Wolf Bargain (Wolfish 3)

I didn’t even last long enough for Romulus to join us.

“What happened?” I hear him calling from the doorway across the lawn, on the other side of the trees. It swings shut behind him with a bang, followed by the soft sound of his footsteps as he sprints towards us across the moonlit grass. “What’s going on?”

“She’s too ill,” Rory says as Romulus breaks through the line of trees beside us. His face is pale, his eyes wide and muscles tensed.

They all look at me as my vision once again begins to blur.

“She’ll not shift tonight.”

Rory’s next words are the last thing I hear before the blackness and sickening silence takes me again.

When I wake up the next day, to say everyone is concerned is an understatement. At least this time I haven’t been asleep for days at a time. That’s the one small comfort I have.

And it’s not much.

The boys stay in the room with me, but they talk in whispers amongst themselves as I drift in and out of sleep.

Lydia tries to reassure me that this could just be a reaction to the transformation and the way that my weakened body is trying to handle it … but even though I think she means to tell the truth; I’m not really buying it.

I don’t think anyone else is either.

Everyone looks super worried about me, and for good reason. This is the second moon cycle that I haven’t been able to shift and from the way that I am starting to look and feel, I don’t think my body is very happy about it.

Once again, an understatement.

It’s as if my whole body is revolting against itself. My muscles ache. My head swims. My stomach churns uncontrollably, rejecting anything I put inside it.

If I could just shift, then maybe this would all stop and I could get better. But my next chance is another month away … a span of time that feels like forever.

As the days pass on and I feel little relief, I start to feel a desperation settle in. And it’s not just me. I can tell that the boys are starting to wear thin too. After my second failed shift they’ve seemed different. I guess we all seem different when I just wish things would go back to how they were.

For one brief moment, everything was perfect.

But it was too brief, thanks to Remus and his hate.

As ill as I feel, it only takes me a week to feel well enough to get out of bed this time. It’s an improvement, sure, but not enough to lift the dour mood that hovers visibly over me when I make my first appearance downstairs.

“How are you feeling this morning?” Lydia asks as soon as she spots me in the kitchen doorway. There’s no talk of me looking better this time.

She’s making coffee and Romulus is standing and staring out of the kitchen window. He looks like he’s thinking about something and the tightened posture of his shoulders hints at what it is.

There’s only one thing on everyone’s minds these days.

The boys follow me in, and only then does he glance back. They’ve tried to stay with me ever since the last moon, barely leaving my side and making sure that at least one of them is with me at all times whenever possible … but I can tell they’re feeling as cooped up as I am.

I don’t think they’re confident that that is the end of it, either. Not with the moon still waning, who knows how it will hit me next week? Who knows what will happen at the next full moon?

I might never recover. I know that’s what they’ve started to worry about, and I’ve started to worry that they might be right.

“I feel fine,” is all I manage to muster in response to Lydia. And it’s true, I do feel fine at the moment. It’s the strangest thing really, some days I feel completely fine and others I feel like absolute death. Well … fine in comparison to how I have been feeling.

Today happens to be one of the better days, at least.

She offers me coffee, and even though my stomach immediately rumbles in protest, I accept.

I haven’t really had any appetite lately, and frankly the thought of putting anything in my mouth repulses me … but I have to start somewhere. Today, the scent of the freshly roasted grounds smells just a little less revolting than usual.

Almost as revolting as I look, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the glass.