The Worst Kind of Wonderful

Chapter ELEVEN

✖️The Worst Kind of Wonderful✖️

"It is a very sad thing,

nowadays there is so little

useless information."

-Oscar Wilde

Chapter Eleven~

My vision slipped in and out if focus as I clawed for something truly solid. I could feel shaking fingers slipping and grasping my forearms as my sister tried to keep me steady and hear my mother's voice echoing in the distance.

My bones shifted under skin and my blood pumped too hot in my veins. My teeth ached bitterly and slowly, forming and shaping and falling into place with force. I could taste fresh blood but it felt tainted like it had somehow spoiled. My ribs snapped and legs broke beneath me beginning the shredding of my skin. Long rips tore me apart, up a spine that was now open to the air; bending and straightening, shaping and twisting. I felt as though I'd bleed out as a tingling numbness spread from the tips of my fingers and toes and up my aching appendages.

"Mia!" Andrea's voice leaked into my head. Thought slipped into my mind too slowly, like saline through an IV drip but I clung onto them to keep from falling into the darkness that was encompassing me like slipping into a lake of dirt clouded ice water. The wolf beneath my skin began to show and I could feel silken strands of fur reach the air around me.

But something was different. My heart beat faster in my chest and I felt clean. Air moved more freely in my lungs and the world around me sparked and vibrated deliciously. My claws slipped across the floor toward my closet, moved and guided step by step from my wolf's sheer will to see our mate. 'Stop' I demanded in my head, but still we continued on in our slow march. 'Stop it now.' I warned but her only response to my desperate pleas was a slideshow of images flashing across my vision, all of Xander. 'They'll kill him!' I insisted, screaming the words out through every pore in my body and forcing images of him beaten and broken and bloody.

Her whimpering echoed through the room and my legs crumbled beneath us, sending me to the floor with a thud. She continued to whine but began to relinquish control pulling back the feeling of darkness and cold that had me gripped in its vice. I looked up to find my family staring down at me in shock; fear clear in their eyes.

"Mia, sweetie what's going on?" My mother asked, her voice shaking noticeably. I tucked my snout under paw and whimpered slightly, unsure how to change back or express a reasonable explanation for my transformation. There was a creak in one of the floorboards and I looked up to find my sister approaching me. She stretched her long fingers out slowly, letting them glide through the air and onto my large canine head. Her fingers rubbed over my brow soothingly as she knelt, tucking her pajama encased legs beneath her and staring at me in awe.

"I've never seen your wolf while I was in human form." Andrea reminded. Being older than me she had her first shift before I did so I had seen her wolf before my own but she only ever shifted with me.

I had barely enough time to process her words before my body began to buzz with electricity. Andie jumped back in surprise at my sudden trembling. I could feel my blood run smoothly through my veins and my organs pulse but the rhythm somehow made functioning simpler. I felt alive and more well rested than I had in awhile. My vision was clouded with silver as my body was cleansed with the light that dripped from the crescent moon that hung in my window, dangling by a string of stars.

I took a breath and my lungs burst. I suddenly felt like I was floating but could smell the distant metallic scent of my own blood slicing and tearing at the thoughtless state I was slipping into. It wasn't right for me to shift back so soon after taking my wolf form, it wasn't natural, but here I was. My body ached but complied with my blood's urge to glide beneath human skin.