The Awakening Series

The memory of witnessing this many times reminds me that they take them and pull the blankets free for the turning, laying them down to be blessed by the full moon.

Logically, a part of my brain is telling me this is what is happening. It’s almost like I’m no longer attached to my limbs, and a warm sensation trails firmly across my cheek.

A raspy voice comes through the fog at me.

“It’s going to hurt… I can’t wait to watch it, reject. Or maybe I might take advantage of you like this. Finally get my way.”

I barely recognize the voice, but gut instinct tells me it’s Damon, a boy from the Conran pack who tried to kiss me a year ago.

He cornered me in the school hallway, pushed me against the wall, and tried to force me to kiss him while shoving his hand up my dress.

I fought him off, leaving him with a nice scratch down his smarmy face, and he has been gunning for me ever since. Not that I marked him badly, we heal fast, but I left a dent in his pride and ego.

I can’t react, and as a hot, invasive sensation moves down my shoulder, I can only squirm, wanting so badly to get his hands off me.

He’s not that dumb, though, and with all eyes on us, he leaves me alone to my fate as I try to fight to return to a sense of now.

I’m suddenly afraid that he will be the one to tend to me like this after this is done, responsible for ushering me back to my clothes and the concealed shadow of the cliff edge.

Who knows what he will do? I don’t recall if the turning takes you out of the drug-induced stupor when it’s done or not.

I can’t dwell on it any longer as a burning light hits me hard over the entire surface of my body, almost like a blowtorch was turned on, and I spasm instinctively into an arched position on the floor.

Every inch of my skin is bubbling and blistering to searing levels of torture as though I have been set alight, and I strain and claw the ground beneath me, gasping with effort.

I break nails on the rough terrain as I scramble for relief and yet can do nothing but scream, crying out in pain, writhing in agony, as an intense sensation rips my skin from my bones and engulfs me.

My voice deepens, scraping and hoarse like I’m swallowing splinters, and cries become growls, my throat almost bursting into flames with the effort.

For a second, it’s like I’m being strangled. I’m under attack. My body is being ravaged, twisted, snapped, and slain, but this isn’t another wolf… this is the turning.

It’s so much worse than I ever imagined it could be.

Cracking, convulsing, and devastating agony rip through me hellishly, sending me rolling around to relieve the pain as grime, rocks, and dust scrape at my flesh and burn as I graze across them.

I whimper and moan, but it eases nothing of the torture of my body crunching and shredding itself apart.

I cry out, beg for my mother to save me, wail for the Fates to stop this, and claw at the rocks, breaking fingers with the sheer force of my fight and gouging what’s left of my skin on sharp edges underneath me.

No one could prepare me for what this feels like, and I’m being turned inside out while slow-roasted over an open bed of hot coals.

I can’t breathe, I can’t scream anymore, and silently, I writhe, jerk, twist, and turn as I am consumed by hell.

Our noises are drowned out by the stamping, chanting, and clapping of the packs, thundering through the ground and reverberating through my broken, smashed body.

They give way to howls as the moon reaches its peak, and they encourage us to make the final transition to become like them, combining to howl, under strict orders that none are to transform tonight and break the ceremony.

Only the new shall change tonight. Only our blood will spill as our human form is destroyed to build something better.

I want to die.

The pain is unbearable, driving me to the brink of insanity, and it truly feels like my human self is being tortured to nonexistence.

Every bone in my body snaps and reforms as though it’s being done manually, one at a time. My flesh tears free and pulls away from the muscle.

I’m wet, a hot pouring out as blood drains from the hellish self-inflicted wounds that seem to last forever, covering me in sticky warm heat, smothering me, and leaving a vile metallic scent all around.

I can’t tell what’s sweat, blood, or maybe other kinds of fluid. I howl and strain with all my might, so I extend my face up into the air and gasp with relief as my lungs inhale, and I finally take a breath.

I’m barely holding on, reaching a pinnacle where my mind is on the verge of collapse, and the dregs of sanity teeter on a cliff edge.

And then… everything is still.

It all stops.

Like having a cold drink poured over scorched sunburn, instant soothing hits hard and intensely as my noise becomes silent, my burns become cool, and my breaks become one.

I stop fighting my body. I am aware of the immediate cease of all of it and the eerie quiet that surrounds me so suddenly.

The unnatural silence, hazy and blurry as my head spins, and I grasp for some sense of reality. I catch my breath, gulping in cool air and calming ambiance as the fog clears. My vision returns only a little.

I try to get up, to right myself, although it feels different, and I stumble sideways with a disoriented sense of uprightness.

I’m on my hands and knees, even though I don’t know how I got this way.

I can’t stand or push myself up as I would because it all feels strange, and I blink and shake my head to clear my eyes enough to see which way up I’m facing.

