh, and I felt the first ache of packlessness in my stomach. “Go,” he said, when his chuckles finally receded. “I’ll be glad to see the back of you. But don’t let your wolf be seen by a human or I’ll come kill you myself.”

  And, still without looking me in my face, my father strode out of the room and out of my life. That morning, I hitched a ride to another state, found a forest large enough to hide my wolf, and set into action the chain of events that led to mauling that poor little girl ten years ago...and to saving Melony today. I was packless by choice.

  THE MEMORY HAD PULLED me so deep into the past that I felt like I was wakening from a dream when I opened my eyes back onto the camping scene in front of me. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but the bond that held the human family together was even clearer than before. Mr. Carr stroked his wife’s damp hair, Melony nestled down into the cavity between the two parental bodies, and Mrs. Carr sat up enough to open her air passages and sing a quiet lullaby, her hand circling over her daughter to embrace both husband and child. As I stood in the chilly drizzle, I could imagine the emotional and physical warmth of the family’s hug, but after remembering both the seductive embrace and the strict rules of my own pack, the vision only made me feel colder.

  Behind me, I could hear car doors banging shut as my co-workers finally headed home. A screech owl called mournfully in the woods, and I thought the rain had begun to fall harder, then I realized the water dripping down my face was tears.

  With twenty-twenty hindsight, I now wished I’d put up with the status quo and stayed in Haven. I wished I’d agreed to marry young and turn into a baby machine, to bow my head when my husband entered the room and to forget my big dreams of finding my own way in the world. I hadn’t known then that the outside world was so cold and lonely. I hadn’t known anyone without a wolf clawing at their insides would inevitably stay a stranger.

  But my vision at seventeen had been clouded by youth, and I’d chosen to leave the only pack I could ever belong to. As my stepmother would say, I’d made my bed, and now I had to lie in it. With one final sigh, I turned away from the lantern-lit scene to head home to my empty cabin and my cold quilt.

  Chapter 4

  I dreamed about Wolfie. He was chasing me through the woods, and I should have been terrified of the huge alpha wolf on my trail. Instead, my dream self was playful and laughing as she eluded the canine, pausing once to rub up against his side and lick his face. Perhaps because of the confusing dream, I woke to an even worse ache in my stomach and to one word on my mind. Packless.

  I couldn’t miss work since I’d already taken the previous morning off, but a little luck was waiting for me at the nature center. At our morning staff meeting, I learned that one of the back-country cabins an eight hour hike into the wilderness area needed repairs, and I quickly volunteered to do the honors. Carrying fifty pounds of camping gear and tools down the trail wasn’t necessarily my idea of fun, but the task meant I could spend three days away from civilization: three days when I wouldn’t have to look over my shoulder fearing that Wolfie had tracked me down, three days when I wouldn’t have to make inane conversation with my co-workers and pretend to be human, three days to think.

  And, at first, the choice seemed to have been a good one. The straps of my pack creaked like the lines on a sailboat as the bulky parcel swayed with my steps, lulling me into a meditative state. Meanwhile, the sun was out and the scent of fallen leaves underfoot reminded me of simpler years. By the time I’d turned twelve, life in our werewolf pack was difficult, but childhood as a wolfling was bliss. I wasn’t able to shift forms at that age, but my mind was more than half wolf as I stalked prey in the woods above our settlement. My sister Brooke and I played for hours, only coming home when our mother yelled up the hillside toward us that dinner was ready.

  But then Mom had died giving birth to our little brother, a bloodling who had emerged in wolf form and had torn our mother apart from the inside out. My father drowned the tiny wolf in the duck pond, and before long, I had a stepmother, a little brother, and a father who treated me to birthday-morning orders that sucked every ounce of freedom out of my life.

  I shook the unwanted memories away and tried to pay attention to my surroundings. I’d already crested the ridge that marked the halfway point between the nature center and the cabin, and now I was following a boulder-lined stream that filled the air with the sound of running water. As I looked down the trail, appreciating the fall colors, I paused at the sight of a man’s form resting on a log by the side of the path. Although the human seemed to be napping with his broad-brimmed hat pulled down over his face, the unmistakable scent of wolf drifted into my nose from all sides, and I could feel my adrenaline kick back in. I was as distant from my wolf brain as was possible at that moment, so such strong odors meant there were several wolves around and that they were close by. Trouble.

