‘It also left me with something else.’ I pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth, searching for the words to tell a story that made me feel hollow. ‘I was so premature that my lungs hadn’t developed properly. I had to have a tube inserted through my throat to help me breathe.’
‘God,’ Lucas whispered. ‘You must have been so small.’
He would have seen tiny creatures over his years as a vet. I wondered how my newborn self would have compared. Mum said she wasn’t allowed to hold me, but that I would easily have fit in the palm of her hand.
‘I was, but apparently I was also strong. It took a while, but gradually the machines used to keep me alive were taken away. I could eat and breathe and move on my own. I could go home.’
I was far too young to remember when Mum held me in her arms and carried me over our threshold, but there was a picture. My grandmother, who died when I was four, captured the moment when I came home for the first time. I was still incredibly small, a blurry bundle held tight Mum’s chest.
That wasn’t what drew my focus when I got my photo album out. Mum’s face was alight with pure love. She might have worked a lot as I grew up and have been ridiculously driven, butin that moment when I was helpless and small, she’d loved me just for me.
Sometimes it felt like I’d spent my whole life searching for someone who would look at me again with such wonder. Someone who would choose me over anything and anyone else.
‘The doctors were sure that the scars from the tubes would fade and disappear as I got older.’ I wormed a hand up under the blankets to press on the scarf covering the front of my throat. ‘But the scar where the tube had been inserted to help me breathe didn’t go away.’
It sat just above where my collar bones met, a pink indentation in my creamy skin.
‘I didn’t do it consciously, but I touched that scar a lot. Mum told me off, said I’d make it sore, but it was hard to stop when I didn’t even realise I was doing it. If I was stressed or nervous, which was too much of the time when I was at university, I pressed my fingers into the scar.’
I flattened my hand on my scarf, willing away the sharp ache in my chest. Lucas didn’t interrupt or dig for more details. His breathing was steady down the line.
‘Doctors weren’t ever sure of the cause of it all, but I had a lot of health issues that never fully resolved as I was growing up. While I was studying and after I moved here, I’d get these horrible migraines. They’d last for days, where I had to lie as still as possible in bed and wait for them to pass. Sometimes, I had to shut the bookshop until they passed. Bonnie noticed.’ I swallowed hard against the lump rising in my throat. ‘She asked if I wanted to take the bite, make the pain go away.’
I’d been embarrassed when the island’s mayor strode into the shop after a particularly bad migraine that had left me pale and wobbly for days afterwards. She’d demanded to know exactly what was wrong. I’d stuttered replies while her thick eyebrows crowded dangerously close to her eyes.
She hadn’t offered the bite immediately. I hadn’t realised at the time, but other members of the pack slowly got to know me. It was an initiation of sorts; Louisa’s demands that I watch films and invitations to go out on Errol’s boat, mornings in the bakery with Joshua and Cob, long walks across the mountains with Callum. They were feeling me out, making sure I would be a good fit. Bonnie might have wanted to help me, but she also wanted to make sure I’d be an asset to the pack.
And that I wouldn’t turn into a murderous lunatic when they shared their true nature with me.
‘I might have read one too many fantasy novels, but the idea that I’d not only be consistently well but would also be strong and able to hear and smell really well seemed amazing.’
‘It is amazing,’ Lucas interjected. ‘I don’t think I would have said no if I’d had a choice.’
I took a deep breath, which felt far more difficult than it should have. At the time, I’d jumped to say yes. I’d been ready to run up to the mountains and have Callum bite me the next day. Bonnie had made me think about it for a week, to make sure I was certain.
I didn’t know what I’d say now I knew what the bite would take from me, but Lucas was right; since I’d been bitten I hadn’t had a single migraine. Not even a bad headache. The lingering dread I’d carried that at any moment life could be interrupted by unignorable pain had been lifted. For that, I was eternally grateful.
I just wished there hadn’t been a cost. I should have known that what Bonnie was offering was too good to be true. Something so amazing couldn’t be given for free.
‘Have you told Aster that?’ I checked. He’d messaged me several times since Lucas had been bitten, rambling missives worrying about the huge decision he’d made for his best friend.
‘A thousand times,’ Lucas grumbled. I wasn’t sure I would have heard a hitch in his heartbeat. He could be exaggerating, or he could literally have told his best friend that he was happy as a wolf that many times and still Aster was concerned. Lucas’s voice was gentle when he asked, ‘What happened after you were bitten?’
He had to have ideas. I’d told him I’d cried for a long time after I became a wolf and he’d gone through the change himself. It was kind of him to let me tell the whole story.
‘I didn’t realise anything was wrong right after I changed. I wasn’t hurt like you, so it only took a couple of days.’ I didn’t remember much after Callum’s fangs sliced through my skin. Becoming a wolf used a lot of energy. The days had been filled with alternate sleeping and gorging on Callum’s hearty stews. ‘When Callum and I were practicing how to block out unpleasant smells, I couldn’t get it right. I was worried that I never would. I went to touch my scar.’ I screwed my eyes shut. ‘It wasn’t there.’
My panic in that moment had been absolute. I had probed my skin, desperately searching for what was no longer there. I didn’t realise I was screaming, that my fingers were tipped with elongated claws that tore at my throat until Callum clutched me in his arms.
It had taken a long time to find the words to tell him what was wrong. Guilt, stringent and inescapable, had poured off him. He’d meticulously explained the changes my body would undergo. He’d told me that any tattoos would disappear, that sensitive spots in my teeth would heal, that my migraines would be no more.
I hadn’t mentioned my scar. I hadn’t been stressed when we’d talked about me becoming a wolf, so he hadn’t seen how it was a touchstone.
A reminder I was loved from the moment I’d been born. A remnant from the mother I’d lost. An imperfect part of myselfI liked far more than the hair or lips or eyes everyone else commented on.
‘Oh, Kit,’ Lucas breathed. ‘I wish I could give you the biggest hug right now.’
I huffed out a half laugh, half sob. I wanted that more than anything. ‘How’s it going with mastering your new abilities?’
