Some disturbing news had been brought to my attention as well. Now that I had survived the change, Trina thought it fair that I know just how rare Changed actually were. She estimates that there are probably about five Changed werewolves in the United States. She reminded me that most humans died during the attack, and most who survived that, died during the Change. They apparently had kept that fact from me to keep me from losing any hope about surviving. I suddenly had a better understanding of Simone’s comments in the locker room. She wasn’t just being a pain in my ass; she honestly hadn’t expected me to survive because, so few ever did. I hope to be there when she finds out I made it, just to see the look on her smug face. To let her know that yes, I’m still here, and yes, Kodi was still mine. Kodi. I looked across the table at him now. Trina had done most of the educating while he seemed to just watch me, as if trying to gauge my reaction to all that I was being informed of.
So far I hadn’t really heard anything outrageous and the only comment I might have had was how great it’d have been if Simone had been born into Moki’s pack, but then again, I wouldn’t wish her on anyone. I turned to find Kodi still watching me.
“I’m fine,” I laughed. “Stop waiting for me to have a mental breakdown.” He let out a sigh of relief and smiled. I reached for his hand that rested atop the table and gave it a squeeze which he returned. Truth be told, I was rather excited to be a part of all of this. I’m considering it as a fresh start.
I managed to scarf down three bowls of stew and like magic, after each bowl I felt the soreness in my bones and muscles ebb away. I wondered if the need for protein was how Maggie had come up with the recipe in the first place. Now that I was beginning to feel like myself again, I realized that it was more than that. It was like my body was buzzing or humming with energy.
“Does anyone else feel that?” I asked. Everyone looked at me.
“Feel what?” Kodi ask with an air of concern.
“It’s like a tingling under my skin,” I replied in wonder. Trina smiled and Stephen laughed.
“That’s the moon. You’ll feel it until you shift, but since it’s your first night, you might as well get used to it,” he smirked.
“What do you mean?” I asked with a furrowed brow.
Kodi leaned into me and said, “It takes a bit to control the change at first, it could be a few weeks before you can change at will.”
My confusion grew. “Didn’t I change earlier?” I couldn’t be sure of course, when I lost consciousness, I had been human and the same was true when I had regained it. Maybe I hadn’t shifted at all.
“Yes, you did. It was quick, though. You were a wolf for maybe two seconds. Even your clothes hadn’t been destroyed. That’s why I’d thought…” Kodi let his sentence trail off but we all knew what he was going to say.
“You’d thought I was dead,” I finished for him.
Trina cleared her throat, “When a werewolf dies, they revert to human form.” That explained the pain I’d heard in Kodi’s voice.
“I’d like to try, if that’s alright?” I looked to their faces for any objections but thankfully found none.
“This is going to be interesting,” said Stephen excitedly. I wasn’t sure what he’d meant by that, but I was confident that I was about to find out.
Once the dishes were cleared everyone headed upstairs to change clothes. Stephen and Kodi changed into basketball shorts which Kodi seemed to own plenty of. Trina came out of her and Jack’s room wearing a beautiful white terrycloth tube dress. I’d seen people use them as towels after swimming and they seemed pretty convenient because you didn’t have to occupy hands to hold it around you. She held a bag out to me which took while looking at her expectantly.
“I figured you would need one. I picked it up last week, I hope you don’t mind the color,” she said with a knowing smile. I opened the bag and found a matching dress the same as hers only it was a larger size and the color was purple. Kodi must have told her it was my favorite color, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if his mother was just that intuitive.
Thanking her, I went into the bathroom and changed. My reflection showed me that it didn’t look as bad as I’d thought it would. Obviously, I didn’t compare to the sharp beauty that was Mrs. Barrett, but I didn’t look like Barney, so that was a plus. I came out of the bathroom to find Kodi waiting for me in the hallway. He smiled before leaning in for a quick kiss. I returned it and thought he was going to draw back but he only rested his forehead against mine.
“Thank you for coming back,” he whispered.
I laid a kiss to his forehead before whispering back, “Thank you for bringing me back.”
With that, we descended the stairs and on our way to the back door in the kitchen we passed a clock which informed me that it was nearing midnight.
More time had passed between now and when I’d left the group home than I’d originally thought. Sunset had been five hours ago.
Once we were all outside, we stood in a triangle, Kodi next to me with his hand in mine.
“You look beautiful,” he said softly.
“So, do you,” I said with a laugh. I’d meant it though. He always looked beautiful to me but I could easily say that I much rather enjoyed seeing him in nothing but shorts than fully dressed. Every warm-blooded female would probably agree with me, but thankfully, it appeared so far to be my solo privilege.
“Alright,” Trina began in her no-nonsense tone which I was beginning to know as her “teacher-tone”.
“Stephen, you go first. Try to make it as slow as possible. Meghan, the odds are against you as far as learning to Change on your first night as Changed. I’ve only heard stories of wolves that were able to do that and they lived long ago and were born to be Alphas. I’m not trying to discourage you, I just don’t want you to be upset if you can’t do it. It’s completely normal if you can’t,” she said. I nodded and Stephen approached the center of the triangle.
