Wolf Magic

Mom always told us we were special. She told all five of us pups this, but none of us truly believed her. We all thought it was just a MOM thing she was saying.

It’s extremely rare for someone to have multiple pups during a pregnancy, for our kind. Twins happen once in a Great Moon, but triplets? That’s almost unheard of. It puts such a great strain on us.

Then there is my mom. She had both twins and triplets.

My brother’s Owen and Oscar, twins, are twenty-one. They are fraternal, but both have distinctive boxy faces with square jaws. They look very much a like, with a few differences.

Oscar has wavy jet black hair that he keeps short but long enough to have some body to it and allow those natural waves to flourish. Oscar’s brown eyes are round and wide set.

Owen has a lighter shade of black hair, still black but just not as inky dark. It’s more like the black of a full moon night. He has round green eyes.

Oscar is taller by four inches, while Owen is more muscular. They are both over six feet tall. They tower over me. I am only about 5 foot five inches.

Both of them are Zetas, which in our pack means they are highest-level warriors. They train hard, and help train others. They also lead the groups of warriors, Deltas, when we are under attack or if we should ever go to war.

Owen found his mate when he was eighteen. They were friends in high school but once she turned eighteen; it was like two magnets crashing together unable to fight the attraction, the instant allure. That’s when you can first find your mate, at eighteen. His mate, Cora, is pregnant with their first pup. She is due to birth soon, as our pregnancies advance quicker than a human pregnancy. It only lasts about four to five months, a little less if there are multiple pups. Though it's not common to have more then one pup.

We date in high school. Well, I don’t, but it is allowed. Some even partake in releasing hormonal tensions with one another, fully mating. Just not me, I don’t because I’ve never had a boyfriend. I have been focused on my studies.

Oscar is still waiting for his mate and being more and more impatient about it. He grumbles about not having a mate every time I see him. I remind him that maybe his mate isn’t fully of age yet and patience was typically a virtue. He wants a mate, and he wants pups. Now would be great in his book, yesterday would be so much better.

We have pups which are just like humans have babies. Only they are called pups because we eventually turn into wolves. As babies and children, we look just like humans, because we are humans. We get our wolves, typically, at the age of sixteen. That is when they show up but we don’t shift for the first time until a year later.

A human can’t tell we’re wolves. We look and act like everyone else in the “normal” human world. We interact with them all the time. We work with them, go to school with them, we can even mate with them.

The difference is, we have a second soul with in us, that is our wolf. They have their own names, thoughts, feelings, all of it. We don’t give them their names. They tell us their names when they first reveal themselves to us. Selene, the Moon Goddess names them. We don’t even know what they look like until we shift for the first time. They don't seem to be allowed to tell us either.

My brothers and I are very close. They are not close to my sisters, but to me, we were the best of friends and they doted on me. Now, we aren't even friends. Some shift happened a few years ago and now they can't stand to be around me. I don't even know why.

Mom and Pops thought they were done after having the two pups. Surprise!! Not only did the Moon Goddess bless them again, but with twins a second time, or so they thought. Those would be my sisters, Ayerland and Annestyn.

Gorgeous and tall with long black hair and smokey grey eyes. Identical twins. Perfectly round faces with long eyelashes and doe eyes. I've always seen them as perfection.

She gave birth to them and then when the contractions continued and mom started to holler that there was another pup, no one believed her. Mom said she heard my heart beating inside her still. That is how she knew I was there. She called me her little stowaway. Then I was born, tiny, with a head of curly red hair and large violet eyes. Rareness in a pack of wolves.

That’s me. Rare! One in a million, they say. The pack doctor didn't think I would survive. They say I didn't cry when I came out, I mewed and wide eye and intent concentration, I just watched everything going on.

Of course, that’s not where it stopped. I was small at birth, much smaller than both of my sisters. I was small in life and everyone kinda assumed I was going to be a weak one. Though, in primary school, I began to run faster. As my senses developed, my senses of smell and hearing were better than the other kids. At puberty, when we all started training, before our wolves came, I ended up kicking my trainer so hard that not only did he fly across the gym, but he actually left a dent in the concrete wall. I ended up shattering several of his ribs and his back broke.

Before you get all bent out of shape, you gotta know that as a wolf, we heal better and faster than humans. It only took Charles a few days to be good as new.

