My Big Bad Wolf

1.

Wolf

The shift tears through me like lightning splitting a tree. One moment I’m standing at the edge of the Huntsville woods, human skin prickling with anticipation. The next, my bones are reshaping, muscles elongating, senses exploding into a thousand brilliant fragments of awareness.

The pain is familiar, almost a welcome relief. A reminder that I’m alive. That I’m more than human. My clothes fall away as fur ripples across my body, midnight black and thick. My paws sink into the soft earth, and I can feel every pebble, every root, every tremor of life beneath the surface. The world sharpens into focus. Colors muted but movement crystal clear; as sounds become amplified into a symphony of rustling leaves and distant birdsongs.

Shaking out my fur, I breathe deep. God. The scent of pine and moss floods my lungs, rich and layered. I can smell the creek a quarter mile east, the mineral tang of water over stone. There’s deer somewhere to the north; three of them, maybe four. Their scent is faint but unmistakable. A rabbit burrows nearby, among other animals huddled underground, their heartbeats quick with instinctive fear even though I haven’t moved yet. They know a predator is near at hand...

I bare my teeth in what might be a grin if wolves could grin, and then I run. The forest opens up before me like a promise. My paws eat up the ground, powerful legs driving me forward with a speed no human could match. Branches whip past, barely brushing my fur. I leap over a fallen log without breaking stride, land smoothly and keep going. The wind rushes through my coat, cool against my skin, carrying a thousand stories I’m only beginning to read.

This is freedom. This is what the curse gave us, even as it took everything else away. I slow as I reach a small clearing, sides heaving, and my tongue lolling. The sun filters through the canopy above, dappling the ground in gold and shadow. Late August in South Dakota; the air still holds summer’s warmth, but there’s an edge to it now. Autumn creeps closer. And school starts on Monday.

My stomach twists, and I shake my head hard, ears flapping. I don’t want to think about school. About walking into Huntsville High with my leather jacket and my tattoos and my reputation that’ll precede me whether I want it to or not. The new kid. The strange kid. The kid whose family left town over twenty years ago and came crawling back for reasons no one will understand.

Except we didn’t come crawling back. We came back to fight. I pad over to the creek, lower my muzzle, and drink. The water is cold and clean, tasting of stone and sky. My reflection ripples on the surface, a massive black wolf with eyes like molten gold. Those eyes are the one thing that doesn’t change, human or wolf. My mother says they’re a mark of the curse, a reminder of what we are. What Rose Nelson made us.

The name sends a growl rumbling through my chest before I can stop it. Rose Nelson, the witch who cursed my family three centuries ago because some Garret man broke her heart. Cheated on her. Betrayed her. And instead of just hexing him, she cursed his entire bloodline. Every Garret born since then carries the wolf inside them, forced to shift with the full moon, unable to ever live a truly normal life.

Monsters can’t live normal lives. That’s what she said, according to the stories passed down through generations. She wanted us to suffer. To be outcasts. To know what it felt like to be betrayed by our own bodies, our own nature. And it worked!

My parents left Huntsville before I was born. Desperate to escape the curse. They moved to Seattle, then Portland, then Denver. In hopes that the distance would weaken the magic. But the wolf followed us everywhere. The shifts got harder, more frequent. My dad started losing time, forgetting himself when the moon was dark. My mom couldn’t sleep, haunted by dreams of the witch who started it all.

Finally, six months ago, they made the decision. We had to come back. We had to face it. Because the Thorton family still lives here. Rose Nelson’s descendants. The bloodline that holds the other end of the curse, whether they know it or not. My parents think there’s a way to break it. Some loophole, some ritual, some something that’ll set us free. They’ve been researching for years, digging through old tomes and family histories. And every path leads back here. Back to Huntsville. Back to the witches who made us into monsters.

I don’t know if I believe them. But I’m here anyway... I lift my head from the creek and scent the air again. The town is southwest of here, maybe two miles through the trees. I can smell it faintly; exhaust fumes and cut grass and the greasy sweetness of fast food. Civilization. Humanity. The world I’ll have to rejoin in a few hours when I shift back and walk home like a normal eighteen-year-old kid.

Except I’m not normal. I’ll never be normal... I turn away from the town’s scent and run deeper into the woods instead. I need to know this territory, every inch of it. If things go bad, no, when things go bad; I’ll need places to hide. Places to hunt. Places to be the wolf without anyone seeing.

The forest thickens as I go, underbrush tangling around ancient oaks and maples. I mark my path the way wolves do, claiming this space as mine. It feels good, primal. This is what I’m built for. Not classrooms and homework and pretending to care about football games and school dances.

