"Hey, I'm going for a run later, are you coming along?" Celia asked the girls after class.
"I have a fencing class later, but if you go before that I can do a quick jog around the field with you." Isabelle said.
"Uh, yeah, I'll go too. My back's been hurting all day. Maybe I can jog it out, stretch my muscles."
"I don't know, Boots. If it hurts, maybe you should go lie down. It's a little cold out."
The girls were walking back to the dorms to put their things away. The sun was still out, but the wind was cold.
Ash pressed her thumb to her lower back and traced along her spine, massaging the sore spots. She'd felt a slight pain in her back for days now, but today the pain was sharp. Not only that, she had felt her joints aching all day. It was like someone had thrown her body in a washing machine and set it on high.
"Maybe she just needs a massage. I bet she'd like a Swedish massage, wouldn't she, Cece?" Isabelle said playfully, looking to Celia for back up.
"Oooh, yeah, a Swedish massage from a hot Swedish man! A tall Swedish man with blue eyes and blonde hair working out the kinks in your back? Mmmm-hmmm." Celia swayed as she walked, exaggerating the tone of her voice, making herself sound like an airhead.
"Mmmm, yes. A tall, handsome man with big strong Swedish hands, working all the way down. Mmmmm," Isabelle had started to sway walk too, matching Celia's cadence and talking in the same air-headed tone of voice. Isabelle put a finger to her lips. "Mmmm, Swedish daddy!"
[Ugh, Hunter isn't Swedish. He's some kind of Scandinavian, sure. But I don't think he's Swedish.] Ash thought quietly to herself, mentally responding to her friends's teasing.
Not for the first time, Ash regretted telling her friends about her crush on Hunter. She had told them about it in confidence since she assumed they would figure it out for themselves eventually. They had kept her secret---which wasn't exactly hard to do given that the rest of their peers weren't exactly interested in the trio and their affairs. The teasing wasn't even what annoyed her the most, because she loved bantering with her friends. What irritated her was that they weren't interested in anyone, which left her with nothing to tease them back with.
Celia and Isabelle didn't have crushes on anyone at the Academy. Celia had a girlfriend before she came to the school, but that relationship had ended badly. The breakup was why Celia had agreed to being sent off to boarding school by her parents in the first place: she wanted to get as far away from her ex as possible. Isabelle, on the other hand, just wasn't interested in dating people her own age. She had explained that after college she would likely be married off to a nobleman or some high-roller in her own country. She was still so eager to please her father that she had dismissed the idea of being with any man he didn't choose for her.
"You know what, I think I'll pass on jogging today. And no massage either, thanks," Ash said in a huff.
"Hey, we were just kidding," Isabelle said.
"---But if you change your mind you could have him in our room. Just put a sign on the door so I know you have a man in there." Celia offered, jokingly.
"How about I barricade the door so you sleep outside on the ground?" Ash said, seething.
Her friends stopped walking and turned to look at her. They were already in front of their dorm building.
"Hey, I'm sorry, Ashy. I didn't think you'd get so mad. We were just teasing." Celia said softly.
Isabelle looked at Ash with concern. Ash had an easy-going attitude and almost never lost her cool. Out of all of them, Ash had the most sarcastic and cutting humor, so it surprised her that Ash had taken offense to their teasing. She sensed that something else was bothering her friend.
Ash took a deep breath and exhaled the air out of her mouth with a whooshing sound.
"No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to sound like that. I was just kidding too."
The group stood together in an awkward silence. Isabelle opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything a group of girls rushed past them, one of them bumping into Celia and knocking her aside.
"You were in the way!" A red-headed girl in the group shouted back to them; it was a statement and not an apology.
Celia raised a fist and faked a punch in the direction of the red-headed girl. The group had kept on walking and hadn't even bothered to look back at her. Ash had calmed slightly after the teasing, but she felt her friend's anger add to her own and fed off it. She felt the blood rush to her ears. It gave her a hot feeling in her chest. Her face twitched.
