When we finished eating, I pulled on a pair of sweatpants and hit the sack. I was so exhausted and my belly so full, I was only very slightly bothered by the fact that Jules was lying next to me in nothing but his boxer briefs.
“Sully,” Jules mumbled before drifting off, “I don’t mean to alarm you, but there’s something weird going on with your hair.”
I was drifting off and thought it was the food coma talking, so it didn’t alarm me in the slightest.
That night, we shifted again. I ran through the woods with Jules at my heels. That time, the second time we shifted, we hunted together. I caught the scent first. A deer. A doe. A good size but old. Slow. Definitely something worth killing. My memories of the hunt are hazy. There were flashes of brown, green and red. The sound of blood rushing through my veins and my paws hitting the ground. Inside me there was a bloodlust so strong, I couldn’t feel another thing. In human form, I had mixed feelings about hunting. Strictly speaking, I was against it. I thought it was cruel. My wolf saw it differently. It relished the hunt, the chase, and, yes, even the kill. Especially the kill.
When it was done, I became aware of myself snarling as I stood over our kill. I felt as far from human as it was possible to feel. Jules’s wolf eyes were lowered. He was salivating down his canines. He took a tentative step or two back, and even though I’d had my doubts about whether I would be able to do such a thing, I stepped forward and took the first bite.
I woke up on the soft grass that grew on the banks of the river. It was a surprisingly sensible place for a wolf to pass out. I was covered in dried blood. I needed a bath and I needed it fast. Jules was already in the water. His hair was wet and slicked back off his face. Tiny droplets of water had collected on his thick, dark lashes and they were glittering as they reflected the sun. I joined him in the water.
“Was that some night, or what?” he said as we both scrubbed ourselves.
“You’re telling me. It was way different from how I imagined it would be.”
“Yeah, never really thought of myself as bloodthirsty before, but here we are.” He chuckled.
“Me neither.”
“Seriously? I always thought you’d be a killer.”
“What? What the fuck, Jules? I’m a pacifist. You know that.”
He hooted at that. “You might have been once, but it sure didn’t feel like that when you were throttling me the other night.”
I still felt awful and embarrassed about that. I made my way out of the water and sat on the bank, mumbling, “Sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
“You were on fire last night as well. You were flying. I couldn’t keep up with you.”
I was surprised to hear it. I’d felt him lagging when I went in for the kill, but I thought he was hanging back to corner the deer. I thought it was part of a plan.
“Don’t go getting a big head about it, though. I bet I can still pin you.”
He came out of the water and ran for me. He took me down before I had time to brace myself. We rolled around on the grass. His wet skin was a shock against mine. He was laughing and so was I. I was laughing right until he had me on my back. The second the base of my skull made contact with the earth, something wild and dark moved in me. The force of it propelled me up. I rolled over with such force that Jules emitted a soft grunt as he hit the ground. Just like that, I had him on his back, and I was holding him down by the wrists.
“Jesus, big boy.” His voice sounded shaken and breathy, but he had a strange smile on his face.
I jumped off him as fast as I could. I was so aroused that for the first time in my life I wasn’t sure I could trust myself.
“I’m going to run back to the cabin to dry off,” I called over my shoulder as I headed into the forest, shifting midstride, desperate to get away from him and from that version of myself.
By the time Jules got back to the cabin, I was already in bed—in human form—and was gearing up for a nap of epic proportions. I closed my eyes when I heard him approach and pretended to be asleep. I was feeling flustered. I wasn’t happy with myself. I was struggling with a bit of wolf/human dysphoria and felt like I needed some time to gather my thoughts.
“Sully,” he whispered as he got into bed with me, “remind me to tell you about your hair. There’s something I need to show you.”
Most of the time Jules made complete sense to me, and the rest of the time he made none. His fixation with my hair was turning into one of those things that made no sense at all.
It was late afternoon when I woke. Jules was already up. As soon as I got out of bed, he dragged me to the bathroom. The room was tiny and timber-clad. It felt like a low-budget sauna. I had to shuffle in sideways to get to the basin. Jules crammed himself in there with me.
“What the fuck, Jules?” I complained. “I can’t even fit in here on my own.”
“I told you. I need to show you something. Look in the mirror.”
I crouched down until my face came into view in the tiny mirror that hung over the handbasin.
“What the fuck?” I said again, this time to my reflection. My hair, which was shoulder length and jet black, looked fucking weird. It was still black, but there were two streaks of white at my temples. And I don’t mean a gray hair or two. I mean two entire locks of my hair were solid white. “What the fuck is this?”
“There’s another one here,” he said, lifting a thick lock that grew from the whorl on the crown of my head. “This one was the first one. I noticed it yesterday after the first time we shifted.”
