Chapter 2: Power of the Moon
The low creak of settling wood echoed through the cabin, masked by the quiet rise and fall of sleeping breath. Outside, the moon cast a silver sheen over the forest, sharp as bone. Inside, Ryker sat upright in his cot, sweat beading along his brow despite the cold.
His fingernails had carved thin lines into his palms. He hadn’t meant to. He just needed something to ground him. Something to hold.
But the moon pulled harder tonight.
He stared across the room. The others slept scattered—piled in blankets, curled in corners, sprawled on mattresses salvaged from abandoned homes. Wolves without a den.
His pulse drummed in his throat. He could feel it. The shift. Not just in muscle and bone—but in thought. The way the world narrowed. Sound sharpened. The wolf itched beneath his skin, pacing just behind his eyes.
They told him he was too young to fight it yet. Too raw. Too wild. And that was true.
But this was different.
For weeks now, the dreams had come—strange, shimmering things. At first, he thought they were just his wolf’s instincts bleeding through. But they’d grown more vivid. More urgent.
The city. Always the city.
Lights blurring like fireflies. Asphalt gleaming wet beneath streetlamps. And a voice—not a human voice, but not quite a wolf’s either—calling his name through the dark.
Ryker.
It didn’t sound like warning. It sounded like… invitation.
He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“You okay?”
Ryker flinched.
Jessa lay two cots over, her hair tangled across her pillow. Her eyes were half-open, cloudy with sleep.
“I’m fine,” he whispered. “Go back to bed.”
“You’re sweating.”
“It’s the moon.”
A long pause. “You’re not gonna do anything stupid, right?”
Ryker managed a crooked smile. “Define stupid.”
Jessa’s sigh sounded annoyed, but it didn’t mask the worry. “Just don’t be dumb. Kade’ll skin you.”
He waited until her breathing evened out again.
Then he stood.
The wooden floor was freezing under his bare feet. He moved silently, muscle-memory sharp from years of hiding, of sneaking through a world that wanted them dead. He eased the door open, wincing at the quiet creak, and stepped into the chill of night.
The air hit him like a slap. Clean. Brutal. Real.
The moon stared down at him like it knew.
He didn’t shift.
Not yet.
Instead, he ran.
Not wild. Not mindless. But fast.
He darted through the trees, each step farther from the safety of the pack, closer to the hum of distant lights. His chest burned. His skin prickled. The air smelled different here—less earth, more metal. Asphalt. Car exhaust. Neon sweat.
The city was close now. Closer than it had ever been in his dreams.
And still—just barely—he could hear it.
That voice.
Ryker.
Calling him forward.
He didn’t look back.
The trees began to thin, and Ryker’s breath came in short, sharp bursts. Each inhale was a struggle against the instinct clawing at his insides—the one that told him to turn around, to run back, to not be seen.
But he couldn’t stop.
His bare feet pounded against the frost-hardened ground, leaving behind faint crescents where claws threatened to break skin. The moon carved silver paths through the canopy above, each beam like a leash tugging at the beast inside him.
He gritted his teeth. “Not yet,” he muttered. “Not here.”
The treeline gave way to a narrow gravel service road—broken, half-swallowed by weeds and rot. Rusted fencing curled in on itself around an old gas station, its sign long gone, its windows shattered into jagged grins. The place looked abandoned decades ago.
Still, the pull dragged him forward.
He stopped beside a flickering streetlight, blinking hard against the pounding behind his eyes. His whole body buzzed with heat. The shift was close now—close enough that his bones ached.
He doubled over with a dry heave. Fingers clenched the edge of a broken dumpster as his back arched, muscles spasming.
“No, no—just a second—just one more—”
But the wolf didn’t care about seconds.
His skin felt too tight, stretched thin like paper about to tear. Every breath came with a shiver. His vision blurred, pupils sharpening, then dilating too wide.
He stumbled to the far end of the alley, hidden by the skeleton of a collapsed canopy. His body hit the wall, knees buckling.
The transformation began.
Not gentle.
Not elegant.
It never was.
His jaw cracked. Fingers split. Bones twisted with sickening snaps beneath his skin. He bit down on a scream, but a guttural sound still escaped—half-human, half-snarling animal.
And from the other side of the alley—
A footstep.
Soft.
Familiar.
Human.
Ryker’s head whipped up.
She was there.
A girl.
Maybe seventeen. Wide green eyes. Chest rising and falling like she’d run a mile—but she hadn’t. She stood frozen halfway between the street and the alley, lips slightly parted, face pale in the moonlight.
She didn’t scream.
Didn’t run.
Her head tilted.
Like she knew him.
Like she’d been expecting him.
Ryker’s body quaked. Half-fur. Half-boy. Full fear.
She took a step closer.
And Ryker bolted into the shadows.
Eden hadn’t meant to wander.
One moment she was walking behind Sierra and Logan, the buzz of their laughter echoing down the alley as they passed around a half-smoked joint. The next—she was gone.
She didn’t even remember turning.
It was like her legs had just moved, pulled by something deep in her chest. Not a thought. Not a sound. Just a feeling. Like being called without words. Like déjà vu laced with static.
She’d passed a fence with a caved-in gate, drifted through tall grass still silver with frost, and stepped under the shattered awning of a place that smelled like old gasoline and time. Her boots crunched over broken glass.
Then she saw him.
No, not him—not quite.
A figure. Writhing in pain. Slamming against a rusted wall like his body was trying to destroy itself from the inside out. The sound—God, the sound—was all snapping cartilage and something wet tearing free.
She should’ve screamed.
Should’ve called someone.
Should’ve run.
Instead, she froze. Breath caught in her throat, every nerve screaming not fear—but recognition. She knew this wasn’t normal. But it didn’t feel wrong.
Not like it should have.
The boy was maybe her age, barely older. He gripped at his own skin like it was on fire. His back arched, and for a second—just a second—his eyes met hers.
Glowing. Amber. Wild.
She blinked.
And then it happened.
His body jolted forward. Bones cracked loud enough to echo off the alley walls. His face stretched into something monstrous—snout splitting through skin, teeth elongating, ears twisting back. His shirt shredded along his spine as fur broke through. His hands—no, paws—slammed into the gravel.
A wolf, huge—trembling, rose from the wreckage of the boy.
Not a dog. Not a coyote.
A wolf the size of a damn horse, its sides heaving with panic, foam glinting on its lips.
Eden didn’t move.
The wolf looked at her.
And paused.
Its golden eyes locked on hers with something disturbingly human still flickering inside.
Recognition.
Confusion.
And then—without warning—it turned and vanished into the trees beyond the alley.
Gone.