The Wicked and the Haunted

Changed Forever

I stared through the metal bars into the eyes of Midnight Storm. "Your pup is out there. His name is Blowing Storm. Running Flame and Little Paw are caring for him now. Don't come back for me until you have more help! I'll send you word when the best time is to try!" I shouted through my head. I heard him whine and then he took off. I realized then as I saw human legs coming toward me that I wasn't standing on two legs anymore. I was a wolf. I looked up at the man that was standing in front of me at the door to the cage and I saw his face. It was Ruka, he looked at me for a moment longer and then he pointed a gun at me. I inhaled and suddenly I met his eyes. It was as if we were linked. "Ruka, don't harm me. I am not a wolf. I'm a shifter. Today is my sixteenth birthday," I said through my head. He lowered the gun and looked at my face. "What have you done?! You have set them free! We needed those wolves to breed with our shepards!" he growled. "It's enough. I can help you with the breeding," I whispered. "How? You are still human!" he said. "But I have wolf in me. As long as I stay wolf for sixty days then I can give you pups," I said through my head. "Not another male will touch you in that way! I don't care if he is human, like you, or an animal! It's not happening!" he roared. "Come on," he said after a few minutes of calming down. He unlocked the door and I walked beside him to the castle that was his home. "I intended to have a family when I was pregnant with Crow, but now I see that it just isn't going to happen," I said in my mind.

I was still in my wolf form and I was lying on the bed room floor of Ruka's room. "Please change back!" he said. "If anyone finds out what you are they will kill you, or worse, you will be hooked up to machines!" he said. He had pleaded with me for an hour and a half without any prevail. "Just leave me alone," I said through my head. I was tired and I didn't want to fight this battle anymore. "I'm not leaving you alone! You will change back because it will be dark soon and I want you to sleep here tonight. Not sex anymore, just sleep. You need to know why you are a shape shifter," he said looking at my face. I looked at him with an expression that I know looked silly. Suddenly he was standing there in a wolf form. "I am a shifter too, like you, that's why I had to do what I had too do," he said through our mind link. That's when it hit me. I was sixteen years old and he was twenty years old. The stories and legends were true. What my grandfather had told me and my mother was right, nothing had been what it had seemed. I was gifted like this because they knew what animal I would shift into. I wouldn't just be a wolf I could be any animal I wanted, but I loved the wolf so much, because my mate was a wolf-shifter.