Chapter 7

What was there to celebrate? My failures, the fact I am pack-less and homeless, that I am raising a baby on my own because the father refused to believe he got with a seventeen-year-old because he couldn’t recognize me as his mate. “Shift! Please, Everly. I can’t watch you suffer in the rain, please,” My mother begs, sucking in a deep breath. “You can do this, Everly,” I whisper to myself. It isn’t how you imagined shifting, but you need to put your big girl panties on and do what’s required. I tell myself that nobody will be celebrating for you, not anymore, before stripping my saturated shirt off. I hang it over a railing along the far wall before shredding the pajama pants. I look around; it is late at night no one will see me. Even if they did, they wouldn’t pay any attention to the disgraced Alpha’s daughter.

My mother taps on the window, and I look in at my son drinking his bottle in her arms, gazing up at her nice and warm. His eyes get heavier and heavier the longer he feeds on his bottle.

“Thank you,” I whisper to her. She smiles sadly while nodding her head.

“I’m right here. You don’t have to be alone for your first shift,” my mother says, and I nod. Usually, when a wolf shifts for the first time, they go running with their family, they have a big celebration. Me, I was shifting to stay warm, funny how things turned out. I was transitioning out of necessity while everyone else shifted for celebration.

I have been able to feel my need to shift for months; however, being pregnant, I couldn’t change without causing harm to my unborn baby, then it did not have anyone to watch him while I did. This was my only chance, yet I dreaded seeing myself in wolf form. Alpha’s were supposed to be big, but I had been stripped of my title and my Pack.

I hadn’t shifted on my eighteenth birthday like I should have, and all these things affected our wolf’s strength. Swallowing down all emotion, I kneel on the ground, stretch my fingers, and stand on my toes. My neck cracks first, my face twisting and morphing. Everything stretches and moves when I feel the first snap of bone. It was agony, I knew it would hurt, but I never imagined it like this. The first shift always hurts, apparently.

“Don’t think of it, just envision your wolf,” My mother tries coaching through the glass window. It shouldn’t be like this; it wasn’t meant to be like this; Dad always promised mum and him would be there to help me through it.