I find a ridge overlooking a small valley and pause, panting. From here I can see the edge of town, the rooftops just visible through the trees. Huntsville. Population 3,000. Sleepy. Boring. The kind of place where everyone knows everyone, and secrets don’t stay buried long.

We’re going to shake this town apart. I can feel it in my bones, in the curse that runs through my blood. Something’s coming. Something’s shifting. My parents feel it too, though they won’t say it out loud. There’s a reason the curse led us back here now, after all these years. There’s something or someone waiting.

A shiver runs through my fur despite the warmth. I think about Monday. Walking into that school. Having teachers who’ll look at my tattoos and my piercings and decide I’m trouble before I even open my mouth.

And somewhere in that building, maybe sitting in one of my classes, maybe passing me in the hallway... Will be a Thorton. I don’t know if there are any left my age. I don’t know if they have any idea what their ancestor did to mine. But I’ll find out. I have to.

The sun is sinking lower now, painting the sky in shades of orange and pink. I’ve been running for hours, and my muscles are starting to ache in that good, tiring way. Time to head back. Time to be human again even though I don’t want to.

But I turn anyway, retracing my path through the forest. The scents are familiar now, my own markers guiding me home. By the time I reach the edge of the woods where I left my clothes, the sky is deepening to purple. Stars are beginning to prick through the gathering dark as I shift back.

It’s worse than shifting into the wolf. My body fights it, wants to stay in the form that feels most true. But I force the change, gasping as bones crack and reshape, as fur recedes and skin stretches over human muscle. I end up on my hands and knees in the dirt, naked and shaking, sweat dripping down my spine. “Fuck,” I mutter, my voice rough and strange after hours of silence.

I grab my jeans and yank them on, then my t-shirt, my jacket. The leather feels confining after the freedom of fur, but I zip it up anyway. My boots are where I left them, and I shove my feet in without bothering to tie the laces. The walk back to the house is short. We’re renting a place on the outskirts of town, close enough to be convenient but far enough that the neighbors won’t notice when one of us disappears into the woods at odd hours. The lights are on when I approach, warm and yellow through the windows. Home well, sort of...

I push through the front door and find my mom in the kitchen, stirring something on the stove that smells like tomatoes and garlic. She looks up when I enter, her eyes searching my face. “Good run?” she asks.

“Yeah.” I lean against the counter, suddenly exhausted. “The woods are good. Lots of space.”

She nods, satisfied. “Your father’s in the study. He found something in one of the old journals. He wants to talk to you after dinner.” Of course he did.

“Sure,” I say. She goes back to stirring, and I head upstairs to shower. The hot water feels good on my sore muscles, washing away the dirt and sweat and the last traces of the wolf. By the time I’m clean and dressed in fresh clothes, I almost feel human again. Almost.

Dinner is quiet. We eat my mom’s pasta and talk about nothing important; the house, the weather, and whether the grocery store in town is any good. We don’t talk about the curse. We don’t talk about the Thorton’s. And we definitely don’t talk about what happens Monday when I walk into that school and everything changes. But it hangs over us anyway, heavy and inevitable.

After dinner, I find my dad in the study like my mom said. He’s surrounded by books, old leather-bound journals, and modern printouts scattered across the desk. He looks up when I knock on the doorframe, and his expression is grim. “Wolf,” he says. “Come in. Sit down.”

I do, dropping into the chair across from him. He slides a journal across the desk. The pages are yellowed, the handwriting spidery and old-fashioned. “Read this,” he says, pointing to a passage near the bottom. I lean forward and read.

The curse cannot be broken by force or magic. It can only be accepted. The wolf and the witch must choose their natures freely, or remain bound forever.

Cocking my head and lifting my pierced eyebrow questioningly as I look up at my dad. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know yet,” he admits. “But I think it means we’re not looking for a way to destroy the curse. We’re looking for a way to... transform it. To make peace with it.”

“By finding the Thorton’s,” I say slowly.

He nods. “By finding the Thorton’s.” I sit back, my mind racing. The Thorton’s. Some family who might not even know what they are, what their bloodline did. Someone I’ll meet on Monday. I can feel it, certain as the moon’s pull. “Okay,” I say finally. “Okay.”

My dad reaches across the desk and grips my shoulder. “We’ll figure this out, Wolf. Together.”

I nod, but I don’t believe him. Because deep down, I know the truth. This isn’t going to be about breaking the curse. It’s going to be about surviving it. And Monday is when it will all begin to unravel.