Lily
With wide eyes Elijah followed the line created by Lily’s finger. The fear curdling her stomach receded as he laughed.
“Well, shit,” he said, his eyes soft as they met hers. It was by far the most colloquial, the most relaxed, she’d ever heard him sound.
“It seems I don’t have a choice,” Lily muttered, turning away from him to stare at the moon. She’d never shifted outside, unrestrained, before. To do so now seemed impossible, but there was no other option. Elijah took her hand.
“I’ll be with you. I promise, Lily, it will be okay.”
“How can you know that?”
He smiled sadly. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”
“It’s not about me. I don’t care what happens to me. I just don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Okay.” His eyes teemed with hurt, but he nodded. “I won’t let anything hurt you – or let you hurt anyone.”
“Can I trust you?”
“Forever.”
Resignation set in. The moon hovered, its pearlescent sheen casting a strange, orange glow around it in an almost perfect ring. It blurred into a curtain of navy spotted with stars. It, too, was waiting.
Needing the comfort only Elijah could give her, Lily pressed herself closer to him. Her toes curled with uneasy anticipation, and her cheeks stung from the cold. But he was warm and solid at her side, and his strong arm kept her safe as it wound snugly around her waist.
Gritting her teeth, Lily shoved down the feelings that had sprung to the surface only moments before. She had no idea how long they’d been in the clearing, the names of the dead their only company. She had no idea why thoughts and feelings she’d kept unsaid for years had spilled freely from her, a river bursting its banks after years of neglect and rainfall. She hated how vulnerable it had made her, but there was a sense of peace that had accompanied truly letting go.
It was time for a fresh start. She’d known that since before Atticus’s rejection. Blood Moon held nothing for her, save for her strained relationship with her father. Maybe it was time to leave her shame in the past as well.
Lily’s throat bobbed. She wet her lips with a dry tongue. Anticipation ached, curling in her gut.
“Once,” she whispered, still watching the moon. “I know I have no choice, but this once I want to. I want to shift… with you.”
She turned to face Elijah. His eyes shone with tears that Lily did not understand. He pressed his lips to her temple, but before he could speak the crack of bone filled the small clearing.
Elijah fell backwards, throwing his face up to the moonlight. It carved the intricate planes of his face into something inhuman. In the light, his ears looked longer, sharper, along with the hard line of his jaw. His lips pulled back from his teeth.
Lily shivered. She’d never seen anyone other than herself turn. It hurt to see him in pain, but she couldn’t look away. Not when paying witness to his suffering was the only comfort she could afford him. Wrapping her arms tightly around herself, Lily looked on in horror as Elijah’s back broke.
She cried out for him, only for her own leg to shatter. Lily focused on the human spark at her centre, desperate to hold onto her humanity as her back bowed and her ankles twisted.
Through the pain, she tried to find Elijah. He was curled in on himself on the shadowed ground and, though he did not make a sound, the moonlight lit up the tears streaking down his sallow cheeks.
Rather than thinking of the mundane, as she usually did, Lily focused on the love blooming within her. They’d known each other less than a month, but Lily already knew that the desire burning in her would only end one way: love. She longed to be with him, to feel him, to care for him and for him to care for her in return.
She thought of his eyes, of how they changed from dark to light when he looked at her. She didn’t know why they did, but she knew what it meant, and that mattered to her a hundred times more. She knew what the bright light in her chest at the sight of him meant, too.
And then she was gone. She fell forward onto paws, and snapped her teeth playfully at nothing. She was gone, but, just as she had last time, something integral remained. She was a wolf, but her mind was still her own.
For the first time, her paws were white, not a dust-toned rose, distorted by the dim light of the wine cellar. She flexed them, pressing her weight onto her paw pads, one after the other.
Then she looked up, and her eyes met Elijah’s.
He was huge. His wolf form was a deep, glossy brown, highlighted by the naked moonlight shining across his fur. Grey eyes met hers, and his mouth opened in a grin.
And then Lily heard his thoughts in her head.
‘She’s beautiful like this, too. I didn’t expect her to be white – I thought she’d be brown, as I am in this form. It’s like moonlight.’
‘Elijah?’ Lily thought in return.
‘Lily?’
‘You’re in my head.’
‘Yeah, well – you’re in mine!’
‘We can hear each other?’ His head cocked to the side. ‘It must be the mate bond.’
‘It seems so.’ Lily padded over to him. ‘I feel… like me.’
He nudged her with his head. ‘I promised you’d be fine.’
‘You did.’ Everything felt clear to her in that moment. Brown eyes searched grey, and Lily knew that she’d found her peace. She was in control, and her choices were her own.
Maybe… maybe being a wolf didn’t have to mean suffering and pain and loss. Perhaps, in the right company, it could even be fun.
She’d wanted to test her boundaries before. She’d pulled at the chains knowing they’d never come free. And, when the full moon had rolled around again, she would still have tied herself down well before the moon had risen. She’d needed change, and she’d found it in Sea Pine; she’d found it in Elijah.
‘Run with me,’ Elijah thought. ‘I can scarcely believe you’ve not done it before.’
Had she been human, Lily would have snorted. ‘You still sound like you.’
‘I am still me.’
Such a simple thing, such an impossible fact. But the truth of it rattled her bones.
‘Come on, then.’ She turned her face up to the moonlight, feeling fresh, cold air on her face for the first time in her wolf form. It brushed through her fur, through her whiskers, and she closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, Elijah was staring plainly at her, and blood burned through her veins.
Nobody had ever looked at her like that before. And as a wolf...
It was almost painful, that burst of realisation. Her nature was not evil. She was not unlovable because of what she was. She was herself, not despite her wolf-side, but including it. She could master it, forge it into something good. Something beautiful. Elijah saw her that way already, and the force it of made her shudder.
She'd left the evil part of her behind the moment she'd left Blood Moon. Fate had something more for her than the old life she'd never truly felt at home in. Here, she had something to say. And, here, she was heard.
‘Let’s run,’ she added, staring back. Lily let him see everything she’d thought about as she’d shifted, about the kernel of… something that had been planted the minute she’d met him. With water and sun, it was growing into something deeper, something more.
His mouth lolling open in a new, toothy grin, Elijah put his paw over hers. Then he raised his head to the moon and howled, loud and free.
With his call ringing in her ears, singing through her veins, Lily ran with her mate at her side to where she knew the rest of her pack would be.