his first shift

*CHAPTER 9: HIS FIRST SHIFT*

Leo's growl was small but it was real.

I have healed hundreds of wolves, but I have never felt my heart stop like that. My baby was scared, and his wolf was waking up to protect me.

"Leo, no! Breathe, baby, breathe with Mama!" I reached for him, but Kade held him tight.

Kade wasn't scared. He was proud. Tears were in his golden eyes as he whispered to Leo, "It's okay, little lion. Let it out. I'm here. Mama's here. You're safe."

White light exploded around Leo.

It wasn't like a normal shift. Normal pups shift fast, messy, crying. Leo's shift was slow, bright, beautiful. The white light wrapped him like snow.

When the light faded, Kade was no longer holding a boy.

He was holding a white wolf pup. Bigger than any pup should be. Snow-white fur, silver tips on his ears and tail, and those same golden eyes, now glowing.

A white wolf pup. On Blood Moon territory for the first time in fifty years.

The whole pack gasped and fell to their knees without being told. Even warriors. Even elders.

Elder Marga was crying out loud now. "The prophecy! The white child born of black and white! He will bring the packs together!"

Tara was the only one still standing, her face pale with rage and fear.

"No! No, it's a trick! White wolves are extinct! She—"

Leo — the pup — turned his big golden eyes to her and sneezed. A tiny, cute pup sneeze that broke the tension and made some of the younger wolves laugh through tears.

I laughed too, with tears running down my face. I knelt and opened my arms.

"Come here, my brave boy."

Leo wobbled over on four new paws, clumsy, tail wagging, and jumped into my arms, licking my face with a big wet pup tongue.

"He did it," I whispered, holding him. "My baby did it."

Kade knelt beside us, his big hand gently stroking Leo's white fur. His hand was shaking.

"Our son," he whispered to me, his voice full of wonder. "Ani, our son is a white Alpha."

For a moment, everything was perfect. The pack was kneeling, Leo was a pup in my arms, Kade was looking at us like we were his whole world.

Then I smelled it. Bitter, familiar, wrong.

Wolfsbane.

I knew that smell better than anyone. My mother used tiny drops to hide my wolf. Too much of it kills a wolf. Especially a new pup.

"Tara, what do you have in your hand?" I said, standing slowly with Leo in my arms.

Tara's hand was behind her back. She was smiling now, a nasty smile.

"You think you can come back and take everything?" she hissed. "I waited five years to be Luna! I waited while he howled for you like a crazy dog! I deserve to be Luna! Not a wolfless freak who—"

She threw something. A small glass bottle. It shattered at my feet, and yellow smoke puffed up.

Wolfsbane smoke. Strong. Enough to choke a pup's new lungs and force him to shift back painfully.

"Leo, hold your breath!" I shouted, turning to shield him with my body and my cloak.

But Kade was faster.

He roared — not a human roar, a true Alpha black wolf roar that shook the trees. He shifted in mid-air, faster than I had ever seen any wolf shift.

One second he was a man, the next a giant black beast, bigger than a horse, black fur shining, golden eyes burning with pure rage. His black wolf had finally had enough.

He landed between us and Tara, took the full cloud of wolfsbane smoke into his huge chest, and didn't even cough. He inhaled it, growled, and blew it away from us with one powerful breath.

Tara fell back, terrified.

Kade's black wolf turned to her, teeth bared, drool dripping. He was going to kill her.

"Kade, no!" I shouted. "Don't! Leo is watching!"

That stopped him. His black wolf's ears twitched. He looked back at me, at the white pup in my arms who was watching his father with huge golden eyes.

Slowly, very slowly, Kade's wolf stepped back from Tara. But he didn't shift back. He walked over to us and lay down, his huge black body curling around me and Leo, protecting us, his head on my lap, his golden eyes never leaving Tara.

A black wolf shielding a white wolf mother and her white pup.

The image was so powerful that even the pups in the pack stopped crying and stared.

Elder Marga walked forward, picked up the broken bottle with a cloth, and looked at Tara with disgust.

"Tara of Blood Moon, you tried to poison a pup. A prophecy pup. On pack land."

"I— I didn't—" Tara stammered.

"You are banished," Luna Rhea said coldly. "From this moment, you are no longer Blood Moon. Leave. Before our Alpha remembers you tried to hurt his son."

Two warriors grabbed Tara and dragged her away, her red dress tearing in the dirt.

When she was gone, Kade's black wolf finally sighed and rested his huge head fully in my lap. He was tired. He took the poison for us.

Leo, still a pup, wobbled over and licked his father's big black nose.

Kade's wolf made a soft, rumbly sound I had never heard before. A purr.

And then, in front of the whole pack, Kade shifted back — human, naked, not caring — and pulled both me and Leo-pup into his arms.

"My family," he whispered, so only we could hear. "My Luna. My heir. Mine."

Leo shifted back then, with a soft pop of light, back into a naked, sleepy five-year-old boy in my arms, yawning.

"Did I do good, Mama?" he whispered.

"You did perfect, my lion," I whispered, crying and laughing.

Kade wrapped his cloak around both of us.

"Let's go home," he said.

And for the first time, I didn't know if he meant the clinic, or Blood Moon, or just wherever the three of us were together.