CHAPTER 4
1392 Words
The woods swallowed me whole.
For days, I wandered without direction, without purpose, without anything except the clothes still clinging to my skin torn, dirty, stiff with dried blood. Some of it mine. Some of it Macbeth’s.
I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t face the town, the people, the consequences. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her face. Heard her scream. Felt my claws tearing through everything I once swore to protect.
The forest became my punishment.
The days blurred. Sunlight through the trees, shadows spreading long and thin, nights cold enough that my breath fogged the air. Hunger gnawed at me constantly, but survival instincts rose where human ones failed. I found fruit berries, apples from wild trees Pete once pointed out to me. I hunted small animals when the hunger became too sharp to ignore. Rabbits. A stray fox.
I hated myself for how natural it felt.
And even worse I hated how my new body didn’t seem to mind.
When I ran out of clothes entirely, I fashioned a crude wrap from a blanket I found hanging on the lower branches of a tree, probably left behind by a hiker or hunter months ago. The edges were torn, but it kept me decent, kept me slightly warmer.
Nights were the worst. The woods were too quiet. My thoughts too loud. I’d lie on the forest floor staring up at the stars, asking questions that never had answers.
Is this what I am now?
A beast?
A curse?
A murderer?
Sometimes I hoped the moon wouldn’t rise. That maybe it would spare me. But the moon didn’t care. And neither did the wolf inside me.
It was on the fourth or fifth night I’d lost track when everything changed.
The moon hung low between the trees, a sliver of cold silver. I crouched near a stream, washing dirt from my arms, when I sensed something behind me. Not an animal. Not prey. Something else. Someone else.
A twig snapped lightly.
I spun, instinct sharpening my senses in an instant.
A man stood several yards away, partially hidden by shadow. Tall, muscular, dressed in worn clothes, his hair long and tied back. His eyes reflected the moonlight the way mine had in the farmhouse window.
He didn’t move. He didn’t raise his hands. He simply watched me like he had been waiting.
“You’re a hard one to find,” he said calmly.
I stiffened. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Andre.” He stepped forward into the light with deliberate slowness. “And you’re not hiding as well as you think.”
I backed up. “Get away from me.”
He stopped, but he didn’t look afraid. He looked… understanding. Too calm. Too familiar.
“You don’t have to run,” he said. “I’m like you.”
“Like me?” My voice cracked with disbelief. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“Oh, I know more than you think.” He smiled the kind of smile someone gives when they’re trying not to scare a wounded animal. “You’re newly turned. I can smell it on you.”
Just hearing the words made my blood freeze.
I swallowed hard. “Stay back.”
“If I wanted to hurt you, you’d already be dead. You’re in no shape to fight.”
He was right. My legs shook, my stomach twisted with hunger, and my head felt like it was weighed down by a hundred stones. I’d been running for too long, surviving on instinct and guilt.
Andre took one more step. “Come with me. I’ve got food. Shelter. Clothes. A place to sleep.”
I stared at him, searching for lies in his face. But there was something genuine in his eyes. Something warm. Something I hadn’t felt from another person since Pete. Since Macbeth.
“Why would you help me?” I asked quietly.
“Because someone once helped me,” he said. “And because your eyes look the same way mine did when I turned. Lost. Alone. Terrified.”
My chest tightened at his words.
After a long moment, I nodded. Not because I trusted him completely, but because I was too tired to keep running.
He turned and walked ahead, motioning for me to follow. I trailed behind him cautiously, ready to bolt if anything felt wrong. But nothing did.
About twenty minutes later, we reached a shed nestled deep in the woods. It was larger than a simple tool shed more like a one room cabin built from rough logs. Smoke rose from a small chimney. Warm light flickered through the cracks.
“Home sweet home,” Andre said, pushing the door open.
The inside was simple: a cot, a table, shelves with jars of preserved food, a fireplace glowing with embers. There were clothes folded neatly on a wooden stool.
For the first time in days, I felt the warmth of a fire. The comfort of walls around me. The safety of someone who didn’t want me dead.
He tossed me a bundle of clothes. “Put these on before you freeze.”
I changed quickly. The clothes were worn but warm, fitting loosely against my thin, tired frame.
Andre stirred a pot over the fire. “Sit. Eat.”
I hesitated, then sat. The stew he handed me was rich, hot, and tasted like actual life. I inhaled it in minutes.
Andre watched me with a kind of quiet amusement. “You really have been running yourself into the ground.”
“You don’t know what I’ve done,” I murmured.
“That’s a story for when you’re ready,” he said gently. “Right now, what matters is that you’re alive.”
Alive.
Yeah. Barely.
After I finished eating, Andre settled across from me, leaning his back against the wall.
“So,” he said, “let’s talk about what you are.”
I tensed immediately.
“A werewolf,” he said plainly. “Same as me.”
“You say that like it's normal.”
“It is,for us.” His tone never wavered. “And you’re not the first hunter to turn. Or the first to be scared out of his damn mind.”
I dropped my gaze to the flames. “I didn’t want this.”
“None of us did.” Andre shrugged. “But here we are.”
He told me things that night truths no book, no legend, no whispered campfire story ever explained. How the change worked. How the instincts took over. How the human mind could learn control with enough discipline.
“You’ve got potential,” Andre said. “I saw it the moment I found you.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I know strength when I see it. I know pain too.” He paused. “And I know you’re meant for more than running like a scared animal in the woods.”
I didn’t know how to respond.
So I listened.
---
Days passed. Then weeks. Andre trained me physically, mentally, instinctually. Not how to kill. Not how to dominate. But how to control the storm inside me.
He taught me breathing techniques, sharpened my senses, showed me how to tune out overwhelming noises, how to identify scents, how to move silently and deliberately.
He became my mentor.
And unexpectedly my friend.
He’d laugh at how serious I always was. I’d roll my eyes at how effortlessly he shifted between stern instructor and annoying older brother.
He told me the pack existed the real pack, the one he belonged to. But I wouldn’t meet them until I completed something he called the “final test.”
“What’s the test?” I asked him one day.
“You’ll know when you’re ready,” he said with that mysterious half smile.
I hated how vague he always was. But at the same time… I trusted him.
For the first time since Pete died, since Macbeth died, since my entire life crumbled, I felt like I belonged somewhere. Like maybe I wasn’t just the monster I feared.
Maybe I could learn control.
Maybe I could learn forgiveness.
Maybe I could learn to live again.
And maybe, just maybe, meeting the pack would be the start of something new.
I couldn’t wait.
- Writer
