CHAPTER TWENTY:I COULDN'T SHIFT

        I COULDN’T SHIFT

I was sixteen when everything shifted.

Not all at once. Not dramatically. It was quieter than that, which somehow made it worse.

Before sixteen, I was invisible in my parents’ pack. Too quiet. Too strange. Not weak enough to bully openly, not strong enough to respect. I existed in that uncomfortable middle space where people forgot to invite you, forgot to remember your name, forgot you had feelings at all.

And then I didn’t shift.

That was when invisibility turned into attention.

I remember the morning clearly. The chill in the air. The way my mother braided my hair tighter than usual, her fingers trembling even though she tried to smile.

“Today will be fine,” she said, not meeting my eyes.

I believed her. Because I loved her. Because I was sixteen and still stupid enough to think parents always knew things I didn’t.

At the training grounds, everyone stood in loose clusters. Sixteen-year-olds were meant to shift for the first time during communal training. Not all of us succeeded, but enough did that failure was noticeable.

I felt it before it happened. That cold twist in my stomach. The pressure in my chest. Everyone else buzzing with nervous excitement.

The Alpha gave the signal.

One by one, wolves emerged.

Gasps. Cheers. Laughter.

A girl screamed with joy when fur burst from her skin. A boy fell to his knees shaking, his wolf snarling its first breath into the world.

I stood there.

Waiting.

Nothing happened.

I closed my eyes. Focused. Pushed inward the way I’d been taught.

Still nothing.

The whispers started first.

Quiet. Careful. Curious.

“She hasn’t shifted yet?”

“Maybe she’s late.”

“Maybe she’s defective.”

I opened my eyes and met my father’s gaze across the grounds. He looked stricken, but he didn’t move toward me. The Alpha’s daughter didn’t cry in front of the pack.

I stood through the rest of training surrounded by wolves in their first hours of existence, pretending the ground wasn’t swallowing me whole.

That night, I cried into my pillow until my throat burned.

The next day, the jokes started.

Light at first.

Someone tripped me during drills and laughed. Someone called me “human” under their breath. Someone else mimed wagging a tail behind my back.

I told myself it would pass.

It didn’t.

Weeks passed. Then months.

Everyone else treated shifting like breathing. Natural. Inevitable.

I was still locked inside my body like a bad secret.

The training sessions changed. Less encouragement. More correction.

“You’re not trying hard enough.”

“You’re holding yourself back.”

“Fear blocks the wolf.”

They said these things like they were being helpful.

The pack youths were less subtle.

They shoved me harder during combat practice. Paired me with stronger opponents. Laughed when I hit the ground too slowly.

One day, someone scratched “SHIFTLESS” into my locker.

Another day, someone replaced my boots with mismatched ones that were too small.

I stopped reporting it.

That was when it turned cruel.

They started calling it “training.”

They cornered me after dusk, surrounded me, circled the way wolves do when they want prey to panic.

“Maybe if we scare her enough, her wolf will come out.”

“Maybe she doesn’t have one.”

“Maybe she wasn’t meant to be born into a pack.”

I remember the night I went home bruised and my mother held my face gently, tears slipping down her cheeks.

“You’ll shift,” she whispered. “You will. I know it.”

I nodded because I didn’t want to break her.

At sixteen, the pack stopped seeing me as one of them.

At sixteen, they started seeing me as a liability.

The worst part was pretending.

Pretending I didn’t hear the whispers. Pretending I didn’t see the looks. Pretending it didn’t hurt when my father stood beside other pack fathers and laughed, then went quiet when I approached.

Pretending I wasn’t terrified.

It wasn’t just the bullying.

It was the isolation.

The way no one defended me.

The way silence became approval.

One afternoon, during combat drills, my opponent didn’t stop when I fell.

He hit me again. Hard.

The trainer looked away.

I tasted blood and learned something important that day.

No one was coming to save me.

I stopped crying after that.

I stopped asking questions.

I stopped expecting kindness.

That was when the wolf should have arrived.

But she didn’t.

She stayed buried.

Quiet.

Waiting.

Looking back now, I wonder if she was protecting me.

Or if I was protecting her.

Either way, sixteen was the year I learned survival wasn’t about strength.

It was about endurance in silence and I endured.

Even when it marked me forever.

Even when parts of me never came back whole.