The First Change
1090 Words
I shouldn’t have gone back to the docks. Every instinct I had left was screaming at me to go to ground, to find a dark corner and wait for this fire to either burn out or consume me. But Oakhaven doesn’t let you just disappear. If you miss a shift, people ask questions. After what I’d done to Jax, I couldn't afford any more eyes on me.
So I showed up. I tried to move like Kael. I tried to breathe like Kael. It didn't work.
The moment I stepped onto Pier 9, the world assaulted me. The screech of metal cables overhead felt like a serrated blade drawing across my skull. Every seagull’s cry was a jagged spike in my eardrums. The smell of diesel wasn't just a scent anymore; it was a thick, bitter oil coating the back of my throat.
I flinched—a hard, physical recoil. The clipboard slipped from my hand, hitting the timber with a c***k that sounded like a gunshot.
"Kael! Focus!" Miller’s voice boomed. I didn't just hear the words; I heard the wet rasp in his lungs and the frantic, tiny heartbeat of a rat nesting beneath the nearby pallets. It was too much. The world was too big, too loud, and far too bright.
"Sorry," I muttered, bending to grab the board. My hands were vibrating—not with weakness, but with an overloaded current. The skin looked flushed, stretched thin over knuckles that seemed to be thickening by the minute. The dark hair on my forearms was coarser, shadowing my skin in a way that wasn't human. I yanked my sleeves down, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Hide it. Hide your eyes. Squelch the fire. The man's voice echoed in my mind. He was the only one who knew, yet I hadn't told a soul. Not my parents, not the guys on the line. Just like I’d kept the girl in the yellow coat a secret—the only part of this that didn't feel like a threat.
A truck hissed its air brakes nearby. The sound was a physical blow. My vision flickered, and for a terrifying second, the color bled out of the world. The docks shifted into high-contrast shades of silver and blue. The men around me weren't people anymore—they were glowing silhouettes of heat moving against the cold machinery.
I blinked hard, forcing the world back into color. My chest was so tight I could barely draw air. It wasn't getting better; it was accelerating.
"Kael."
I froze. Jax. He stood ten feet away, his arm strapped in a fresh sling, three of his cronies flanking him like a pack of curs. They weren't here to work.
"Leave it alone, Jax," I said quietly. My hand tightened around the metal railing. The steel groaned under my grip, bowing inward. I let go instantly, staring at the dented metal in horror.
Jax stepped closer, emboldened by his audience. "You think you’re tough now? I talked to your old man. He says you’re sick. I think you’re just a freak."
He reached out for the same move—the same arrogant shove. But the moment his palm made contact with my shoulder, the world exploded.
Pain, white-hot and violent, tore through my nervous system. My spine arched as something deep inside me cracked and shifted. Not here. Not now.
"Kael? Your eyes—what the hell—" Jax’s voice broke, shifting from bravado to pure terror.
I didn't stay to hear the rest. I ran. It wasn't a controlled retreat; it was a desperate, blurring sprint. I tore through the docks, vaulting crates and dodging cables with a speed that defied physics. Shouts erupted behind me, but they were already miles away in my mind. I hit the edge of the pier and leapt.
The distance vanished. I landed in the mud and kept going, the forest calling to me like a siren. The pain was an ocean now—muscles twisting, bones lengthening, seams of my shirt ripping under the sheer mass of my expanding shoulders. My breath came in ragged, animal huffs.
I reached the ridge at Blackrock and collapsed. My hands slammed into the stone, my fingers digging into the rock until the granite crumbled beneath my nails. A sound ripped from my throat—a deep, guttural howl that had no human origin.
"I told you to stay away."
I forced my head up. The man from the woods stood there, watching with a clinical, detached calm.
"I tried," I rasped, my jaw feeling like it was being unhinged. "I couldn't... stop it."
"No one stops the first change," he said, stepping into the spray of the storm. "Don't fight it. You fight it, it breaks you. You let it happen... you might live."
I pitched forward, my hands hitting the dirt. But they weren't hands anymore. I watched in a daze of agony as my fingers shortened and my palms thickened into heavy, calloused pads. My bones reshaped themselves from the inside out in a symphony of sickening cracks. Every nerve lit on fire, then snapped into a new, terrifying configuration.
One final, deafening c***k echoed through my skull, and then—silence.
The pain vanished instantly. I stood up, but not on two legs. I was on four—heavy, balanced, and pulsing with a power that made my human life feel like a shadow. I looked down at massive paws covered in dense, dark fur. I turned my head toward a rain-slicked pool in the rock.
A wolf stared back. But it was a monster of a wolf—broader, larger, with amber eyes that glowed with an ancient, predatory intelligence.
The man studied me for a long beat, then gave a single, sharp nod. "You made it," he said, as if survival had been a coin toss.
I turned toward the tree line. Something moved there—a flash of yellow, gone before I could even growl. But I felt it. The same pull. The same storm.
When I turned back, the man was gone. No scent, no footprint. Just the howling wind. I stood alone on the cliff, a creature of the dark, finally understanding the truth. This wasn't a sickness. This was who I was. And somewhere in that forest, she was waiting.
- Writer
