Chapter 31 CHAPTER 31
White fur.
On my hands.
My hands that were perfectly normal five seconds ago now had white fur sprouting out of them like I was some kind of science experiment gone horribly wrong.
I screamed louder.
"Sera, breathe, you need to breathe," Aunt Kelly was in front of me, holding my furry hands and that should have been comforting but it made everything worse because she wasn't shocked.
Nobody in this room was shocked.
They were just... waiting.
Like this was a show and I was the main attraction.
My chest caved in. Not the fur, not the wolf, not any of this supernatural nonsense, no, my lungs simply stopped working.
I remembered this horrible feeling.
The last time it happened, I was thirteen and a police officer was at our door telling my mother that they'd found my father's body. She collapsed but I just stood there, breathing in and getting nothing out.
The doctors called it a panic attack.
I called it my soul trying to leave my body.
"She's hyperventilating, give her space!" Aunt Kelly yelled but I could barely hear her over the roaring in my ears.
"The shift is beginning, we need to monitor—"
"Get out!" Aunt Kelly's voice cracked through the room so hard the windows rattled. "Every single one of you, out of my house. Now!"
"Kelly, the council has a right to—"
"I said GET OUT! That is my niece, not your experiment! You can write your reports when she's not dying on my living room floor!"
Footsteps. Scrambling. The door closing loudly.
But I didn't care about any of them because something was happening to my hand.
The fur was spreading up my wrist and underneath it, my bones were moving.
Not breaking.
Moving.
Like someone had reached inside my arm and was rearranging the furniture.
“No no no, make it stop!”
"Sera, I'm going to be right here the whole time. You are not alone, do you hear me?"
I heard her but I couldn't respond because my fingers were shortening.
I watched them — my fingers, the ones that held pens and solved equations and typed messages to Naomi — they were pulling into themselves, the nails thickening, darkening, curving into something that was not a human hand anymore.
"Sabrina," I gasped, "please make it stop."
"I can't. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry but I can't stop it now."
She sounded like she was crying too.
My other hand went next and I fell off the sofa because I couldn't grip anything anymore. My palms weren't palms, they were paws and the word alone made me want to throw up but I couldn't because my jaw was moving.
Oh God, my jaw.
The crack was loud enough to fill the room and Aunt Kelly grabbed my head and put it on her lap and just held me.
"I know baby, I know. It's the worst part. It'll pass, I promise you it'll pass."
It didn't pass. It got worse.
My jaw pushed forward, slowly and I screamed, no, howled, the sound that came out of my throat was not mine, it was something raw and wounded and strange.
"Make it stop!" I begged but who was I begging? God? Aunt Kelly? My dead father who pumped drugs into my soul to prevent exactly this?
My spine arched and I heard every vertebra click, one by one, like someone cracking their knuckles except it was my entire back and the pain was so white hot that my vision went blank.
There was nothing.
Just pain.
My legs went last.
The sound of my femur reforming is something I will hear in my nightmares for the rest of my life. Both of them, one after the other, and I felt my feet disappear into something compact and clawed.
Fur was everywhere now. White, thick, covering every inch of skin that used to be mine.
And then, as suddenly as it started, the pain stopped.
Just like that.
“What?” I gasped, but I was in my head? This made zero sense but I was where the wolf was earlier.
But it was like someone turned off a switch and the agony was replaced by nothing.
No.
Not nothing.
Everything.
I could hear Aunt Kelly's heartbeat. Not just hear it — feel it, like a bass drum pressed against my new ears. I could hear Edgar and Tori upstairs, their breathing, their whispered conversation about me.
I could hear the elder outside on his phone, reporting to someone. His exact words: "The half-blood shifted. Yes, fully. White wolf, crescent mark. She's the one.”
Who?
I could smell the food Kelly had cooked three hours ago, each ingredient separated and identified by a nose that was no longer limited to human capabilities.
I could smell Aunt Kelly's tears. Salt and fear and love, all mixed together.
And I could see.
Even though the curtains were drawn and the lights were dim, everything was sharp. Edges I never noticed. Dust particles floating in light beams. The texture of the carpet beneath my... paws.
Paws.
I had paws.
"Easy," Sabrina's voice was clear now, no fog, no wall between us. "We shouldn't try to stand yet."
I tried to stand.
My legs buckled immediately and my chin hit the carpet.
Graceful.
"I literally just said—"
I tried again. Front legs first. They wobbled like a newborn giraffe and I would have laughed at myself if I still had a mouth that could laugh.
Slowly, painfully slowly, I got all four legs underneath me. The balance was all wrong. I had four points of contact with the ground instead of two and my brain couldn't figure out the math of walking anymore.
The irony of a math genius not being able to figure out four legs was not lost on me.
One step. Another. My back legs weren't cooperating with my front legs and I stumbled sideways into the coffee table, sending a vase crashing to the floor.
"Sorry Aunt Kelly," I tried to say but what came out was a whine.
A whine.
I made a dog sound.
"You're doing beautifully," Aunt Kelly said, and then I heard her bones crack.
I spun around — too fast, my tail, I have a tail, knocked something else off the table — and where my aunt stood a second ago was a wolf.
Brown. Large. Warm eyes that were exactly Kelly's eyes in a face that was not Kelly's face.
She walked towards me slowly, like she'd done this a thousand times, and pressed her body against mine.
I think it was the wolf equivalent of a hug and something inside me, something that had been clenched tight since my father died, released.
Sabrina was purring. A low rumble in my chest that I didn't initiate but couldn't stop.
Kelly's wolf rubbed her head under my chin and I stood there, on four shaky legs, being held by the only family that rescued me.
Well, she had lied about everything. But she was here.
We stayed like that for a while. I don't know how long.
Eventually, Kelly shifted back. The cracking sounds were faster for her, practiced, easy. In seconds she was human again, wrapping herself in the robe she'd left on the sofa.
"Okay sweetheart, your turn. Just think about your human body. Picture your hands, your face. Sabrina will help you."
I pictured my hands. My human hands. The ones with fingers and nails that didn't curve into weapons.
Nothing happened.
I pictured harder. My face. My hair. My legs.
Nothing.
"Sabrina?"
"I'm trying! I don't know how! We've never done this before!"
"Sera, it's okay, just relax and—"
Relax? RELAX? I'm stuck as a wolf in my aunt's living room with white fur and a tail and I can hear the neighbour's television three houses away and she wants me to RELAX?
My heart began racing. The panic clawing back up my throat except this time it came with a howl that shattered whatever was left of Kelly's good china.
"Oh no," Sabrina whispered.
I couldn't shift back.