Chapter 2

My blood is rushing through my head to the point I have a headache, palms sweaty and adrenaline spiking as I follow the path to the top of the cliff on Jell-O legs. Walking in behind the others, like me, who are to go through the ceremony at the highest point of the full moon. I m breathless, fighting nausea and internal shaking of fear, body trembling, as I watch where I step a little too closely, and almost collide with the girl in front of me. Staggering sideways and kicking stones in my path, accidentally, to avoid her. "Watch where you re going, reject!" The growl of one of our accompanying mentors hits me in the side of the face with an open palm as he leans in close and shoves me back in line, harshly. Hard enough to send me crashing into the rock face we are brushing up against, and I almost hit the ground with the force, coughing out a whimper of pain. I catch myself, right my body quickly, ignoring the burning pain of grazes, and skip two steps to catch up and get back in line while rubbing my bruised arm and shoulder from the collision. Trying not to look his way, knowing if I do, he will probably smack me in the face for showing zero respect to a superior. He s called Raymond, and he s around twenty-four. One of the Alpha s main pack leaders of the subs, one of the Santos, and he hates anything to do with us. Another superior wolf from a pure bloodline who sees us as an inconvenience and unworthy to breathe his air. This is the reality of my life and how little value I have in this hierarchy. Reject is the name for all of us like we don t have separate identities anymore and I can t wait to be free of these people and this life. "Halt!" A booming low and gravelly voice ahead of us stops us all in our tracks as we come to the level top of the cliff known as 'Shadow Rock . It s more of a large plateau than a rock, but the sun never seems to lay its light and warmth in this nook of the mountain, and yet it gives us a direct and uninterrupted view of the moon every night. It s been the point of this ceremony for hundreds of years and we re finally here. I pull myself past the girl in front of me and come to her side to gaze at the familiar scene before us. Stomach churning with the knowledge it s happening. The ceremonial set up of flares and burning fires at points near the ledge, are already there and glowing bright, all the way around the curve of this large platform. Creating a red and amber glow that illuminates the space in what will soon be wall to wall darkness of this still night. The center of the clearing is marked out with symbols in chalk and a large set of circles surrounds them, one for each of those who are to awaken. I shudder inside as reality hits home that this is really it and I have nowhere to hide. You can t outrun it, there s no way to stop it from happening. "Clothes off here and put these on." Scratchy gray blankets are thrust into our arms by a tall, muscular Santo, looking down at us with almost black eyes as he snarls his contempt. Probably annoyed that they even allow my kind to go through this like everyone else does. Walking past as he dishes them out and I am aware that many have gathered around the ledges, and above us on the edges of the cliffs above to watch this. All the packs are here already, and right in the middle stands Juan Santo and his immediates. His second in command, his third, and his son, Colton. The ceremonial Shaman, in full dress, is standing with his staff awaiting the start of his duties. Something he could do with his eyes closed, I expect, as he has been here for so many years. I don t wait to question the order, eyes down, nerves frayed, but get to it. I know the drill. I throw it around my shoulders to conceal my body as best I can, the same as the others, and we quickly strip down inside our coverings with haste. Discarding our things into neat piles that we ll return to later. Transforming rips your clothes to shreds, so being naked is the best way to deal with it. Afterwards, we ll be able to get dressed again, but for now, this itchy old blanket is all I have to cover my modesty. Not that anyone cares. Nudity among wolves is common and not something they actually stare at or find abnormal. So many turn in the blink of an eye and come walking back in human form with no covering at all. It s another sign of weakness to be body shy and hide if you have to come home without your clothes. Obviously, the Alpha types walk around in the nude with no worries, seeing they are physically perfect. The only time it s an issue is if a mate is being ogled by someone who isn t hers. Males are territorial, jealous, and aggressively unpredictable when mated up, so it s common for regular testosterone fights over looking at each other s women. It s kind of basic and primal and another reason I won t miss being part of a pack. We re animals by nature and humans would be disturbed by what is normal among us. I mean, aggression, physical hostility and even beating each other is not viewed in quite the same way that humans would between married people. Mates fight, sometimes in wolf form, and bites and scratches are usually the best way to work out a dispute. I undress fast and leave my clothes and shoes in a neat pile between my ankles to stand up, pulling my blanket around me snugly to await the next orders and shield myself from the cool air. Visibly shaking with nerves, and I glance around me quickly to see equal fear, pale skin, and solemn faces of the others. I m not the only one who is terrified. We ve all seen how bad this gets and before the night is out, will have felt pain incomparable to anything we ve been through in our lives. "Move!" Raymond shoves the male to my left to make him lead the way, and we dutifully follow silently, in a line, to the open clearing and head towards the chalk circles awaiting us. I close my eyes for a second and try to swallow the clawing fear spreading through my veins like ice, my throat dry and itchy with the effort. Holding myself together, I quickly move to the first circle I see as the line in front of me dissipates. Hundreds of eyes on us as they watch and wait. Silence eery in the oncoming night and I look up to the sky to find some sort of eternal calm. Soon it will be dark and dotted with twinkling stars, but for now, it s daylight and we have to begin. The moon will be upon us soon enough. After everyone shuffles quickly into place and settles, the