Page 34 of Blood and Magic (RBMC: Helena, MT #2)

Maeve

“I t’s true,” Guin told me as we followed the group of Royal Bastards and their family through the woods to the shifting grounds.

It was deep in their territory, surrounded by more fences and barriers than I would have considered possible.

After all they’d been through, I understood why they took their security so seriously.

“Everything Vermillion told you. The Bastards. Sol and me. The Bloody Scorpions. All of it.”

I hugged my middle tighter while we walked. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Would you have believed me?” She ran a hand over her forehead to brush her bangs out of her eyes. “Hell, I didn’t until I went through my first moon.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” Vermillion had given me the highlights, but there had been so much to talk about, I didn’t ask for details. Guin wouldn’t sugarcoat it, and I appreciated that most about her.

“Your body will break down.” She gave me a sideways glance before continuing. “The transformation takes about ten minutes. Your bones break and shift and reform, and your inner beast grows from inside you.”

I stopped walking, my legs frozen in place. “What the fuck?”

Guin turned to face me and sighed. “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. You should know that.”

“Does it hurt?” I clenched my hands into fists, my nails burrowing into my palms.

“At first, it’s excruciating,” she said as I caught up with her. “But then, once the moon takes over, it’s…” Guin paused like she was trying to find the right words. “It’s like a stiff drink after a long day. Or that first hit of a cigarette after a detox. It’s life-changing.”

She grabbed my jaw and tilted my head to the side, her gaze landing on the bite mark on my neck. Self-conscious, I instinctively covered it. She swatted my hand away.

“Fucking animal,” she said. “He shouldn’t have bitten you. I could kill him for that.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I actually?—”

At her glare, I stopped talking before I admitted more than I should.

We stayed silent for a few moments while I digested what she said. She’d come out of Kodiak’s office in a storming rage, but I thought that had more to do with the MC’s president than with my transition.

I saw the back of Vermillion’s head a few yards away, and it reminded me that he had helped Guin a decade ago.

They both insisted there were no lingering feelings between them, that there hadn’t been even after they came out of the haze.

But their prior connection made things even more complicated.

Did it make me some kind of deviant that I wanted more from Mill?

That we’d hooked up before the transition hit, before the call of magic made us do it? Or had the pull always been there?

“I’m sorry,” I told her, drawing her attention back to me. “About Mill.”

She rolled her eyes and waved me off. “Please. He and I are ancient history. There’s nothing to be sorry about.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why? Are you thinking about taking things further?”

I thought about how he’d said I was different, that his pull to me was stronger than it was with Guin, and I tried to imagine a life where I came out the other side of this having no interaction with Mill whatsoever.

Was my attraction to him simply because he’d played such a pivotal role in my pre-teen life?

Or was there something more profound going on?

Guin had mentioned mates in our conversation earlier.

Shifter magic would pair a person to their most compatible match, whether they liked it or not.

Most of the time, they liked it very much.

But she had heard of shifters matched with someone inconvenient, like a parent’s friend or their sibling’s spouse. Talk about awkward.

I looked at the back of Mill’s head again. Was he my mate? And if he was, would I want that?

We finally reached a spot where the trees were so thick, I could barely see a hundred yards in either direction.

The smell of undergrowth and summer air permeated the space, vibrant with the impending onset of nocturnal life.

Members of Kodiak’s pack stood around us, almost sixty in total, all in various states of undress.

The energy between the pack members hummed with something electric and foreboding.

A few people cracked their necks, tilting their heads from side to side, rolling their shoulders almost as if preparing for a fight.

She’d explained that we had to get naked to shift, but the reality of it didn’t entirely set in until we were here…

actually doing it. My nerves rattled under my skin, my stomach clenching and fluttering with anticipation.

Perhaps some part of me still thought this wasn’t real, that I would wake up in my bed at the mansion and realize this had all been a dream, some altered reality that had no basis in truth.

Guin yanked her blouse over her head and unbuttoned her trousers before kicking off her boots. I closed my eyes and shook my head, deciding I’d better go along with it. If it was as bloody and gruesome as she described, I didn’t want to ruin my clothes.

“Fold them up and put them over there,” she said, now naked as she carried her things to a rock near a big tree.

Growing up in a house with seven siblings, I’d seen them all in their birthday suits at least once or twice when we were little kids.

But the confidence with which Guin always held herself never ceased to make me jealous.

She didn’t care if anyone looked at her.

She never hid from anything. Trying to don that same attitude, I shucked my shirt over my head and slid my jeans to the ground, stepping out of them before doing as she asked and placing them next to hers.

Shivering against the cool twilight air, I crossed my arms, half hiding my breasts and half trying to keep myself warm.

“Remember the rules,” Kodiak said, his voice booming from the center of the space. “Stay within the bounds. And if you smell something, say something. I’ll be in close contact with all of you.”

