Page 84 of A Wolfe in the Woods

Her pause cut deeper than a yes.

I tried to save her from it. “It’s okay if you say yes.”

She still didn’t speak.

So, I did.

“Sometimes I lose myself…when I shift.”

Her gaze turned to me, soft but unreadable. “Are they painful?” she asked quietly.

I hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. But not how you’d think. It’s not screaming pain. It’s more like…a gym pump on fire. Blood turns molten, everything swells. Muscle, nerve, instinct. Every cell wakes up and starts howling.”

I felt her fingers brush down over my stomach. Not far. It was a whisper of movement, but it helped to ground me. A reminder that I wasn’t alone in this memory.

Blanche smirked faintly. “I can attest to that.”

That earned a crooked grin from me, but it faded as quick as it came. “There’s a point where your heartbeat spikes—like you’ve sprinted full tilt uphill and your body’s about to flatline. Vision blurs. Thoughts splinter. You forget who you are and start remembering what you were.” My voice dropped lower. “Your senses go feral. You can taste wind. Hear your own blood. Everything becomes about scratching, biting, tasting, running. Clothes feel like cages. You want to tear free. You have to.”

I swallowed hard, voice rough. “You ever lie in bed on a hot night and you just…can’t sleep until everything’s off? No fabric, no pressure against you. Just skin and air?”

She nodded, slowly.

“It’s that. But primal. And when it hits, it’s bliss and madness all at once. You run until you forget what stopping means. And eventually…” My eyes fell shut. “You crash. Like a drug. The comedown is brutal. You ache everywhere. But it’s a good ache. Like hard labor met a hangover and had a spiritual crisis.”

She propped herself a little higher against my side, her hand now splayed across my chest like a shield and a balm all at once. Her thigh pressed fully over mine.

“That’s what a shift feels like. For Lycans anyway.” I paused, then added, voice quieter, “Werewolves don’t get that luxury. The moon owns them. Their change isn’t choice or free will. It’s a sentence. They wake up covered in blood and regret. We get to remember what we do. Doesn’t mean it’s clean. Just means we have to live with it.”

Blanche’s gaze softened. “That sounds…awful.”

I nodded once. “My first shift was when I was thirteen. My father didn’t believe in coddling. He took me out to the woods, chained me to a pine, and said, ‘You fight it, or you feed it. Either way, you learn.’”

Her eyes widened slightly.

“He came back the next morning. Found the tree half-ripped out of the ground. Blood on my hands. I’d bitten through my own tongue. He was proud.”

“Jonathan…” she whispered, voice breaking.

I shook my head. “He taught me to master it. Not to understand it. Definitely not to accept it. That was weakness.”

Silence stretched again. I felt her toes brush lightly against my calf. A small gesture, but deliberate. She was still here. Still touching me. But then her hand moved, fingers threading into mine.

“Iwasscared, to answer your question,” she admitted softly. “But not of you.”

I looked at her sharply.

“I was scared of myself. Of how easy it was to trust you. To want you so fully.” She drew in a breath. “But tonight…you didn’t lose control. You could’ve. You should’ve. But you didn’t.” Blanche touched my chest, palm against my heart. “You chose me. Even then.”

I blinked hard. My throat was dry. “You should’ve run,” I told her.

She looked at me like she already had the answer. “But I didn’t. I didn’t want to.”

Something inside me cracked then.

I’d always feared being seen like this.Trulyseen. And not turned from in horror, but held like I was still worth something. That was the cruelest kindness. The one I never knew how to live with.

“Maybe the thing I’m most afraid of,” I said quietly, “isn’t the monster. It’s what I lose when I become it. And what I might never get back.”