One-Shot
All my life, I've trained to kill shapeshifters. And now, I am one.
The transformation happened three days ago, while I was on the run. I remember the excruciating pain, the cracking of my bones as they rearranged themselves, the scream that tore at my throat as hairs pierced my skin. I remember waking up naked in a forest, much later, covered in blood that wasn't mine, the instincts of a wolf lingering in my human mind.
My name is Ketrina Vazquez. Orphan, weapon, and monster.
And I've never been so afraid in my entire life.
The Academy took me in at the age of seven. My parents, kind and gentle people who ran a small bookstore in the coastal town of Vikarburgi, were slaughtered by a savage pack that ravaged the region like a swarm of locusts. I survive because I hide in the cellar: I play with my toy soldiers when I hear my mother's screams above me, mixed with grunts and the thud of breaking things.
Three days later, the Academy recruiters find me in that cellar. I'm still clutching my soldiers and refuse to let go of my mother's icy hand. They tell me they understand my pain. They tell me they can give meaning to my life. They tell me the shapeshifters are abominations, that every single one of them deserves to die, and that I can be the one to execute them.
I believe them. How could I not? They save me. They feed me. They train me.
For fifteen years, the Academy is my family. The other orphans are my brothers and sisters. The instructors, hunters with haunted eyes and scarred skin, are my mentors. We learn everything about our enemy: their biology, their weaknesses, the structure of their packs, their vile mating rituals. We learn that shapeshifters are incapable of love, only possession. That their so-called soulmates are merely a pretext for indoctrination and obsession. That an Alpha is the worst of all, a tyrant who rules through fear and force.
I've memorized all their weaknesses. Silver, of course, but also wolfsbane, fire, decapitation, and a precise nerve point behind the left ear, capable of paralyzing even the most powerful Alpha if struck hard enough. I can dismantle a silver-bullet rifle in under thirty seconds. Hunt a shapeshifter in the rain, in the snow, or amidst industrial waste. Kill with my bare hands, with my feet, a blade, a fork, a crumpled cell phone charger.
I am the best. The instructors themselves say so. At twenty-two, I've already eliminated seventeen shapeshifters. Seventeen creatures who will never harm anyone again. Seventeen monsters whose deaths I cause with cold satisfaction.
Then the Academy turns against me.
It all starts with dreams. Experiences that aren't mine: running through a moonlit forest, hunting deer, feeling the earth beneath enormous hooves. I wake with a start, the sheets soaked with sweat, my gums aching as if my teeth are trying to erupt all at once.
I don't tell anyone at first. I think I'm sick. Or crazy. I think the stress is catching up with me and I'm starting to crack. But soon, my eyes begin to change: from brown, they turn pale gold, and they reflect the light. I no longer recognize the eyes staring back at me in the mirror.
When I finally go to the Academy infirmary, they don't seem surprised. That should have tipped me off.
"Don't worry, Ketrina," says Dr. Vogel, his smile too wide, too bright. We expected it.
We expected it.
They know. They know what I am, or rather, what I will become. The Academy doesn't just train orphans to kill shifters; it breeds them. Somewhere in my lineage, a shifter passes on their corrupted genes to me. They remain dormant until age, stress, or the chemical cocktail the Academy injects into our morning protein shakes reactivates them. The Hunter Code is absolute: a shifter is a target for life. They can't make an exception for me. I'm helping to write the protocols for this specific scenario. Elimination within 24 hours of confirmation of the transformation.
I don't wait for the kill team. I kill three medics with my bare hands—humans this time, not shifters, but they were family to me, and their blood reminds me of my own—and I run.
The forest that stretches beyond the Academy's mountain complex is said to be fatal to anything that enters it. Miles of wilderness teem with a particularly hostile pack of territorial beasts, and there are no supplies. But I train in these woods for years. I know every cave, every stream, every deer trail. I know which plants can heal and which can kill.
I last three weeks. I kill two more hunters who are tracking me. I eat raw fish and wild berries. I sleep in the trees, my back against the bark. My ears, now hypersensitive, quiver at the slightest sound.
And then the transformation happens, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
It's pure torture: every nerve is on fire, every bone snaps and snaps back into place. My consciousness gives way to an ancient, ravenous force. When I wake up, I am crouching near the carcass of a deer, my muzzle dripping with blood, my she-wolf heart beating with a wild joy I have never felt before.
