One

I don’t think anyone saw it coming. I, Terrell Gladson, was at least the most surprised. When the beautiful raven-haired cheerleader shifted her first time, we all knew, just knew, that she and Gavin were mates.

But her scent… it drove me mad. I could smell her showering, in her house, over a mile away. She was the beauty queen, and it surprised no one that everyone loved her. Her sleek white smile. Her graceful, anvil cut calves. Her soft tanned skin glimmering in the sunlight.

She was truly beautiful.

I could smell her. I knew it was her. And I was horridly confused.

I followed the scent, almost unwillingly, deep into the heart of the woods. I saw her body go through the pain staking first shift. The sickening crack of her ribs, her knees inverting as the jeans she wore shredded effortlessly aware from them. Her falling forward, paws out-stretched, exhausted. I shifted before she saw me.

But she could smell me, and she knew I wasn’t Gavin.

She sniffed the air, her head revoltingly twisting this way and that. I could tell she was also confused, but couldn’t seem to find where it was coming from. Finally, she turned around and locked eyes on me.

That once gleaming smile sneered in my direction. She shifted back into her human form, not even flinching to cover herself.

“Terrell?” she asked in her dazed confusion.

I shifted back too, grabbing my pants and hurrying to put them on. “Yes, Anastasia. It’s me, Terrell.”

She walked up to me, still naked as the day she was born. She scoffed as she sniffed me, tussling my already crappy hair. “I don’t think so,” as she sneered again, this time in my ear.

“W-what do you mean?”

“You, my mate? I don’t think so!” She wretched her back and laughed. It was one of those laughs that makes your hair stand on end, like from a witch in a movie. It was high pitched, evil, and cruel.

She grabbed my chin and pulled me down on all fours. My wolf was raging inside, wanting her, grunting.

“I reject you.”

The words came crashing into my soul like a sword through my eyes and heart. I fell over, the pain rampant through my mind. I could feel my own cells dividing as the neurons flashed their pain sensors through every inch of my body.

Then, the laugh. She laughed at me in my moment of desperate pain. She walked away, not so much as trying to pick up the tattered remains of her clothes.

She may as well had cut my balls off that day. Or at least that’s what it felt like. I knew what this meant. I knew what torment I would continue to feel if I didn’t respond.

But I couldn’t respond. I lay there, whimpering like the pup I felt like.