Fresh Blood (Book 1)

3. Why Is This So Hard?

“Oh?” Olivia said as she stared at Dean. He had all but just declared that he thought she was his soul mate. That scared her a little. But deep down, in a part of her she kept locked down, there was excitement.

“Yep, come on,” Dean said as he pushed her off his hips. He pulled her up into a standing position.

“Where are we going?”

“Back to the house, before our parents start to get worried.” They walked in silence for a while. She snaked her fingers in with his, he grabbed her hand tightly, lacing their fingers together. She stared at their hands with fingers intertwined, his wasn’t much bigger than hers. She tried to imagine it turning into a giant wolf paw.

“Have you ever seen anyone turn before?” she asked him suddenly. She scolded herself, she had to stop letting things slip out of her mouth.

“No, it’s not something we get to see. It’s different for everyone. I know it hurts, a lot.” His voice was soft.

“Does it bother you that you’ve never seen it?”

“Kind of. I want to have some idea of what to expect, you know? But I get why my dad doesn’t show us. He said that it would scare us so badly that we wouldn’t want to accept the change. And that’s how wolves die on their first change.”

“That’s comforting.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, his eyes wandered off ahead of them.

“So on your birthday, do you know what happens?”

“Kind of. On my birthday, I’ll be hungry. Like eat-everything-in-sight hungry. I’ve seen some people spike a fever, and others get real lethargic. It’s a crap shoot until the time I was born, eleven thirty-eight pm. As soon as that hits, my transformation will start. My dad, and maybe your mom, will be in the room trying to pull me through it faster. After I finish, it could take anywhere from twenty minutes to three hours, my dad will establish dominance between myself and him. I’m most likely less dominant than him, so it won’t take long. I’m required to stay in my wolf form as long as I can. At least two hours, so I can acclimate to the wolf and learn to control it and not let it control me. Once that time has passed, I can shift back. Marek, you haven’t met him yet, will come evaluate me and make sure I’m healthy enough mentally to be around the rest of the pack.”

“Mentally healthy?”

“Yeah. Like, that I’m in control, not my wolf.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

“No. You can tell, eye color changes depending on who’s in control. My dad said there’s only a few wolves who can handle their wolves being dominant.”

“So wolf and human, like two separate beings?”

“Basically. Dad said when the wolf and the human fuse, most wolves have to be put down because they become more wolf than human.”

“Has anyone ever survived it?”

“Yeah, two.”

“That’s it? Jeesh. Were they like from back in the day?”

“One of them yeah, you actually know both.”

“I do? Who are they?”

“Cain,” Dean started.

“Makes sense. Though I think he’s more jerk than anything.” Dean chuckled, the laughter touched his eyes.

“The second is your mom.” Olivia paused in her walking, pulling Dean to a stop.