I'd seen first shifts before. Not many—Darian's community and the orphanage had young shifters, but they were born into their nature—they knew it was coming. Still they felt the disorientation. The panic. The way a person's mind struggled to reconcile with a body that had fundamentally changed.
James was drowning in it.
"Okay," I said, keeping my voice low and steady. "Okay. I need you to look at me."
His ears flattened against his skull. He was trembling—not from cold, from shock. His body was burning through energy faster than he could process, the shift having demanded everything he had and more.
I needed to work fast.
"I'm going to set some things down," I continued, already shrugging off my pack. "I'm not leaving. I'm right here. But I need my hands free."
He watched me with desperate intensity as I pulled out the first aid kit, the emergency bivvy, the thermal blankets. I arranged them on the snow within arm's reach—everything I'd need when he shifted back. Because he would shift back.
When that happened, he'd need warmth. Medical attention. Someone who knew what to say.
I could give him all three.
"James." I straightened slowly, hands visible, posture non-threatening. "I know you're scared. I know nothing makes sense right now. But I need you to hear me: you're not dying. You're not broken. What's happening to you is... it's something your body was always capable of. You just didn't know."
A sound escaped him. Half whine, half something that might have been a word if he'd had a human throat to form it.
"You're a shifter." I said it plainly, no softening. He deserved the truth. "A werewolf, if you want the old term. It's why you came to Frosthaven. The academy recruits people like you—latents, we call them. People who carry the gene but haven't triggered yet."
His legs buckled slightly. He caught himself, but barely.
"The bear triggered your first shift. Fear, adrenaline, the need to protect—it pushed your body past the threshold." I took a slow step toward him. "It happens. It's not supposed to happen like this, alone on a mountain with no warning, but it happens. And you survived it."
Another step. He didn't flinch this time.
"I'm going to come closer now. I'm going to touch you. It's going to feel strange, but I need you to let me. Can you do that?"
He held my gaze for a long moment. Then, slowly, he dipped his massive head in something that might have been a nod.
I closed the distance between us.
Up close, he was enormous. His shoulder came to my chest, his body easily twice my mass. The fur I'd glimpsed from a distance was thick and soft-looking, dark brown shot through with gold where the afternoon light caught it. Blood matted the fur on his left flank—the wound from the bear, still seeping.
I reached out and laid my palm flat against his neck.
The bond flared.
It was like completing a circuit. The hum that had been building between us since orientation surged through the contact point, warm and electric. I felt his heartbeat—too fast, rabbit-quick with panic—and beneath that, something else. His emotions, bleeding through the partial bond. Fear. Confusion. A desperate, clawing need to understand.
And underneath all of it, trust.
He trusted me. Even now, even terrified and trapped in a body he didn't recognize, some part of him trusted me to make this okay.
I let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.
"Good," I murmured. "That's good. You're doing so well."
His trembling eased slightly at my voice. I kept my hand on his neck, letting the bond do its work, and started talking.
"Shifters have been around for centuries. Maybe longer—the histories get fuzzy past a certain point. Most are born into packs, raised knowing what they are. But some, like you, carry latent genes. You could go your whole life without triggering, or you could shift at sixteen, or forty, or..." I gestured vaguely. "On a mountain, fighting a bear."
A sound that might have been a laugh, if wolves could laugh. It came out more like a huff.
"The shift is controlled by emotion, at first. Strong feelings push you over the edge—fear, anger, protectiveness. With training, you learn to control it. Choose when to shift and when to stay human. But right now, your body's running on instinct. It doesn't know the rules yet."
