Shift | Complete ✔️

12 | The Wolf

My stomach rolled with nerves as I followed him outside to the forest edge. I knew he could feel me watch him but I couldn't tear my eyes away. His back rippled with each step, his broad shoulders so wide and strong, that anyone coming from the opposite direction would not have seen me behind him.

"Wh- where are we going?"

He stopped and turned, "I want to show you something, I think you're ready."

As always his expression was unnerving to me. It was as if it hurt him to smile. But behind his eyes was a glimpse of vulnerability, swallowed down by pride perhaps and quickly covered as if I'd not seen it in the first place.

I wondered if he was like this because he was an Alpha. If that, as a leader, any show of emotion or softness was tantamount to weakness.

I nodded slowly, and although I was anticipating what he was going to do, nothing could have prepared me for it.

It was swift as much as it was in slow motion. The cracks sounded sickening and painful, but his face showed no emotion as his body began to morph. Reaching his arms out to his sides as if in silent rejoice, midnight fur sprouted from each of them before claws elongated from his finger tips.

And then, within the split second it took me to blink, I was standing before a wolf. A monstrously huge, and terrifying wolf.

"Jesus. Fucking. Christ." I all but whispered under my breath. I was rooted to the spot, too frozen to move a muscle, and the words that escaped my lips barely registered as even they too refused to move.

My eyes locked with endless pits of darkness within his. And although my instinct had always been to run, in this moment I was shackled to the ground.

He moved first.

Tentatively... cautiously... I watched as Phelan, no- the wolf, took a step closer. Instinctively I put my hands outwards in surrender. A clear barrier that would oh so easily withstand the gnashing teeth that could snap me like a toothpick.

"Woah, easy. Easy..."

It wasn't like I thought talking to him like that was actually to going to placate him if he was really a ravenous wolf, but I couldn't seem to differentiate between him and well, him, in the moment. Perhaps it was actually a verbal reassurance to myself. Perhaps both.

And it was as if he sensed my struggle. His movements became as cautious as my own as he edged towards me.

Shuffling backwards, I tried to keep myself calm.

"Phelan..?"

I had seen him before when I had almost been mauled by the small pack of wolves. I had also seen Sophia shift in the living room of his house. But this... this was something completely different.

This time I was alone with him.

A wolf whose sheer size towered over me to such an extent that it made me feel like a roe fawn standing on her legs for the first time.

I could tell he was trying to ease my fear. With each step he took towards me, his head dropped lower. His limbs crouched in an attempt to appear less intimidating. A small whine releasing from his muzzle in response to seeing my unease as if pleading for understanding.

But his eyes. Oh his eyes stayed locked on mine, waiting for any hint that would indicate to him that I would flee. But I couldn't.

There was something that stirred within me that wouldn't allow it. As much as I was afraid, there was something else that wouldn't let me run. That wouldn't let me hide. And whatever part of me it was, was yearning to be seen by him.