Chapter 302

Chapter 302

Alex's POV

"Don't explain it, don't justify it, just tell me if there is a good enough reason for what you did because I have been trying to think of one for days and I cannot find it."

I looked at her and her face was wet. She was shaking and glowing and furious and frightened all at once, standing barefoot in the trainers she hadn't tied, in the middle of a dark forest, wrapped in her own arms.

"There isn't one," I said.

She blinked.

"There is no reason good enough," I said.

"I made a decision in a moment of panic that I had no right to make. I told myself it was to protect you and that was true but it was not the whole truth. The whole truth is that I acted without thinking about what it would cost you and I have not stopped thinking about that since."

I paused. "I am sorry, Caitlin I know that doesn't fix it. I know sorry doesn't give you back the choice I took from you. But I mean it."

The silence between us lasted a long moment then her body seized.

She gasped and bent forward, one hand going to her spine, and I stepped toward her instinctively.

"It's coming," She gritted out. "Right now-"

"Don't fight it, remember what I said."

"It hurts-"

"I know, let it breathe out."

She cried out, a short sharp sound, and her knees hit the ground. I crouched beside her, close but not touching, because I knew from experience that contact during a first shift could make it harder to let the body take over.

"Keep breathing," I said. "You're doing it. You're right in it, just keep going."

Her back arched, her hands went flat on the ground, fingers spread, and I watched her nails darken and lengthen into claws, pressing into the soft earth. She made a sound that was not quite human and not quite anything else yet, caught somewhere between the two.

"Alex," She gasped.

"I'm here," I said. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."

Her spine shifted visibly beneath her shirt. Her shoulders broadened. She cried out again, louder this time, the sound swallowed up by the trees around us. Her hair fell forward over her face and her whole frame shook violently, muscles moving beneath her skin in ways that made my jaw tighten to watch.

Then the change took over completely.

It moved through her fast, faster than I expected for a first shift, and in less than a minute the girl kneeling on the ground in front of me was gone.

In her place was a wolf. I sat back on my heels and stared.

White. Completely white, not a single dark hair anywhere on her coat. She was large, larger than most turned wolves on their first shift, which meant nothing yet but would mean something later. She stood on four legs in the clearing and shook herself once, hard, like she was settling into her own skin.

Then she turned her head and looked at me.

Gold eyes. The same gold from her human form, the same light behind them, but calmer now. The panic was gone. Her breathing had slowed to something deep and even.

"There you are," I said quietly.

She held my gaze for one long moment. Then she turned away from me and moved into the trees.

I stayed by the car and listened.

I heard her moving through the undergrowth, fast and sure-footed in a way that surprised me for a first shift. Then further out, deeper into the trees, the sounds of something being chased. A short struggle. Silence.

I sat on the bonnet of the SUV and waited and looked up at what I could see of the sky between the branches.

She came back twenty minutes later, emerging from the treeline at a steady walk. There was blood on her muzzle and her white coat was muddy at the paws. She walked to the edge of the clearing and then stopped, and I watched her body begin to tremble again.

The shift back was always harder than the first one.

I stood up and moved to the treeline and turned my back without being asked, giving her what privacy I could. I heard the sounds behind me, the same sounds she had made going in but in reverse, and then a sharp exhale, and then silence.

"Okay," She said her voice was rough and exhausted.

I turned around.

She was on the ground, curled on her side in the mud and the leaves, her eyes half closed, her body completely spent. I shook out the blanket I had been holding since we left the house and crouched down and draped it over her, tucking it around her shoulders, pulling it down over her legs.

She pulled it tighter without opening her eyes.

I sat down in the dirt beside her and rested my arms on my knees and looked out at the trees.

"White," I said, after a while.

"What?" she murmured.

"Your wolf. She's white." I paused. "That's rare. I've only seen it once before in my entire life."

Caitlin didn't respond for a long moment. When she spoke her voice was already half asleep.

"Of course it is," She said quietly. "Nothing about this could just be normal."

I almost smiled.

I didn't. But I almost did.

I stayed beside her until she was fully asleep, and then I sat in the dark at the edge of the forest and kept watch, and did not move until the first grey light of morning started to come through the trees.