I was alive.
When my eyelids snapped open, Maddy was right in my face. I was lying in some bed with a tacky orange floral printed comforter.
“She’s alive,” she breathed.
A giant hand grabbed her shoulder and pulled her backward and then Brayden was hovering above me. His blue eyes raked over me and he swallowed hard, relief written on his features.
“You made it.” His breath washed over me and the scent of cinnamon gum surrounded me.
I guess you were right, I meant to say, but instead a howl came out of my mouth.
What the…?
I looked down at my body to see that I was… a light colored greywolf.
I sprang to my paws and bolted off the bed.
Brayden held his hands out.“Whoa. Easy there. You’re still going to be sore.”
I’m a wolf. I’m a wolf. I’m a freaking wolf!I yelped and then my bones started to crack again as I was thrown forward.
“No!” Brayden shouted. “Don’t shift back so soon.”
He sighed, placing his palm over his face as my fur slowly turned to skin. There was a tight pressure all over my body, a burning and stretching, but not unbearable pain. In under thirty seconds I was standing on two feet.
He looked at Maddy. “Bowl.”
Bowl?
She handed him a plastic Tupperware tub and my stomach roiled from the sudden transition of wolf to human.
When I looked down, I noticed that I was completely naked.
I gasped, but the nausea was of more a concern than my nakedness. “I’m gonna be—”
He shoved the bowl in my face and I vomited straight into it. As I looked up from the bowl, Brayden’s yellow eyes were watching me.
Awkward.
He turned then, giving me his back while Maddy stepped closer.
“Would you like to take a shower?” she said as I scanned the room quickly to see that we were in some dodgy motel that looked like it was stuck in the eighties.
I nodded, pinched my legs shut and covered my arms over my naked chest while also holding my vomit-filled bowl.
Kill me now.
“Bathroom is that way,” Maddy said, pointing to a closed door. She then reached over and grabbed a folded stack of clothes and handed them out to me. I took the clothes from her and walked across the room with my head held high, trying to cover the fact that I was writhing in mortification. Forget the fact that I was some shapeshifting creature, this hot dude I barely knew just saw me barf naked into a Tupperware bowl in a seedy motel. Things could only go up from here.
Shutting the door behind me, I upended the bowl into the toilet and flushed before rinsing it in the sink. When I washed my hands, I looked into the mirror and burst into sobs.
Golden yellow threads wove throughout my normally hazel eyes. My red hair was ratted on one side, and there was blood on my cheek and neck. A memory of my collarbone piercing through flesh hit me then and I whimpered. My body was spotted all over with bruises. I looked like a Dalmatian.
Who was this girl in the mirror?
“You okay in there?” Maddy’s voice was full of awkwardness and I lied when I said it couldn’t get any worse. This wassomuch worse. I could puke naked andthenbe heard sobbing.
Reaching out, I turned on the shower to muffle my breakdown and then inspected my body more closely. There was a lot of light green and purple bruising on my abdomen, but otherwise I seemed okay. How the hell did I just change from wolf to human and stay alive to tell the tale?
