19. The Boy Who Cried Wolf
The Boy Who Cried Wolf
Twenty-Four Years Earlier
Mash
Ifolded my clothes. In fact, I folded, unfolded, and refolded them several times. I never folded my clothes. They usually stayed in a heap on my bedroom floor until Mam yelled at me to throw them all in the laundry basket, but I was so nervous I needed the momentary distraction it brought.
It was Harvest Fest, which meant a hundred or so wolves from neighbouring packs had gathered in the Howling Pines marquee. Our Harvest Fests had become somewhat of a local institution, with people clambering over each other for an invite.
It was my “official” first time in the marquee on full-moon night. A little cubby with a prettily written name tag, Mash Cassidy , waited for me at the end of the cubs’ section. My clothes rested neatly inside. Well, my shorts and tank. I sat in my underpants with the rest of the youngsters while we waited to see if tonight we would shift. We watched, and tried not to look at the older folks undressing.
Once I’d shifted, my cubby would get moved to sit beside Nana’s, Mam’s, Clem’s, and Mika’s. But until that moment, I had to wait here with my brother Zach, his best friend Kai, my other sister Alba, and about thirteen other kids varying in age from eleven to fourteen.
It was different when it wasn’t Harvest Fest, or another big family celebration like the Wolf Moon in January. Those times, my pack would simply get undressed in their bedrooms or in the living room, and they’d go out together in a small group of four. Sometimes we’d have visitors, like the Black Fang pack from across the lake, but more often than not, it was just the Cassidys. Mika shifted about three years ago, so before that it was only ever Nana, Mam, and Clem.
A couple of weeks ago I’d had my eleventh birthday. Zach was thirteen, and he’d been undressing in preparation for his first shift for two years.
I drummed my fingers against the wood of the bench.
“It won’t happen tonight, chill out,” Zach said to me, then he resumed playing some kind of card game with Kai.
Ahead of us, the male alpha of another pack got undressed. Kai elbowed Zach, who looked up. The pair shared a smirk, then went back to their game. I wished Aaron was here with me, but his birthday wasn’t until June.
“Nah, it will happen tonight,” said Poppy. She was in the year above me at school. All the cubs here went to Lykos Academy, but I was the only one from grade six. Nobody else in my grade had had their eleventh birthday yet.
“How do you know?” Zach said, regarding Poppy as though she were a bug in need of squishing.
Poppy wore underpants and a cotton vest top. I couldn’t stop staring at the embroidered daisies in the centre of her chest.
Some of the cubs wore swimwear, some wore underwear. It didn’t matter too much if a pair of pants got destroyed in a shift, but it could be dangerous to shift in clothes. Especially in things like belts and jewellery. Paper robes were always available, almost like hospital gowns, but no one ever wore them. Zach told me if I wore a paper robe, I’d get laughed out of the school and we’d have to move towns.
It wasn’t Poppy who answered Zach’s question, it was Rob from Zach’s class. “Look at the size of him. He’s taller than you, Z.”
“No he isn’t,” Zach sniped, which was a dumbass thing to say. I was over six feet and already half a foot taller than him.
“I just know,” Poppy said. “I feel it, like in my . . .” She patted the centre of her chest, drawing my eye again to the flowers.
A few mornings ago, I’d woken up with some new things happening . . . down there. It confused the heck out of me. I’d thrown a Wingball down from the top bunk. It hit my brother on the back.
“Zach, Zach, wake up. Something’s wrong with me, Zach. My willy’s big and . . . hard.”
“Congratulations on your first boner,” he’d said without turning over to face me. “You’ll get them all the time now, especially when you look at—or think about—really hot men or women.”
I tore my eyes away from Poppy’s underwear. The last thing I needed was to get a boner in my tighty-whities in front of the entire school.
She continued like she hadn’t seen me staring . . . or maybe she hadn’t. “He has an alpha’s aura.”
“Oh, fuck off, he does not!” Zach spat.
“Language, Zachary,” said one of the older, entirely naked wolves.
“You’re just jealous,” Poppy said. “Because Mash will be the next alpha and not you.”
Zach was on his feet, his card game abandoned. “I will be the next Cassidy alpha, not Mash. I’m the eldest boy.”
“It doesn’t work like that.” That was Rose. At fourteen, she was the oldest of the unshifted wolves. She had actual boobs. I didn’t even let myself glance at them, but gods, I wanted to. “My sister is younger than my brother and they both shifted together for the first time, but she’s our next alpha, not him.”
“It could still be you, Alba,” Rob said, turning to my only unshifted sister, who’d wisely kept herself out of the argument.
