The Awakening
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 jelly 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 the nausea and internal shaking of fear 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 are going, reject!” The growl of one of our accompanying mentors hits me in the side of the face 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 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 sons main pack who runs with him , one of Santo’s, 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. We’re here.
I pull myself past the girl in front of me and come to her side to see 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 all the way around the curve of this large platform. The centre of the clearing marked out with ceremonial symbols in chalk and a large set of circles surround 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.
“Clothes off here and put these on” 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 above us and on the edges of the clearing 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 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.
Transforming rips your clothes to shreds so being naked is the best way to deal with it. Afterwards we will be able to get dressed again, but for now, this itchy brown 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. So many turn at the blink of an eye and come walking back in human form with no covering. 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 without any worries, being they are physically perfect. The only time it’s an issue , if a mate is being ogled by someone who isn’t hers. Males are territorial, jealous and aggressively unpredictable when mated up so its not uncommon for regular testosterone fights over looking at each other’s woman. It’s kind of basic and primal and another reason I won’t miss being part of a pack. We are animals by nature and humans would be disturbed by what is normal among us.
I undress fast and leave my clothes and shoes in a neat pile between my ankles and stand up , pulling my blanket around me snugly to await the next orders. I am visibly shaking now and my eyes dart around me quickly to see the equal fear, pale skin and solemn faces of the others. I’m not the only one who is terrified. We have all seen how bad this gets and before the night is out, I will have felt pain incomparable to anything I have been through in my life.
“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. Hold myself together and then quickly move to the first circle I see as the line in front of me dissipates. I can feel the hundreds of eyes on us as they watch and wait. Silence eery in the oncoming night sky 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, its daylight and we have to begin.
After everyone is in place, the hush is broken with the booming voice of the Shaman and he gestures for us all to sit as he raises his staff. I do as I am told 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.
“Drink” Something hard shunts me in my ribs from behind and I strangle a yelp, sitting upright sharply and spin 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.
“Drink it and find out” he smirks, walking away with no real answer. I sigh, looking down at the dark amber liquid contained within and upon catching sight of the other drinking it down fast I follow suit.
It tastes like thick gloopy honey laced with all sorts of herbs and chemicals that burn my throat as I take it down. I almost gag but manage to claw myself into staying still and swallowing hard. Closing my eyes as the taste turns bitter, spreading down my throat and into my stomach and immediately warms them. 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 start to feel a little woozy. The ground around me moving 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 of the ceremony and it’s stages as light faded to dark. They have drugged us for the pain and I start to lose track of everything around me.
I don’t know how long we are this way, what’s happening as all I can hear is the chant of the shaman as he dances around, shaking things, singing and clapping. My vision is 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. Cocooning me into the little bubble of space around me where the smell of fire and incense makes me giddy and sleepy. It’s peaceful yet surreal.
I feel warm hands on me but I’m not sure, the sudden breeze too although it does nothing to cool my eternal warmth. I have lulled 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.
The roughness of something pulling across my skin startles me slightly and then suddenly I am levitating out flat or floating, or maybe just laying down. I have no clue anymore. I have 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.
Memory reminds me that 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 am no longer attached to my limbs and as a warm sensation trails 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 recognise 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 corridor, pushed me against the wall and tried to force me to kiss him while shoving his hand up my dress. I fought him off, left him with a nice scratch down his 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 warm hand moves down my shoulder I can only squirm wanting so badly to get his hands off of 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 reality; suddenly afraid once more that after this is done he will be the one to tend to me like this. Who knows what he will do? I don’t recall if the turning takes you out of the drug induced stupor. After we turn or if I will be like this once more.
I can’t dwell on it any longer, as soon as I do, a burning light hits me hard over the entire surface of my body, almost like a blow torch was turned on me and I spasm instinctively into an arched position on the floor. Every inch of my skin bubbling and blistering to searing levels of torture. Crying out in pain as an intense sensation like ripping my skin from me with lasers engulfs me entirely. My voice deepens and cries become growls, my throat almost bursting into flames with the effort and for a second, I feel like I am being strangled. Cracking, convulsing and devastating agony rip through me hellishly. Sending me rolling around in a bid to relive the pain. Nothing does and I cry and claw at the rocks, breaking nails and gouging what’s left of my skin on sharp grit underneath me.
No one could prepare me for what this feels like and I feel like I am being turned inside out while slow roasted over a fire. I can’t breathe, I can’t scream anymore and silently I writhe and jerk and roll as I am consumed by hell.
Our noises are drowned out by the stamping, chanting and clapping of the packs…giving way to howls as the moon reaches its peak and they encourage us to make the final transition. Combining to howl, under strict orders that none other are to transform tonight and break the ceremony.
I want to die. The pain is unbearable and every bone in my body snaps and reforms as though it is being done manually one at a time, my flesh torn and pulled away from muscle. I feel 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 more. I can’t tell what is sweat, what is blood. I am barley holding on and then suddenly …everything is still.
