Page 8 of Wolf's Whisper

I ground my teeth on each other as hearing him say it made it even worse. He was right, our tribe couldn't shift. We hadn't been able for centuries now. We were cursed.The reason why went way back to the beginning of history, where the Twelve Spirits had just begun distributing the Earth.

The Swan had chosen the coasts, while the Black Bear had taken the great forests for himself. The Puma had settled for the desert, while the Coyote and Wolf quarrelled over the great Wastelands. Eventually, the Coyote settled for the East, while the Wolf had taken the West. It had taken them seven nights and seven days to make a fair trade-off, and while they thought the hardest was over, the worst was yet to come.

There weren't just lands they needed to distribute, every Spirit was given the honour of picking out a gift for their people.While the Snake picked youth for his people, the Swan chose beauty for his folk. The Boar chose to grant his people abnormal strength in times of distress, while the Eagle gave his tribes the gift of foresight. The Monkey from the Mountains picked for his descendants, configuration, and the Black Bear oddly enough asked for the Eternal Sleep. The Puma took invisibility, a feature the rest would later envy him for, while the Turtle chained his people in an endless circle of rebirth. The Rabbit was granted eternal peace and as the last of the Ten, the Porcupine chose forbidden blood magic. But the Wolf and the Coyote, they couldn't stop fighting. They both had their eyes set on the ancient magic of the Shifters so they could live on eternally in their own descendants. But as it was, both couldn't get this power.

So they had a face off, one that lasted for many years. And in the end, the Wolf came out in as the ultimate victor. So we were given the rare power of transformation, something the Coyote loathed.As the last of the twelve Spirits, instead of choosing a gift for his people, he chose only for himself. A curse.

He cursed the Wolf and every single one of his descendants. And so, instead of us becoming a race of shifters, we were now a pained folk with wolves stuck inside us.

So this bag of muscles couldn't have been able to shift. So either he was crazy or he was lying. Maybe he was a dirty coyote and was just pretending to be my companion so he could lure me into a false sense of security.

Yes, that must be it. Crazy Coyote, the worst of their kind. And it didn't seem like he was about to leave, no, he was still hanging around.

I jumped back as I pointed the stick at him again. Better sort this out now before he became even crazier. "Tell me who you are. Or get the hell out of my camp!"

He rolled his eyes. "This again? I told you, I am the wolf."

"Impossible. Wolves can't shift. None of us can."

"Well then, today is your lucky day, pumpkin." He flashed me another smile and to my annoyance, he had perfectly white teeth. That bastard.

"Don't call me pumpkin. And if you’re a wolf, just prove it," I challenged him, crossing my arms as I dared him to make a fool out of himself.

"Alright. But you asked for it."

If you ever thought the transformation from man to wolf was painless and smooth, you were horribly mistaken.

In front of my very eyes, Aspen's skin split open as all his limbs twisted in a way they weren't supposed to bend. He writhed and groaned in pain as I heard all his sockets loudly pop, his bones one by one realigning from a human skeleton to that of a wolf. He fell to the cold ground as he screamed in agony until he no longer possessed a human face or mouth to scream with. Instead, the forest was filled with a howl that sent a twinge of shivers down my spine as I found myself in the company of a grey wolf.

He stared at me with his dark amber-coloured eyes, the pain of his transformation still lingering in his eyes.

Guilt washed over me and I immediately fell to my knees as I hugged the beautiful animal. "I’m sorry I made you go through that," I softly sobbed in his fur, not believing he actually did this for me.

Aspen the wolf gently licked the back of my hand as he rubbed his soft head against my shoulder. The pain slowly faded from his eyes and he didn't seem to blame me for it. Maybe he was used to it.

I didn't want him to be used to it. It was never okay to get used to pain.

He gently nudged against my knee as he dribbled around my seated figure. He wagged his tail playfully against my leg as he ran circles around me.

"You want to play?" I smiled as I wiped the tears away from my cheeks.

He happily barked, resembling a tame dog rather than a wild wolf. Then again, he wasn't exactly a wild wolf.

I grinned as I stood back up. "I guess you won't be able to transform back for a while, huh?"

He softly whined as he tilted his head at me, his dark eyes sad again. So that was no.

"Sorry..."

Aspen nipped at my ankles as he bumped against my hip. I let out a yelp as I swatted him away. "Alright, alright. I'll run with you."

And so, I ran into the night with my wolf by my side. Having a companion wasn't such a bad thing after all.

Apparently, it took Aspen the whole night to refill his reserves before he could turn human again.

Somehow, it didn't seem nearly as painful for him to shift into his human form. Yes, sure, there was some whining and whimpering, but the transformation went much more smoothly.

And at the end, instead of having a beautiful wolf as my companion, there was a sweaty ball of male lying next to my feet. He was slowly panting as if he ran a marathon, but I wasn't complaining. In the position he was in, I couldn't see his "crown jewels" and I was fine with that. Well...

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