He, too, was naked. Like many members of his pack, he was beautifully sculpted muscle, truly an exquisite example of the human form.

But I wasn’t supposed to notice those things.

Guin had explained the shift was primal.

It was a sacred ritual shared with one’s pack, and the nudity was simply a part of it.

I wondered what they did in the winter. Certainly, they didn’t come out here in the snow and freeze their bits off.

The thought made me laugh, and I covered my mouth to hide my childishness. Guin nudged me with her shoulder.

“Stop that,” she said. “After the change, the people closest to you will be in your head. Mill, me, probably Kodiak and Fenris, too.”

“In my head?” I furrowed my brow. “Like…telepathically?”

She nodded. “It’s how we communicate in shifter form.”

I wanted to ask more questions, but I caught sight of the moon trickling in through the trees overhead. Its shining luminosity stunned me into silence, so full in its splendor, so radiant and gorgeous. Had any moon ever been so beautiful before?

Groans and shouts of pain echoed from around me, and I’d started to wonder what was happening when a sharp pang yanked at my stomach, toppling me over.

“Fuck,” I groaned, wilting at the knees.

I dug my hands into the earth as fury erupted in my veins, spreading through my entire body.

I was on fire. Every nerve ending burned with agony, and I clenched my eyes shut against it.

Bile rose in the back of my throat. I was certain I would throw up, but I opened my mouth and the only thing that came out were my teeth.

I spat them on the ground, blood and saliva coating my tongue, and when I looked down, I saw my skin peeling back over my forearms, thick dark slices zigzagging across my wrists, up to my biceps, and dark obsidian fur poked out of the wounds.

My fingernails pushed out of the ends of my fingers, replaced by tiny black claws.

My spine cracked, and I arched into the pain, whimpering as something strong gripped my insides and yanked.

Like Guin said, it was pure anguish, and it seemed to go on and on.

I grabbed my face, whining when my cheeks and jaw slid from the bone, my skull splintering, fracturing, taking on a new form.

The pressure in my head built until my eyes popped out of the sockets with a disturbing crunch that made me believe I would never see again.

But my vision did not darken. It was replaced with a stronger sight beyond anything I’d ever experienced as a human.

My torso twisted and my knees bent the wrong way, and just when I was certain I would die, that this torture would be the end of me, a greater power took over.

It reshaped and reformed into a brilliant exhilaration, like that first leap off a cliff when the world gave way and there was nothing but the thrill in my blood and a great understanding that the ground would catch me.

The urge to shake took over, and I landed on my paws, trembling until the last little bits of my flesh fell off my fur.

Fur!

It was the color of pitch, matching my human hair, and I inhaled through my nose…no, my snout, tasting the night. A thick musky cloud floated over the grass, remnants of the pack’s blood around me, and when I tried to stand, I stumbled forward onto my face, collapsing on unsteady paws.

A weight behind me flopped onto the ground between my back legs. I looked over my shoulder at a thick, fluffy tail, wagging as I tried again to push upright.

“You’re a fox,” came the soft voice inside my head. My sister’s voice. I glanced up to see her standing only a few yards away, her copper fur slick with blood and sweat. “Like me.”

“This is incredible,” I said as I panted.

I tried again to stand, my body weak, my limbs barely able to hold me.

They shook under my new form, muscles I had never used before, screaming with exertion.

I stood there momentarily, terrified to try to walk again, but a cold wet nose nudged at my head, distracting me.

“You’re okay,” Mill said. He took the form of a massive chestnut wolf with dark crimson eyes, standing nearly as tall as his human half on all fours.

I blinked, certain I would wake up from this dream any second, but when he was still standing there with his mouth open, tongue between his fangs, warm breath blowing on me in soft pants, I accepted this new reality. “Try again.”

I pushed upright and took a tentative step, and when I didn’t immediately fall over, I took another. Instinct guided me, like I was always meant to be in this form.

“There she is,” he said. “Come on. We hunt this way.”

Hunt?

No one had said anything about hunting, but my stomach grumbled, and the aroma of blood had awakened something beastly inside me.

The part of me that was still human balked at the idea, seemingly repulsed by the notion of tracking and killing an animal.

But the beast, the one that spoke for the feral side, came to life, excited by the idea.

Yes, it purred. Yes, hunt.

Guin trotted ahead, her fluffy ginger and white tail bouncing as she walked, and I followed her with Mill at my flank.

We met up with Kodiak and Fenris, heading deeper into the woods, and I took a moment to glance around at the other shifters.

Most were hulking wolves, bigger and more muscular than any wild animal.

A few mountain lions roared in between, stretching and flexing their enormous claws.

I saw deer and smaller animals like rabbits and eagles.

I had no idea the pack was this varied, and I wondered how they got along so well living in such confined quarters.