Chapter 1
Poppy.
Timidly, I walk through the woods, the night air feeling cool against my warm skin. I continue to walk slower, maintaining my distance from the rest of my pack. I search for a good place to hide so I can remove my clothes without anyone seeing me before attempting to shift into my wolf. I’m nervous that my wolf will not manifest tonight. I’ve always been seen as different from the others, being an Omega witch and all. If my wolf doesn’t come tonight, the pack will bully me for being without a wolf.
I find a small cove behind some bushes and begin to take off my clothes. I freeze when I hear the sound of footsteps against the ground and laughter in the air. My stomach tightens as I patiently wait to hear if they are walking toward me. Relief flows through me when the laughter begins to fade in the distance, and their footsteps head in a different direction.
I take notice that my senses are heightened more than they usually are, and I eagerly hope that my wolf will appear to me. Removing the last bit of clothing, I stare up into the sky and look at the moon. I smile, for it’s a full moon on my seventeenth birthday, which I take as a blessing from the Moon Goddess.
Echoes of fellow pack members shifting into their wolves travel through the night air as I wait for the pain to start and my bones to break as they start the shift. My heart races as the adrenaline builds up inside me. A shiver travels down my spine just as I cry out in anguish and hear the sound of the first bone inside me begin to crack. My eyes fill with tears as I collapse to the ground on all fours while the shift tortures my body.
My grandmother warned me about the pain, but never did I think it would be this much. After what seems like a lifetime of pain and torture, a small sigh of relief travels through me as my wolf finally emerges and shakes out her fur.
Timidly, I walk over to a small pond filled with water and take a look at my reflection. My eyes widen as my mouth drops a little. My wolf is everything I could hope her to be. With her black fur and silver eyes, she is majestic. She is grander in size than most of the other wolves in the pack, not nearly as large as an Alpha wolf, but she comes pretty close.
My wolf lifts her head to the sky and lets out an intense howl toward the moon. I am giddy with excitement at how beautiful my wolf is. Being an Omega witch, our wolves are different from others. They are powerful beings and can come off as terrifying and feared by others.
Wanting to see how fast she can run, we take off through the woods; the trees are nothing more than a blur as she races past them. She is faster than I anticipate and shocks me as she takes a significant leap into the air over a giant bushel of bushes and out into the wide-open field.
I sense the other wolves from my pack nearby and ask her to slow down so that we won’t intimidate the other wolves around us. But she doesn’t listen; she seems headstrong as she wants to flaunt her strength and abilities for others to see.
I try to explain our place within the pack to her, but she doesn’t understand. She can only see the power that we possess and see us as being unique. We should be appreciated for our talent, not cast away and looked down upon. She senses my anxiety and slows down. I’m appreciative that my wolf respects my emotions and tries not to overpower me. She stills when a peculiar scent fills our nostrils and takes over our senses.
My wolf lets out a howl and starts racing through the night. I try to ask her where she is going, but she refuses to answer. A part of me thinks she is unsure of what she is truly looking for. I start to sense the other wolves running through the woods around us and begin to grow concerned with what my wolf is attempting to do. My heart is racing as I try to tell her we need to stop before something happens, but she will not listen.
She is on a mission, and nothing will stop her until she finds what she is looking for. I try to regain control of my senses and shift back into my human form, but she will not let me.
A cold chill travels down the spine, causing the fur on our back to stand on end. My stomach felt as if it was tying up in knots, not knowing what was going to happen. I try one last time to gain control of my wolf when we collide with another wolf. The moment I caught his scent, I knew who it was. My wolf cried out in my head that he was our mate. I could feel myself go completely white, as if my blood was drained right out of me. I shook my head. My wolf was wrong; she didn’t know who we had collided with, and she had to be mistaken.
A ferocious growl was heard across the forest as I looked up in fear and saw the Alpha’s golden eyes staring down at me. His eyes are filled with anger and hate, while he continues to growl at us with his teeth in a vicious snarl and stands in a defensive pose with his hair raised and ready to attack. My wolf lets out a whine, but the Alpha growls back. My heart races as I quickly put the pieces together.
Our mate doesn’t sense us.
The stories that my grandmother told me about an ancient curse that was cast upon us fill my head. The Alpha takes the first move and jumps into the air, landing on our back. He attempts to wrap his teeth around the back of our neck. I tell my wolf that we need to submit, but she refuses. She is hurt that our mate does not recognize us.
Our eyes start to glow as she chants something in my head in a language I wasn’t familiar with. A burst of wind shifts all around us and pushes the Alpha away from us, forcing everyone around us to fall to the ground.
I scream to my wolf, “RUN,” which she does as quickly as she can before any of them have a chance to come after us. My wolf runs all the way back to the place that we had shifted and allows me to come back to my human form. The tears are falling without my control as I quickly pull my clothes back on. I sit down on the ground, bringing my knees to my chest while rocking myself as I continue to allow the tears to fall.
I shake my head as I make a promise to myself from this day forward that I will never allow anyone to see my wolf again.