Chapter 1

Rain is pouring down heavily all around me. For every step I take, there is a new, brown puddle refilling my already heavy combat boots with more dirty water. I think a small rock has lured its way into one of them, too, but I’m not sure. My feet are numb, so I don’t feel the pain. They’re cold, wet and they’ll definitely hurt in the morning, but I can’t stop yet. I need to get at least halfway through this forest first.

The dirt road beneath me is slippery and muddy, yet I still haven’t fallen down and ruined my clothes. I hope I don’t either. They’re the last pieces of clean clothes that I have. A pair of very distressed jeans, exposing more of my pale thighs than I want to admit, making them freezing cold, even though my blood is naturally a lot warmer than everyone else’s, are covering my legs. Or, almost covering them, at least. I have a tank top, too, and a knitted sweater that my grandmother gave me for my fifteenth birthday. I’ve been careful to wear it, since I don’t want it ruined, but now it’s all I’ve got left. It’s a beige brown color, with my name embroidered into the back of its neck, where the tags on bought clothes would sit. It’s perfect. And I hope I can find a river to wash my other clothes, soon, so I can let this one take a breather.

I tighten the straps on my backpack. They tend to slip a little when it rains, and I’ve dropped the whole thing more than once before. So I’ve got to make sure I don’t do that again. I then pull some of my now dark copper-y, almost brown hair behind my ear, before looking forward towards the road again. My hair is normally a very vibrant shade of red, but when it’s wet it gets darker, and loses the vibrancy. I don’t mind. It makes it easier to walk past people without getting noticed. I don’t want to get noticed either. Someone might recognize me.

It’s a wonder no one has, but I don’t dwell on it too much. I like to think about it as luck, and I’m not one to turn away from that. I need it more than most, being alone and all. I’ve been on my own, homeless, wandering from town to town for five years now. Ever since my fifteenth birthday, when my body started changing. My grandmother didn’t mind and told me everything would be fine, but I’m not sure she understood what I told her and my “parents” that day. Every bone in my body suddenly broke and changed, and when I looked into my bathroom mirror, I was not human. I know now what I am, but back then? Hah, I was stupid enough to tell my parents after I changed back and they kicked me out. Their little charity case was no longer welcome.

After I ran from the city, they reported me missing. I saw them in a news-segment in a diner a few weeks later, and they begged me to come back. I don’t think they meant it. I think they just wanted to look good for media. I wasn’t their biological child, anyway. They adopted me when I was about two years old, and left me to grow up among their servants and maids. The only person that really cared for me in that household was my grandmother. She was kind, loving and gentle, and she spend a lot of time with me. I loved her so much, but I had to leave.

I never stay in one place too long. It’s not safe. Especially not when I don’t know how to control myself during the full moon. I change, then, and I usually don’t know how, when or where it will happen. One would think I knew something about this after five years, but I don’t. Just that it happens every full moon, and that I usually end up hating myself after.

A loud siren brings me to my knees on the dirty ground, and I put my hands over my ears as I fall down. A shooting pain runs through my whole body, lingering in my knees that are without a doubt split open from the impact, and I grit my teeth. Stupid, fucking sound. Once it dies down, I look up to see a huge beast in front of me, breathing out of its dark snout so hard it’s audible, and a cloud of mist emerges from its nostrils.

I’m not afraid of it, though. I’m just as scary as this thing every full moon, and I know how to intimidate a normal wolf by now. Another one walks up behind it, and I growl at them. Warning them that I can put up a fight if I have to, even though I don’t know if I can when I’m human.

The two wolves look at each other, then they get up on two feet, and starts changing. It happens so fast, like the split second where they looked at each other was merely a segment of my imagination. My jaw is on the ground after the two seconds it takes them to transform into two men, just shy of thirty years of age, I would think. They both look intimidating, yet scary as hell. I have never in my life seen another human change into a wolf, just like me. Or the other way around, like now.

And definitely not without it being a full moon.

I’m dead. There’s no way I can fight these guys.

“Who are you, and what are you doing out here?” the tallest one of them asks me, crossing his arms firmly across his chest.

I glare at him. I don’t want to tell him anything. How can I trust them? They just showed me, a human, that they’re able to shift into wolves. I would never show a human that I can shift. I’d be signing my own death certificate, practically shoving myself into a coffin and nailing it shut.