“Once you get the hang of it, it only takes a second or two to focus. You kind of just will yourself into shifting, for lack of a better word. Imagining becoming a wolf could help too,” Stephen shrugged and right before my eyes, I witnessed again what I had seen twice before with Kodi.
Stephen’s eyes glowed gold and his body slowly contorted. Muscles moved, bones cracked, but it wasn’t a sickening crack. It was even slighter than cracking your knuckles and I was thankful for that. I never wanted to feel my bones breaking again. It was the worst part about my Change, and I’d refuse to ever shift if I’d had to endure it a second time. After all, I’d barely survived the first.
Moments later, Stephen’s light brown wolf looked up at me with gold eyes and it was as if all of the information I’d gathered about him from my wolf at Stephen’s request, was shoved to the forefront of my mind and I didn’t even have to go searching for it. That was when I realized it. There was no me and my wolf, no us. It was just me now. We were finally one. I could still see Stephen in those black pupils rimmed with glowing gold. I’d been meaning to ask about that.
“Trina?”
“Yes, dear?”
“How does the eye color work for wolves? Simone, Jack and Stephen have gold eyes, but Kodi has silver. Why?” I asked and felt Kodi’s gaze on me.
“The eye color of your wolf form has nothing to do with what color your eyes are naturally. Most are gold, some are silver. Very few other colors have been known to occur. My grandfather on my mother’s side had brown eyes. It rarely differs from gold or silver though,” she said.
I took that into consideration. I don’t know why, but I didn’t want gold eyes. I knew it was petty and that Stephen and Jack were like family to me, but I just didn’t want anything in common with Simone. I wondered if it helped or hindered my chances of not having gold eyes since my eyes were so close to gold already. Auburn wasn’t really that far of a stretch.
“Kodi, did you by chance see my eye color in the few seconds that I was a wolf?” I asked and I feared the answer.
<
br /> “No. You were unconscious, so I didn’t get a look, I’m sorry,” he said.
I nodded in acceptance. “Okay, who’s next?” I asked in an attempt to change the subject.
Kodi smirked. “You are.” My attention snapped back to him in surprise.
“We are going to stay human so that we can better control the situation should anything go wrong,” Trina explained. Go wrong? What could go wrong? I decided not to ask because no one seemed to be actually concerned or worried. I took that as a positive sign.
“Alright. So just do what Stephen said?” I asked and looked at him. He gave me a little whine and a happy pant.
“There aren’t many better ways to explain it, so yes. Focus. Strongly envision yourself transforming and for those moments, shut the rest of the world completely out,” she said and sounded just like she does when she’s teaching us in class, but I was the only one getting graded on this particular test. Taking a deep breath, I disentangled my hand from Kodi’s and stepped forward.
Looking up at the full moon, a giant and beautiful white orb in the dark night, I felt the buzzing in my blood intensify. I closed my eyes and tried to do what they’d told me to do. I focused. I willed my body to become what Stephen was now. I pictured dropping to all fours and becoming furry. I opened my eyes. Nothing happened.
I heaved a sigh of disappointment. I was really hoping it was going to work. I looked to Trina and Kodi and found them both looking at me sympathetically.
“It’s alright, Meghan.”
I looked at Kodi who had spoken. It wasn’t alright. I think he was part of the problem. I was so set on shifting because I wanted to show him that I could but also, I wanted to do it for me. I think the second reason was more important, and the first might have been what was hindering me. Saying nothing, I took several steps away from the group so that I faced the trees. They slowly swayed back and forth with the night’s wind and it felt good across my face. I looked up at the moon again. I felt the buzzing along my skin again. Stephen was right, it was the moon that was doing it. Moon-called. That was what Moki and the White Point pack considered us to be.
I realized that the humming sensation was energy. Energy could be harnessed or transferred. Was that how werewolf magic worked? I’d already failed once, what could it hurt to test the theory?
My feet firmly planted into the soft dirt; I closed my eyes once more. I felt the glow of the moon and imagined that the energy was being transferred into me by the buzzing in my veins and pushed that power toward the animal inside of me. We were one. All I wanted was to wear my other form. I saw it in my mind’s eye. The moon sent its energy into me and I collected it before slamming it forward at the moon.
You know that feeling you get when you’re on a rollercoaster that’s going incredibly fast? When everything falls away and your body feels completely different for those few moments where you don’t seem to exist in the normal realm? That was the sensation I felt in that moment. When I came back to myself, I realized that I was lying on the ground. Had I been knocked down or fallen? I opened my eyes blinked away the blurriness that enveloped my vision. Immediately, I noticed that something was different. It was like looking at everything in high definition when you were used to regular television with a fuzzy connection. Even in the dark I could see every branch, every leaf on the trees that surrounded me. Looking at Trina, I saw all of the tiny strands of fabric that made up her terrycloth dress.
It was then that I noticed the expressions on their faces. Kodi and Trina were looking at me in shock and I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad. I looked down at my hands and found none. Paws covered in fur as black as the night itself lay underneath me.
