Page 32 of The Ashpaw: Part One

She looked up, her hood slipping off as Jules approached her, smiling wide.

“Oh! Good evening, Jules.”

His eyes glowed in the growing darkness. “Are you excited? Nervous?”

“Both?” she replied with a slight chuckle.

Jules nodded. “It’s one thing I envy of the made—you get to remember your first shift. I was but a pup at mine.”

At the mention of “pups,” Fern noticed there were actual children in the clearing where they had started to gather, the first she had seen since coming here. Many had not bothered with cloaks, already comfortable in their natural state, chasing each other and ready for the night.

But there still weren’t as many as one would think with how many adults were present.

“Why don’t the children come to the clan meals?” she asked.

Jules merely shrugged. “Safer for them to stay home with their nursemaids.”

Fern conceded that was likely true. She had yet to see an actual fight breakout among the wolfkin, but there had been moments that seemed ready to turn to violence were it not for a quick intervention by an alpha.

A child could easily be hurt getting underfoot in such a brawl.

There was a beat of tense silence, and Fern cleared her throat. “Well, I suppose you should get back to… to… to whoever you typically spend the night with.”

His head tilted quickly, the act making him appear rather canine already. “What do you mean? I was planning to spend the shift with you.”

“O-oh,” she said, catching herself before she gasped too loudly. “You were? But I thought…”

Confusion knit Jules’s brows, and she bit her lip, trying to think of how she could word her worries without insulting Darion. “Alpha Darion told me that—”

“Ah,” he said, nodding in understanding. “He told us there would be no petitioning you for now, that is true, but he also asked me to be your companion this evening.”

“He did?”

“He did. He was worried you might be overwhelmed, given you’ve suppressed your wolf for so long.” He reached out to grab her hand, his gaze lingering just for a moment on the sliver of her body he could see before meeting her eyes again. “I told him I’d be honored to guide you through the experience.”

Her skin heated, finding the warmth the cloak provided somewhat unnecessary now that she knew of Darion’s forethought and Jules’s offer.

Perhaps things would be better after tonight. Slates wiped clean, and all that.

A hush fell over the clearing as the alphas headed to the front.

The sight of Darion still made her arms ache, and her chest ached to see Kyntha, luminescent as always, by his side, the two staring lovingly in each other’s eyes. His uncles and brother nodded and smiled towards the crowd, and finally Alastair lifted his hands to the darkened sky, his voice carrying easily over the clearing.

“Tonight we cast aside the frailties of flesh and remember what the moon gifted us. Run true, hunt well, and let no wolf among us stand apart from the clan.”

Silence followed, deep and reverent, and then the clouds drifted apart.

Moonlight spilled into the clearing like liquid silver, washing over wool cloaks and bare skin alike. A collective shudder rippled through the crowd, sharp inhales and low groans rising all at once as the first pull of the shift took hold.

Bodies bowed and trembled, hands bracing against the earth as bones began their terrible reshaping, and the night filled with the wet crack of changing limbs and the guttural cries of wolves surrendering to their truest form.

Beside her, Jules sucked in a sharp breath, fingers tightening painfully around hers.

And then Fern felt it too—something ancient and hungry unfurling beneath her skin, lifting its head at the call of the moon.

But just as she submitted to the call, it stopped, and her wolf failed to appear.

She waited for a moment, trying to coax her out, but it was as though she had disappeared completely.