The second he said it, I knew he was right. I started ripping my clothes off, tearing my T-shirt down the middle and kicking my jeans off. By the time I was naked, Jules was too. He’d already fallen to his hands and knees. I followed suit, though I don’t remember actively deciding to do it. I looked up at the moon, and beside me, Jules did the same. The gentle beams caressed my face. It felt like the touch of a mother or father. I didn’t blink and I didn’t fight it. I accepted it gratefully. I allowed it to flow through my skin and into my veins, and as it did, my body started to burn. It felt like I was on fire. Everything I was, or ever had been, was scorched. Burned. It should have been painful, and it was. To a point, it was, but before it became unbearable, something deep, deep inside me shifted.

Click.

In a split second, every cell in my body was altered. Changed. Imbued with ancient magick. It felt euphoric. It was euphoric. I was euphoric. Beside me, I could tell that Jules was too. His back was arched up away from the ground almost grotesquely. He snapped and snarled, saliva spraying as he did it. I did the same. My breathing was labored and my heart rate was out of control. My vision blurred and with a flash, the world went bright white.

When I came to, I found myself on all fours. I looked down and saw my hands weren’t my hands. They were paws. I had paws instead of hands! Instead of skin, I had glossy black fur. I had sharp claws instead of nails. I’d known I was a shifter forever. I knew this was what I was meant to be. It was what I’d always been. Still, there were no words to describe what it felt like when I finally, finally shifted from human to wolf.

“Holy fuck!” I cried. “We did it!”

That’s what I meant to say, anyway. What came out was something closer to a choked yelp. I spun around to face Jules. He was a wolf! He was Jules, but he was a wolf. He was mainly gray with brown and white markings. His eyes were different, wild and wolfy, but they were his eyes. Even if I hadn’t known for a fact that shifting was real, if I’d stumbled across this wolf in the woods and looked into his eyes, I’d have known right away—those were Jules’s eyes. One of his eyebrows was up and the other was down. His mouth was wide open, and his tongue was lolling out to one side.