Page 40 of A Wolf's Heart

I frowned. I had expected more, but oh well.

He shook his head as we stepped out the door, grass tickling the bottoms of my feet. I wish I had flip-flops. “Lila, I have been hard since we stepped off that fucking elevator. I think it might be a permanent thing when I’m around you.”

I rolled my eyes. Glancing around, I watched shifters change from human to wolf within seconds. I swallowed.

“After you,” Weylin said.

“I…my transition time is a lot slower than theirs.”

“No one will attack while you’re in transition. There’s no honor in that. I’m right here, Lila.”

I nodded before beginning my shift. The crunch of bones breaking into place, snapping of ligaments, and the rearranging of organs filled all my senses so that I couldn’t concentrate on anything else around me. My lush white fur sprouted along my limbs, and my ears felt heavenly as they stretched up to the sky. My wolf was more than pleased to display herself, and that’s exactly what she did.

Having gained a small crowd, I stretched my front paws out before standing upright and giving a bit of a shake.

“Fucking gorgeous.” My ear twitched back to Weylin’s voice. He stared at me in complete awe before making his transition.He was quick; within a couple of blinks, a large magnificent grey wolf stood where he’d once been.

I couldn’t communicate with him anymore, but I read his body language. Our crowd of onlookers had as well, falling in line behind Weylin and me, flanking us as we ran up a hill towards a clearing.

Most of the wolves in the pack were black with various markings. Some of them were white, and I saw one wolf with red tips that shimmered under the lights. There were a couple that were grey, like Weylin, but he was much larger in size, his colors somehow more majestic.

Standing in the clearing, with a small following of his own behind him, was a black wolf with white paws and a white-frosted chest. His eyes told me who he was, the one who had challenged me.

His lip twitched and pulled with a snarl as he tracked my descent into the clearing. Weylin stayed next to me, right up until the invisible, though obviously, circle that everyone was respecting, but before I could leave him, he turned and pressed his muzzle into my shoulder. He would be watching my back.

I walked into the ring, taking in the crowd and the sheer beauty of the pack. Maybe now wasn’t the best time to notice such thing, but I’d grown up as the only wolf, and now I was being thrust into a group of so many.

There was no pause. There was no time for me to take in any more than what I already had. The black wolf ran straight for me, teeth bared and hackles standing on end. He sank his teeth into the side of my neck.

I cried out, snapping my head back and biting at his side, shaking when I took a large piece of flesh between my teeth.

The last time I had attacked anyone, in even remotely close to wolf form, was back in fifth grade, when Danny Hubert pulled my braids and called me a dead brain because I was shy andquiet. I hadn’t completely transitioned, and it was the first time I realized I could shift specific parts of my body. I bit his arm, ripping a chunk of flesh back in a way that, when I finally let go of the screaming child, the muscle on his arm flapped back and forth in the wind.

My father, Jacob, gave me a good lecture that night about self-control. Danny had lost that muscle on his arm. He worked at the local gas station now, and every time I go in, I can’t help but look at the missing flesh from the arm. Scar tissue over bone, that’s all that was there. He now claimed it was a freak accident, that he couldn’t explain it but didn’t hold it against me. Still, I’d never lashed out in such a way to another human again.

But I wasn’t among humans.

At first, I jumped, turning my head and snapping at his face until he let me go. Now, the hackles on my back were raised, my teeth bared as a warning. The black wolf didn’t take my warning and lunged for me again. This time, I fought back.

It was a mess of rapid bites and shakes, one body fumbling over another. The crowd of surrounding wolves went wild, yipping and howling, whining and surging back and forth. They wanted in on the fight as well but held themselves back. Not as well as Weylin, though.

I couldn’t just see his concern whenever my eyes caught his, and it wasn’t the fact that he kept creeping forward that alerted me that he was holding back. I heard him.

“You can do this.”His voice began echoing in my mind, starting quiet at first and then growing louder. I wasn’t exactly sure if it was him or if it was my brain dubbing a voice to him, but it sounded like him.“You are better than him, Lila. You are stronger.”

I was? I paused and looked to Weylin, caught off guard in the moment, and that’s when the black wolf capitalized on his attack.

He came up behind me, taking my hind leg in his mouth and shaking. I let out a cry, but it was the pain that did something to me.

Twenty years of holding myself back. Twenty years of preventing myself from being the wolf that was inside of me, of forcing my animalistic nature into a box held by human etiquette. Twenty years…and it was that one moment that sent me back.

The black wolf had no time to react to my vicious attack. It was his turn to cry. For all those times bullies picked on me on the schoolyard and I took it. For all those times in the academy when I was laughed at for being a woman, being told the chances of me getting a real job were slim. For all those times perps walked all over me, attacked me, thinking I was the weak one. For every moment a coworker or someone higher up harassed or attempted to sexually assault me, and while I could have ripped their throats out, I stood by and took it because my wolf didn’t belong in the human world.

My wolf didn’t belong there, but she sure as shit belonged here, and I wouldn’t allow anyone to take that away.

The black wolf lay limp on his side, his panting breaths rapid and loud. He kept his head down and his eyes looking anywhere but at me as I stood over him snarling, teeth bared.

Finish him.

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