Page 65 of Hunted Mate
“We’ve gone from being surrounded by people, who act as a sort of natural protection, to being alone out here. If something goes wrong during the shift, there won’t be easy help for you.”
“If something goes wrong, you call for my personal helicopter,” I tell him.
“Why didn’t you do that when you broke out of the lab?”
I shrug. “Didn’t really need it.”
“God,” he mutters to himself. “You’re absolutely…”
“I wasn’t in any danger then, and I’m not in any danger now. Full moon’s tonight, right? Let’s get this over with.”
Gray
Let’s get this over with. I share the sentiment, but not the enthusiasm. I know something is coming through Callie. I can feel it. I can see it behind her eyes. The last vestiges of her humanity have been forever twisted, and when the moon rises from behind the trees which surround the house, it’s going to be over for who she once was.
I try to stay cheerful. Callie is clearly unbothered by the whole situation, but that’s because she doesn’t know what it feels like to shed one’s human skin and take on the mantle of the wolf. I am going to have to be at my best tonight. I made sure we haveplenty of protein on hand to not only feed us up beforehand, but to help recover from the shift after.
“That smells like… not good,” Callie says, coming to sniff at a pot of bone broth I am stewing on the stove. Her voice is lower and huskier than it was before. Her shift is already beginning, though she clearly doesn’t know it yet. She is also getting snappier and less patient. I don’t think she’s going to eat dinner. She’s been pacing the kitchen and lounge as the sun sets.
“I have to go outside,” she says suddenly. Her voice is full of certainty. She doesn’t want to be out there, shehasto be there. The moon is summoning her, and there is no escape.
I turn the burners off and follow her out, stripping my shirt off as I go. It’s going to be a warm, quite humid night. As good a night as any for a human female to be forced through a transition that will not come naturally to her. Fireflies are dancing low over the lawn, messing around low and high.
Callie’s pacing is faster. She’s wearing a light white dress. It’s almost sacrificial in nature. She is so beautiful as she loops about much like the fireflies in the gathering dimness, flashing a smile at me when she realizes I’m here with her.
I remove my pants and fold them neatly on the stairs, standing naked in the twilight before the celestial body who governs us rises and takes her sway.
“I feel amazing!” Callie yells to me. “I’ve never felt so free!”
Her voice is deeper still, and there is a certain… lope to her gait. She’s moving with the intensity and motion of a wild animal already. There’s nothing I can do to stop what is about to happen. I am as helpless as a king before an incoming tide.
Sure enough, the minutes fail us, the full moon slips out from behind the clouds… and my mate erupts into her true form.
“Oh, my god,” I growl to myself.
It’s worse than I expected.
It’s more than I could have imagined.
The first shift is always messy. It’s not the smooth transition that it becomes later on. Learning to shift is about learning to submit in some sense, so I shouldn’t be surprised that her limbs are sort of all over the place, and she’s not going down on hands and knees in a way that would make things easier.
“Kneel down, sweetheart,” I say, trying to guide her. It’s not really how it’s done. A shifter can only ever handle their shift themselves, but maybe I can coach her through it a little. “Don’t stand on your hind legs like that. You’ll fall over when the full shift takes place.”
She’s still not listening, and now her legs are starting to look very odd. Very large. It’s normal for them to be covered in a thick pelt of fur, but it’s not quite as normal for them to look almost digitigrade, up on her toes.
It strikes me, all of a sudden, that the scientists might have made a mistake of a nature that will not allow her to make a proper shift. She might even die in the attempt, her body not properly wired or made for this taxing biological experiment.
I want to reach for her, but her hands have sprouted very, very long claws that look sharp enough to rip my throat out with a casual swipe. I can’t get any closer. I can’t fix this. All I can do is watch the terrible thing happen and hope that somehow these things get better on their own.
I curse my father inwardly. I wish I had never taken her anywhere near his cursed house, and given him the chance to have this done to her. This is just a longer, crueler way of killing her in front of me. It would have been kinder if he had simply put a bullet in her head.
She is howling and fighting air, somehow still standing erect, but writhing around anyway. I am now certain that I am watching my mate perish. Nobody can survive the wicked cracking of bone and twisting of flesh. She is being tormented and remade, like a person in an invisible car crash.
I close my eyes. I pray to the cursed god who bestowed this gift upon us for mercy.
And suddenly, it is over. I know because the night goes silent, and her anguished screams and cries fade to the light wind. I know I have lost my mate. There is no way she is…
She’s alive.
