The Wolf (Book 1)

Company

Chris walked up to me keeping his head down.

“You ok?” I asked as he stopped in front of me knowing something was wrong.

“Yeah I'm ok.” He replied a without any emotion in his voice apart from emptiness “It was hard you know, leaving family like that, really hard.”

“Yeah I know... I know...” it was true, it was hard to leave family like we had done.

We walked for a bit up the road in silence and as a red Fiat drove past I wondered what they must have thought of us, two teens both walking down the road at 4am with hiking bags. Chris had only just bought his, he had bought it yesterday because the only other thing he had was his school backpack which could hold almost nothing, and he wanted to actually bring some spare clothes.

“How did your letter go?” Chris asked nervously

“It was ok I guess, I mean I told them I loved them and I will miss them.” I paused “What did you tell them?” I really wasn’t sure what he would say and I was worried he told them about the whole shape shifter thing and if he did this would make everything a lot more complicated.

“I told them I'm running away, I love them, and not to worry. Said I'm going to travel, live life as a free man, no school, no job, just... survival I guess.”

“So you didn’t tell them about being a shape shifter?”  I said slowly

“Do you think I'm that stupid Tilyer?” he said sarcastically

“You could be” I laughed, Chris gave me a serious look before he too burst into laughter.

As we entered the woods I slowed down to try and shift my eyes, since I couldn’t see a thing as a human and there were no lights in the woods, I thought it would be a good idea to take advantage of my wolf side, good thing wolves could see in the dark.

“What you doing?” Chris asked as I closed my eyes and stopped in my tracks.

“I'm shifting my eyes.” I replied with my eyes closed as I felt them swirling into their wolf form.

When I opened my eyes I could see as if it was day time. It was amazing; I loved the advantage I had over the night now.

Chris looked at me and slowly took out a torch from his bag and turned it on.

“You know there are these wonderful things called torches for those who cannot shift as easily as you can.” He said half heartedly as he looked into my eyes.

“Don’t worry, one day you will shift as easily as I can now and after that even better.”

“I hope so.” From the sound of his voice it was clear he didn’t have too much faith in himself, he had only shifted 4 times, and only two of those were on purpose and that was on Friday when I had insisted on training him, it had taken him over half an hour each time to shift and had only stayed as a wolf for 15-25mins.He had first shifted involuntarily because I had tackled him, his latest shift was when he had pinned Alex to the ground, he had stayed a wolf for about 30mins, which wasn’t bad but I had decided to teach him to hunt and this meant he had shifted back as we were hunting, and rather dangerously as well since we were sprinting full pelt as the change happened. He had blacked out in mid sprint and fell into the river which we were running alongside of, I was just grateful he hadn’t hurt himself.

I shifted my eyes back and got out my own torch to not make him feel so left out, I hated being left out, so the least I could do for him was put myself in the same position.

“How far is the den again?” he was pretty unsure about all of this and I knew he hadn’t liked the idea to start but I hope he would get to grips with it soon and move on with life, I know it sounds harsh but what else is there to say or do.