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Once I regain the strength to sit up, I turn my attention back to the white nettles. They flourish here, a natural occurrence after I buried her at the top of this hill and the headstone was set. At least these plants are thriving, even if nothing else is. The archangel flower, a gift from Mother Nature herself, deters intruders with its fierce, toothed leaves. Yet, amidst these defensive features, delicate white flowers bloom, covered in fine hairs that feel surprisingly soft under my fingertips.
“Weeds,” I sigh, smoothing the petals between my fingertips. “That’s all we are.” A raven spirals from the sky and perches on my shoulder as if summoned by my negativity. I smile and rest my cheek on the soft patch of his belly. Swayer, as I named him, appeared the day my mother died and surprisingly is never far: as if the universe decided that being utterly alone was too severe a punishment for one being – outcast or not. Swayer nuzzles his beak into my hair, making a mess of the white strands, and I stroke his head in return.
My eyes drift to the horizon before me, a crystal blue sea stretching as far as the eye can see. I can't see the waves crashing against the cliff beneath me from this angle, but I can hear each melodic crash of the water like a symphony playing just to ease the stress from my bones. Fresh sea air used to assault my nostrils with a sharp burn when I was younger, but now I’m accustomed to the scent, and instead, I find peace as it fills my lungs. I tip my head to the setting sun, admiring its perseverance in clearing all evidence of yesterday’s heavy downpour whilst pushing a warm balm through the wind that refuses to quell, suddenly realizing I’ve sat up here far too long.
I fight the cold fingers caressing my heart and swallow despite the thick ache in the back of my throat. I can’t stall anymore and ignore the impending return to a reality I hate. So, with a final glance at the nameless headstone, I kiss my fingers and place them on the stone slab before I grab my backpack. Securing it tightly on my back, my sneakers feel heavy as they take me back toward the forest before I’m fully ready to leave. If it were up to me, I never would. But I owe it to my mom not to waste away crying over what should have been, even if my existence isn’t much to return to.
Once I hit the tree line, I break into a run. Not out of fear from those no doubt watching on, but through the need of exertion. Tension claws at my chest like a festering wound, and only through pushing myself to physical exhaustion will I be able to sleep tonight. Using the trunks and shrubs as my obstacle course, I relish the burn of my muscles. Savor the ache of labored panting only achievable by suppressing my supernatural abilities.
I know every inch of these woodlands, from the robins nesting in a cluster of cedars to the wildlife burrowed beneath each boulder. A stream bisects the forest, winding its way from the far-off mountain ranges – which we are forbidden to explore – to the sea on our side of the boundary line. Bracing myself against a truck, my legs tense briefly before I launch myself high into the air, grabbing a branch to swing on. Once, twice, before launching my weight toward the next.
With a guttural howl, I land on a precarious branch in my worn-out sneakers living on borrowed time. But I don't hang around long enough for the branch to snap under my weight. Leaping through the trees, I catch sight of the modest hut nestled on the fringes of shifter territory – the place I call home
Home is a loose term, but it was mine. Complete with an old-style thatch roof that drips when it rains, paired with single-glazing windows that rattle in the slightest wind and topped with crumbling old brickwork. Vines have molded and weaved themselves into cracks around the exterior, like surgical stitches, almost as if nature itself is helping to keep the structure from collapsing. See? Home-sweet-home.
Admittedly, it’s not all doom and gloom. After my banishment to the exile hut, I built my very own ensuite shower cubicle onto the side from thick branches, which have been stripped down and bounded together with an open pipe hanging above. If I heat the tank long enough, I can have up to seven minutes of pure, luxurious hot water all to myself. As if there was another option. It’s fair to say that I’d been accustomed to fending for myself even before my mother died.
Leaping from the last branch, I touch down right in front of the stone steps. The wooden door is slightly open; there's no need for a lock since I have nothing worth stealing. Making my way around the clearing, I duck under a clothesline holding a few t-shirts and my only other pair of jeans. I reach my cherished vegetable patch, surrounded by a fence. It's my pride and joy, especially after I devised an anti-parasite spray to protect my sole food source. If only I could create a spray to fend off fellow shifters just as effectively.
