Chapter 56
Faith’s Pov
+25 Points
Six years. That’s how long it had been since I stepped out of the woods and into the noise of the human world. Six years since I walked away from Astor, from the pack, and from a life that demanded I be something I just wasn’t.
New York City was everything the packlands weren’t, loud, fast, and completely indifferent. It was perfect. Indifference meant peace.
I had found my routine. Early mornings, the smell of yeast and sugar, and the comforting presence of Mr. and Mrs. Gable at “The Gables Cake.” They were an old couple who treated me just like the daughter they never had. They didn’t ask about my past, and I didn’t offer it. I just kneaded dough and stacked loaves, and for the first time in my life, I felt safe.
I had even managed to buy a little house in a quiet part of Queens. It was small and needed work, but it was mine. No pack guards, no alpha demands, no agonizing pressure to complete myself.
I missed Astor. That was the one constant, heavy truth. He was my mate, and that bond doesn’t just cut–it stretches and tears, leaving scars. But I had to leave. I had to find out who Faith was without the shadow of a pack or the expectation of a powerful Luna. Frankly, I think I prefer Faith the baker. I may never fall in love again, but I was happy. This new life was mine.
But lately, the peace had started to pull apart at the seams.
For the last three days, I had felt horrible. It wasn’t a normal cold. It started as exhaustion, the kind that medication can’t touch. Then came the fever. I was sweating through my pajamas every night, waking up freezing, only to start boiling hot again an hour later.
My whole body was sore. Not just tired, but deep, throbbing soreness, like I had run a marathon
and then been hit by a truck.
“Faith, dear, you look terrible,” Mrs. Gable said yesterday, her brow furrowed as she handed me a cup of strong tea. “Go home. We can manage the afternoon rush.”
I had tried everything. I went to the walk–in clinic twice. They gave me antibiotics, then a stronger
anti–inflammatory drug.
“It sounds like a severe viral infection,” the doctor had concluded, looking bored. “Rest, fluids, and these pills.”
I took the pills. I rested. Nothing changed. In fact, things were getting worse.
Tonight, Tuesday, I didn’t even make it home from the bakery before feeling truly terrified. The pain
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was no longer just in my muscles; it felt like it was in my very bones, twisting and shifting.
+25 Points
I managed to lock the front door of my tiny house, drop my bag, and stumble to the couch. I was shaking so hard my teeth rattled.
This is it, I thought, pulling a blanket around myself despite the intense heat radiating off my skin. I must have caught something deadly.
I closed my eyes, trying to focus on breathing slowly. The pain sharpened, starting in my lower
back, moving up my spine, and settling in my skull like a vice. It felt like pressure, unbearable,
internal pressure, trying to push out of my skin.
I groaned, a long, ragged sound that echoed in the quiet house. I tried to reach for my phone to call
the clinic again, but my hands were suddenly too clumsy, shaking too violently.
Then the heat became a searing inferno.
It wasn’t just a fever anymore. It felt like my blood was boiling. I threw the heavy blanket off me
and crawled to the bathroom, desperate for cold water.
As I struggled to stand up, a searing, cracking sound ripped through my body. It wasn’t an external
sound; it was my sound. It felt like the largest bone in my leg had just snapped in half.
I screamed, a guttural, inhuman sound, and collapsed onto the hardwood floor of the living room.
“What is happening?” I gasped, tears streaming down my face from the pure agony. “I’m dying! I
am really dying!”
Another violent crack. This one came from my ribs. It felt like my entire skeletal structure was
trying to reorganize itself.
I clenched my jaw so hard I thought my teeth would break. This pain was beyond anything human.
It was primal, terrifying, and utterly consuming.
Then, a wave of cold dread washed over me, even through the burning heat.
This wasn’t sickness. This felt… familiar. It felt like the stories whispered in the pack nursery, the
terrible tales of the first shift. But that was impossible.
I am twenty–seven years old.
I didn’t shift when I was eighteen, or nineteen, or twenty. I was the failure. The broken one. The one who had no wolf. That had been my deep shame, the reason I always felt incomplete next to Astor. I had mourned the lack of a wolf for years, and eventually, I made peace with being only human–or
at least, only half–werewolf.
No. No, no. This is impossible.
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My hands–I looked at my hands, shaking violently–they were swelling. The fingers were thickening and shortening. The skin on my knuckles was stretching tighter than drum skin.
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The pain surged again, focused now on my joints. My elbows popped with a terrible, wet sound, and my arms extended, lengthening and drooping down to the floor.
I started to sob, not from the pain, but from the realization.
The wolf. The wolf I didn’t get. It’s coming now.
And it was tearing its way out.
My skull felt like it was being stretched and reformed by invisible, brutal hands. My nose and jaw elongated, popping out and forward. The agony was so immense that my consciousness flickered, white hot spots dancing behind my eyes. I couldn’t focus; I could only feel.
A low, involuntary growl ripped from my throat–a sound I didn’t recognize, deep and raspy, full of
true, wild pain.
Then came the skin.
It was the worst part. My clothes were just rags, tearing as my body widened and bulged. The skin covering my back was too small, too tight. It felt like hundreds of tiny, simultaneous paper cuts, then the tearing sound–shhh–rip! shhh–rip!-as new fur erupted through the skin pores.
It was like being flayed alive, while simultaneously having every bone broken and reset by a
monstrous force.
I thrashed against the floor, gritting my teeth to keep from screaming loud enough for the neighbors to hear. My spine arched violently as my tailbone began to lengthen, pressing painfully against the floor, forcing my body up into a four–point stance.
Short, coarse hair, dark as rich soil, was covering me completely now. It smelled of ozone and
musk and blood.
The last agonizing moments were spent on my hands and feet. My fingernails blackened, thickened, and became sharp claws. The small bones in my feet snapped, reforming into massive
pads, my heel lifting high off the ground.
With a final, terrible shudder, the pain receded. It didn’t vanish entirely, but the screaming agony
was replaced by a deep, vibrating thrum of overwhelming power.
I lay still for what felt like forever, breathing heavily, the smell of dust and torn wood filling what
was now a snout.
My ears–they were higher on my head now, sharp and alert–picked up the distant siren sound of
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an ambulance, the hum of the fridge, and the frantic, heavy thump of my own beating heart.
I was breathing the air through a nose that could pick up a hundred scents at once.
Slowly, carefully, I pushed myself up onto four massive paws. I felt heavy, solid, and utterly primal.
I was standing in the middle of my small living room, my human clothes shredded around my feet.
I moved my head, testing the new weight of my neck. I looked down at what had once been my
hands–now massive, clawed, white paws.
I stared at the thick fur covering me from head to toe. I was large, terrifyingly so. My flanks were lean, my muscle tone immense.
My wolf.
Nine years late, without warning, and with enough violence to nearly kill me, my wolf had finally
arrived.
The reality hit me with the force of a physical blow, the small peaceful world that I had built for
myself was no more.
