Cornered

Chapter 2-1

2

I didn't leave the bar until after closing, but the living room light still glowed behind the closed curtains as I swerved through the gates of home. The rain had kicked up a few notches since earlier, and idly splashing over the block paving, I guided the bike to its spot beneath the carport, beneath which the rain beat out something akin to a Rammstein track, more so once I'd cut the bike's engine.

Beside me, Dad's truck sat like a hulking dark beast, thanks to the cloud coverage blocking any natural light. My elbow scuffed against the house bricks as I kicked down the stand and swung my leg over, tugging at my helmet straps the second I'd set the bike down. Cool, damp air swamped my face as I freed my head, and pocketing my keys, I crabbed out from the carport toward the rear of the house.

I'd barely rounded the corner when I caught the low laughter over the rain drumming my shoulders, and peeking through the kitchen window confirmed what I'd heard.

With her back to me, Brook sat planted on the worktop, her knees spread wide enough to accommodate my brothers bulk. Thanks to his face being buried into her neck, only his thick auburn hair could be seen, the curled strands sticking up all over the joint like they'd had Brook's fingers in them a few times too many.

My teeth ground at them invading a shared space of the house, and I glanced toward the back door, but only for a second before I about turned and ducked back beneath the shelter beside my bike. As I worked off my leather jacket, I slid my mobile from my jeans pocket and scrolled through my contacts to Dad. After typing out a quick message: DOSSING AT NATE'S, I clicked 'Send'.

With my mobile zipped safely in the inside pocket of my jacket, I undid my jeans button and made fast work of shunning the rest of my clothes until they all lay strewn over my bike seat, with my boots hiding just beneath.

Raindrops attacked my bare flesh as I stepped out from beneath the shelter, and I cut a diagonal path right into the trees of the forest surrounding our home. The woodlands had belonged to Nate's family for too many generations to keep track of, and a fast run north-east across the five-mile gap, to the home belonging to our Alpha, would be a whole lot faster than the round-about route by road.

Despite the overhead canopy being lush with foliage, fat blobs of wetness still broke through, spattering my head and thudding quietly upon the dirt path cutting between the trees. Goosebumps sprang up over my chest from each hit I took. With it being May, it should've been warm, not freezing my hide off. So much for it nearly being summer.

It took only a few minutes to trek through to my changing spot. I'd initially selected it because there'd been a horrific downpour the evening of my initial change, years before, and I'd hunted for somewhere dry. I must have liked it, because I'd returned there ever since.

Old fern and bracken crumpled beneath my soles—beneath my palms, too, as I hunched down and braced myself. After a quick scan through the sooty darkness to ensure my solitude, I closed my eyes, drew in a deep breath and forced concentration.

The change hit my nape and scalp first, no more than a prickling sensation. Within seconds, it'd intensified to needling, then stabbing, rolling along my vertebrae to my shoulders, before dipping forward to seduce my chest.

Tendons in my thighs and shins tightened. Muscles either side of my spine began to condense. A splinter of pain pierced through my left leg, as an inferno roared the length of my arms, and my chest heaved beneath my hastened breaths.

With each inhalation, musty oak-wood got sucked in, along with mulch and cleansed greens, soggy soil, matured fruits, and I focused on those instead of the fire raging through me.

Catching a whiff of stoat, I held onto it a moment—before releasing a groan as a fist-like agony clenched at the base of my spine and knotted the cords there. When every muscle in my body seemed to implode, before being branded by the flames raging through me, that groan expanded into an outcry.

Allowing me scarcely a pause to absorb new breath, my entire spinal cord snapped out of alignment, one debilitating vertebra at a time, and my back bowed low, far too low to be considered 'safe', kicking my chest high like a ship's figurehead. If my fingers still existed, I'd have clutched at the soggy earth, but I knew only stubby lengths would be there, mid-mutation, and that hairs would be lengthening, claiming my skin.

Stuck there for a few long beats, trapped within a prison of agony, I blinked, then blinked again, finally accepting my altered sight, the dimmed hues, the skewed tones.

As the next stage brewed, my tendons winched tauter still, and my breaths steamed the already clammy air. The instant I felt my first vertebra unlock, I unleashed my moan, the sound like a crescendo through the dark as the pain ran the gauntlet on a direct route for my coccyx, before settling down again as flesh forced itself forth from there.

For only a beat, my body swayed on trembling limbs—limbs that, I knew from experience, no longer resembled those of a human—and I barely had time to ready myself before my skull split, the noise of it blasting through my head loud enough to drown out my growl of dismay. Equally as deafening, my cranial bone shifted, each slight movement, each modification hitting my hearing like f****d up popping candy—like getting pelted by a wrathful storm of hailstones tailored made for myself. As it rushed forward against my facial bone, it was like I'd pissed someone off enough to stab me. Repeatedly. With a billion toothpicks. Sending my growl rumbling up a notch to a full out attack snarl.

As harshly as the assault on my nervous system began, it stopped, but the thunder in my chest continued rolling for unnecessary seconds afterwards.

Shoulders high, and snout low, each exhalation coming out fast and sharp, I didn't want to think about how long my change took. Prior to the stress with Kyle—with Brook moving in—I could've been done and dusted on the good side of twelve minutes. Since then? I didn't know exactly. I just knew the rest of the pack easily left me behind. If I listened to Dad, though, he'd argue Kyle had nothing to do with any of it. He preferred to blame it on my nightly tendency to drink.

Shaking my thoughts off, I listened for sounds beyond my own, the twitch of my ears sending too long tufts to tickle my jaw bone. Finding nothing concerning, I stretched out my limbs and, with a kick off of my hind paws, ran the path to Nate's.

***