Except…something smells off, and my mouth falls open, my body temporarily freezing as I approach the patch.No. The fertile soil has been upturned, half of my hard-earned crops in shambles, and the rest trodden on and squished into the earth. An entire month of food. Destroyed. Wasted. I shouldn’t be shocked every time. It’s common for the shifters to screw with what little happiness I manage to carve for myself. It’s why I take a backpack of essentials everywhere I go, just in case I return one day to the whole hut up in flames. I scoff internally as if they’d actually wait for me to leave before sparking the light.
The pounding in my ears makes it hard to hear anything besides the blood coursing through my veins at a breakneck speed as I fight the urge to hunt down the scents mottling my once-perfect patch. Yet I can pick up the sound of a branch breaking in the woodland to my left, and I spin to greet my visitor face-on as I swallow past the desire to cause the same amount of damage that is constantly bestowed on me.
My vision tunneling, I peer closely into the forest beyond, past the darkness emanating from the dense foliage and the wide tree trunks jutting toward the sky to block out the setting sun’s dying rays. I take a deep breath, weaving past the heavy scent of the boundary line indicating the edge of the shifter territory. The boundary is not visible by sight. Instead, it was denoted by the thick, cloying odor of old blood that the earth has digested and covered naturally with soil and weeds, time and time again. With every change of leadership, the Alpha redraws the boundary line with the blood from their very veins, thereby announcing their reign and denouncing the old. Supernatural beings of any other kind aren't allowed to cross it, which is how I know the animalistic scent filtering closer must be one of my own - a wolf.
A familiar and unwelcome scent finally through my nostrils as a female, also familiar and unwelcome, steps out from behind a mossy trunk with a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth, which doesn't reach her eyes.
Forcing my shoulders to relax, I speak past the pain of my clenched jaw, "What do you want, Aleena?" I ask.
Although, I already know the answer that would be hidden under whatever response came out of her mouth. Which is to fuck with me, piss me off, and see just how far they can push me. Realistically, the continuous taunting and disrespect that I’ve received and endured for almost eight years are boring and uninspired. However, I am fucking over it.
I narrow my eyes and observe her as she comes closer, an inch taller than me with chestnut brown hair that starkly contrasts mine and dressed in the pack’s usual leathers and furs. I watch as she lifts a brow over her muddy brown eyes, the look somehow conveying her assumption that she is better than me. She isn’t. We had been best friends once upon a time, her family living in the cabin next to ours. As girls, we would always sneak out to run through the woodlands and dive from the cliff into the sea. I like to think I’ve retained my fearless, reckless nature, whereas Aleena’s soured into a callous bitch who’d sooner forget I existed than admit she once considered me a sister.
"Thought you might be hungry," she smirks. Raising her arms, she opens her fisted hands, and a string of crushed carrots and lettuce tumble onto the forest floor. Then to add insult to injury, she rubs her hands together and then proceeds to push the evidence into the mushy ground under her boot.
Like a worn, tattered rope, I feel the last vestiges of my patience start to tear, “famished,” I agree, but not for food. No, my hunger was for revenge on those who have looked down on me. It was for everyone who comes to laugh at the one they call a reject. It’s obvious to myself and the entire shifter camp I don’t belong here. I spare a look behind me towards the boundary line. Nothing except my mother’s gravestone is keeping me here. But if I don’t visit her, no one will, and what will that prove? That her choices defined her memory? That she’s the forgotten traitor, everybody says she is? I can’t have that.
After reading my thoughts, a pesky ability she developed on her first shift, Aleena makes a noise in the back of her throat. Her cruel smile, stretching from ear to ear, agrees with everything I thought. My mom is destined to be forgotten and I, indeed, have nowhere else to go. Exiled from the Shifter camp and forced to live on the fringes is one thing; utterly lost in the big wide world is another.
