Chapter Four

Kenton

There’s no good way to tell someone she’s about to turn into a wolf when, until thirty seconds ago, she had no idea wolves like us exist. Amaris looks at me like I’ve confessed to collecting organs in my basement, which would almost be funny if her first shift weren’t already tearing through her body. Her scent is unmistakably new wolf now, sharp under fear and pain, but nothing about scent tells me coat color, lineage, or anything else beyond the fact that she’s late, unprepared, and running out of time.

I remember my first shift too well. I was younger, surrounded by people who had spent years explaining exactly what would happen, and I still thought my bones were breaking wrong. I had Mom beside me, Dad close enough to answer questions, and a wolf already talking inside my head before the pain started. Amaris has none of that. She has me, a letter tying me to her dead brother, and about sixty seconds before her body makes the decision for her. The comparison is so bad I almost laugh again, but there's nothing funny about the way she is trying not to panic.

I keep every explanation stripped down to what she needs now. Wolves exist. She is one. First shifts hurt. The pain does end. I don't tell her about pack law, mate legends, bloodlines, or any of the thousand things my father would consider relevant. If she gets through the next ten minutes without shifting in front of a human security camera, we can ruin her afternoon with the rest later.

“You expect me to believe that?” she asks through clenched teeth. I tell her no, not immediately.

“I expect you to believe your body is doing something you can’t stop in this hallway, and there are security cameras twenty feet away.” That gets through where everything else failed. Her eyes flick toward the camera.

I feel Asher through the pack link on the other side of the locker-room door, his presence pressing lightly against mine. 

Need me? he asks.

The link itself is another thing I can't explain without making her think I'm building a case for involuntary commitment. I use it only to keep the locker room contained. Asher asks whether this is a human exposure risk. I answer yes. He doesn't ask why. That's why he is my Beta even before I'm Alpha. Boone sends one curious pulse from farther down the hall and Asher shuts him out before I have to.

Dad brushes the family edge of my awareness a second later, probably because my control is under more strain than I think. I close that door too. I love my father. I also know exactly how he reacts to unknown wolves on Ravencrest land. Authority first, questions second. Amaris can't handle another person deciding things around her right now.

Not yet. Keep everyone inside. His answer comes immediately.

Got it. I shut the link down before Dad can notice too much through the family side of it, because the last thing Amaris needs is an Alpha arriving before she even understands the word shifter.

“You can walk ahead of me,” I tell her.

I move to the side of the hallway rather than behind her. She keeps watching my hands, so I keep them visible. Every few steps she stops and breathes through another wave of pain. I tell her where the rear door is, how far the tree cover starts, and that the school keeps this section clear of student foot traffic. She asks why there's apparently a werewolf evacuation route behind chemistry. Fair question. I tell her shifter hormones are even less predictable than human ones and adolescent wolves sometimes need somewhere to lose control without ending up on somebody's phone.

Her expression says she can't decide whether that's the dumbest thing she has ever heard or the first explanation that actually sounds practical. Then her knees give out and I catch her. The instant she says not to touch her, I let go. My wolf loses his mind at me for releasing an injured mate-shaped stranger we still don't understand. I remind him she’s a person before she is anything else. The thought feels obvious to me and strangely new to him.

“I’ll stay back. You don’t have to trust me, but you need trees before the shift hits.”

She glares. “And if I pass out?”

I catch myself before saying I won’t let that happen. “Then I’ll keep you from cracking your skull. That’s all.”

She takes three steps toward the rear exit before her knees buckle. I catch her under the arms because the alternative is letting her hit concrete. “Don’t touch me.” She gasps the words, and I let go the second she’s balanced again.

My wolf surges forward inside me. Help her.

I grit my teeth. I am. Her way. He growls, but he backs off.

The rear door opens onto the strip of woods Ravencrest keeps deliberately untouched behind the school. Humans think it’s drainage land and old-growth buffer. For us, it’s emergency cover for first shifts, territorial movement, and every hormonal disaster that comes with teenage wolves. Cedar, fir, wet earth, and old needles replace fluorescent cleaner and locker-room sweat. Amaris takes one breath and shudders.

We keep this part of the forest thick on purpose. The school district thinks Ravencrest owns the adjoining land for conservation and watershed protection, which is true enough to survive paperwork. The deeper truth is that every wolf kid in the district knows these trails. There are emergency clothing caches in two weatherproof boxes, water at the maintenance cabin, and old pack wards farther back that nudge human hikers toward easier routes without hurting them. It's infrastructure built because bodies do inconvenient things and secrecy works better when you plan for reality instead of demanding perfect control from teenagers.

Amaris stumbles over a root and curses the entire concept. I tell her the trees are innocent. She tells me the trees can fuck off too. If she weren't in agony, I think I'd like her immediately. My wolf already does, but he isn't getting a vote on my personality.

“Why does that help?” she asks.

“Because your senses have something coherent to read out here.”

She shoots me a look. “Because I have a wolf?”

I almost smile despite everything. “Because you are a wolf.”

She makes it another twenty yards before collapsing to one knee. I crouch several feet away instead of touching her. “The first shift is easier if you stop fighting it.”

I sit on the ground instead of hovering over her. Distance matters. She is terrified, furious, and trapped inside a body she doesn't recognize. The last thing she needs is six feet of future Alpha looming above her explaining surrender. I tell her what helped me during my first shift. Unclench the jaw. Stop trying to hold the spine rigid. Breathe out when the pressure climbs instead of holding air until the muscles lock. None of it makes the shift painless, but fighting every change makes the body drag against itself.

She asks how long it takes. I tell her the first one varies. Minutes, usually, once the body commits. Her eyes go wide at the word commits, and I correct myself because apparently every phrase available to me sounds threatening today. I mean once the physical process is underway. She mutters that I should maybe stop talking. I nod. Fair again.

Her head jerks up. “You just told me I’m turning into a wolf. I’m allowed to fight it.”

“Emotionally, absolutely. Physically, you’re making it worse.”

Her eyes flash. “Hospital.”

I shake my head. “They can’t help this.” She calls that convenient, and I don’t blame her.

She thinks you’re lying.

My wolf’s voice is quieter now. Wouldn’t you? He goes silent. Good. At least one of us is learning.

Pain rolls through her again. Her fingers dig into the needles, and the sound that comes out of her makes every protective instinct I own rip forward. I don’t move closer. “Amaris, listen to me. Your body knows what it’s doing even if you don’t. You’re not dying. You’re not losing your mind. You’re shifting.”

My wolf pushes images at me instead of words. Curl around her. Guard. Keep everything away. He has no explanation for why his instincts have gone from restless to feral in the last hour. Neither do I. Fated mates have been gone longer than anyone alive can remember. Whatever is happening here, I refuse to name an extinct miracle because my wolf has terrible boundaries around a frightened girl.

Amaris's scent tells me only what any experienced wolf can read now. She’s a new shifter that’s filled with fear, stress, pain, and an undercurrent of strength, enough of it that the air around her feels charged even without a spell or ritual I recognize. Nothing in scent tells me anything more and right now, all that matters is getting her through this alive and unseen.

She looks at me with fury and terror mixed together. “If this kills me, I’m haunting you.”

I let out the breath I’ve been holding. “Fair.”

Her body bows again. I keep my voice steady because somebody has to. “Stop fighting it. Let it happen.” 

This time, the shift takes her.