Nine: Wren

The pain doesn’t stop at white. There’s a beat of nothing—no up, no down, just a blank where my body used to be.

Then the light turns red, and I hit the floor so hard it feels like I’ve been dropped from orbit. My back arches, every muscle locked in a rictus. I can’t scream. I can only feel. The fever is gone, replaced by a cold so sharp it razors through skin and down to the bone.

I open my mouth to scream, but what comes out is wrong—ripped, shredded, half-growl and half-sob. My tongue feels thick and alien. I slam my head back, skull cracking the tile, and for a second all I see are the stars spinning in my vision.

The change hits in waves. My hands seize up, fingers bending backward until I’m sure they’ll snap off. Instead, the bones lengthen, metacarpals shivering as they stretch. The ligaments go next, popping like bowstrings drawn too tight. My nails rip away and blacken, then regrow in savage arcs—curved, matte, and lethal.

I claw at the floor, desperate for leverage, and the gouges I make are three times deeper than before. Each pull brings a spray of paint from my fingers, gray linoleum and pink skin in a shrapnel pattern. The animal stink is everywhere now, but I can’t tell if it’s from inside or outside me.

My jaw unhinges, not with a pop but a slow, grinding tear. The pain is transcendent, so deep it comes back around to pleasure. My face stretches—nose first, then the brow, the skin over my cheekbones hot and prickling as it pulls tight. I blink and the world fractures: I can see in the dark, every edge lit up in ghost-blue, every shadow alive with motion.

The spine is next. Vertebrae separate, then fuse again, each one slotting into a new configuration. I roll onto my stomach, fighting the urge to vomit, and feel my back bulge under the skin. There’s a pressure at my tailbone, a volcanic burn that pushes outward until the only thing I can do is bite down on my own arm to keep from screaming.

My teeth slice into the flesh, deeper than intended, but the pain is a background hum compared to the bigger engine running in my body. The blood that wells up is bright, almost fluorescent, and it tastes like nothing I’ve ever bled before: raw, sweet, electric.

I try to remember who I am—my name, my street address, anything—but the thoughts scatter, chased out by a new, feral logic. The world is narrower, but it makes sense in ways the old one never did.

There’s a tearing sound as my shoulder joints rotate, collarbones dislocating to make room for something larger, heavier. The muscle packs on in seconds, skin stretching to contain it. My ribs—already broken from the attack, already healed once—shatter again and re-knit, each inhalation forcing them wider, flatter, more suited for running on all fours.

My ears, already ringing from the noise of my own breath, migrate up my head, cartilage reshaping with a series of moist clicks. Sound is different now—thicker, layered, every drip of the faucet a cannon shot, every shuffle from the apartment above an earthquake. I can hear the scuttle of mice in the walls, the rattle of pipes in the crawlspace, and underneath it all, the heartbeat of something in the alley outside.

Fur erupts along my spine, first as a line of static, then as a full pelt, silvery gray and so dense it muffles the rest of my skin. The hair is warm, and for a second, I want to laugh—because all the pain in the world can’t keep the chill off in Pinecrest, but this can.

My legs knot and spasm. Thigh bones splinter and regrow, knees rotating until I’m forced up onto my haunches. The world tilts again, and my field of vision triples: forward, to the sides, even a little behind. Everything is sharper, cleaner, and the colors—oh, the colors—make a mockery of my old eyes.

My hands—no, not hands—claws, now, scrape the floor in search of purchase. The nails bite in and hold. I brace myself, waiting for the next wave.

When it comes, it’s not pain at all, but hunger. An ache so deep it starts in the gut and radiates out, lighting up every nerve. I bare my teeth at the empty bathroom, at the tiles smeared with fur and spit and blood, and the growl that comes out is low and guttural.

For a moment, just one heartbeat, my old self floats up through the animal: I am Wren Cade, I am nobody’s prey. But the thought slips away, replaced by the simple certainty of motion, of breath, of need.

I throw my head back and howl, raw and perfect and full of power. The sound rolls through the apartment, shatters the last of the mirror, and bounces back at me in a thousand broken echoes.

The next thing I know, I’m tearing at the bathroom door, splinters flying as my body finishes its cruel renovation. My ribs finish closing around the new heart, the new lungs, and everything else is bonus.

I can still taste blood. I can still feel the echo of pain. But mostly, I feel the wild, the night, and the pull of the moon so hard it threatens to rip me clean out of myself.

The last human thought is a bright, terrible thrill:

This is what alive feels like.

Then the wolf takes over, and the world goes silver.