Turning my head sharply toward where the wolf's body lay was all I could manage. I didn't have the strength to stand; even breathing felt like dragging air through shattered glass. But something had movedsomething subtle, impossible to ignore.
The wolf's body twitched.
At first, I thought it was the lingering spasm of a dying creature… until the change began.
The massive white wolf started shrinking. Its fur receded like melting snow, pulling back into pale skin. Thick claws shortened, curling back into fingers. The sharp angles of its wolfish muzzle softened, reshaping into human contours. Bones cracked and shifted beneath the skin, rearranging themselves with a grotesque elegance I couldn't look away from.
Despite my exhaustion, despite the darkness of the forest, I saw everything clearly.
In the span of a breath, the beast I had fought with everything I had… was gone.
Lying beside me now was a human boy.
I blinked hard, disbelief making my heart stumble.
It… no… he.
He looked young …too young. Seventeen? Maybe eighteen. Smooth skin, delicate features, hair matted with dirt and blood. A kid.
A kid I had killed.
The thought rang through my skull like a bell being struck over and over. My stomach twisted painfully. Forcing my battered body upright, I stood slowly, swaying as every bone realigned itself in sluggish agony. My feet dragged through the dirt as I approached himno longer the monstrous wolf that had nearly torn me apart, but a boy who could have been sitting in a classroom somewhere hours ago.
I crouched beside him, though my legs trembled violently.
No rise of his chest.
No twitch of fingers.
No warmth in his skin.
Nothing.
I reached for his neck and checked for a pulse, but found only stillness. Even though he had tried to take my head off, the weight of what I'd done pressed down on me like a boulder. I hadn't been wrongI had only defended myself. But that didn't make the sight of his lifeless, too-young face any easier.
My gaze drifted across his body, taking in the wounds, deep gashes from my claws, bruises, blood caking the ground around him. The change back to human hadn't erased the evidence of the battle we fought. In truth it made it more ghastly, at least in his wolf form the wounds were partially hidden by fur.
As I stared at him, something strange happened.
A faint silver light flickered around the wound on his necksoft at first, then bright enough to draw every ounce of my attention. My eyes narrowed, confusion tightening my chest.
"What the"
Before I could lean closer, a twig snapped behind me.
Instinct flared too late.
A heavy weight slammed into me from the side, sending me crashing to the forest floor. My head cracked against the ground, an explosion of white-hot pain swallowing everything.
Before darkness completely claimed me, I saw eyes, bright green, glowing, furious and staring into mine.
When consciousness finally returned, it hit like a hammer to the skull. A splitting headache pulsed behind my eyes, slowly easing until I could pry them open. Darkness surrounded me, thick and unmoving. For a second, I foolishly hoped I was still in the forest.
But no.
The scent told me otherwise, old concrete, rusted metal, stagnant air. I was indoors. Bare walls, no paint, and a single dim bulb hanging from a wire in the ceiling revealed the truth: I was in a small, cramped room… a cell.
I was strapped to a cold metal chair, my arms pulled painfully behind me. The cuffs around my wrists bit into my skin whenever I moved, clinking sharply against the chair's frame.
I tested them anyway once, twice only managing to rattle the chair and send a pulse of pain up my arms.
Footsteps echoed from the hallway outside.
Slow. Heavy. Purposeful.
A metallic clang announced the opening of a small sliding panel in the steel door. Through it, a pair of eyes studied me, hard to make out in the dim light, but definitely human.
Or at least human-looking.
After a few seconds, the panel slid shut with a loud scrape.
"Arren!" the man barked, voice carrying down the corridor. "Go and tell the Alpha the vampire is awake."
The footsteps receded.
And I was left alone in the dark with only one terrifying thought pulsing through my mind
If that boy was a werewolf… then where the hell was I now?