This is the introducing chapter to the story. I'm working on the next chapter. Enjoy!
Thanks to ToxicRainfall for beta-reading my story. You're awesome!
He could feel the cold biting him from every direction, all over his body, numbing his bare fingers and freezing his dark hair. But he didn't care. He wanted the cold to take over his body and rip him apart into that now not-so-familiar pain of the change. Every night he sat in the same spot by the trees at the back of Beck's house, hoping. But of course, the change never came; he had been cured of the wolf inside him the previous year. Now the cold posed no threat to his human form. He resented that greatly. At least if he had changed the year before, he and Grace could be together now. Sometimes he could see her brown eyes staring out at him from her beautiful wolf body, between the trees. Their roles had been reversed, now she was the proud wolf watching hesitantly from the distance and he was the feeble human longing to join her. At least, he thought, he would be reunited with her in the spring – five months from now.
By then they would have a cure. A real cure. He refused to believe it could not be found. But of course, it's hard to concentrate when the other half of your world is lost to the forest.
Cole and Isabel were helping Sam in his search for a cure. Cole stayed inside constantly – keeping himself from changing. He was the only one intelligent enough to discover the cure and so they needed him. Sam and Isabel were really just assisting him. They were not exactly essential to complete the task. A month had passed since Grace's change and they had made no progress. But they would find it. They had to. Now that Sam knew what it was like to be with Grace, he couldn't manage living without her in the winter months. He couldn't think about the pain she would be in every time her body was ripped open and a new form took its place. He couldn't bear to sleep at night without her by his side. Even after a whole month away from her it felt wrong each night. Sitting there, cold, damp and frozen, felt better than lying in his empty bed staring out at the silence of his empty room.
…
Grace watched from behind the trees, inexplicably drawn to this human sitting outside at such a late hour. A strange battle was raging inside her wolf brain, between some unknown emotion she could barely comprehend drawing her towards him and all of her instincts screaming at her to run away. The result was a kind of equilibrium between the two, meaning she stayed where she was, unmoving, staring out at him, half hidden, wanting to approach him and leave him at the same time…