Chapter Two

                                 Eva

It's been a little while since I woke, but I had refused to open my eyes, willing myself to believe that this was not really happening. Or it was one of my wild imaginations. I had them often. 

I feel his fingers slightly part the hair that covered my face. My hair felt like it stuck to my face, and I guessed it was the sweat all over me. 

"I know you're awake" he says, as his hot breath tickles my earlobe, and I feel my cheeks flush red. 

My eyes opens, slow, afraid of what I may see. A faint realization that this was my reality and not a dream, hit me.

I am no longer in the forest, surrounded by wildflowers, but in a chamber. I look around enough to see the chandelier hanging above me, pure gold. Gold as I've never seen before, then my eyes slowly adjust to the pair of silver eyes watching me intently. 

The moment he decided to turn me, I realized something terrifying. I had no say in it.

Shawn didn’t ask. He didn’t even warn me. There was no heroics, no chance to bargain. Only the silent weight of his presence, the press of his hand on my wrist, and the whisper of his teeth near my neck.

“You shouldn’t have seen me,” he murmured. His voice was calm—too calm. Dangerous. I couldn’t breathe. My head screamed again, it had been screaming relentlessly, even while I was passed out. 

Run. Flee. Survive. 

I wanted to, I tried to, but my body wouldn’t obey.

Now again, I sense a little movement from him, like he's about to do something. One thing with experience, it's the greatest teacher. 

He tilts my head a second time and I try to fight back with all my will, but it feels like I am doing it all in my head. My body lay there limp.

 He bites again.

 In a different spot this time around. 

The bite is cold, almost clinical. My flesh burns under his touch as the first fangs graze my neck. Pain shoots through me like lightning, sharp, white-hot. I howl. I fucking howl! That's not something humans do. Then something unexpected happens. I don't just feel the pain. I feel him.

Every heartbeat, every drop of blood, every instinctual thought of his wolf pulsing in me like a live wire. I recoil, but it is useless. It is already there. Already inside me.

Shawn's lips barely touch my skin, and I feel the first stirrings of change. My vision sharpens; the night darkens and brightens at the same time. Shadows moving like they have lives of their own. Sounds become louder, sharper. Every scent tells me a story. His story.

“You feel it now, don’t you?” he says, lips brushing my ear. I flinch violently at the contact. “The bond. It’s real. And it’s irreversible. That's what the second bite was about."

I couldn’t respond. I want to scream, but the words are stuck in my throat, tangled in the new hunger rising inside me. Something feral, hot, and wild clawed at the edges of my mind. My fingers, my teeth, my head… they all ache. 

Shawn holds me tighter. Not cruelly, not gently. Precisely. Like he knows exactly how much to push before I snap. “You’ll survive,” he says. “Or you’ll serve. But you will not leave this night unchanged.”

And he was right.

The change starts out slowly at first. My pulse throbbing in tandem with his. My skin prickles with every brush of his fingers. My senses, screaming with awareness I can't yet control. I see my reflection in the polished stone floor—a face I recognize, but sharper, more dangerous.

“Focus!” He commands, and I do, against every instinct. His wolf presses against me, testing boundaries, mapping territory, claiming. I bite hard on my lip to keep from screaming.

“You’re mine,” he says, low and deliberate. Not as a lover. Not yet. Not even as a warning. Simply a statement of fact.

And somehow, my head is whispering back; Yes. Yes. Yes.

I stagger back when I get to my feet and he finally releases me. My knees are trembling, heart racing faster than I thought possible. My hands shake violently, while I try to steady them by my sides. My reflection looks… wrong. My senses are screaming constantly. The world has edges I’d never noticed before, and I am standing on them, exposed. 

Shawn studies me tenaciously. His eyes glinting silver in the moonlight. “Do not try to hide it,” he says. “Do not try to fight what has begun. It will find you. It will own you.”

I want to curse him. I want to run. I want to sink to the ground and beg for it to stop. But I don't. Something inside me_a part of the wolf_thrummed with a thrill I hadn’t known I could feel. My knees grow weak, and I slump. 

Then I knew, this was only the beginning.

When I woke hours later, this time, alone in the chamber, the bites still burned faintly, and my skin tingled unnaturally. The moonlight painted silver patterns on the floor, and my reflection_the one I almost didn't recognize_looks back with green eyes that weren’t entirely my own.

I could not understand myself. Not the things happening inside me or outside me. 

Somewhere, far away, I could feel him. Shawn. Watching. Waiting. And the bond between us hums, a low vibration in my chest. It is calling me. Claiming me.

And the worst part? I don't want to resist. I couldn't even resist, if I wanted to.

I try as much as possible to push the feeling in my chest down, reminding myself of my unknown fate, my unknown self, the monster I had just become. Not willing. Forcefully. 

I could finally replace that feeling in my chest with anger, frustration, and bitterness.

What would happen to my cabin? The one my dear family and I had once lived in, through shared tears and laughter? I couldn't live there anymore. I was no longer what I used to be. 

Would there be a search party looking for me? Perhaps only Matthew, but would he know where to look? And if he does find me, can I still go back with him? 

For the next five minutes, I lay there, pondering, thinking, trying to make an escape plan. It doesn't matter how I do it. Whom I use to achieve my plans, and what I do to achieve them. I just needed my freedom. A freedom I knew would only be physical. Every part of my being has been altered and maybe, I couldn't return to where I used to be, but I could go somewhere else, where I've never been.