Part Wolf

The mate pull

Zack's POV

Zack remembered his father's warning that it would be painful. What he didn't know was that it would occur too soon and would drag on for too long. But his was a rare phenomenon. Usually, no werewolf shifted till they were at least 18. And usually, it was quick.

A week before his first shift, Zack started experiencing enormous pain all over his body. It was preparing to break and reconnect and remake itself. He didn't once get up from his bed other than when his best friend Alex came to visit him in his hostel room.

Zack told Alex that he was down with some sort of flu. He thought it would best explain his high fever and why his room smelled like a wet dog. Alex never asked any questions. He never did from when they met each other in the very boarding school they have been in for six years old.

A memory played at the back of Zack's head. A six-year-old Zack was running behind a car and crying for his mom when he suddenly fell on his face. Nobody came to lift the kid from the ground.
The car in which his parents sat sped past the school gates without noticing the crying kid.

He felt somebody coming and sitting next to him on the road without bothering him. He could hear slurping noises from the newcomer.
In the middle of wailing, he looked up to a kid who was the same age as him, sucking on a lollipop. He could smell the strawberry waft from the new kid.

Little Zack pursed his lips and glared at the intrusion. But his attention was now on the lollipop. None of this seemed to bother the kid who was sitting there in the middle of the road next to him. The honks of the cars passing them to proceed towards the exit of the school didn't bother both.

Slowly Zack raised himself and dusted himself from all the grit that now covered his face and hand. He extended a hand towards the new kid as if in command. Without taking it the other kid stared right into his eyes, and after a second, gave the widest of smiles.

"Alex," He introduced himself.

Zack was not interested. He extended his hands again in a more urgent manner and said, "Lollipop."

Pulling out another lollipop from his little pocket, Alex said, "It's okay. My sister Elize cries a lot too. Don't cry. Friends?"

Zack grabbed the sweet and glared at Alex. Then pursed his lips and said, "Fine."

Alex was always like that since then- always there for Zack. They went through heartbreaks, weird food cravings, jailbreaks from boarding school, and fights in the years they stayed there together. Never once did they stay apart for a day.

Zack's father would tell him seeing them both that when he would undergo his first shift, he'll have stronger feelings for his pack. But Zack knew that Alex would always come first for him. He didn't tell Alex about the secrets his family held, or that he wasn't exactly human. It was too big of a burden to put on a human's shoulder- keeping all those secrets. It would put Alex in danger.

Hence Alex never knew that his best friend was undergoing his first shift as a werewolf right in front of him. Day after day, Alex kept him company after class, delivering the oh so many letters random girls shoved in his locker. The week passed painfully slow for Zack. The day he shifted, Alex was on his way home.

The first shift is always the toughest- Zack could hear his father's words. But he was only sixteen. He was not ready.

His bones started cracking one by one, each one more painful than the other. He could hear his flesh tear and blood curdle. A small howl started forming from his throat. Thankfully in the woods behind his hostel, no one could hear him. He wanted to scream with all the pain, and so he howled at the top of his lungs. In the place of the blue-eyed boy stood a huge wolf.
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The wolf ran through the thickets of the jungle, often coming out as the forests cleared to give way to the city and then back to the forest for cover. To his relief, nobody noticed him. He couldn't stop running. Something was pulling him somewhere. Something warm and nice. He needed to reach it.