His back cracked again, louder this time, and I watched in horror as his shoulder blades shifted beneath skin that suddenly looked too tight. Like his body was trying to reshape itself according to blueprints that had nothing to do with human anatomy.
I should have run. Every rational thought in my head was screaming at me to get the hell out of there, to leave Evan to whatever private crisis he was experiencing and never speak of what I'd seen. Because this was wrong, impossible, the kind of thing that happened in movies or nightmares but never in the real world where people lived and worked and worried about normal things like bills and relationships and whether they'd remembered to feed the cat.
But I couldn't move. Couldn't tear my eyes away from the impossible thing that was happening in front of me, couldn't make my legs work well enough to carry me back to safety andsanity and the carefully ordered world where Evan was just a mechanic who fixed engines and broke hearts.
Because something was happening to his skin.
It started along his arms, a ripple of texture that looked like goosebumps at first but quickly became something else entirely. Dark hair was sprouting from his forearms, coarse and thick and growing with visible speed. But it wasn't just hair, was too structured, too deliberate to be anything as simple as unusually aggressive body hair.
It was fur. Thick, glossy fur the color of midnight with threads of silver running through it like veins of precious metal.
The transformation spread across his shoulders, down his back, covering skin that stretched and reformed itself to accommodate whatever was happening beneath.
Evan was changing with it, his human features flowing like clay being reshaped by invisible hands.
His jaw lengthened, bones sliding and clicking as they found new configurations. His teeth flashed in the strange light, longer and sharper than human canines had any right to be. And his eyes—they were glowing with amber fire that had nothing to do with reflected light and everything to do with something that lived inside him, something wild and ancient and absolutely fucking impossible.
A growl tore from his throat, deep and primal and vibrating through the clearing with enough force to make my bones ache. It was the sound of something that had never been fully human, something that had been wearing civilization like an ill-fitting costume and was finally free to be what it actually was.
I pressed the shutter without conscious thought, the camera's click lost in the symphony of transformation that was rewriting everything I thought I knew about reality. Because this couldn't be happening. People didn't just turn into animals,didn't shed their humanity like clothing and become something out of folklore and fever dreams.
But Evan was doing exactly that, his body flowing between forms with a grace that spoke of practice, of something he'd done so many times that it had become as natural as breathing. And the creature that emerged from human skin was magnificent and terrifying in equal measure, a wolf larger than any I'd seen in zoos or nature documentaries, with eyes that burned like captured starlight and presence that made the air itself seem to bend around him.
He shook himself, fur settling into place like expensive fabric, and I felt my worldview crack and crumble like glass under pressure. Because this was Evan. The boy who'd written careful notes instead of speaking aloud, who'd fixed my camera when I dropped it, who'd looked at me like I was worth something even when I couldn't see it myself.
And he was also this. This magnificent, impossible creature that belonged to wilderness and moonlight and stories that people told to explain away the sounds they heard in the deep forest.
The wolf that had been Evan lifted his massive head and scented the air, nostrils flaring as he tested for threats or prey or whatever it was that giant mythological creatures worried about when they found themselves alone in clearings that existed outside normal reality.
I held my breath, suddenly terrified that he might catch my scent, might turn those burning eyes in my direction and recognize the human hiding behind a fallen log with a camera and a brain that was struggling to process the impossible. Because I didn't know what happened to people who witnessed transformations that shouldn't exist, didn't know if the creature wearing Evan's essence would remember human friendship or only see potential threat.
But he was looking past me, attention focused on the trees at the far edge of the clearing where shadows moved with more purpose than wind alone could explain. And as I watched, more shapes emerged from the forest darkness.
More wolves.
They came one at a time, slipping from shadow to shadow like liquid night given form. Some were smaller than Evan, built for speed and agility rather than raw power. Others were nearly his equal in size.
There were six of them in total, a pack in every sense of the word, and they moved toward Evan with the easy familiarity of family. Or soldiers. Or both.
But it was clear who led them. Even among his own kind, Evan commanded attention and respect in ways that went beyond mere size. The other wolves approached him with body language that spoke of deference, of acknowledgment that he was something special even in their impossible world.
All except one.
A wolf with silver-streaked fur that caught the dying light like polished steel prowled closer to Evan than the others dared, lips pulled back to show teeth that could have severed limbs without effort. There was challenge in his posture, aggression that spoke of old conflicts and unresolved power struggles.
Evan's response was immediate and absolute. He didn't snarl or snap or give any of the obvious signs of dominance I might have expected. Instead, he simply looked at the challenger, amber eyes holding steady contact until the other wolf's ears flattened and his gaze dropped to the forest floor.
Submission. Complete and total, delivered without violence or even the threat of it.
Holy shit. Evan wasn't just part of this pack.
He was their leader.
The realization hit me like a physical blow, stealing what little breath I had left and making my hands shake so badly I nearly dropped my camera. Because this explained everything and nothing, answered questions I hadn't known I was asking while raising a thousand more that I didn't have frameworks for processing.
The careful distance people maintained around the Callahans. The way conversations stopped when Evan entered rooms. The sense that there were currents running beneath Hollow Pines' small-town surface that had nothing to do with ordinary politics or social dynamics.
All of it suddenly made sense in ways that also made no sense at all.
