Page 5 of Cursed Wolf

Tryn

Waking up felt like emerging from hibernation. It felt like I’d been asleep for months, my limbs stiff from holding a position for so long. Everything, body and mind, felt like I’d been buried under a thick layer of mud and debris. It was a slow, arduous struggle just to become fully awake.

The first thing I noticed was that I was in wolf form. My keen hearing and nose picked up the strangest noises and smells. Voices and footsteps I didn’t know, the hum of machinery that was definitely not my packs’ motorcycle engines.

And the smells, ugh. I rubbed a paw over my snout. My sensitive nose burned on the inside from all the sharp, astringent chemicals in the air. What was that, cleaning supplies? It became bearable after a few moments only because of other scents hanging in the air. They softened the chemical harshness but weren’t strong in themselves. Thank the moon for that. These other scents were unremarkable, neutral, like water or plastic.

My ears pricked, honing in on my surroundings as more awareness filtered in. I knew of only one creature with that simple, neutral scent, and it was alarming that I’d be surrounded by so many of them. In wolf form, no less.

When my eyes could finally focus on what was in front of me, a jolt of panic ran down my spine. A fear-tinged growl loosed from my throat.

“Oh, looks like the wolf’s awake,” one of the creatures, a human, remarked.

“He doesn’t sound happy,” someone else added.

Bars. There were bars in front of me, surrounding me on all sides. I was in a fucking cage, in a foreign world.

The human world.

I rose to all fours, or at least tried to. Something was wrong with my back leg. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t let them see weakness. Another growl rumbled out of my throat, but I was past giving them any warnings. They had me captured, locked up like a pet. If any of them came near, I wouldn’t hesitate to strike.

Turning to hide my maimed leg, I made myself as big and imposing as I could. My spine pressed against the top of the cage and my fur puffed out in all directions. I could barely turn around in this thing. If I tried, maybe I could break out, but who knew what these humans were capable of?

There was a reason why our ancestors hid their shifting abilities when they came to the human world to escape the vampires during the war. Humans in our world were the exception, not the rule, and we didn’t have many. With billions of humans in this world though, I wasn’t ready to trust any of them.

“He is really not happy.”

Astute observation, human, I thought, snapping my jaws through my growl. Come closer, I dare you.

There was a small crowd gathering around my cage. One human male wore a white lab coat that had Dr. Marcus embroidered on one side. Another male and two females wore scrubs and ugly shoes with holes all over them.

Fuck, this might be even worse than I thought. Doctors, or scientists, maybe? Did they see me shift and now wanted to run experiments on me? I’d rather run my motorcycle off a cliff before I allowed myself to become a lab rat.

“Easy, boy,” one of the women in scrubs said. “We’re not gonna hurt you.”

She edged toward my cage and I snapped my jaws in her direction, making her flinch and back away.

Don’t ‘easy boy’ me. I’m not your fucking dog, human.

“Alright, never mind.” She turned toward her colleagues. “We’ll have to fully sedate him to run any tests. It’s just not safe otherwise.”

Fuck no, you are not sedating me! I growled louder and raked a paw over the linked bars in my cage.

The white-coated man, Dr. Marcus, crossed his arms and furrowed his brow like he disapproved of what I had just done. “What was Dr. E thinking? She knows we don’t have resources to spare, especially on a wolf this size. He’s gonna need twice a standard dose to knock out.”

“She hit him with her car. What was she supposed to do, leave him?”

The doctor shrugged. “I dunno, maybe? We can’t save every animal, Justine.”

The woman who argued rolled her eyes. “I’m sure Dr. Stone can find room in the budget for one big wolf.”

My growling softened as I listened. It didn’t sound like they knew I could shift, which was a relief. It was also news to me that I had been hit by a car.

I remembered running at night, following a trail that kept appearing and disappearing. It wasn’t a scent trail but one that was unique to me. Something only I could see, passed down to me from my grandmother, a moon witch.

I had been following a silver thread made of moonlight. A path that I’d hoped would lead me to my fated mate.

Instead, it led me to almost becoming roadkill, apparently. And now in a cage surrounded by humans. I found myself agreeing with the doctor. Whoever had hit me should have just left me there.

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