Chapter 5 Chapter 5

It seemed that a hunter and I were competing for the same prey. I dropped to the ground abruptly so he wouldn't notice my approach. He fired that shot toward the moose.

When I lifted my head, I saw the adult moose running in my direction without her calf. Even at risk, knowing there was a hunter in the area, I brought that animal down.

As soon as she entered my attack range, I knocked her down with my left side, immediately grabbing her by the neck. The vegetation created the perfect camouflage. That moose didn't take long to die. At last.

While I suffocated the animal to the very end, I dragged her body to a safer area, far away from that hunter. It seemed he had hit the calf. I could no longer hear it calling for its mother, whom I had taken down shortly afterward.

After walking about six hundred meters, it was finally time to enjoy the meat clenched in my jaws. My face, fresh with blood, turned me into a monster.

The hunger was so intense that along with the meat, branches, small leaves, and even dirt became part of that savage feast. I no longer remembered the girl who was afraid of turning into a wolf. I didn't even remember the problems I had left behind.

Suddenly, I thought that being a wolf was easier than facing the human life I kept struggling to live. No job, no money, and my father hospitalized. Remembering that wolf version of myself had become a refuge.

In my eagerness to savor that moose, I failed to realize the size of the prey. I had already eaten about thirty percent of the carcass and was starting to feel sick. But a wolf never wastes its prey.

Even without hunger, I kept eating. It had been three years since I had hunted as a wolf. The last time I hunted, I had only caught a rabbit. This was the first time in my life I had taken down an adult moose.

I was crouched among the vegetation when I heard someone approaching. I thought the scent of the kill had attracted another animal. And none of them would be capable of facing a wolf.

As I returned to my meal, I remembered the hunter again. A step sounded closer to where I was after someone snapped a small branch in the woods. With the senses my wolf genetics had given me, I could calculate exactly where that man was. He was very close.

About two hundred meters separated him from me. I lifted my snout into the air to gather all the information I needed about that hunter. The wind was in my favor. He was young and carrying the moose calf. His footsteps were steady and normal. It didn't seem like he was looking for me.

I continued eating the moose without making any noise and decided not to interfere with the hunter's path. But deep inside, the wolf in me wanted to hunt that man.

I abandoned the moose I had been enjoying and started moving slowly through the forest toward the hunter. Little by little, I got closer. When I was at a safe distance of about fifty meters from him, I let out a loud howl and immediately growled afterward.

"My God, my God, that's a monster! Help!"

I jumped in front of the hunter. His fear gave me the courage to do it. The way he was screaming, it seemed better to silence him before he attracted too much attention.

But I quickly restrained myself. It was only a scare. Killing humans was against the laws of our wolf society. I couldn't risk paying for it with life imprisonment or even my own death. Human hunting was only permitted on rare occasions, and that happened once every fifty years.

After I jumped in front of him, the hunter dropped the moose calf and ran in the opposite direction. He sprinted through the woods in a winding path, completely lost.

Inside, I was laughing at the situation. I had gone out to hunt an animal and ended up finding a man who claimed to be strong but was no match for a wolf like me. The moose abandoned by the hunter attracted me because of the smell of fresh blood.

I left the moose I had been eating and claimed that prey, one that had required absolutely no effort to bring down. When I lowered my head to feast on the animal, a gunshot rang out in my direction.

The bullet passed only inches from my right ear, briefly leaving a sharp ringing sound behind. Too close. I raised my head and saw the hunter I had spared.

Even standing before a wolf, he had decided to fight me. He fired another shot in my direction. This time, the bullet struck the ground and ricocheted into a nearby tree.

"I'm going to get you, monster! Show yourself, you bastard!"

Two more shots were fired at me, forcing me to run before the hunter could hit me. I didn't know whether he was using silver bullets. I didn't know whether he had recognized me as a wolf.

I couldn't risk exposing my identity for anything in this world, but that hunter had seen too much. Any other wolf in my place wouldn't have hesitated to eliminate him.

What had begun as a feeling of freedom and pleasure quickly turned into a dangerous situation. I ran through the woods while the hunter fired shot after shot in my direction.

The moment he found me, I had been close to my house, and I couldn't go back there now. Panic gripped me. Damn it. I desperately tried to think of somewhere I could run while still in wolf form.

There was no one from our pack living near my home who could shelter me from that crazy hunter. I decided to hide behind a tree to buy some time while I thought of a solution.

My heart was pounding in my throat. I swallowed hard, tasting the last traces of blood lingering between my teeth. Once again, I resisted doing what needed to be done. Once again, I rejected what any wolf would have done to that hunter.

But I wasn't a violent person. Then again, I wasn't really a person at that moment either. Doubts created more problems than solutions inside my head. Stopping to think about what I should do was worse than accepting that I had to kill that man.

Distracted, I failed to notice that the hunter was much closer than I had imagined. When I looked ahead, he was aiming his gun directly at my head.

It was him or me.

And I chose me.