Shivs
Night owned the Kentucky woods, even the wind holding its breath between the naked hickories.
I burned through it, fur slick and close to my body, every limb extended to the edge of breaking.
Wolf. That’s what they called it. Most never understood the run—never tasted the way wet earth seared your tongue or how the blood beat in your chest grew so loud it could have drowned the engine of God himself.
But I was built for it, and tonight, I craved the violence of it more than I craved air.
The sky was new-moon black, no glow from above, just the eternal ache of stars if you had the patience to look.
I didn’t. I was a missile of meat and bone, brain shrunk to a single lancing need: move, escape, hunt, fuck, howl, kill.
I leaped over fallen trees like they were matchsticks.
My nostrils swelled with scent—deer piss, the cold slick of copperhead under leaf, and somewhere far off, the burnt-oil tang of diesel exhaust. My tongue lolled, drawing air deeper, sweeter, the taste of it so much more than you’d get as a human.
Every sound was raw as razor wire. A mouse dug frantically under frost-burnt grass fifty yards ahead; two owl feathers clipped each other overhead; the huffing groan of a boar, angry and territorial, shivered all the way up my spine.
The run wasn’t an escape. It was a confrontation.
Every muscle tore and remade itself, again and again, because that’s what power felt like—like always being half an inch from destroying your own skin.
My paws slammed the wet clay, digging divots that’d last until spring.
At some point, I realized my mouth was open in a silent scream, tongue streaked black with mud and blood from where I’d bitten it on a sharp stone miles back.
The pain was an old friend, the kind that reminded you this body was real, was yours, was unstoppable.
The forest thinned in a sudden break. Ahead, through the black lace of branches, the land sloped up to a clearing.
The grass there, left uncut for years, hunched under its own weight like drunks at closing time.
In the center: the bastard’s cathedral, the Royal Bastards Motorcycle Club’s “sanctuary.” Four stories of timber, cinderblock, and metal, ringed by security lights that were always off this time of year.
To the right, a crude fire pit still smoldered from last night’s burn—diesel and pine, still alive in the wind.
I slowed, almost tripping over my own paws, the animal part of me furious at the need to stop.
But that’s the bitch of being what I am.
You’re always caught at the crossroad of instinct and memory.
I limped into the tree line and let my back legs fold under me, front paws digging for purchase as the world jerked sideways and the change started.
Every shift is an execution. The wolf brain—hungry, perfect, full—fights it, always.
I bit down on my own foreleg to keep from screaming.
Then the first bone cracked. Then a dozen more.
A fistful of tendons unzipped in my haunches, my whole ribcage buckling, reshaping.
My tongue, still heavy with blood, tried to form a curse, but all I managed was a growl.
Then the world exploded, white and red and agony, as my spine collapsed inward, each vertebra shearing itself into a new shape.
My vision doubled, tripled, blurred with pain, and then my nose—so huge, so sharp a second ago—flattened, cartilage spitting wetly as the bridge collapsed and reformed.
The fur peeled away in strips, leaving a web of raw, dripping skin.
My claws curled, splintered, then withdrew into fingers that flexed and twisted without coordination, like the hands of a newborn.
Eventually, I was something like a man again, though it felt more like being flayed alive and then stuffed back inside my own skin. I gasped for air, chest heaving, every nerve ending singing. I rolled over onto my back, arms splayed, feeling the cold earth against my raw, sweat-lacquered body.
I always came out of a run naked, not just in the flesh but in the soul.
Every fucked-up thing I’d done, every joy or regret, hung suspended in the air, ready to swarm.
I lay there a long moment, not ready to stand, not ready to face what waited inside the clubhouse.
The breeze bit down on me, and I shivered, but it felt good, clean, earned.
Somewhere inside, someone had just opened the side door. I heard the scrape of a boot on the concrete landing. The scent of cigarettes drifted out, followed by the warm rot of spilled beer. I grinned, or tried to, my lips still clumsy on my teeth.
I rolled to my side and forced myself upright.
My body, human now, was a patchwork of old scars and newer tattoos, the cuts and lines snaking over arms and chest, telling a story no one wanted to read.