"Do you want to go upstairs and rest, Ash?"
Ash's eyes darted to Isabelle who was looking at her with concern. A hot rage was still bubbling inside her body, but her friend was asking her a question. It took her a second to process what was said, but even as she understood, she still didn't answer.
"I'll take her." Celia said. She hadn't seen Ash's face yet; she was still staring in the direction of the red-headed girl, shooting daggers with her eyes.
"I'll see you both later at dinner, okay?" Isabelle said in a soothing, almost motherly tone.
"I thought we were going for a run together?" Celia asked, puzzled. She looked at Isabelle. Celia still hadn't seen Ash's face, so she hadn't noticed anything changing.
"Yes, I'll meet you here in the lobby in a few minutes, after you get Ash to your room. I think she needs to rest." Isabelle's eyes were locked onto Ash's face. She kept her expression soft and her voice soothing, as if she were negotiating with a crazy person or a rabid dog.
"Okay, cool." Celia replied, casually.
Ash blinked. She understood that Isabelle wanted her to rest. She nodded and headed up the stairs like an obedient child. Celia followed behind her.
Isabelle watched as her friends climbed the stairs. She bit her bottom lip, thinking about what she had just seen in Ash's face. Ash had looked angry, very angry. No, not angry. It wasn't just that. She looked . . . almost . . . savage? Her expression had been practically that of a wild animal.
But more than that, Isabelle had seen something else. Something impossible. Just before Ash had blinked, she thought she had seen Ash's eyes change color. For a split second, her eyes had gone from a deep brown to an alarming golden yellow.
As soon as Ash got inside her dorm room, she dropped her book bag on the floor, tossed off her overcoat, stepped out of her leather school shoes, and flopped face down on her bed. She didn't even bother to change out of her uniform.Celia looked on from the doorway. She shrugged and quietly picked up her friend's discarded book bag, setting it on the floor beside Ash's study table. She balled up the crumpled coat and set it on top of Ash's book bag. Then, she put away both of their shoes, nudging aside Ash's strewn pair with her socked feet, and put her own book bag on her own study table, just beside Ash's.Celia quietly changed into a pink velour Adidas Originals tracksuit and put on a pair of pure white Adidas trainers with gold accents. She knew that some of the students made fun of her for being noveau riche and ragged on her alleged lack of good taste, so she made it a point to double down on her flashy street-style aesthetic at school. She knew what she liked an
Hunter had noticed the change in the color of Ash's ears as he passed by the girls that morning, just before class. He had been genuinely amused by Celia's accidental insult of her friend's mental capacity (Celia had accidentally called Ash "retarded" earlier that day) but he felt a little guilty that Ash had been embarrassed by it. He had no doubt that Ash was smart. And it wasn't because she was a scholar: the SBA scholarship's only conditions were that she didn't violate any of the Academy's rules and that she pass all of her classes.Despite that minimum standard, Ash had made the effort to perform well in school. She maintained her academic standing in the upper 10 percent of their level every year since she started at Saint Blaise's Academy. While she didn't exactly top the class, she always ranked third or fourth at every term and received minor commendations at the end of every school year.Hunter admired Ash's tenacity. She didn't have the advantage of exclusi
Hunter bounded swiftly into the woods. He had been aching to shift since lunch time: he had felt the surge of animal energy coursing through his veins and the wolf's hunger had been clawing away at his insides. He needed to channel his urges into a hunt, otherwise, he would have gone crazy.When he was far enough away from the fence, he chose a safe spot under a tree. The half moon was cradled in the tree's branches as he looked up: he deemed it a good sign.He let go of his human mind and began to shift. His spine lengthened and his muscles grew to accommodate the increase in his height. From his human frame of nearly 6 feet tall, he grew larger to an impressive 8 feet from his head to his new hind legs. His bones shifted all over his body and his muscles and tissues expanded to cover them, all the while his organs moved, resizing and reorganizing inside him. As the surface of his body increased, his leather costume was swallowed into the expanding mass of his new ski
