CHAPTER TWO
1287 Words
She didn’t know where she was going.
She just ran.
Branches lashed against her skin. Roots clawed at her feet. None of it mattered.
“Get out,” she whispered to herself between breaths. “Just get out.”
But Luka’s voice chased her.
“I love you”.
Rin’s voice followed.
“You always get everything”.
A growl tore from her throat.
“No!” she screamed into the darkness.
The word broke apart halfway through.
Something inside her splintered.
Heat detonated in her chest not warmth, not comfort but something feral and furious. It surged through her veins like wildfire, scorching its way down her spine, flooding her limbs.
Her heartbeat slammed against her ribs.
Too fast. Too hard.
“Stop” she choked.
Her fingers curled inward violently.
Crack.
She gasped as pain shot up her arms. Her wrists twisted, bones grinding against each other before snapping into new positions.
Her elbows jerked backward unnaturally.
Another c***k.
Her spine arched so sharply she collapsed forward, a scream ripping from her throat but it was already changing, lowering, distorting into something rougher.
“I can’t”
Her ribs expanded with a violent jerk. She felt them shift under her skin, felt muscle tear and rebuild thicker.
Breath burst out of her in ragged bursts.
Her jaw trembled.
Then it pushed forward.
With a sickening pop, her face began to lengthen. Teeth sharpened painfully, gums splitting to make room for fangs. Her scream dissolved into a strangled snarl.
Tears streamed down her face, but even that was fading.
“No… please…”
Her voice trembled, thinning, dissolving.
Her skin rippled.
Not like goosebumps.
Like something alive was forcing its way out.
She gasped as a violent shudder tore through her body.
Then furs burst through her pores in dark, relentless waves.
Midnight black swallowed her shoulders first, racing down her arms, spreading across her spine and ribs. It burned as it grew a searing, crawling heat that made her arch backward with a cry.
Her legs buckled beneath her.
Bone snapped.
Not once.
Again.
And again.
Her knees twisted at unnatural angles as her femurs lengthened, splitting and reshaping with a sickening series of cracks. Pain detonated through her hips as they shifted, widening, realigning.
She hit the forest floor hard.
The earth shook with the force of her body convulsing.
Her fingers clawed at the dirt then fused.
Knuckles split.
Nails thickened into claws as her hands compressed and reformed into paws.
Another brutal snap tore through her spine.
Her scream collapsed into a guttural, feral sound.
And the girl began to disappear.
Her nails were gone.
Her hands were gone.
Her voice was gone.
Inside her mind, panic slammed against something vast and ancient.
Her wolf.
It wasn’t gentle.
It wasn’t patient.
It surged forward like a tidal wave, swallowing her fear whole.
Amaris tried to hold on to her name, to her thoughts, to the memory of who she was.
But they were slipping.
Her spine extended again, tailbone stretching outward until a thick tail lashed violently behind her.
Each snap of bone echoed through her skull.
Her hearing sharpened brutally. Every sound had been elevated and now she could hear her own heartbeat.
Her heart.
It wasn’t racing anymore.
It was slow, steady, Zoned in.
“No” she tried again.
But the word never formed.
Her jaw was no longer built for it.
The last of her humanity buckled beneath the weight of instinct.
Where grief had been
Hunger rose.
Where heartbreak had lived
Rage took root.
Her thoughts fractured into sensation.
Scent.
Sound.
Movement.
The pain didn’t stop.
It completed her.
Her body surged larger, muscle coiling beneath sleek black fur. Shoulders broadened. Limbs solidified into raw, brutal strength.
And then
It was done.
Silence fell inside her.
Not peace.
Absence.
Where Amaris had knelt
A massive black wolf stood.
Chest rising slowly.
Amber eyes burning not with tears, but with something older, colder.
She searched for herself inside that body.
For her voice.
For her grief.
But all she saw
was the wolf staring back.
Not waiting.
Not asking.
Claiming.
A broken sound left her throat something between a laugh and a sob.
“Is this what you wanted?” her mind whispered into the void.
“Is this what betrayal makes of me?”
The last fragile thread of her humanity trembled and snapped.
She threw her head back.
The howl that exploded from her chest was not human.
It tore through the forest jagged, feral, laced with agony so raw it seemed to split the night itself.
It wasn’t merely a howl.
It was grief given fangs.
Heartbreak given voice.
It rose, stretched, and carried miles beyond the trees, beyond the clearing, beyond the sacred ground where vows had just been broken.
Miles away
Kane went rigid.
Mid-step. Mid-breath.
The air left his lungs.
Helen’s hand tightened instinctively around his arm as her own heart slammed violently against her ribs.
They didn’t just hear it.
They felt it.
In their marrow.
In the ancient tether between Alpha blood and child.
Kane’s eyes darkened.
“That’s her.”
Not a question.
A certainty.
Helen’s voice trembled. “She’s in pain.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Kane lifted his head to the night sky and unleashed a howl that tore through the forest raw, commanding, desperate. It was a call that carried his fear, his anger, and the weight of a father’s love, all in a single note.
Helen joined him, her voice weaving through his, harmonizing in a sorrowful plea that cut through the silence of the woods.
But the forest answered only with echoes of their own cries. No rustle of movement. No sign of Amaris. Nothing.
Kane lifted his head toward the silver moon and released a commanding howl deep, resonant, layered with authority. It was not merely a call.
It was a summons.
It was law.
Silence followed for half a heartbeat
Then the woods answered.
One by one, howls rose into the night.
The first was distant low and questioning. The second answered, closer. Then another. And another.
Until the forest itself seemed to breathe with the sound.
Shadows peeled away from the darkness between the trees.
Massive forms moved with fluid silence, paws pressing into damp earth without a sound.
Branches shifted. Leaves trembled. Golden eyes blinked open in the underbrush like embers stirred back to life.
One wolf stepped into the clearing.
Broad. Powerful. Head lowered in recognition of the Alpha.
Another emerged behind him, darker, heavier in build.
Then more.
Silhouettes detached from the forest and solidified beneath the moonlight towering shapes with thick fur and coiled muscle rippling beneath midnight coats.
Breath steamed into the cool air. Their eyes burned gold, sharp and aware.
The clearing filled not with noise, but with presence.
A scarred gray brute with a torn ear moved to Kane’s right without instruction, instinctively taking the position of a seasoned warrior.
A sleek silver she-wolf approached from the left. She lowered her head in respect before shifting upright bones snapping, spine elongating, fur retracting in a fluid, practiced motion. In seconds she stood in human form, shoulders squared, gaze unwavering.
Others followed.
Bodies shifted mid-stride spines cracking, claws shortening into fingers, fur dissolving into bare skin. The air carried the raw scent of transformation and earth.
Some remained in wolf form, circling the perimeter with silent precision, their movements synchronized, protective. Their ears twitched at every sound. Their noses lifted to taste the wind.
Others stood tall in human skin, chests bare, muscles taut, eyes reflecting moonlight like polished gold.
They did not speak.
They did not need to.
The pack had answered.
- Writer