It all just stops. Like having a cold drink poured over scorched sunburn and instant soothing hits harder than what I just felt.
I stop fighting my own body. Aware of the immediate cease of all of it and the creepy quiet that surrounds me so suddenly. I catch my breath as the fog clears and my head returns to some sense of normal, only not. I try to get up, to right myself and it feels different. I’m on my hands and knees, but no… I can’t stand or push myself up as I would. I am disorientated yet there is a calm taking over me a sense of serene and heightened senses in every way.
I look down and I see paws that startle me at first. Large, clawed but strong paws. Larger than I thought they would be. My legs are solid, with thick silver-grey fur and all the way up my muscular breast I have a streak of purest snow white that travels as far as I can 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 grey …white is a mutation reserved for someone with special gifts and yet I have none.
I shake my head, feeling the unfamiliar weight of a different form pulling me from side to side, not fully in control of my limbs or movements just yet. I stagger on strange legs and fall. Aware suddenly to the scene around me coming back into focus and realising we are still being watched. The atmosphere is charged and I am surrounded by newly changed wolves of all colours of grey and brown, although I am the only one with white in my coat. I turn as the shaman’s chants draw my eyes back to him and trip over my own uncoordinated legs before tumbling face forward to the ground.
“It gets easier. Try to stay on your feet.” The voice above me pulls my head to tilt towards it and I recoil as I realise Colton Santo is standing right by me, watching as I make a spectacle of myself in falling flat out on new legs. I don’t know if I am more shocked he spoke to me, or wary that he did. I have never trusted anything about him or any of his motives and wonder when he got over here, so close. I avoid looking directly at him, keeping me eyes averted from his and just attempt to get to grips with this weird body and focus on learning to use it. All I can do is whimper back and go into my own head link.
Wolves in the same pack have a connection mentally, so they can communicate without talking, which admittedly is impossible as a wolf. We don’ have the vocal chords for human talking. It’s also possible when close enough to talk to one not from your own pack. If they are willing to hear you.
“It feels strange.” I attempt to link with him. Weirded out by all of this and not sure if I am still heavily drugged when in this form. Things affect us differently as humans and this disorientation might be that or just trying to find myself inside this new form.
“Yeah well, walk it off. Learn fast. “
It’s hardly a polite response and the tone in his voice tells me he doesn’t really want to have any sort of communication with me, especially not in a head link. I am not one of his pack and I am not even on the same level as him. It’s disrespectful on some level to try. As if to further demonstrate the point, he walks off towards his father and I flop down in an attempt to get to grips with everything that I just got hit with. I am heavy, not sure how to navigate my dog body when I have spent my life walking on two legs.
“The turning will not last….. only moments fleeting for your first time. When you come out, you will be awoken and your path will lead you to your destiny. Pay attention, be alert. You are now on the other side.”
The Shaman says it loudly and it echoes around the mountain like some sort of prophetic song. One I have heard so many times but yet this time, it finally means something to me.
I get up on unsure legs once more, slowly, like Bambi on new-born limbs and lift my head as I know I am meant too. In unison with all around me, we howl at the moon for the first time in our lives, as one united pack , no matter who we are, where we are from. Long, soulful with meaning. A sound that echoes around us, through us and is joined by the hundreds who watch until we fill the night sky. United in one song that finalises our transformation.
It feels strange at first but as my belly empties, my air departs and the longest eerie sounds comes cascading out of me, until it scratches my throat and makes me breathless, I suddenly 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.
I can leave. I can run, I can live off the land and hunt to survive. I am no longer bound by the confines of humans in terms of getting by. Wolves can live anywhere as long as they can hunt and although we are pack animals in mentality, I have heard stories if isolated wolves doing fine on their own. That is what I have planned and I know where I am heading. I can finally realise my dream of leaving all of this behind me and finding my solitary peace somewhere out there.
As far away from these mountains and people as I can, and never looking back.
As soon as I relax, our call stops and the energy in me fades fast, I look down and everything changes faster than I thought it would.
Fur that was keeping me warm, on paws instead of hands. On all fours …it all begins to recede and unlike my transformation to beast, the reversal is not painful at all. It’s fast, almost instant and before I can blink or even get to grips with what is happening, I am nakedly human, smeared in my own blood and flat out in a huddled heap on the floor.
I scramble to pull my body into a ball, aware I am completely uncovered and exposed to the hundreds of eyes around us and then jump when a blanket is tossed towards me by the nearby Damon, smirking as his eyes devour my body and I recoil. Embarrassed, ashamed at being naked in front of everyone and mad as hell he made sure I would have to cross eight feet to get the blanket. I glare at him, forgetting myself for a moment and then ponder not going to get it and huddling up to cover myself instead.
Others were tossed theirs directly and looking around I realise I am the only one who has to go crawling for hers, like an animal. He is trying to humiliate me and I move fast to catch it. Shocked when the slightest movement sends me shooting towards him at lightning speed and I end up almost at his feet in the blink of an eye.