With a flick of her shoulder-length hair, Aleena pivots on her heel and walks away, her chuckle trailing behind her. As she strides away, my gaze is drawn to a piece of lettuce stuck to the bottom of her boot and the final fibers of that rope tear. A growl is torn from within, vibrating from the base of my chest to the tips of my elongating fangs. Now, I’m not really that mad about lettuce. I may have been alone for years, but I consider myself of sane mind. It’s what the lettuce represents; my limp, discarded life, squashed beneath the shifter’s heels.
Curling my shoulders inward, my body is pulled forward on an invisible string, carnal instinct taking over. My inner beast has been forced into submission for so long, maybe it’s time she was let loose. Permitted to prowl the forest, and hunt those who seek to harm her. As soon as the thought passes through my mind, there’s no turning back. Aleena’s brown hair is clamped tightly in my fist, and her head rammed into the closest tree trunk before she can turn to defend herself. There, I hold her still, forcing her to listen to my every thought.
I'm done. Done with a life I was never meant to lead. Done with being the most powerful being on this side of the boundary line and suppressing my base needs. I could have flourished, and taken my rightful position as the next alpha’s mate. Yet instead, I've allowed myself to wither and die inside every night I've sat alone in an empty hut, shunning the parts of myself that ache to be released. No more will I let you taunt me, and no more will I hold back.
Aleena’s high-pitched squeal pierces the air as I slam her head back into the bark, blood trickling from her temple into her right eye. My pupils zero in on it, my inner beast causing the sticky substance to appear yellow against a darkening backdrop. Nothing else is of relevance. My stomach cramps, my tongue thickening in a pool of salvia.
“You know what,” I growl inaudibly. “I changed my mind. I’m fucking starving.” As I drag my tongue along her salty skin, savor the taste of her sweat and fear prickling amongst the blood, Aleena and I shudder together for wholly different reasons. Because as I struggle with the urge to satisfy my base need, the same one that I've been taught to despise, to hide at all costs, she understands that I can rip out her throat with my teeth and relish her blood as it pours through my throat. That fear? Is delicious.
"Run," I breathe in a guttural voice laced with the power of my wolf and my hunger. Aleena's breath hitches as I release her hair, and it’s my turn to smirk. For someone ballsy enough to enter my domain, root up my food sourceandhang around to gloat, she sure smells like terror now. She hesitates briefly before she shoves off the trunk and flees. My fangs extend with a sharp, throbbing pain, yearning to pierce the tender flesh of a neck and drink my fill. Yet I cling to the one promise I've made to myself: I am a wolf shifter. Any other cursed traits that haunt me must be ignored and, whenever possible, erased from my memory.
Hanging back, I allow Aleena to escape out of view. We’re around thirty miles from the main shifter camp, with a few secluded residents scattered around the vicinity. A fair trek for Aleena to run on two legs since she can’t call for her wolf on any night that isn’t a full moon. I, on the other hand, have full control of when and where mine can rise.
My wolf pushes beneath my skin, her fur toying with the goosebumps lining my arms. The eyes in my head, typically a dark shade of blue, begin to burn as a golden hue takes over, coating the land in shades of yellow and heat signatures. I race towards the one heading southwest, the bumbling whimpers from Aleena’s lips catching my sensitive ears.
Just as I’m ready to unleash my wolf and release the tight reins I’ve held for far too long, a dark presence surges within me, winding its way around my organs, vying for control. My steps falter as my wolf fights back, their collision leaving me breathless. Still, above the internal war I’ve yet to master, one thought pervades: I can’t let Aleena escape or have the last laugh.
Let me take control, a voice sounds inside my head.It will feel so good.My fangs throb, my throat squeezing tight. A sharp stab in my gut precedes the grumbling of my stomach, the depths of a hunger I’ve never been able to quell. I know what this entity wants. I just don’t know what would happen to me if I relented.
