It wasn’t until well in the afternoon that I left the tent I had been set up in, wearing a gifted nightgown that barely fit and I hadn’t changed from in a month, with my dad’s miraculously surviving coat (minus some new tears) over it. Stepping out into the forest clearing, hidden away with a few others scattered about and a fire set out in the middle, it was a rough life. It wasn’t even apparently my final home, which would be in the mountains, but what they had called an intermittent ground.

  Werewolves — no, Purists — they lived like this, like animals in the woods, and that was the least of what I was expected to do. I knew the horror stories, I’d heard my dad talk about what they were like, and everything was worse than I imagined. We weren’t even supposed to fucking sleep like humans, and the fact I hadn’t learned to turn to a wolf consistently yet meant I’d spent my time here sleeping with just a jacket for warmth and no padding but the tent floor.

  They hadn’t even expected me to bathe regularly, and the fact I still did so in the river we drank from was a subject of regular laughter.

  Despite those best efforts, my hair was messy and with two months of growth from its previous buzzcut, feeling oily and like there were still briars and leaves stuck in it. My teeth had a sour taste to them, and there was always the feeling of something stuck between them. My nails were blackened with dirt, and hurt from the dull pressure under them even as they’d grown uneven and choppy.

  I looked fucking wild, and even in this new body I knew I was loosing weight fast, even with the diet of berries, nuts, and raw deer meat I’d spent two weeks not touching. When I’d woke up as a werewolf I’d looked completely different, almost completely unrecognizable even to me. I was a fucking woman, and while it felt…well, strangely natural compared to before — even experiencing my first cramps and period living like this — it was still easy to tell something was wrong.

  My weight may have been more on my hips and chest, and my proportions very different, but I knew I was starving myself. I was able to feel my ribs with a gentle brush on my side, my arms and legs were growing thin, and my new breasts had gone from rather decent sized to not even a handful.

  It was going to be a fucking miracle if I didn’t starve to death out here.

  My stomach growled at the mere thought of food, and I rested a hand over it as I let out a shaking noise, starting through the woods. A short trip down an unmarked path where I was forced to push through bushes and weeds, my bare feet against the forest ground. Sticks and rocks and thorns cut into the soles with each step, and each time I would cringe and stop, holding my foot up as I would watch the wound close shut.

  After twenty minutes of that for a five minute walk, I reached the river I had been looking for. A relatively clear stream, it was maybe three feet wide and only a couple feet deep with a rocky bottom. Not even clear enough on the banks to sit beside, I stood in its current watching various small fish swim past me as I slowly crouched in the water.

  I scrubbed my hands hard, trying to clean them in the water and only succeeding and getting the first layers of dirt away. When they were as clean as I could get, I cupped my hands, raising it up to drink from the river. The water came up brown and muddy, and after a few more attempts I realized the dirt still on my hands and nails was leeching out.

  I cursed to myself and, looking around to make sure no one was watching, bowed my head to the water and drank from it directly.

  The water tasted disgusting, muddy and wrong on the tongue like I was drinking a leaf, and for the first several seconds I felt like I was going to throw up as I occasionally spit it out and gagged. Thirst and willpower won out though, and I was fucking glad werewolves apparently didn’t need to worry about every disease and parasite in these waters.

  When I pulled away I had tears in my eyes, and I hugged myself close as I began crying. Trying to remain quiet as I could, not wanting to attract attention, I held myself there as I let out choking noises and refused to move from my spot.

  I was a fucking monster, I was the sort of thing people told their children about to scare them. One fucking night had changed everything, and now I was becoming everything I was supposed to hate.

  A smell hit my nose — I hated fucking smelling people coming — a weird mixture of sweats and skin and hair, mud and blood and…food.

  Turning on my heels, I saw a now-familiar man coming out of the woods carrying a plastic bag. Wearing a pair of old work boots and jeans, a white undershirt that was stained several shades of green and brown, and with short-cut black hair and weirdly bright blue eyes, he was one of the younger people here.

  Younger a relative term, the two groups here were people all either a few years older than me, or people at least a few decades older. This one looked like the former category, and like someone who might have been a junior or senior at my High School, if I had to guess.

  “Alpha, right?” I asked weakly, wiping the tears from my cheeks and only succeeding in getting a little more mud on them.

  “One and only, new blood” the man chuckled, holding his arms out with a bow, “Most of Chaser’s pack and mine are out hunting. I think your mentor is off doing some religious ceremony, so who knows when she’ll be back. I took the time to run out for myself.”

  “I thought we weren’t allowed to leave the forest?” I asked, furrowing my brow as he walked along the weed-covered edge of the stream. “You guys chased me the last time I tried leaving.”

  “No, but, no one’s going to be back for a few hours and I fucking hate eating meat and berries for months just to train some girl how to become a wolf,” the man said, holding up the bag as he added on, “grabbed you something to eat while I was out. I thought you could do with it the way your training’s been going there, new blood.”

  I would have gotten in trouble if anyone found out, and at the same time I felt my stomach grumble at the thought of food. Nodding, I walked along the river as Alpha led me along some path, obviously picking a way I’d need to walk the least on unprotected ground.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Eventually he took a turn into the woods, and I was forced to follow, though it was only ten or so feet before we were walking and climbing on large flat stones a little ways up a mountain. Cold under my feet, I was rather glad it was fall, or perhaps winter at this point, for that bit of comfort.