Hunter took stock of the tattered uniform in front of him. He knew from the scent who it belonged to, but it didn't really give him much to go on.Thinking was hard. It was especially hard when the aroma of a fresh kill was still wafting in the air and the enticing scent of a possible mate was within immediate mating vicinity.Hunter left the pile of tatters and returned to the deer carcass. He ate the leg that Ash had dropped, fed on the entrails, and tore apart the deer's front legs. When he had finished with his meal, it looked like a pack of wolves had descended on the poor deer. He would leave the rest for the scavengers to find.If a forest ranger were to pass by, the carcass would just be another hard piece of evidence for predation in action: another prey animal succumbing to a carnivore, just another day in the wild with Mother Nature.He turned his attention back to Ash, eager to sniff at the new werewolf up close.When he found her, she
"You know, I saw you at lunch today, and---"Hunter cut himself off mid-sentence: he noticed Ash's eyelids were twitching. It looked like she was about to come to.[Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,] he thought, panic rising in his chest.She was still haphazardly dressed and propped up on his knee. He would have wanted to put a modest distance between their bodies (making room for the Holy Spirit, as the teachers called it) especially considering her state of undress, but that would have meant putting her back on the cold ground.He settled for cradling her shoulders: it seemed like a reassuring thing to do for her (human contact after passing out and all that) but more importantly for him, he could at least keep her from slapping his face the moment she opened her eyes."Heeeey, Boots. Wassup?" he said.[Wassup? Where the hell did that come from? That sounded so lame!] he thought to himself, cringing inwardly.Ash slowly open
[The following is Ash's interpretation of what happened on the night of her first transformation]Tonight, I was in the woods with the Prince of the Forest. The palace was cold and the deer that drew my carriage ran away because his stomach hurt. I think he ate too many blueberries.The Prince arrived after dinner when they had taken all the food away. The fairies were playing a song when he asked me to dance with him, but the music wasn't right so I asked him to wait until it changed.The Prince gave me his tunic to wear because he had chosen me as his betrothed. I was very happy. I had never been chosen before. Then he asked me if I knew my way home so we could tell my parents of our engagement. But I couldn't tell the Prince that my parents were gone. It would have made him very sad, and I did not want to see him sad.I was only sad that we never got to dance.I picked up my garters from where I dropped them: if human things
Ash woke up the next morning chilled to the bone and with a splitting headache. Her night had been heavy with mixed up dreams that made no sense: the dreams just seemed to jump from one to the other, each one more fantastical than the last. She didn't remember leaving the room to eat, but for some reason, she wasn't hungry.She remembered falling into her bed right after school the day before, and between then and now, she did not remember ever having taken her clothes off. So she was definitely surprised at waking up naked under her thick blanket."Aaaah!" Ash shrieked loudly."Well, look who's awake."Celia had been standing over her friend for the last 15 minutes, just waiting for her to open her eyes. She had her arms crossed over her chest and was staring menacingly into the bottom bunk where Ash was sleeping."Are you gonna tell me where you were last night or do I have to torture it out of you? I'm in a very torturing mood this morning, so y
At the pool, Hunter sat on the bench watching the others finish the last relay for the day. He had been benched by the coach for finishing dead last in the second race. Usually he would be neck and neck with Luka or Anwar, the best swimmers on the team, but today he was barely keeping up with the group.When training was over, Luka and Anwar came up to him on the bench. Luka put a wet arm around his buddy's shoulder and nearly knocked him sideways off the slippery plastic bench."Swimming a little heavy today, weren't you?" Anwar asked without looking at Hunter. He was concentrating on stretching his arms over his head."How does a man from the desert swim so fast anyway?" Luka interjected, smiling at Anwar mischievously, dark gray eyes twinkling."How can I not? It's so hot out there that I cannot help but take to the water. I would rather drown than melt." His caramel skin glistened as he rubbed water off his toned arms. Standing next to the two paler b