His bones…shifted.
Not the familiar shift. This was worse. As if invisible hands grabbed either end of him and pulled.
His front legs buckled. He hit the ground hard, snow exploding around him. Pain ripped down his spine; his ribs cracked, then stretched, his skin straining to contain him. His skull felt too tight, pressure building until he thought it would split.
A scream tore out of him, half-wolf, half something larger.
Dani’s panic hit through the bond, sharp and terrified.
He couldn’t answer. Could barely breathe.
His claws gouged trenches in the frozen earth as his frame expanded, hindquarters thickening, shoulders broadening past anything remotely wolf. Muscles bunched and knotted, reknitting over new bone. For one hideous heartbeat, he thought he’d broken, gone hybrid.
Then everything snapped into place.
The agony dimmed to a deep, pounding ache. The world rushed back.
He was standing.
The ground seemed further away. Everything else, hybrids, wolves, and the mine entrance, looked smaller. He glanced down.
His front paws were massive, heavy, fur thicker over them, claws curved like hooks. When he shifted his weight, the earth thudded under him.
Hybrids froze.
The nearest stared up at him, gold eyes wide with a predator’s instinctive knowledge that it was no longer at the top of the food chain.
He couldn’t see himself, but he felt the shape of his body, spine longer, barrel deeper, shoulders and haunches stacked with ridiculous muscle. His muzzle is broader, jaw heavier. He was twice as large as before.
Not wolf.
Something closer to a bear.
Ice Bear, his pack had called him for years, laughing.
Lunarion, he thought, a little wild.You bastard.
He took a step.
The hybrid bolted.
Arthur swiped without really putting his weight behind it. His paw caught the hybrid mid-back. Its spine snapped with an audible crack.
Silence rippled outward for a moment. Wolves and hybrids alike stared.
“Well,” Leonid said faintly from somewhere off to his right, “that’s…new.”
Arthur didn’t give anyone time to gawk.
He moved.
His stride ate the ground in heavy lunges. A hybrid flung itself at his flank; it bounced off like a dog hitting a truck. Claws scored his fur and barely scratched. He seized it in his jaws, teeth sinking straight through bone, and shook until its neck broke.
He plowed into the thickest knot of hybrids like a boulder through saplings.
One paw smashed two down at once, ribs collapsing under the blow. He stamped another into the snow and put allhis weight on it until it stopped screaming. Hybrids tried to climb him, and he shook his shoulders and sent them flying.
Behind him, wolves rallied, their shock turning to something fiercer, wild joy threading through their fear.