I remain in this animal form for three days. Running. Hunting. Simply being. The world takes on greater meaning through my golden eyes. Scents tell stories. Sounds paint pictures. The constant, persistent hatred that has defined my entire existence fades away.
And then the pack of this forest finds me.
Seven members of the Iron Moon. All imposing, possessing a power inherited from ancient, primal generations. They surround me in a clearing. Their human eyes gleam in the moonlight. I watch them move with the skill of hunters and soldiers: swift, coordinated, efficient. They do this hundreds of times.
I should fight. I should die standing, taking down as many as I can. Instead, I stand there, exhausted, broken. And curious nonetheless.
Their leader steps forward. He is massive, easily six foot five, with dark skin, short hair, and polished copper eyes. He looks at me as if I were a treasure. A miracle.
“An Alpha,” he breathes. “After all these years… An Alpha of our bloodline.”
I only understand what he means later. Shifters have a hierarchy, you see. Omegas at the base, Betas in the middle, and Alphas at the top. You are born an Alpha, you don’t become one. He or she can command obedience from other shifters, feel the emotions of their pack, and channel its strength. And an Alpha without a pack is a contradiction, a tragedy, a distress signal that attracts all the guardians of the territory they roam.
I am their distress signal. And they don’t want to let me go.
“We are the Iron Moon Pack,” this Alpha says. His name is Tarkov, I learn later, though I refuse to use it for weeks.
“We are the last free pack in this region. The Academy has been hunting us for generations, killing our children and burning our territory. We were waiting for a sign. You.” He takes me to their camp: a valley at the end of a tunnel hidden behind a waterfall, invisible from above, and protected by ancient trees. There are families. Children. Elders. A garden. A school. Everything the Academy told me the shapeshifters have never known because they are soulless beasts.
But they are not soulless. They are human beings. Terrified, angry, grieving. Men and women who have lost as much as I have.
I hate the Academy for its lies and its actions.
"I am not your Alpha," I repeat for the hundredth time.
Despite my protests, I am now in a small cabin they have assigned me, "the Alpha's quarters," as they have dubbed it. A fire crackles in the rudimentary fireplace, a pile of blankets lies scattered on the bed, and a window overlooks a garden of moonflowers.
"I'm not even a true shapeshifter. I was created accidentally. I'm an experiment gone wrong." Tarkov shakes his head, a patient smile on his lips.
"You don't understand what you are, Ketrina. The transformation doesn't work like that. You don't become an Alpha. You either are, or you aren't. Your blood bears the mark. It has for generations. The Academy didn't bestow this gift upon you. It... revealed it."
"A gift?" I repeat, bursting into laughter. You call that a gift? I spend my life training to kill creatures like you. My parents were murdered by shapeshifters. My family…
“They weren’t your family,” a new voice interrupts from the doorway.
He’s handsome. I hate him instantly.
He’s tall, but not as tall as Tarkov. Slender, with lean muscles built for speed rather than strength. His dark honey-colored hair falls over a brow furrowed with worry and arrogance. His eyes are gray, like storm clouds, and fixed on me with an intensity that sends shivers down my spine.
“We’re your family now,” he continues, entering the cabin without asking permission. “Whether you like it or not.”
“And who are you, anyway?”
“Dunav.” He says his own name as if I’m supposed to know it. — Beta leader. And your soulmate, before you even ask.
The world stops turning.
Soulmate. This shifter concept I've always scoffed at: the idea that the universe decides who you're meant to love, that you have no choice, that your entire romantic future is predetermined by some kind of cosmic farce. I've killed shifters who used the soulmate bond as a pretext for violence. I've read the files, the horror stories, the possessive madness that consumes otherwise rational creatures.
"No," I say.
"I'm afraid you don't have a choice."
"I don't know you, and you mean nothing to me."
"The moon doesn't care what you think." I stand up; he doesn't flinch. Most people flinch when I stand: I'm tall for a woman, broad-shouldered, my body sculpted like a weapon honed over fifteen years. But Dunav simply stares at me with his gray eyes, and I suddenly understand that he isn't afraid of me simply because he's stronger.
"Listen to me carefully," I say in a deep, rumbling voice. "I don't want your pack. I don't want your territory. And I certainly don't want a mate, predestined or not. I will find a way to control this curse, or better yet, to rid myself of it, and then I will leave. If any of you try to stop me, I will kill you. Understand?" Dunav smiles slowly. It's a devastating smile that completely transforms his face, turning him from merely handsome into irresistible.