Twenty
“Holy crap!” I tried to cry out, but nothing came out but a loud whine. I looked to Trina and Kodi for help as I tried to stand and stumbled backward. I didn’t try to get up again and instead focused on breathing because I was pretty sure even as a wolf, I was hyperventilating.
Why were they looking at me like that? Had something gone wrong or were they just surprised that I’d pulled it off? I don’t think anyone was more surprised that I was.
“Mom,” Kodi said.
“Yes, son?”
“Have you ever seen anything like that before?”
“No, son.”
I was happy that I understood what they were saying but wasn’t so happy about the words themselves. What did they mean they hadn’t seen anything like me? Had something gone wrong? Did I get stuck between human and wolf? I tried to ask again, and my panic had caused me to forget that I couldn’t speak so only another whine emerged. Stephen chose that moment to trot over to me. I had forgotten he was here. He stuck his giant head under mine and sort of chin-checked me. My first instinct was to growl at him but then I realized he was telling me to stand up. I looked back at Trina and Kodi who still wore masks of shock and didn’t know where to go from there.
“I’ve never seen a more beautiful wolf,” Kodi whispered.
Trina’s face broke into a smile. “She’s lovely,” she agreed. Were they talking about me? I had to assume so since I was the only other “she” present. I slowly attempted to stand for a second time. I managed to make it to my feet, but I had no idea how to walk with four of them. I took a couple of steps forward and really hoped that it would come naturally, and I wasn’t disappointed. I cautiously walked to Kodi and sat back on my haunches. I don’t think I’d ever get used to the fact that I now had haunches.
I looked up at Kodi and he kneeled down to run his hands over my fur. So that’s what it had felt like all of those times that I had done the same to him when I’d thought he was just a normal wolf. It felt absolutely pleasant. I pulled back to lick his hand before half-crawling into his lap and he laughed. Standing, he set me back on my feet carefully before taking a step back and in moments, he was wolf as well. He closed in on me and began licking all around my face or muzzle. My instincts told me that this was very affectionate, so I basked in the attention and my glory at successfully shifting on my first night as a werewolf. Take that, Simone.
Several things happened in the next two hours. The four of us ran all the way to the far side of the river where there was a salmon run that I hadn’t known about. We fished and played in the shallow water while snacking on fish we caught with our mouths and in wolf form, the raw fish tasted juicy and delicious. I caught three by myself and the others caught upwards of ten. It was one of the best nights of my life. There seemed to be a lot of those spent with Kodi and his family and I looked forward to many more.
Before we’d gone to bed, we’d all rushed into Jack’s room to tell him what had happened and the look of pride on his face at finding out that I’d managed to shift so soon had almost brought me to tears. Kodi had shifted back first and had taken a short video of me as a wolf with his cell phone so that he could show me what I looked like, before quickly deleting it. Nothing like that could ever surface on the internet for risk of exposure.
Kodi had been right. My wolf was beautiful. My fur was all black with a single strange white patch on my right shoulder. It was odd that it was on the same spot where Simone had bitten me, but I’d asked, and it really was only coincidence. I liked it, though. It was a reminder of how I came to be here with this people. My eyes, thankfully, were not gold. They were a rarely seen icy blue and I couldn’t be happier. None of the Barretts or Stephen had ever seen or heard of a wolf with blue eyes and I was proud to be the first.
Jack had also called Officer Travis Decker, who happened to be a member of the pack. I hadn’t met him because the only pack meeting, I had been to, he was on patrol and hadn’t been able to get away. He had two kids with his wife Kimberly, a pack member he’d met from White Point that had transferred over to ours when they’d first gotten together several years ago. Their children were under ten, so they had years before they went through their first Change, therefore didn’t attend pack meetings.
Officer Decker had taken over the call that
the group home had made to report me as AWOL and explained to them that everything was alright, and that I would be spending the night with the Barretts. I was grateful for the convenience and promised myself that I would thank the officer whenever I met him.
Kodi and I headed to his room and I was back in the blue basketball shorts and black t-shirt that I’d worn earlier by the time we went to bed.
As much as I would have loved to stay up and cuddle with Kodi, I was asleep by the time my head hit the pillow and it wasn’t long after that when the dream began.
I knew right away that it was Maggie. I’d worried that she wouldn’t come back now that I knew who she was but there she sat, on her log in front of her fire and she wasted no time.
“Sit, girlie, we haven’t much time,” she spoke urgently. I did as I was told as she continued.
“I know about that pack meeting tomorrow. You must wear the terrycloth dress, hide it under your clothes. Do not let anyone know that you can Change at will until the exact moment that you have to, and trust me when I say you’ll know the moment that I speak of,” she said sternly. Still reeling at what she was telling me, I watched as her face softened.
“I’m happy to see that you survived the Change. I knew you’d be strong enough,” she said with a smile.
“You can thank your grandson for that,” I replied. Her smile faded.
“Speak of the devil,” she said, and my brows creased in confusion. Before I could ask her what she meant, I followed her gaze which had strayed to just over my left shoulder. I found Kodi standing there with his eyes locked on Maggie in shock.
High School Bites Page 18