  “Don’t you want to say hello to your old man?” the figure called without looking up. I should have been relieved that this was a family reunion, not the ambush by Wolfie’s pack that I’d been expecting ever since my trip to the city the day before. But, if anything, the sight of my father was even less welcome than an invasion by Wolfie’s pack would have been. I unclasped the waist buckle of my backpack and let the mass fall to the trail so I’d be ready to run, but the Chief had anticipated my retreat. A dozen wolves stepped out of the trees behind me and advanced, herding me toward the father I’d escaped ten years before.

  Father had straightened to a sit by the time I reached him, and he patted the log in invitation, but merely shrugged when I chose to remain standing. He looked exactly the same as he had ten years ago, and his commanding presence wasn’t dimmed in the slightest by the fact that his face was a foot lower than mine as I stood over him. I trembled as the breath of a wolf blew hot against the back of my legs, then almost laughed when I realized that I was terrified, for once, of someone else’s wolf rather than of my own. Another stray thought reminded me that Wolfie, despite his strangeness, had been a perfect gentleman the day before. In contrast, the alpha who was my father preferred fear tactics over subtlety.

  “Father,” I acknowledged once I had gathered myself enough to speak. Even though I had safely yelled at the pack leader as a teenager, I had a feeling that any lack of respect now would be met with harsh repercussions, so I bowed my head even though I felt anything but submissive. I could tell my father liked the gesture even more because of my resentment, and his eyes took on the mischievous sparkle that I understood most women in our pack found irresistible. I detested it.

  “Little Terra, all grown up,” the Chief said pleasantly, once my single word had been allowed to sit in the autumn air long enough to be swallowed up by the rushing water of the creek. “I’ve missed you,” he continued flatly.

  I couldn’t prevent myself from sending my father a shocked look in response to that profession of affection. Was I misremembering the Chief’s farewell warning a decade ago? I’d thoroughly believed then that the alpha was willing to kill his own daughter if she made his life difficult, and I saw no reason to change my mind now. So why would my father want to pretend to have missed me?

  Even though the memory only took seconds to rush through my mind, my father was apparently bored with my reverie, so he continued without waiting for a reply. “You’ve had enough running around time,” he intoned, making me wonder if perhaps today was my birthday and I’d somehow missed the date. This forced meeting and command felt like those other birthday ambushes, and the similarity was only accentuated when the Chief continued to speak. “It’s time to come home,” he proclaimed, and I could instantly feel my limbs moving to obey his thinly veiled command. The alpha smirked at the agonized expression on my face, then he added, “Unless....”

  I took a deep breath to calm my stuttering heart, then drew my father out the way he clearly intended for me to do. “What do you need from me?” I asked.

  “Well, since you’re offering,” my fathe
r began, “An old man like me needs an heir.”

  SO WE’RE BACK ON THE grandchildren train, I couldn’t help thinking, before blurting out, “What about Ethan?” By the time I’d left home, my spoiled-rotten half-brother had been good for only one thing, in my opinion—to keep Father’s attention safely away from me and Brooke. Ethan had been four years old at the time, and the little despot already seemed to be growing into his future role as alpha. Now he’d be...I added up the years in my mind...fourteen. Just old enough to shift into wolf form and make everyone else’s lives miserable with those teen-wolf temper tantrums. Unless.... “Cricket isn’t a halfie!” I exclaimed.

  If I hadn’t been so focused on surviving, I would have been proud of the way my words broke through my father’s cold exterior. His reaction was just an angry twitch in one cheek, but it was there. “Your stepmother, unfortunately, does not appear to have come from the quality bloodlines we’d once thought,” the Chief confirmed. “Ethan is no use to me as meat.”

  The words were like a slap. Yes, the kid was annoying, but using the slur “meat” for the son of a werewolf, even if he would never shift, was extreme. Somewhere beneath his alpha exterior, I’d always assumed my father harbored an ounce of compassion for his favorite child, if not for the rest of us. It seemed I’d been wrong about a lot of things.

  I would have to worry about Ethan later, though. If my stepmother was a half-breed descendant of a werewolf and a human, that meant any other sons she’d borne would have a 50% chance of being “meat,” while 50% of her daughters would be halfies like herself with the same tendency to produce human sons. I had no clue if I had other little half-siblings running around, but from my father’s expression, it was clear none of them would make the cut as his precious heir.