"You can always try," he challenges me. "But I've been waiting for you for seven years, Ketrina Vazquez. I'm not going anywhere." The following days are a strange and terrible purgatory.
I train with the pack, but only because I need to understand my new body. I eat with them, but only because Tarkov threatens to have food delivered to my hut if I don't come to the mess hall, and I refuse to be imprisoned. I sleep alone in my hut, the door barricaded and a silver knife under my pillow—old habits, even if silver now burns me.
The pack watches me with a mixture of hope and mistrust. They lost their previous Alpha ten years ago, killed by Academy hunters, along with half their members. The survivors wandered leaderless, until my arrival was seen as a thunderbolt and a stroke of luck in the territory. I am their salvation. Their prophecy. Their last hope.
I want nothing to do with any of this.
Dunav is everywhere. In the training yard, he watches me train with the Betas. In the mess hall, he sits just close enough for me to smell him, a mixture of pine, smoke, and something wilder that makes my wolf moan with desire. In the forest, when I go for a run, he's always a few steps behind, never suffocating me, but never falling behind either.
He doesn't try to force a soulmate bond. He doesn't try to touch me, claim me, or make me experience the horrors I've heard about. He's simply there. Patient, unyielding, and infuriating.
"You'll have to talk to him sooner or later," a woman's voice tells me one evening. I turn around and see a young woman leaning against a tree, arms crossed, looking amused. She's beautiful and looks cunning, with fiery red hair, freckles, and piercing eyes.
"To whom do I have the honor?"
"Senja. Dunav's sister. And before you ask, no, I have no advice to give you on how to handle this situation. He's always been stubborn."
"I don't need advice, I need him to leave me alone."
"That won't happen," she assures me, bursting into laughter. "You're his soulmate. Do you have any idea what that means to us? From the time we were little, we were taught that the soulmate bond is the most sacred thing in the world. It's not just love, it's destiny. The ultimate fulfillment. Completeness. Dunav has been dreaming of you for seven years, Ketrina." Seven years of waking up with your name on my lips and your scent in my nostrils. You can't just... make it disappear.
"He dreamed about me?"
"Very clearly. He knew your name before Tarkov even told him. He knew your face. He knew you were raised by the Academy, that you were taught to hate us. He knew everything, and yet he chose to wait for you. He chose to hope." A stone sinks into my stomach, the weight of something I thought the Academy had erased years ago.
"It's not fate," I say weakly. "It's obsession."
“Maybe,” she concedes, shrugging. “But it’s also the most genuine, sincere feeling you’ll ever have. You can fight it all you want, the bond doesn’t break. It just… hurts.” The grim truth comes three weeks later.
I’m having nightmares again; not the ones where I’m running through forests, but the ones where I relive my childhood. My parents. Their bodies. The cellar. The toy soldiers. I wake up screaming, drenched in sweat, and Dunav is there before I can even catch my breath.
He doesn’t ask permission to touch me. He simply pulls me into his arms and holds me tenderly until I stop trembling. I’m too exhausted to struggle, too vulnerable to remember why I should hate the warmth of his body against mine.
“My parents,” I whisper against his chest. “The Academy told me they were killed by a savage pack.” A group of renegade shifters without territory, without laws. But that's not true, is it?
Dunav's arms tighten around me.
"No."
"Tell me." He remains silent for a long moment, then begins:
"The Academy killed them." I freeze. Once again, my world shatters into a thousand pieces.
"It was an elimination operation," Dunav continues, his voice low and cautious, as if he were speaking to a wounded and frightened animal. "Your father is a shifter from our pack, a powerful shifter. He's an Alpha. He went underground after the purges, married a human, tried to lead a normal life. But the Academy found him. They always find us. They killed your parents to get to you, to take you before your powers manifested, to make you a weapon against your own people."
"No." The word came out of my mouth, broken.
No, it's not… They saved me. They took me in. They…
“They destroyed your family. They stole your heritage. They filled your head with lies so you would hate yourself without ever understanding why.” Dunav steps back slightly to look me in the eyes. His gray eyes are filled with a pain so old and so deep that it grips my heart.
“You were never an orphan, Ketrina. You were a hostage. And we, your pack, have been searching for you for fifteen years. We’ve always tried to bring you home.”
Home. The word thunders in my skull.
