Page 31 of It All Started with a Bite

I did as I was told. “Here?” I called out a moment later from across the way.

The ball came at me like a bullet. I snatched it out of the air, surprising myself.

“Again,” Samuel said.

His throws got increasingly challenging, his arcs growing wider and his speed accelerating as he tested my reflexes.

I caught them all, some by the skin of my teeth.

“This is weird,” Bo commented uneasily after my twelfth perfect catch. “Even for a werewolf.”

Samuel’s expression had grown brooding. He reached into his bag and pulled out a lacrosse ball.

“Last exercise,” he said. “I don’t want you to catch this one. I just want you to jump and stop it.” He paused at my confused look. “Imagine creating a wall of compressed, moving air in front of your hand as you leap,” he explained. “You want to time it perfectly so it meets the ball at the correct velocity. Focus all your senses on this.”

What he was describing didn’t sound within the realm of normal physics. I said as much.

Samuel shook his head. “Trust me, it’s possible,” he said confidently. “Even Hugh can do it.”

I made a face. “That’s not helping.”

He smiled faintly. “It’s unlikely you’ll manage it the first time, but you’ll get there eventually.”

I hesitated before reluctantly agreeing to give it a try.

“Ready?” Samuel said.

I cracked my neck and shook out my limbs. “I’m ready.”

He drew his arm back and threw the ball without so much as a warning. It whistled high through the air, so fast I would have missed its trajectory had I blinked.

Time seemed to slow as it curved toward my position.

I focused all my senses just like he’d told me to. My breath caught.

The air was suddenly sharper.

I could see every speck of dirt, every minuscule droplet of water, every infinitesimal blade of grass being carried by the breeze.

Muscles bunched as I crouched, my gaze locked on the rotating ball, its every revolution crisp and clear. I jumped when my inner wolf told me to, hand shooting out and fingers clawing slightly to trap the wind.

The ball stopped dead an inch from my palm, the thump it made echoing across the clearing like a gun shot.

I landed lightly on the ground and caught the ball without even looking. I stared at it, my heart racing and my blood singing with elation.

“I did it!” I looked up with a grin.

Samuel had gone very still on the other side of the clearing. Even Bo looked stunned, jaw agog beside him.

My smile faded at their stares. It dawned on me that I’d just done something that shouldn’t be technically possible for someone who’d been a normal human twenty-four hours ago. Elation gave way to apprehension.

“It was probably beginner’s luck, right?” I said nervously.

Samuel and Bo exchanged a look.

The Hawthorne alpha frowned. “There’s only one way to find out.”

Five minutes and several ball throws later, we concluded it was not beginner’s luck.

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