The wolf tried to back away, and adrenaline surged through me. My left arm shot out, clamping around the beast’s neck out of some instinct I couldn’t fathom. I rolled to my right, throwing the wolf onto its side. My right hand twisted the hunk of metal buried in the monster’s neck, dragging the makeshift blade through its flesh. Across its furry throat.
The beast made a strangling sound as blood sprayed from the wound. I scrambled to my feet, trying to escape the mess, but a warm stream hit the side of my face and splattered the front of my dress through my open cloak.
For a moment, I stood, stunned and gasping for breath.
Then a vicious cramp seized every muscle in my body at once, drawing my arms and legs into unnatural positions. I collapsed into the dirt on my side, twitching, trapped in mute horror as my entire body became one excruciating injury. My bones ached cruelly. My joints popped. My skin—every square inch—was assaulted with a vicious itch.
I felt like I was being pulled apart on the rack and stitched into a new shape.
And as suddenly as the whole thing had begun, it ended.
I sat up, perplexed, yet panting with relief from the fading pain. And with a start, I realized that the world looked brand-new.
I’d been able to see better in the woods than ever before since the wolf had attacked me, but suddenly I could see as if it were broad daylight. A hundred different hues of fallen leaves, from crunchy brown to black and rotting. Every crevice on the bark of every tree within sight. Thick, gnarly woody vines, the grayish brown of tree trunks. I processed all of it with an eerie clarity.
WELCOME, CHILD.
I flinched, startled by a message that seemed to have bypassed my ears entirely, to be spoken directly into my head. I’d heard my father’s voice in the woods several times since his death, but this was no voice I recognized. It didn’t sound human.
This was different than the dark wood’s normal manipulation. It was more of a . . . greeting.
I looked around, searching warily for the source, and instead, my gaze snagged on the white wolf lying in a pool of its own blood, staring sightlessly at the fallen tree behind me. Its throat was a gruesome wound, still oozing blood into a puddle soaking into the ground. A foot away lay the pane of metal that had ripped open a grisly gash in its fur.
I’d done that.
I reached for the metal, but the hand that stretched into my sight wasn’t a hand at all. It was a paw. A wolf’s paw, with thick, rust-colored, wiry fur that looked nothing like the beautiful snowy fur of the wolf I’d killed.
Terror fired through me, tightening my throat. Racing in my pulse. I tried to clench my right fist, and the rust-colored paw curled inward, claws curving toward the ground.
I rose, and I found myself standing on four legs.
As panic gripped my chest—as I sucked in rapid, shallow breaths—a frightening comprehension settled into my bones. I was a wolf.
This isn’t possible. Yet my body welcomed the new form as if it were an old and comfortable dress. The night was freezing, yet I felt warm, insulated by the fur covering my skin. I could easily distinguish a myriad of individual scents. Rotting leaves. My own blood. The burnt wick from my extinguished candle. The musky scent of the wolf lying dead in front of me.
I’d feared death in the dark wood, yet I’d succumbed to an even worse fate. I had become a monster.
Noooo. A lupine whine leaked from my throat.
I’d been infected. But how? The wolf hadn’t bitten or scratched me. It hadn’t broken my skin. Yet there I stood, in a form that would terrify my neighbors.
When I was eight, my father was burned alive in the village square, while my mother and I watched from the crowd, because my neighbors suspected he might turn into a werewolf, after being attacked by one.
Now I had become, without any doubt, the very beast they’d believed him to be.
And yet, I didn’t feel like a monster. Or, how I imagined a monster must feel. I had no urge to spill human blood. To consume human flesh. Still, when the rest of Oakvale discovered what I had become, my fate would echo my father’s. My mother would lose me like she’d lost him, and this time Sofia was old enough to be scarred by the ordeal, just like I’d been eight years ago. The charred post in the village square would haunt her like it haunted me.
This can’t be happening.
I backed away, shaking my head in mute denial, and my paws got tangled in something. In a mass of material.
I was caught up in my own dress—or maybe in my cloak. I backed up, tossing my head, trying to fight my way free from the cocoon of cloth, but that only seemed to further entangle me.
“Adele.”
I froze at the sound of my name, and it took me a second to realize I recognized that voice. And yet another second to realize that the speaker shouldn’t have recognized me, as I currently stood.
Gran? But the word came out as another hoarse whine.
“Calm down, chère. Everything is okay,” she assured me as I nudged my way forward to peek from beneath the hood of my new cloak. “You did very well.”
I . . . what?
“Your mother will be so proud.”
My mother would be proud that I’d become a monster?
I tossed my head, and the hood flopped to the right, revealing the forest to me again. And there stood my grandmother, straight and tall in a bright red cloak virtually identical to mine, except for a beautiful white fur trim.
I’d never seen her wear that cloak before.
She knelt in front of me, unfazed by the dead wolf, and untied the cord holding my cloak closed. Then she pulled it aside to loosen the bodice beneath. “Come on out of there, child.”
Finally free, I crawled out of the ill-fitting garments and stood in front of her. Something swished in the underbrush behind me, and I spun around, on alert for the new threat, only to realize that I’d heard my own tail swishing through a bed of dead leaves.
Because I had a tail.
My grandmother laughed. “That takes a little getting used to. But your instincts are good—there is much to fear in the dark wood, even for us. Be still for a moment. Close your eyes and listen, and you’ll see.”
I didn’t want to be still. I didn’t want to close my eyes. I wanted answers. But I couldn’t ask any questions, in my current form.
“Go on, child. Close your eyes,” my grandmother insisted. So I did.
At first, I heard nothing but my own breathing. My own heartbeat. Then slowly, I became aware of a subtler sound. A soft sliding, like a snake slithering through the underbrush toward me, from the left. Only it was much too cold for snakes.
My eyes flew open. My front left paw slammed down on something long and round. Something about the thickness of two of my fingers. It was a woody vine, which had been heading right for me—moving all on its own—until I’d pinned it. And even as I stared at it, the vine began to curl upward on either side of my paw, slowly winding around my wrist. Or, what would be my wrist, if I hadn’t become a monster.
“Good.” My grandmother gave me an approving nod, and I whined, puzzled by how pleased she seemed about the horrific change in me. “But that’s only the beginning. You’re more prepared, now that you can see in the dark wood, but that doesn’t make you safe. Reassume your human form, and let’s get you cleaned up.”
I could only cock my head to the side, hoping the gesture communicated a question I couldn’t actually ask.