We train hard for a reason. ROGUES! Rogues are wolves, or other supernaturals, that have been banished from their pack or clan and are not welcomed into a new one. The longer they are alone, without a community, the more they become feral. They also emit this putrid smell that stinks so badly that it could make one sick to their stomach. It’s that sulfuric smell of rotten eggs.

Rogues just want to be aggressive and fight. It's almost like they are rabid. They are absolutely feral. This process can be reversed if a rogue does something of great honor and or a pack wants to allow them to join their community.

Charles also continued to be my trainer, even though our Alpha Dylan gave him a choice of passing me to someone else. Charles just laughed and said he thought it would be an honor to train a wolf like me.

Then my wolf came when I turned sixteen. Well, my sisters’ wolves came, but mine did not. Of course, I was beyond upset, not understanding why my wolf didn’t come when my sisters’ heard from theirs on our birthday. I could sense my wolf, but she didn’t speak to me. I couldn’t see her when I closed my eyes.

Lana bragged that her wolf, Henna, and Nesa’s wolf, Hallzee, were so beautiful and amazing. They became best friends with their wolves and everything inside me was silent. I had thrown myself on my bed in tears. I couldn’t understand where my wolf was. I was so devastated. It was months before I understood.

I had heard horror stories of kids not being born with wolves, and they were just human shells. That couldn’t be me? But that’s what I thought when my wolf didn’t come at the same time their wolves, Henna and Hallzee, came to them.

A few months later, this voice woke me up. Shouting “GET UP GET UP” in my head. I sat up in my bed, ready to fight. I believe I had even had my fists out. She just laughed, then apologized for scaring me. She said her name was Hennessy and she wanted to go run during the morning twilight, the rising sun in the morning dew. I realized it was my wolf talking to me.

I got up, got dressed and went on a run through the woods in the sunrise.

You don’t shift, though, until the first full moon after your seventeenth birthday. Typically, you aren’t supposed to shift for the first time without a parent or elder present. It’s a painful process and can sometimes take up to an hour or more. It depends on how much the person fights against the pain of shifting. You have to give in to the pain and try to let your wolf take the pain. My sisters took over an hour. Ayreland took ninety-six minutes and Annestyn took eighty-eight minutes. They both had to stop to take breaks from the pain. Of course, each time you shift, it gets easier until it’s eventually effortless.

Just like when our wolves first spoke to us, my sisters both shifted the first full moon after our seventeenth birthday. However, Hennessy said she couldn’t yet and wouldn’t tell me why. She would just say, in due time, she’d come out to play. Just not that day, or rather, night.

I watched my sisters first shifts though and let me tell you; it was traumatizing. I wanted to stop it, protect them, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t take their pain away, either, but I felt it in my bones as I watched them twist and transform. I watched the bones break themselves and elongate. I witnessed their faces shift and their snouts protrude from their faces. I watched as their hair shifted in length and color and spread to cover all of their bodies. They screamed in pain and begged for the process to stop.

It all made me nervous and extremely eager for my shift.

It was the night of the new moon in August when my wolf woke me up around midnight. She urged me to go outside. I was confused, but I still did what she asked, figuring there would be a reason.

Our home was right on the edge of the woods and mountains of our territory. Our territory covers a vast area, thousands of miles around, with a mighty mountain range and beaches that stretched out to the Pacific Ocean. Our weather was typically cool and didn’t get overly hot all year long. In some areas, during the Winter months, our Moon Goddess granted us with a lot of snow, and some areas saw none.

I told Hennessy that I didn’t want to wake my parents up, so I had skillfully snuck out without waking them. I didn’t realize what she intended to do. She just told me to go outside, in a tone like I was silly, and so I did. Though, I think she was just excited and so the tone came off weird.

I had on an older nightgown, and before I knew it, my clothes were shredded around my paws and I was on all fours. That’s right, I said paws. When I looked around, I saw white legs with silver paws instead of arms and legs, hands, and feet.

“What the…” I had said to Hennessy in my head.

She just laughed. The shift didn’t hurt at all. It felt strange and there were feelings of pressure, but it was painless. It was also quick, not even five minutes from beginning to end.

This was not what my sisters experienced, or any others that I know of.