Chapter 1—The First Shift

Elara's POV

The lunch hall was loud the way it always was on Fridays. I was staring at my food and not eating it when Professor Aldric walked to the front and clapped twice.

The noise dropped.

"The annual forest camping trip begins today. Buses leave at four. Attendance is mandatory."

The hall erupted. Half the room excited, the other half pretending not to be. I was somewhere in neither category.

"Say something," Freya said, watching me from across the table.

"I didn't say anything."

"That's the problem." She leaned forward. "You have the face."

"I don't have a face."

"Elara." Leo set his fork down. "It's been two months since your birthday and you still haven't shifted. We know that. You know that. But sitting here looking like someone cancelled Christmas is not going to make your wolf show up any faster."

I looked up at him. "That is the least helpful thing anyone has ever said to me."

"It came from a place of love."

Nyx had not looked up from her notebook through any of this. "Go on the trip," she said. "Staying behind alone while everyone else is gone is worse than whatever you're trying to avoid out there."

She was right and I hated that she was right.

Two months since my eighteenth birthday came and went without a shift. For a girl from any other family that would have been humiliating enough. For a Moonfall it was something else entirely. My parents carried one of the rarest bloodlines in Velthorn and I had spent the last two months being proof that bloodlines did not guarantee anything.

The whispers had not stopped since. In the corridors, in the lunch hall, in the spaces between classes where people thought I could not hear them. Wolfless. Worthless. A disappointment to a name that deserved better.

I had learned to keep walking and keep my face neutral and keep showing up, because the alternative was giving them something to talk about that was worse than standing still.

In the hallways, at the dining table, in classrooms when teachers thought I was not paying attention. Wolfless. What a waste of a bloodline. Her parents must be devastated. I had learned to keep walking and keep my face neutral and act like none of it reached me. Most days I was almost convincing.

"Fine," I said. "I'm going."

Freya smiled. "Obviously you are."

***

By the time we set up camp the sun had already started going down. I stayed close to Leo, Freya and Nyx the way I always did, near enough to the main group but far enough that nobody felt the need to come over and remind me of things I already knew.

The bus ride had been exactly what I expected. Loud, crowded, everyone in high spirits about a weekend away from classrooms and schedules. I had sat by the window and watched the trees get denser as we left the city behind and tried to talk myself into something that felt at least a little like enthusiasm. It did not fully work but I managed something close to neutral and that was enough.

We found a spot beyond the main cluster of tents where the trees were older and the noise from our classmates faded into the background. Leo built a fire while Freya and Nyx laid out the sleeping things, and within twenty minutes we had a small corner of the forest that felt entirely ours.

Then Freya looked up.

"Why is the moon red?"

We all looked. Above the treeline the moon hung full and heavy, deep red instead of its usual silver, washing everything around it in a colour that felt wrong in a way I could not explain. It was not subtle. It was the kind of red that made you stop what you were doing and just stare.

"Blood moon," Leo said confidently. "Rare lunar event. Completely natural."

"You failed Earth Science," Nyx said.

"I deferred my grade."

"That's still not a thing."

Around the main campfire I could hear other students reacting to the moon, someone announcing it was the end of the world, another one asking if they should pack up and go home. Leo muttered something about how Draven Wolf Academy somehow always managed to produce the most dramatic students in all of Velthorn. I stared up at the red sky and said nothing, because there was a feeling sitting in my chest I could not explain and I was not sure I wanted to.

I pressed my hands flat against my knees and breathed slowly.

"Elara." Freya's voice dropped. "You okay?"

"I don't know," I said.

Then my spine cracked.

A real sound, from inside my own body, and the pain that followed knocked the air out of my lungs. I grabbed Leo's arm and held on.

"Elara, what's wrong?" Leo's voice was sharp.

"Something is wrong." My voice came out thin. "Something is really wrong."

"What does it feel like?" Freya was already on her feet.

"Like my bones are—" I could not finish because another wave hit and my knees were on the ground before I made any decision to kneel. The dirt was cold under my palms and I could not think past the pain.

"She's shifting." Nyx's voice was quiet and certain. "She's actually shifting."

"Go," Leo said. "Get someone. Go now."

Two sets of footsteps ran. I heard Freya calling out somewhere behind me, her voice cutting through the camp noise, and then Leo's hands were on my shoulders trying to hold me steady.

"I've got you," he said. "Just breathe. Keep breathing."

I tried. The pain came in waves and between each one I focused on his voice and the cold dirt under my palms and nothing else. My fingers were changing, nails darkening and lengthening, and I watched it happen to my own hands like I was watching someone else entirely. Part of me wanted to panic. The other part, some quieter part I had not known was there, just held on and let it happen.

The pain was enormous. I stayed focused on one thing at a time. Breathe. Stay on your hands. Do not let go of the ground.

Around me the forest had gone completely still, like every living thing in it had stopped to watch. I was dimly aware of Leo's voice above me, steady and low, telling me to hold on, that help was coming, that I was going to be okay. I held onto his voice the same way I held onto the ground, one anchor and then the other, because everything else was noise and heat and the feeling of my own body becoming something I did not yet recognise.

My mother's voice came through without warning, something she said years ago when I was small enough to ask what shifting felt like. She had smoothed my hair back and said, "It only hurts the first time, my love. After that it is the most natural thing in the world."

I held onto those words and let it take over through the pain, because after two months of waiting, my wolf had finally decided to show up.