Chapter 7
SEVEN
AARETH
His body felt more alive than it ever had before. The closest he could come to placing an exact feeling on his state now was when he was in his late teens. Reckless and wild, he had felt indestructible.
He felt like that now, except he might actually be indestructible. After the fight with New Hope’s new vampire soldiers, he had suffered injuries. However, these injuries had healed quickly, and he sensed his body was still changing.
The other day he had felt the need to hunt. While out around the city of Term, he had come across a stag. Within seconds of his arrival, the animal had either smelled or sensed his presence and it sprinted in the opposite direction.
On all fours, a killer instinct had taken over.
Aareth caught the animal without having to overexert himself.
The stag made one last attempt at survival, pivoting at the last moment and driving its rock-hard antlers into Aareth’s side.
Nothing happened. Aareth’s hide battered against the sharp points as if he were made of steel.
A moment later, his muzzle was drenched in hot blood as he finished the kill.
Somewhere, Aareth understood that he should have been disgusted by the idea of ripping apart flesh with his claws and his maw.
He even wanted to be a little disappointed in himself for giving into this new part of him with such ease.
But he just wasn’t. He needed to eat, and this was the way of the forest.
Aareth’s memory was still intact. It was like instead of losing any part of who he was, a part had been added. An animalistic part of him that raged to run free, to howl at the moon, and to roll in the dirt.
Aareth thought of all of this as he hunched in the shadows just outside the small city of Term.
He found a high vantage point on a hill covered in thick trees and bushes, completely concealed while he waited for Sloan’s whistle.
The two had perfected a pitch that Aareth would be able to hear at almost a mile away.
If he sprinted all out, he could be there in under a minute.
While he waited for the call, he tried for the hundredth time to change back into the man he was. Aareth held his breath as he tensed his paws. He concentrated on ushering the wolf part of himself back into the cage it had escaped from.
I’ll let you out again, Aareth thought. You have to let me turn back into our human form sooner or later.
Whether the wolf part of him understood or not was yet to be seen. Nothing, however, happened; Aareth stayed in his half-wolf, half-human form.
He heaved a heavy sigh of frustration as he sat back on his haunches, listening to the night sounds of the forest.