Until now. “We all know it’s gonna be Mash. Sorry, Z, but you just aren’t as cool as my baby bro.” Alba’s shit-eating grin told me, without looking at Zach, that her arrow had found its target.
“If Mash is the next alpha, I’m never speaking to him again,” Zach said. “I’ll leave the pack and start my own with Kai. You can’t be the leader of a pack with a name like Mash.”
“Oh, don’t be dick,” Poppy yelled, also standing. “Just because you think—”
I jumped to my feet, pushing a gap between them, careful not to place my hand anywhere near Poppy’s daisies. “It’s fine. Whatever happens, happens. Zach can be alpha, anyway. I don’t want to.”
“That’s not how it works either,” said Rose, as Rob said, “Why not? I reckon it’d be really cool. Bossing everyone around, lording it about, always getting the biggest steak.”
I shrugged. Hadn’t thought too much about it, but I knew I wanted more. To see more of the Eight and a Half Kingdoms, meet the other species I’d read about in books and seen in movies. Couldn’t do that if I had to stay behind and lead the pack. “I wanna travel.”
“You can do that before you’re twenty-five. That’s what most wolves do,” Poppy said.
I sat back down, safe in the knowledge that Poppy and Zach weren’t about to have a dogfight. “I just don’t want to do it, okay?”
But it was pointless trying to deny what I already knew. What Nana, and Mam, and Clem, and Mika, and Alba, and even Zach already knew—though he was in denial. I would shift tonight, or if not tonight, over the next few lunar cycles, and I would become alpha.
I felt it in every fibre of my being. In my guts and the marrow of my bones. In the very atoms that made me Mash Cassidy.
Zach watched me over his shoulder. He said nothing and then turned back to Kai.
“Oh, they’re shifting!” Poppy said, snapping everyone’s attention to the crowds of wolves.
A deep rumble filled the marquee. Resonant growls built louder and louder as a hundred wolves transformed at once. It sounded like thunder rolling overhead.
The once-naked bodies sprouted fur—on chests and backs first, but soon it covered everything. Bones began elongating, bending different ways. Wolves were crying, howling. The noise was skull-splittingly loud. Impossible to even think through.
Mam padded over to the cubs’ area. She was enormous now, with her light-brown shaggy fur and deep amber eyes. “I’m not meant to be here.” She pushed her cold snout against the skin of my neck, sniffing me, and then she did the same to Alba and Zach. “But I can’t miss one of my babies shifting, so I’ll be just outside the tent if you do, okay?”
“Sure,” I shouted over the top of the noise.
Alba waved her away, and we continued to watch the rest of the wolves shift and then scent each other in very typical dog fashion.
“I’m never gonna sniff someone’s butthole,” Rob said.
“Yeah, you will,” Rose said. “Everyone says they won’t, but it’s just something that cannot be stopped.”
Poppy looked down at her hands. “I really hope I shift tonight. I’m tired of waiting.”
“Try sitting here every month for three years,” Rose said.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
It was Zach who spoke. “Yeah, it fucking kills.”
“How would you know?!” Poppy shouted over the roaring and yipping and barking in the marquee. “I’ve heard it hurts at first, but you get used to it.”
We continued to watch the wolves shifting and filing out of the exit until we were the only people still here. After another thirty minutes, Rose brought out the blankets for those who were getting chilly. I refused mine. Felt like I was burning up. Poppy also turned hers down.
“If it’s gonna happen, how long does it take?” I asked.
Rose shrugged, wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, and sat on the floor. “Probably would’ve happened by now, but they say it can happen any time before dawn.”
Everyone groaned.
An hour went by, the board games were brought out, and the fizzy drinks and junk food.
“I feel sick. I think I need to lie down,” Poppy said, pushing the bag of candy away.
Everyone froze. Poppy’s already pallid skin had drained itself of any remaining colour, except that her lips had turned blue. With her ice-blonde hair and pale eyes, she looked almost ghostlike. Like she’d drowned in the Howling Pines lake and had walked back to the marquee, but had left her body in the water’s murky depths.
“Oh my gods, it’s happening!” said Rose. She took Poppy’s hand. “Look!” Tiny hairs sprouted on Poppy’s shoulders.
“She’s shifting!” Kai said.
Poppy gagged but nothing came out. Regardless, every cub around her retreated like she was an unexploded bomb. Every cub except Rose, who still held her hand.
Poppy groaned, cried out. “No, I hate it. I hate it! Mammy! Where’s my mam?!”
