A/N: Howdy! I think I have some new readers? Maybe? 😬 If so, hi!. I have several completed fics (and a canon-divergent DTTW redo WIP) that you can check out, too, if you're interested.
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Chapter 2
The next morning, Sookie stood naked in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom. She was filthy and her body was covered in scratches and bruises. Everything hurt. She reached up and pressed on the dark purple smudge on her cheekbone and winced, her eyes watering. It was very tender and starting to swell.
She swallowed and then the tears began to run over. It obviously hadn't been a dream; she was covered in physical proof that she hadn't spent the night in bed. Plus, there hadn't been a shift of consciousness. Just a shift of… perspective. Preceded by the feeling that her bones were melting, or something equally as horrifying.
She took a deep breath that stuttered in her chest a little. She was kind of terrified. Either she had turned into some kind of animal overnight or she was batshit crazy and just thought that she had. She had no idea which one was more likely. Or, hell, which was the better option.
The memories of the night before were strange. They felt more like dreams than lived experiences. At the same time, in the moment, everything had felt so real, but in a strange way that her brain couldn't quite understand. Like she was herself and she wasn't, at the same time.
What she did know for sure was that she was completely exhausted and needed to sleep. She thought about having something to eat first and her stomach lurched and then lurched again when her brain coughed up the memory of catching a rabbit and eating it raw, tearing its body apart with her teeth. She ran to the bathroom and threw up for what felt like forever.
Eventually, she managed to stand up on rubbery legs and stumbled her way into bed. She was out as soon as her head hit the pillow and then slept for fifteen hours.
…
The moonlight streamed through her window and she woke as her body was starting to change. She sat up and could see her reflection in the mirror over the vanity. Her mouth and nose began to lengthen into a snout and her screams turned into a long, low howl.
She jumped down and stood in front of the full length mirror. She cocked her head. Her bedroom was dark but she could see herself easily. She was being called by the moon and her instincts were pleading with her to run and to hunt and to kill, but she needed to look first. To try to understand.
She had a wolf's head and her body was completely covered in thick silver hair. She stood mostly upright on long legs that ended in paws. Her hands, though, were fully articulated with sharp claws and rough, padded palms. She curled a lip at her reflection and growled at herself.
She couldn't stand to wait any longer. She walked upright easily but dropped down onto all fours when she got outside. Her new proportions made it easy to switch from one to the other. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath through her nose and was completely overcome by smells. It was like every scent around gave her a paragraph's worth of information, all at once. And she could smell everything. Human-Sookie was firmly in the back seat. Wolf-Sookie started to run.
Her brain processed and then dismissed thousands of smells and almost as many sounds as she ran through the forest. Occasionally, one or the other would make her take notice. Many led her right to prey and she easily caught and ate several small mammals, including snapping a bat from the air, mid-flight.
Other scents, strong and pungent, made her turn around and run in the other direction. They were keep-away smells, marking the land that belonged to the others. The ones that were like her, only different. Her instincts told her that different was bad. She didn't want to advertise her presence and made sure to bury any traces of herself. She heard them calling, far away to the north, and part of her wanted to call back, but she wanted to stay hidden more.
She went to the place where she had seen the beautiful man the night before. He smelled strange. Not like the man-smells she had found around her house and near the edge of the forest. He was much more dry and spicy.
There had been a fire. She had smelled the acrid smoke long before she got to the clearing. The rubble of the burnt building was still radiating heat and she didn't want to get too close. She sniffed the ground where he'd been standing and catalogued his scent. She didn't stay long; she was much more frightened of him than curious and she didn't want him to see her again. When he had looked at her, it had felt like he'd been able to see right into her soul. But she would like to see him.
She trotted back through the woods to where the brother lived. She recognized his scent from back at her house. He smelled good. Sweet. She was in the shadow of the forest and saw him pass in front of the window. She could feel her vestigial tail wave back and forth. He was good. Friend. Part of her pack, but still man.
She heard some leaves rustle several feet behind her. The sound paused for a few moments and then the leaves rustled again. She stood stock-still and slowed her breathing down to almost nothing. She waited.
It got closer. She could smell it easily now, warm and musky and alive. It took another step and she launched herself, spinning around, and she snapped its neck. The deer was young — just a yearling — and it was dead before it had even realized that it had been in danger. She tore at its soft belly with her teeth and claws and then ate her fill.
It was getting close to dawn and she felt the need to head for home. She drank from a small stream on the way and did her best to clean the blood from her muzzle and hands.
Her back door was still standing wide open and she remembered to push it closed on her way through. She hopped up onto her bed and circled before curling up. It should have looked awkward but it didn't. Some of her bits and pieces looked strange, but together, she was beautiful. Lithe and graceful. Exotic.
She had been asleep for nearly an hour when she changed back. A little while later, she pulled the quilt up from the bottom of the bed and snuggled into it.
…
Eric went back to the cabin he'd burned the night before, ostensibly to check that there was nothing incriminating left behind. Really, he wanted to look around for any trace of the bitten Were.
He had no idea why he'd become so captivated by her. Her wolf form was strangely beautiful but he didn't think that it was that. He certainly wouldn't want her, even if she turned out to be the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. He cared nothing for shifters at the best of times and she wasn't even a real shifter. She was an abomination. A monster. One who would be killed on sight if she took a day trip to Mississippi.
There were many places in the country where the local shifters would put down any hybrid they encountered. The Long Tooths were more progressive. They allowed bitten Weres to run with the pack during the three nights of the moon but, barring a few exceptions, they generally were not treated as equals or packmates.
She hadn't been hunting with the pack, though. They had been miles to the north the night before. She was a lone wolf. Which somehow added to the intrigue.
He went straight to the place where he'd seen her. His eyebrows drew together. He smelled… nothing. Nothing but smoke and the forest and the Bayou nearby. No trace of a shifter.
He knelt on the ground to get closer to where the scent should have been. Still nothing. He walked around the area surrounding the cabin for over an hour and the only ones he scented were the banished vampires and himself. Had he somehow hallucinated her? Was she a figment of his imagination? Was he going insane?
Dawn was coming soon, so he finally checked the remains of the cabin for anything that could trace back to them. On the ground nearby he saw a fresh paw print in the ash. He found another a few feet away, but that one only vaguely resembled a wolf's paw. The large pad in the middle was broad and flat and squared off, and the toes were long and almost delicate. No, not toes. Fingers.
Definitely a bitten Were. She had been back earlier that night, sometime after the fire had burned out. The tracks couldn't have been more than a couple of hours old. And he couldn't smell a thing. He'd wanted to search for her but without being able to follow her or her scent, he didn't know where to start.
For a second he wondered if she wasn't really a ghost. He snorted and shook his head. He could see her tracks right there in front of him. He had seen and heard her in the bushes the night before. No, she was real. And he would find her.