The Academy killed my parents. The Academy stole my life and my family. The Academy made me into a monster who kills his own without remorse. I believed it. Every lie, every manipulation, every carefully crafted story. I’m so blind, so desperate to find a family, that I swallow their poison and crave more. And now, I'm a werewolf. I am what I was taught to destroy. I am what my father was before they murdered him.
I am a member of the pack that can finally give me the family I was denied.
"I need to see the files," I said the next morning. "The Academy's archives. Their research on me. Everything." Tarkov nodded slowly.
"We have some of it. Not all of it. The last raid on their facility cost us dearly. In lives. But we were able to recover a fair amount of documents."
"Show me." He led me to an underground bunker beneath the common hall, a room filled with filing cabinets, computers, and archive boxes that smelled of old paper and rusty metal. This was the pack's war room, I realized. Their mission planning center. He lets me in because, despite my protests, the pack already considers me its Alpha.
The files are damning. The photos of my parents' bodies are from the night of their murder. The lab reports document my blood tests over fifteen years, tracing the progressive activation of my shapeshifting genes. Memos between the Academy's directors discuss my "potential" and my "programming." A classified document, dating from my first year at the Academy, bears my name and the notation: PROJECT ALPHA: LONG-TERM CANDIDATE.
I read until my eyes burn with tears. Until my hands tremble with rage. Until the hatred that has always consumed me finds a new target: no longer the shapeshifters, but the humans who made me a weapon and turned me against my own kind.
When I finally look up, Dunav is standing in the doorway, his stormy gray eyes fixed on me.
"What do you need?" he asks.
It's a simple question. No pressure, no expectations. Simply… "what do you need?" I think of my parents. The cellar. The toy soldiers I left behind. All the shapeshifters I killed, convinced I was doing the right thing. To the seventeen graves I dug: seventeen creatures who may have been innocent, who may be like these people, with a family, a garden, and children playing in the moonlight.
Then I think of the Academy. Of Dr. Vogel's too-bright smile. Of the elimination protocols I helped establish. Of the hunters who are probably tracking me right now, to apply those same protocols to me. Hunters who will eventually find this valley and reduce it to ashes, along with all its inhabitants.
"I must protect this pack," I decide, and my words bring sweet comfort to my ears. "And I must destroy those who created me." Dunav smiles. It's no longer the devastating smile of before, but a gentle one. A smile filled with pride and gratitude.
"Then we'd better begin, Alpha." The battle takes place three months later.
I train like never before. Not just my body, though I push it to the extreme too: I'm learning to transform at will, to fight in both forms, to draw upon the strange source of power unique to the Alpha. But I'm also training my mind: I'm learning the pack's names, histories, and objectives, what makes them strong and what frightens them, I'm learning to be the leader they need, not the weapon I was designed to be.
Dunav is by my side every moment. My companion, my Beta, my conscience. He challenges me when I'm too harsh, supports me when I'm too weak, and never abandons me, even when I give him every reason to. The soulmate bond between us grows stronger like a growing trunk, slowly and inexorably, until I can no longer imagine my life without the subtle sensation of his presence, at the edge of my consciousness.
I still don't believe in fate, but I'm beginning to.
The Academy's assault force arrives at dawn. Fifty hunters armed with silver-bullet rifles and flamethrowers, indoctrinated with all the hatred the institution can instill. They've tracked me down through contacts, satellites, the culmination of a relentless pursuit that has so long made the Academy such a feared institution.
They are unprepared for what awaits them.
We are expecting them. The pack knows every corner of this valley, every rock, every root, every path. We've laid traps, prepared ambushes, coordinated our movements until we are one, a single being with a hundred limbs. And I… I am the heart of that being. My Alpha will pulses through every member of my pack. It makes us faster, stronger, and more formidable than ever.
I personally kill five hunters. Not in my wolf form, but as a woman, using the techniques the Academy taught me. There's a beautiful irony in that: the weapon turns against its creator. But I feel no irony. I feel aged instantly. I'm furious. I feel as if the memory of my parents weighs on my shoulders and guides my hands. Dunav fights beside me. He covers my blind spots and my rear. We move together, as if we've been doing so for decades. The soulmate bond vibrates between us and makes our coordination natural. When a hunter surprises me from behind with a silver blade, Dunav is there to take the blow that should have wounded me. He roars with pain and fury as he tears the man apart.