One of the other cubs, Rob I think, ran to the entrance of the tent. I took Poppy’s other hand and watched transfixed, horrified, as her face grew outwards. Her vest tore free as her chest expanded. Pale fur erupted everywhere. Her hands—now paws—thudded onto the marquee floor.
But I was on the floor too. Why was I on the floor?
I couldn’t lift my head or look at anyone. And then a pain ripped through my gut. I was going to vomit lava. I tried to stand, but my back spasmed into an arc. Every single one of my bones felt as though they were breaking in turn, smashed one by one like the bars of a xylophone being struck. My eyeballs were going to fall out of my skull, but that didn’t matter because my head was about to explode anyway.
“Mash!” Alba yelled.
Zach was on his feet. Tears fell from his eyes. I was in too much pain to think about what they meant.
I was going to die. I was dying, and my brother was going to watch me die. And then he would become alpha and I wouldn’t have to worry about anything.
When I thought I couldn’t take any more, the agony stopped. Like a candle being snuffed out, everything felt . . . normal again. Except not normal . . . a new normal, I guessed.
“Mash, Mash.” It was Mam. Her voice was soft. “Mash, you did it.”
Clem and Nana were there too.
I pushed myself shakily into a standing position and looked down at my legs. My incredibly furry legs. They were long. I must have been huge. My coat was the same colour as Mum’s. I looked over to Poppy, who was now a brilliant white wolf. No other cubs had shifted.
“How do you feel, sunshine?” Mum asked me.
“Good.” The word came out all weird and squeaky. “Good, I feel good. Great, actually.”
Nana came up to me, nuzzled me. Then, without speaking a word, she left.
“Told you Mash was the next alpha,” Alba said.
Zach said nothing. He pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders and turned his back to me.
Whatever. I could deal with him later. Right now, I needed to run. I needed to check out what this body could do.
Mam obviously sensed it. “Go. Go with Poppy. Have fun. I’m going to wait beside the marquee in case Alba and Zach join you. Mika is out there.”
But I was already running from the tent, Poppy chasing my tail.
The first rush of fresh night air as I burst from the marquee was like nothing else. Suddenly, I understood why everyone looked forward to the full moons so much. It was something I needed for survival. I just hadn’t realised I needed it until that point.
“ Shiiiiiit!” I yelled, running as fast as I could through the trees. In my mind, I was a golden blur through the darkened forests.
“It feels amazing!” Poppy shouted, drawing up next to me.
We slowed to a stop in a clearing somewhere on the Howling Pines grounds. I’d lost all my bearings, but I didn’t care.
“Hey, watch this,” I said. Then I cocked my leg against a tree.
Poppy laughed, caught sight of her tail and chased it for three or four spins.
“Um, this is gonna sound really weird,” I said when she stopped spinning.
“You wanna sniff my butt?”
“Yeah.”
She laughed again. “I kinda wanna sniff your butt too. We don’t have to tell anyone.”
“Oh!” I said after the butt sniffing had happened. “It’s not gross.”
“No, it’s not gross at all.”
“I’m gonna find some more trees to pee on,” I said.
“Ooh, that sounds fun. I’m gonna go and howl. I really want to howl.”
“Ooh, me too.”
We ran together all night, playing and rolling around, chasing and pinning each other. Drinking from the stream. We weren’t brave enough to hunt and eat raw meat, but I had no doubt we’d get there eventually.
We woke up in a bed of pine needles three metres apart from each other. I was thankful we weren’t cuddling, because we were both buck-ass naked. Luckily, no boner that morning.
“Mash, oh my god!” Poppy said, jumping to her feet, wrapping her arm around her chest, and placing one hand in front of her privates.
I covered my eyes, and then probably too late, I realised I should have been covering my dick.
“Um . . .” Poppy said. “Where are we?”
I peeked through my fingers. Saw the red-tiled roof of Mam’s workshop. “Oh, okay, I know where we are. We’re not that far from the house and the marquee. You wait here and I’ll go fetch your clothes.”
“Are you sure?” Poppy said, but she was already looking for a place to sit.
“Back in a sec.”
“Hey, Mash?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you remember any of last night?”
“Uh . . .” I thought about it. “Bits, I guess. Like I remember how much shifting hurt. And I remember sniffing your butt—”
“Oh my god.”
“But I’m not sure I remember much else. I know I had fun, though,” I said.
“Me too,” Poppy agreed.
As I walked back to the cubbies to collect our clothes, I remembered with lightning-strike clarity, my destiny as the next Cassidy pack leader had been confirmed.