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The pain started around midnight.
I woke up feeling like my bones were trying to crawl out through my skin. Every joint locked up at once. I bit down on the blanket to keep from screaming, but it came out anyway, muffled and animal.
Footsteps. Heavy. Fast.
Cain's door slammed open down the hall. I heard him moving, heard something metal scrape against wood. My whole body seized up and I rolled off the cot, hit the floor hard. The impact should've hurt but I couldn't feel anything except the fire spreading through my spine.
"No no no—" The words came out wrong. My jaw felt too tight, teeth too big.
The door to my room crashed open. Cain stood there in jeans and nothing else, a silver knife already in his hand. His eyes locked on me and went cold.
"Shit."
I tried to stand. Couldn't. My hands were pressed flat against the floor and my fingers were bending, joints popping in ways they shouldn't. I watched my nails split. Blood welled up and something dark pushed through underneath.
Claws.
"What's happening—" My voice cracked. "What's happening to me?"
Cain didn't move. Didn't lower the knife. He just stood there in the doorway, every muscle locked up like he was deciding something.
"You need to breathe," he said. Flat. Controlled. The way you'd talk to a wild dog.
"I can't—"
"You can." He shifted his grip on the knife. The silver caught the dim light from the hallway. "You fight it, it's gonna hurt worse."
I wanted to scream at him. Wanted to ask what the hell he meant, what was wrong with me, why he was just standing there with a weapon. But another wave hit and my back arched, bones grinding, reshaping. I felt my skull start to stretch.
That's when I understood.
The wolves in the photos downstairs. The silver on every wall. The way he'd looked at me these past two days like he was waiting for something.
He knew.
He knew what I was before I did.
"You're one of them." I forced the words out. My tongue felt thick. "You're going to kill me."
Cain's jaw tightened. He didn't deny it.
The fear should've made it worse but it did something else instead. Something in my chest snapped and suddenly I wasn't trying to hold it back anymore. I was falling into it. Fur broke through skin in patches, black and matted with blood. My hands flattened into paws. I tried to scream but it came out as a snarl.
I was on four legs. The room looked different. Smelled different. Everything was sharper, louder. I could hear Cain's heartbeat from across the room. Steady. Slow. Like he'd done this a hundred times.
He took a step forward.
I scrambled back, claws scraping against the old wood floor. My shoulder hit the wall and I pressed into the corner, as far from him as I could get. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to run but there was nowhere to go. He was blocking the door.
He crouched down. Slow. Kept the knife visible but lowered it a fraction.
"Easy," he said. "You're still you in there."
I didn't feel like me. I felt like something made of teeth and panic.
He moved closer. One step. Two.
I snapped at the air. Warning. The sound that came out of me didn't sound human at all.
Cain stopped. For a long second we just stared at each other. His face was unreadable. I couldn't tell if he was going to use the knife or not. Couldn't tell if I wanted him to.
Maybe it'd be easier. Maybe waking up like this was worse than not waking up at all.
Then he did something I didn't expect.
He put the knife down.
Set it on the floor between us, silver blade gleaming, and slid it away. It skidded across the wood and came to rest near the doorframe.
"I'm not Derek," he said. Quiet. Rough. "I'm not gonna hurt you."
I didn't believe him. Couldn't. Every man who'd ever said that had been lying.
But he stayed there. Crouched down, hands open, three feet of space between us. He didn't move forward. Didn't reach for another weapon.
"You're scared," he said. "I get it. You don't know what's happening. But you're gonna come back. First shift always reverses fast. You just gotta ride it out."
I wanted to ask how he knew. Wanted to ask what the hell I was supposed to do after. Wanted to ask if he'd been planning to kill me this whole time.
But I couldn't talk. Couldn't do anything except shake in the corner, blood and fur and terror.
Cain's eyes didn't leave mine. "When you come back," he said, "we're gonna talk. And you're gonna listen. Because if you run, you're dead in a week. You understand?"
I didn't move.
"They can smell a new wolf from miles out. You've got no pack. No control. The Guild's already got spotters on the highway looking for ferals." His voice dropped. "You stay here, I can teach you to hide it. You run, I can't help you."
The pain was starting to ebb. I could feel it pulling back, my body trying to figure out what shape it was supposed to be. My front leg twitched and suddenly it was an arm again. Human. Shaking.
The shift reversed faster than it had come on. Fur receded. Bones cracked back into place. I gasped and it sounded like me again, raw and broken but human.
I ended up on my side, naked and covered in blood that I think was mine. Everything hurt. My skin felt too tight. I couldn't stop shaking.
Cain stood up, grabbed the blanket off the cot, and tossed it over me without looking. I pulled it around myself, fingers barely working.
"What—" My voice came out hoarse. "What am I?"
"Werewolf." He said it like it was obvious. Like I should've known. "Late shift. Means you had the gene but it didn't trigger till now. Trauma, usually. Stress."
Derek. The basement. Running.
That made sense in a way that nothing else did.
"You said you'd teach me to hide it."
"Yeah."
"Why?" I looked up at him. He still wouldn't meet my eyes. "You're a hunter. This is what you do."
His jaw worked. For a second I thought he wasn't going to answer.
Then he turned and I saw it.
On the inside of his left wrist. A mark. Red and raw like a fresh burn, twisting in a pattern I didn't recognize. Shapes that looked almost like letters in a language I'd never seen.
I looked down at my own wrist.
The same mark.
Exact same size. Same place. Still smoking.
"What the hell is that?" My voice pitched up. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything." Cain's voice was tight. Strained. He stared at his wrist like it had betrayed him. "That's a bond mark."
"A what?"
He finally looked at me. His face was hard. Angry. But not at me.
"It means we're linked," he said. "Soul-deep. If you die, I feel it. If I die, you feel it. And if either of us tries to break it—"
He didn't finish.
I pulled the blanket tighter. "I don't understand."
"Neither do I." He turned toward the door, grabbed the silver knife off the floor. "Bond marks don't just happen. Something triggered it."
"Can we undo it?"
"No."
The word hit like a door slamming shut.
"So what does that mean?" I asked. My voice sounded small. "What happens now?"
Cain stopped in the doorway. Didn't turn around.
"It means you're stuck with me," he said. "And I'm stuck with you."
He walked out.
I sat there on the floor, wrapped in a blood-soaked blanket, staring at the mark on my wrist.
It was still burning.