After that, I don't let anyone near him. The fight lasts three hours. In the end, thirty-seven hunters were dead, thirteen were wounded and captured, and the rest fled into the forest, abandoning their weapons, their dead, and their certainty of being righteous. Eight members of the pack were lost. Eight funerals were held. Eight shattered families were cared for.
But we won. We survived. And for the first time in ten years, the Iron Moon Pack found hope again.
That night, I sat alone at the edge of the valley, gazing at the moon that had haunted my dreams for so long. The bodies had been buried, the wounded tended to, the prisoners brought to safety. My she-wolf was unusually silent, exhausted by the battle. She simply remained nestled in a corner of my soul, recovering.
Dunav finds me there, as he always does. His arm is bandaged, the silver burn already healing, but he moves stiffly, the pain still raw. He sits down beside me, so close our shoulders touch, and we stay like that for a long time, watching the stars twinkle above our heads.
"I'm sorry," I finally say. "For everything. For fighting you. For doubting the soulmate bond. For… For not being what you needed."
"You're exactly what I need," he corrects me, his voice calm, hoarse with exhaustion and emotion. "You're exactly what this pack needs. You just had to figure it out for yourself."
"I've killed shifters. Seventeen. Maybe more… I lost count. How can you look at me like that knowing that?" Dunav turns to me, his gray eyes shining with a tenderness that tugs at my heartstrings.
"Because it wasn't your choice, it was the Academy's. They used you like they used everyone else: as a tool, a weapon, a means to an end. You're not responsible for what they made you do. You're only responsible for what you do now."
"What if what I do now isn't enough? What if I'm not capable of being a good Alpha? What if I disappoint them all?" He reaches out, slowly and carefully, and cups my face in his hands. The contact sends a shockwave through our bond, a mixture of pleasure, comfort, love, and a thousand other things words can't express.
"You're not going to fail," he assures me. "Because you're not alone anymore. You have me. You have the pack." You have a family, Ketrina. A real family. And we're not going anywhere without you.
I close my eyes. I feel the warmth of her hands on my skin. I feel the pack's steady pulse through the bond: its fear, its hope, and its passionate, inclusive love. I feel the she-wolf inside me calming, finally at peace, finally home.
"I'm still angry," I admit quietly. "I'm still broken. I'm still having nightmares about the cellar."
"Me too, I'm still angry," Dunav says. "We'll heal together."
"And the Academy? They'll come back. They always do."
“Then we’ll be ready. And we’ll give them a proper welcome when the time comes. Because that’s what packs do: we protect each other, and we survive together.”
I open my eyes again. I look at this man, this impossible, stubborn, and magnificent man, who waited seven years for someone he had never met, who loved me before I even knew how to love myself, who fought by my side, shed his blood for me, and who never, ever gave up on what is right.
“I don’t know if I believe in destiny,” I confess.
“Me neither,” he replies. “But I believe in you.”
And then, finally, I kiss him.
Six months later, I stand on the same cliff, gazing down at the valley that has become my home. Moonflowers are in bloom, pale and luminous in the darkness, their fragrance carried on a gentle summer breeze. Behind me, the pack is celebrating the new moon: a feast is in full swing, filled with music, laughter, and that intense joy you feel when you've survived against all odds.
Dunav approaches me from behind, wraps his arms around me, and kisses the back of my neck.
"Still brooding," he teases.
"I am."
"Me too." I sink back against his chest. I can feel the steady beat of his heart through the rope.
"I was thinking about my parents. What they would think of me now."
"What do you think they would think?"
"I think they would be proud," I reply, smiling. "I think they would be happy that I'm home." Dunav turns me around and cups my face in his hands, just like he did the first night.
"You're home, Ketrina. You always have been." You just had to stop running away long enough to see it.
And he's right. My life will never be the same again: the hatred, the training, the blind obedience to those who made me into a monster. But perhaps it's acceptable. Perhaps the person I thought I was had to die so that the person I truly am could live.
I still sometimes dream of the cellar. Of the toy soldiers. Of my mother's cold hand in mine.
But I also dream of the valley. Of the pack. Of gray eyes, a kind smile, and a love that asked for nothing but gave me everything.
I am Ketrina Vazquez. Alpha of the Iron Moon Pack. Dunav's mate. Daughter of shifters and hunters, of victims and monsters, of everything I was taught to hate and everything I learned to love.
I'm still learning to forgive myself.
But I'm not alone anymore.
And that, I finally understood, is what changes everything.