I blink, my eyes watering, as finally, dry is restored to moist, and I see forms, shapes, and shadows which then sharpen to details and more.

I’m confused, yet there is a calm taking over me, a sense of serenity with heightened senses in every way.

Gazing down, I see paws that startle me at first. I gasp at the closeness and realize they are mine, where my hands should be, flat on the ground.

They are large, clawed but strong paws, bigger than I thought they would be. I lift one and shake it, almost as if I need to convince myself that I can use and control this limb.

It’s genuinely connected to my body. My legs are solid, with thick silver-gray fur up my muscular chest. I have a streak of purest snow-white that travels as far as I can see.

I stare at it, lean back, and pull my chin in tight to follow it until I can’t strain any further to see.

I have very little memory of my mother in her true form, but I know this is from her. She was a white, and my father a silver, yet it’s rare to combine both in such a way.

Most wolves are brown or gray... white is a mutation that’s almost unheard of, and my mother used to try to hide because it brought only stares.

I stagger on strange legs and fall flat, splaying out and bumping my undercarriage as I collide with stone.

I shake my head, the unfamiliar weight of a different form pulling me from side to side. I’m not entirely in control of my limbs or movements yet, but I’m aware it’s so much bigger than my human skull.

I’m suddenly aware of the scene around me coming back into focus and realize we are still being watched. I sober fast as my new metabolism pushes the last drugs out of my system and cleanses my blood.

The atmosphere is charged, and newly changed wolves of all shades of gray and brown surround me, although I’m the only one with white in my coat.

Turning as the shaman’s chants draw my eyes back to him, I trip over my uncoordinated self as I try to right myself and get up.

It’s hard to use my hands as front legs, and I instinctively rear backward too far onto my haunches, lose my balance, and reel forward again to correct it before tumbling face down.

I slump to the ground once more and meet the dust with a lower jaw clunk.

“It gets easier. Try to stay on your feet. All four of them.” The voice above me pulls my head to tilt toward it.

I recoil as I realize Colton Santo is standing right by me, watching as I make a spectacle of myself, falling flat out on new legs. I don’t know if I’m shocked that he’s spoken to me or wary that he has.

I’ve never trusted anything about him or his motives and wonder when he got over here, so close.

I avoid looking directly at him, keeping my eyes averted from his, attempting to come to grips with this weird body and focusing on learning to use it.

All I can do is whimper back, realizing I can’t form words this way and go into my head link instinctively.

We don’t have the vocal cords for human talking. Wolves in the same pack have a connection mentally, so they can communicate without talking, which, admittedly, is impossible as a wolf.

It’s also possible when close enough to speak to one not from your pack if they are willing to hear you.

“It feels strange,” I attempt to link with him, weirded out by this new, almost natural ability I didn’t have before.

I am overwhelmed by all of this and unsure if I am still heavily drugged in this form or if this surreal new way to experience everything is wolf’s sense.

Things affect us differently as humans, and this disorientation might be something I have to adjust to.

“Yeah, well, walk it off. Learn fast,” he links me back, a husky familiarity to his voice inside my head that does strange things to my stomach.

It’s hardly a polite response, and the tone tells me he doesn’t want to have any sort of communication with me, especially not in a mind-link.

I’m not one of his pack or even on the same level as him. It’s disrespectful to try.

He walks off toward his father to further demonstrate the point, and I flop down to come to grips with everything I got hit with.

I’m heavy, not sure how to navigate my dog body when I’ve spent my life walking on two legs. I must weigh four times my average weight for sure, although the size of my paws suggests maybe even more.

“The turning will not last... only fleeting moments for your first time. You will be awoken when you come out, and your path will lead you to your destiny. Pay attention, and be alert.

“You are now on the other side.” The shaman states this loudly, and his voice echoes around the mountain like a prophetic song.

I have heard it so many times, yet it finally means something to me this time.

I get up on unsure legs once more, slowly, like Bambi on newborn limbs, and lift my head as I know I’m meant to.

In unison with all around me, we stretch our necks out, lift our noses to the heavens, and howl at the moon for the first time in our lives as one united pack.

No matter who we are, where we are from, whatever our bloodline or our past, our call is long and soulful with meaning, united in one song that completes our transformation.

The sound echoes around us, through us, and is joined by the hundreds who watch until we fill the night sky with a low, eerie hum that will reverberate around the mountains and put the fear of God into the wildlife.

It feels strange at first.

My throat vibrates; it aches and rasps my vocal cords, but as my belly empties, my air departs, and the longest yowl comes cascading out of me until it scratches my throat and leaves me breathless.

I feel alive. Like I have been holding my breath and waiting for this my whole life. I guess I have. This is what I was born to be, and with the awakening comes freedom.