“Wow” I say out loud, and get laughed at by someone nearby as they realise how naïve I am about the speed and power we all just inherited. Another change in me I have to get used to.
I grab the blanket and try and crawl backwards while pulling it over me and fall onto my back as the blanket is jerked tight and yanked back taught, sending my head crashing on the smooth stone below me and bouncing my skull painfully.
Damon sniggers, his foot on the edge of it as he looks at me with complete disdain. Laughing at how much he is enjoying making a show of me and I have no choice but to try and pull the blanket from him once more. My face reddening with heat, aware of many more muffled sniggers and laughs at my expense and I can’t conceal the shame washing over me.
I know others are watching, my senses are hitched up real high and my body Goose bumping all over in response. I can feel eyes on me from all over and I want to just sink into the ground and disappear. I yank but the blanket begins to tear from the pressure nearer my end and I have no choice but to stop or be left with a scrap that will cover nothing.
“For god’s sake, Damon. This isn’t the time or place. My father is staring at you. Pack it in.” Colton pushes him from behind and comes into view, shoving him off the blanket and swoops down to pick it up. He walks forward in two strides and hands it to me, bending lightly as he does so to make sure I get it. I know he is only doing it to save face, exert his dominance in front of his father and save Damon from punishment later. Either way I am for the first time ever, thankful for him and relieved.
I reach out and take it gratefully, quickly pulling it around me and hiding what is on show, afraid to really look at him but it’s almost impulsive as his hand and mine briefly touch in passing and a hot searing flash runs through my body igniting something inside of me I have never felt before. Like being electrocuted by a low strength taser.
I gasp at the contact, looking up at him as he attempts to rise to standing and for one brief millisecond, our eyes lock.
It’s all it takes.
One second of locking eyes and the worst thing in the world happens to me.
We connect - visions, images, projections start flowing through my mind at neck breaking speed that fries my brain and I cannot break his gaze or look away. Startled into silence locked in and unable to fight what happens. His memories, my memories, my fears, his fears, they become a jumbling mass of information flooding my mind and overtaking me as I am body slammed with an overwhelming amount of information and emotion in literal seconds that could potentially zap your brain to death.
My body , my heart, my soul, all pulled into this flash of seconds, which completely spin my world on tilt and change everything instantaneously. Rooted to the spot, aware only of the darkest chocolate eyes on mine, unable to break free yet marooned like I suddenly found home. Neither of us can do anything in our paralysed state but let it happen until the wild ride of transferring all we are, we know, we feel is done and we are left shellshocked from the fall out.
Breathless, overwhelmed and reeling from the invasion of his life, his memories, his history. I finally snap out and fall backwards in a slump, released from whatever the hell that was and momentarily dazed.
“Holy shit” Colton’s voice waves my way, sounding equally shocked and as breathless as me and I strain up to see him, also on the ground. On his knees, looking like someone just sucker punched him in the stomach , eyes wide, skin pale unusually for his normal tanned hue. He looks like someone just told him the worst news he ever wanted to hear in his life.
Around us is complete and utter silence, like a pin could drop and be heard right now and I have no idea what to think.
“They just imprinted” one solo voice squeaks out and echoes around us like someone announcing a death sentence.
“No, that’s can’t have happened…” another, moments later….and then another and another.
The mutterings of one or two become many, deafening as they all begin to verbalise their questions at what they just saw.
Me?
I lay here dumbfounded and trying to reel my thoughts together, unsure why I now know how he likes his coffee, or his favourite song or why I suddenly cannot get the strong scent of him out of my nostrils or the urge to get up and go hug him, out of my brain. The crazy primal urge to get up and go sit on him and do things I never had the urge to do before, or even a few seconds ago. It’s like every part of me is suddenly attuned to him , feet away. I lay back down and try to breathe through the oncoming panic, trying to rationalise what this was.
“Silence!” Juan Santo demands and like a sudden clap of thunder, his voice halts the rest of the chaotic noise, giving me some relief before my brain explodes.
He storms towards us and almost physically drags his son up by the shoulders from his slumped position. Angrily turning to face him once on his feet with raw anger erupting all over.
“Tell me you didn’t!” He snaps at him, but Colton seems as spangled as me. Knocked sideways and unsure what the hell just happened.
“I don’t know what that was…I have never …..I don’t know” His normally cocky, dominant tone is lacking and I can feel his eyes back on me as I struggle to sit up, pulling myself into a sitting ball and finally have the courage to look at them.
As soon as I meet Colton’s eyes again that same jolt hits me in my heart and stomach like a massive zap and I know this isn’t anything else. I have heard enough about it to know what it is. I have seen it happen to others. The need to go over and wrap myself in his arms, the longing way we stop and look at one another as urge blots out sense and beast overtakes human reasoning.
We just imprinted and fate gave me my mate. Colton Santo is my alpha that I am meant to spend eternity with and follow him wherever he goes. He is my destiny, my lover, my life, the father to my future offspring.
I can’t imagine anything worse.
ns 18.68.41.146da2