My knees were muddy, shins cut from the last dash through the bramble, but I was already healing.
The change always did that, burning out weakness with its own special brand of pain.
I found the jeans I’d stashed under the root of a fallen oak—always plan for the walk of shame, Vin used to say—and dragged them on. My hands trembled as I buckled my belt, still strung out from the adrenaline, but I welcomed the tremor. It reminded me I wasn’t just the wolf. Not yet.
I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand, spat, and started toward the light bleeding out of the open door. The clubhouse waited, full of ghosts and brothers and all the laws we made for ourselves.
But for now, I was only what the night made me: muscle, hunger, and bone, standing at the edge of the world, breathing in the taste of rain, and ready for whatever came next.
Inside, the world shrank. The place was always close, choked with the stink of bodies, old wood, motor oil, and a haze of cigarette smoke so thick you could tongue it off your teeth.
The “church”—as Vin called the briefing room—looked like the holding pen for a bomb shelter, every wall lined with American flags, club patches, and the heads of animals no one in here could have ever hunted legally.
I stepped in and let the door thud closed behind me, every eye flicking my way, measuring.
Most nights, I didn’t mind the attention. Tonight, it pressed like a bad tooth.
Vin stood at the head of the table, reading glasses perched on the nose he’d broken five times, always the same way: by headbutting someone bigger.
He wore his cut like a skin graft, old denim battered by a hundred rainstorms, RBMC logo faded but never once stitched over.
A battered Louisville Slugger leaned against the wall beside him, a souvenir from the last time a rival club tried to torch our place.
He saw me, didn’t smile, just nodded. I nodded back.
Protocol. The other brothers—eight tonight, including fresh meat and a couple of crusty ex-cons—had circled the table on whatever they could drag in from the curb: folding chairs, broken recliners, two plastic milk crates.
Moab, my right hand when he wasn’t trying to steal the left, sprawled over a chair the color of old puke.
He was carving his initials into the edge of the table with a switchblade, face blank, but eyes bright with something like amusement.
I grabbed a stool in the far corner, beneath a mounted buck head with glassy eyes and one snapped-off antler. The air around me pulsed with stale beer and sweat, so thick the wolf in me wrinkled its nose.
Vin clapped once, sharp as a pistol shot. “Got two items and a favor tonight. First, the Louisville Kings put a scout in our backyard last Thursday. Near the quarry, north trail. Shivs—” He flicked his eyes at me. “—you saw the tracks?”
“Yeah. Dumb fucks were wearing Red Wing boots. Same size, both sets. Drank Pabst, pissed all over the place.” I didn’t mention I’d followed the trail for miles, found their camp, left them a little present in the form of two shredded tire valves and a patch of fresh blood on their tent. Let the others figure out how I knew.
Vin grunted. “We escalate?”
I shook my head. “Scared. Not looking to fight yet.”
He considered this, jaw working. “Second—” He pulled a sheet of paper from his cut. “—there’s a new player. Maybe a sponsor, maybe a fixer. Reports say she’s got cash and no fear. Name’s Hart. She’s buying up property between us and the distillery.”
A murmur. I listened but didn’t care. The wolf inside me was pacing again, hating the smallness of the room, the way everyone here smelled tired and old. My knee bounced, jittery, and I made myself stop, fingers curling into a fist so hard I felt the old scar in my palm light up.
Vin talked for a few more minutes, laying out routes, watchwords, and who was running with whom. I heard every word, but none of it stuck. All I wanted was the run, the air, the hunt. But there was protocol, so I stayed, watched the way the others watched me.
Sometimes I wondered if they’d have let me in if they’d known from the start.
It wasn’t like you could take out a Craigslist ad—“Wolves only, no fakes, must enjoy violence and late nights.” I’d proved myself the usual way.
First as a prospect, then by sending a couple of Louisville Kings home in body bags.
The other half came out after a party, when someone slipped me a blend of molly and god knows what else.
Moab and I were the only ones left conscious when the cops came, and I woke in a holding cell.
That was the night Vin found out. He just shrugged, said, “Guess you’ll be point on night ops from now on.
” Like it was the most natural thing in the world.