The Pack - On the Run

“What are you doing? Where are you going? The previous trip was supposed to be your last!” Mum whispers, her voice frantic and hoarse from sleep.

I peek downstairs, half hidden behind the wall, watching dad put up his hands placatingly. He’s dressed in his hunter’s uniform, ready to leave as usual.

“I have to go, you know that, Mel. The Lou-”

“Don’t you even dare finish that sentence! Mikey’s already seven. Seven, Steve! You promised you would quit when he was born. If they find us-”

“They won’t, I promise you that. It is the last time I’m going, I mean it. Dean needs my-”

“And the kids need their father!” Mum interrupts, throwing her hands up in frustration. “They need you here, safe and sound. Whenever you go, you risk exposing us, risk bringing them here, to our house!” She stabs dad in the chest accusingly. “You were meant to quit when Mikey was born, so God help me if this isn’t your last time. Last chance, Steve. After that, if you go on your weekend trip and come back, you’ll never find us. I swear it on my parents’ grave,” mum threatens, her eyes full of rage.

My parents stay silent for a second or two, then mum abruptly whirls on her heel and leaves for the bedroom. I quietly dart back further into the hall, listening to her receding angry steps as I watch dad move to follow after her.

The buzz of his phone stops him short. For a brief moment, he seems torn between heading after mum and checking the device, but in the end, his mobile wins. He takes it out of his pocket and looks down at the screen. Its blues illuminate his face, making his frown appear deeper. Dad sighs and puts the phone back in his pocket.

“Fuck.” He murmurs, quietly closing the front doors behind him.

***

I was pretty sure I was not meant to be shifting yet.

In every movie I could recall about werewolves, people changed during the full moon. Never earlier. Hell, even on the night dad had shifted and attacked us, the moon had shone in all its glory. But here I was, writhing on the ground, consumed by pervasive, excruciating pain.

I felt as if my whole body was on fire, burning from the inside. My bones snapped one by one, popping out at grotesque angles with a loud crack muffled only by my panicked pants and whimpers. The worst thing about the whole situation, ridiculous as it seemed, wasn’t even that I was suddenly changing into a monster. No. It was the very fact Mikey was lying a few feet away from me, and I couldn’t reach him. I was on my stomach, grasping at the grass, yanking it out madly, roots and everything, and I couldn’t. Reach. My. Brother.

Tears of frustration and pain blurred my vision. As if my circumstances weren’t dire enough, my thumbs started moving towards the middle of my palms - the action accompanied by a sickening grinding and crunching that made me nauseous. I blackened out there, too weak to stomach it, and once I opened my eyes, the chaos erupted.

I saw an enormous black wolf lunge at dad, who met the beast mid-jump. I yelped my weak protest, scared for my father regardless of the shit he had put us through. It was his fault I was laying on the grass, after all, twisting in pain - my body wringing and turning into something entirely different. And still, I couldn’t hate him. Not really; not fully.

I was pathetic like that.

More wolves appeared at the edge of the woods, and my dad’s wolf - a golden-brown, red-eyed monster - managed to fling his opponent off his back and take off for the forest. I spasmed in pain, yelling my guts out, and shut my eyes as a brutal force bent my spine in half. Barks and howls filled the meadow, the ground shook around me, incited by the thundering of paws. The chase began, and, through all of that, nobody took notice of me. I was heaving and spitting saliva all over the grass, crawling at it and desperately trying to ease the ever-present pain, literally dying in agony at some shitty Podunk. And no one cared.

Or so I thought.

“Shh, It’s alright. I’ve got you,” I suddenly heard Louis’ soothing voice. I would have cried if I wasn’t already. The relief flooded my weary mind and body. Louis surely knew what was happening to me and how to stop the shift. He had done it a million times, hadn’t he?

I fluttered my eyes open, immediately drawn to his silver orbs that haunted me from the very first day we met. It was like a bad habit I couldn’t actually get rid of.

“Don’t fight the change, Josie. The more you fight it, the more painful it becomes,” Louis instructed, gently brushing away a lock of sticky, damp hair from my sweaty forehead. His calmness stood in stark contrast with my panic and desperation. If anybody saw him, they would assume all was fine and dandy, that everything about my change went according to the plan, and Louis wasn’t the least bit concerned with how my bones were popping, snapping, and reshifting.

They couldn’t have been more wrong.

Unfortunately, I was able to somehow feel Louis’ real emotions, and nothing about them seemed dandy.

“Shhh, don’t fight it. It’s okay, you’re okay,” Louis lied, placing his hand on my back. The warmth spread from his outstretched fingers, soothing some of the soreness, but it wasn’t enough.

I started losing it. I didn’t want to change. I didn’t want to turn into a monster. I didn’t want to lose myself to the beast battling to overrule my mind and body. I was my own master, always had been-

Another wave of blinding pain hit me.

I yelled. Tears poured down my cheeks. I couldn’t take it anymore, I couldn’t. I was surely going to break.

“Please, Josie, you can’t fight it. Don’t fight it,” Louis’ pleaded. His voice sounded strangled, as if he, too, was suffering with me. “You have to embrace the change. I know it’s difficult to give full rein to your body, but... just give in. If not for yourself, do it for Mikey. He needs you. He needs his older sister.”

I hated how much sense Louis actually made. I hated that I had to share myself with a strange entity so I could survive. But I couldn’t leave Mikey while my crazed father was somewhere out there, and mum decided to go pretty much AWOL. I couldn’t die. Not yet.

So I did the only thing I was shit scared to do - I squeezed my eyes shut and let go.

* * *

There were no woods, like in the films, and no wolf, just milky white, thick fog, and the girl who looked exactly like me, except for the eyes - they were amber gold and glowing.

She sat on what seemed to be a rock, one bare, creamy leg propped on its jagged surface, the other hanging loosely down, an elbow on a bent knee. She was also watching me like a hawk, her gleaming eyes animalistic and unmoving. Assessing.

Finally, after what seemed to be ages but must have been two seconds, a lazy smile spread across the girl’s lips - one that showed her elongated canines.

“You’ll do,” she/I stated as she hopped softly on the ground.

I wanted to ask what she meant by that, but in a blur of a movement, the girl leaped at me, shifting into a white and grey wolf while she did.

I screamed, not fast enough to back away on time. I threw my hands in front of me to shield myself, but it was too late.

The wolf went inside me.