booming voice of the Shaman breaks the hush as he gestures for us all to sit while he raises his staff. I do as I am told, slide down quickly, and sit cross-legged within my blanket on the cold, hard, gritty ground beneath me. Trying to get enough of the covering underneath me to make it less uncomfortable. I m aware of the penetrating stares from all around, and I try to blot them all out. "Drink." Something hard shunts me in my ribs from behind and I strangle a yelp, sitting upright sharply and spin my head around to see a wooden cup held out to me. Another Santo shoving it into my hand as I unravel it out to take it. "What s it for?" I ask innocently, always wondering when we watched from a distance and stupidly na?ve to think I ll get any sense from one of them. "Drink it and find out," he smirks, walking away with no actual answer. I sigh, internally irritated at his attitude, before staring down at the dark amber liquid contained within, its heavy scent of herbs and perfumes wafting up into my face. I spot the others drinking it down fast, without question, and I follow suit. It tastes like thick gloopy honey, laced with all sorts of chemicals that burn my throat as I take it down and almost choke on its thicker consistency. I gag but manage to claw myself into staying still and swallowing hard with multiple gulps. Closing my eyes as the taste turns bitter, spreading down my throat and into my stomach and immediately warms them both. I can feel it disperse into my veins and limbs, knocking the cold of the rocks away from anywhere my skin touches and almost immediately, I get a little woozy. The ground around me moving and swaying softly, like the sea coming in on the tide. I shake my head, but it s completely pointless. Hunching forward so I don t fall over, I now understand why every time I watched this, the newest to awaken would sit the whole ceremony slumped down and immobile until they turned. Seemingly oblivious to all the ceremony and its stages as the light faded to dark. They have drugged us for the pain, and I start to lose track of everything around me as a veil of surreal sweeps up like a warm fluffy fog and devours me whole. I don t know how long we are this way, or what s happening, as all I can hear is the chant of the Shaman as he dances around, shaking things, singing, and clapping. Vision blurry and coming in waves, my body heavy yet detached and I no longer feel like I am really here or even conscious. Time passes, but I have no clue how fast or slow, and all I know is it gets dark so quickly around me and I can t seem to stop myself drifting into space or losing track and fading away. Cocooning me into the little bubble of black space around me, where the smell of fire and incense makes me giddy and sleepy. It s peaceful, yet somehow it s not, and there s a stirring of awareness and fear almost out of reach. There are warm hands on me, maybe, but I m not sure, the sudden breeze, although it does nothing to cool my eternal warmth. Lulling into a weird state of semi-sleep, and can no longer open my eyes or really understand what is going on around me. It s almost pleasant. Cold liquid and wrinkled hands, as something is smeared across my forehead, making me flinch with a second of reality and I grasp to focus on the dancing form in front of me. Rattling, blowing smoke, chanting a song as it runs down the bridge of my nose and I pull from memory that the new turns are marked with a fresh blood kill to prepare for their own turn. My face will bear the mark of a wolf with an animal our Alpha will have slaughtered. The roughness of something pulling across my skin startles me slightly, and then suddenly I m levitating out flat or floating, or maybe just lying down. No clue anymore. I m too wasted to have any sort of idea about what my body is doing, and the heavy, loud tones of the wolf song, echoes across the mountain as the packs sing to welcome our moon. I ve never felt anything close to this, not even being drunk for the first time a few months ago when we found some booze in the orphanage storage cupboard. The memory of witnessing this many times reminds me they take them and pull the blankets free for the turning; laying them down to be blessed by the full moon and 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 as 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 obviously left a dent on his pride and his 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 come back to a sense of now. Suddenly afraid that after this is done, he will be the one to tend to me like this. 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 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. Breaking nails on 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 entirely. 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 and jerk and 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, giving 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 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, what is blood, what is maybe other kinds of fluid. 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. 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. And then ... everything is still. It all just stops. Like having a cold drink poured over scorched sunburn, and instant soothing hits hard and intensely as my noise becomes silence, my burns become cool and my breaks become one. I stop fighting my body. Aware of the immediate cease of all of it and the creepy quiet that surrounds me so suddenly. The unnatural silence. Hazy and blurry as my head spins and I grasp for some sense of reality. Catching my breath, gulping in cool air and calming ambience as the fog clears, and my vision returns only a little. I try to get up, to right myself, although it feels different, and I stumble sideways with a disorientated sense of upright. 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. Confused, yet there is a calm taking over me, a sense of serene with heightened senses in every way. I blink, my eyes watering, as finally, dry is restored to moist and I see forms and shapes and shadows which then define to details and more. I gaze down and I see paws that startle me at first. Gasping at the closeness and realize they are mine, where my hands should be, flat on the ground. Large, clawed but strong paws, larger 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 truly 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.