The Lycan Who Shouldn't Exist

CHAPTER 3

The Fullmoon ritual gatherings happen every two years. This is the first thing children were taught: they said it with respect and didn't ask questions about it until they were of age.

But by the time they are old enough to ask questions, they already know about it.

It is not an occasion people attend casually.

The Solcist community has held this tradition for as long as anyone can remember the three pack. One moon. One arena. And the three strongest beings.

The three elders—Oldman Vale, Oldman Wolfe and Oldman Ashford—will gather and build pressure outward. Raw wolf energy, layered and compressed, filling the field the way heat fills a closed room.

And under this pressure, those who are ready break through.

The first Wolf Awakened stage. For the first time, human and wolf fused, and remain in their wolf form. Some shape-shifts cleanly or badly depending on what you have been building since.

Once you shift, you remain in your wolf form till you attain another breakthrough 2nd wolf awakened stage, or you only become human during the full moon. In your wolf form, which is the 1st wolf awakened stage, no human reasoning, pure instinct, territorial and volatile.

Families prepare in weeks, practicing techniques, preparing restraints, coordinating with elders for containment.

Because sometimes the wolves that emerge are not manageable in anyway.and sometimes in the chaos of a full field and multiple shifting, families stretch thin and things go wrong.

Nobody told the children directly, but children listened to the edges of adult conversations and got some information and they understood.

Those who have already broken through spend some years trying to build control at some stretch, some remain as wolves for ever.

At the 2nd wolf awakened stage, you have no control over when you shift, but can control your mind to shift and change back, gain control of the human mind and can shift back to a human at any time. Unlike the 1st Wolf Awakened stage, who only shifts back to humans only on full moons and remains in wolf form.

Some get two breakthroughs in the full moon rituals. Those are the celebrated ones.

The proof that the system works, the preparation and discipline are compounded.

For those who have not shifted at all, that is sixteen and seventeen years, this is the time the community holds its breath for you.

Most families had already started preparations a month or two ago. The Vale family was not an exception.

This morning the sound changed in the Vale courtyard. Earlier morning and heavier footfall. Oldman came out to meet Selene, Nyra and Rowan in the courtyard doing some Body Tempering exercise. He brought out a scroll and handed it over to Rowan. “This is the family training arc let them use it. This will help keep their bodies tempered in that way they can break through the second stage.”

Every family has their own different methods and style of fighting, hunting and skill. The stronger your method is what differentiates families from strong to weak.

Rowan started training them: “To get over the 1st stage, wolf awakening depends on your ability to control your mind and to overshadow your wolf instincts. You have to tame your wolf, and you can't do that when your mind is lost, so the first step is to find your mind when you find it. Then taming the wolf becomes easy. If you finally get your wolf to surrender to you, then you break through to the second stage,” Rowan explained, the same with other families in their respective homes.

“Second, train your wolf's energy by fighting and hurting an intellectual beast. This is the best method and the fastest and strongest route as this helps stabilize your wolf,” Rowan continued, explaining, “And you know what happens to an unstable wolf you get stocked on stage until it stabilizes. In this family, our method covers all which makes it easier and better and makes our wolves stronger,” he taught.

Rowan ran Selene and Nyra through the sequence himself at dawn when the light is still deciding its color and the air still has its cold edge.

Selene follows the same sequence precisely and with the focus, she brought into everything unhurriedly, with her wolf almost visible to the skin. Anyone who has eyes can see with more effort she will shift even without the ritual. Nyra moves through the same form beside her with full focus and more carefully.

Her father watched her with that particularly careful expression of a man who has decided to believe something and is working very hard to keep believing it. Never for once did he think his daughter was weak. If not for his blood then her mother's blood just maybe it was not yet time for her wolf to surface, and her timing is different.

Nyra, on the other hand, tries not to notice the look on his face.

Body tempering on the normal is not meant to be painful, it wasn't meant to be or designed to be exactly. It was pressure, sustained and controlled. The exercises were made to open channels in the body that, at first shift, will tear through eventually. The logic is that the channel opening gently and more deliberately will cause less damage to the person than forcefully opening during the shift. Every family with untested younger ones did this.

For Nyra, it produced a faint warmth behind her sternum, but she said nothing to her dad. If not, he would have held onto it like his lifeline, but she wasn't sure it meant anything.

Mira found her 2 days into preparations in the tree side, the place she normally sat when she just wanted to get some good air watching the treeline.

“You're scared,” Mira said sitting beside her.

“I'm fine.”

“You have been fine for two weeks now, the way people are fine when they're not.”

What if nothing happens, she asked?

She went silent for a while since she knew what she meant. Slowly placed her hands on Nyra's shoulder and said, “Then nothing happens, and we deal with whatever comes after it,” Mira said.

“That is not reassuring,” Nyra said.

“I know,” she paused. “But I was not going to tell you something just because you need to hear it.” Mira said.

“Selene is going to shift,” Nyra said.

“Most definitely,” Mira said, “and I will be standing right next to you even as a wolf if I have to,” Mira said. Nyra didn't say anything, just nodded and they kept enjoying their view.

The night before the gathering, Nyra couldn't sleep.

She lay in the dark of her room, listening to the manor settle, the old wooden sound and the whispering of the wind, that particularly silent when everything and everyone had gone still.

She placed her hands on her sternum. The warmth inconsistent feeling is still there, but all eyes are watching her.