  After a time we stopped, and Alpha sat on the edge of the rocks as I hesitantly moved beside him, having some trouble figuring out how people did this in a dress. A little above the trees, we could see for a good distance in the forest we stayed, with no sign of civilization all around.

  By the time I was settled, Alpha was chewing on a piece of jerky, and he offered me a piece which I took eagerly. The meat, seasoned, peppered, fucking prepared with something other than a fire, was like heaven on my tongue, and I let out a pleased noise as I closed my eyes for a moment.

  “Fuck that’s good,” I muttered, letting out a small sigh, “what was that? Everything tastes…more, but that tastes different. I can’t tell if I’ve had that before.”

  “Oh, well, you know,” the man said with a chuckle, “human.”

  I spit off the cliff, clamoring to move from sitting off it to half-holding my torso over the edge as my saliva grew warm and I threw up. Tears welled in my eyes, and acid came up with the lack of food on my stomach as I spit and gagged and coughed, trying to get the cursed taste off my lips.

  And Alpha laughed, and the laugh was like a knife to my ears until he repeatedly said, “I’m joking, I’m joking.”

  I looked over to him, my vision blurry with tears, and I saw him holding up a small bag labeled Alligator Jerky. Anger and disgust mixed onto one emotion, and I stumbled to my feet and screamed, “that’s not fucking funny!”

  “It’s a little funny,” Alpha said, holding back a laugh as he reached into the bag once more, “here, I’ll make it up to you.”

  The man pulled out an orange soda and a plastic container holding a wrap, and my ruined appetite came back almost immediately as I scrambled down next to him once more. He passed them off to me, and I sat the soda aside as I nearly ripped the lid off the package and started wolfing down the wrap.

  My brain didn’t care about the spots of dirt my fingers left, the muddy taste that held to them, as I barely brought myself to chew the food. Two months ago I fucking hated turkey, I wasn’t a big fan of wraps, and now this was the best thing in the world. All the flavors twice as strong on my tongue as they’d used to be, new layers to the flavor I’d never known existed. By the time I’d finished the wrap I looked like an animal eating it, and I was still scooping up what crumbs I could with my fingers from what pieces of turkey and lettuce were left in the container.

  I was panting by the time I was done, having not taken a breath in the couple minutes it had taken me to eat. Alpha himself only had a few bites of his own wrap, and maybe a few sips off his drink as he stared off with a conflicted look on his face.

  “They’re talking about finishing off your training in a couple weeks,” the man said, nodding to me without looking over. “Or, at least finishing off the first part. You won’t do your final test for a while more, but you’ll start being allowed a lot more of the privileges of a Purist.”

  “Does that include shoes?” I asked, frowning as I looked down at my mud and blood stained feet.

  “Shoes, a bit more freedom of movement, learn more our secrets, non-wild foods, a name, etcetera,” Alpha said, smiling at the thought, “it takes two weeks to do it, so you’re looking at a good four more weeks of this though. That said, you probably want to toughen up your feet and hands anyway, going to make life a lot easier.”

  I nodded, frowning at the words as a thousand thoughts crossed my mind. After a few seconds, hesitantly starting and stopping a few times, I asked, “what’s the training going to be like?”

  Alpha didn’t answer me at first, seeming to cringe for a moment as he sat aside his food and slowly answered, “well, you see…I told you none of this, but your mentor, Tracker, she brings you up to this cabin in the woods. You spend a couple weeks learning our rules and history. It’s…a tight schedule, you don’t get much sleep or time to eat or drink during it, so it’s pretty rough.”

  I nodded, and I had a strong feeling he was leaving something out even as a part of me didn’t want to know.

  Wanting to enjoy the moment for as long as I could, I took up my soda and finally opened it. Taking a small sip that I nearly spat back out as I let out a few small sputtering noises and coughs at the taste.

  Not wrong by any means, my newfound senses had merely made everything about it taste stronger than normal. The artificial flavoring, the carbonation and bubbles, the overall fizziness of it feeling like it was turned up to eleven. I blinked a few times, tears in my eyes from this of all things, and I noticed Alpha suppressing a laugh into his fist even as I finally took another sip.

  “Glad you didn’t bring me any candy,” I muttered, smacking my lips a few times as I tried getting used to the new — well, enhanced — texture.

  “I did get some sour gummies because I thought it’d be funny to see you try them,” the werewolf relented.

  “I’ll pass,” I admitted, looking down at the half-finished wrap Alpha still held. He noticed, and the man rolled his eyes as he passed it along to me with an almost defeated sigh.

  I went about eating that wrap too, and Alpha ate the candy he’d brought before pulling out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. With a small cringe at the sight, I watched him fetch one for himself before offering me the box as he asked, “you smoke?”

  “I’m fifteen,” I said, not bothering to hide my disgust.

  “Yeah, and we’re werewolves, I’ve smoked since I transformed,” the man muttered, pausing for a moment before he put his own cigarette back and sighed. “Ah well, I’ll hold off until you head back anyway, they’re going to forgive me a lot faster for treating myself than if I made you break your rules.”

  “Do I even want to know how I’d get punished for this?”

  “Flogged in the town square,” Alpha answered, before noticing my reaction and with a chuckle clarifying, “another two weeks on your training. Most Purists get a few weeks added on, I know I did. Doesn’t help that every Purist that’s had to go through the same thing fucking hates seeing new bloods suffer. Tracker did this for me when I transformed, and I did this for Hunter when he was in training before you.”

  I nodded and a small smile crossed my lips as I slowly said, “thank you.”

  “I’m not carrying you back to camp though,” Alpha said, chuckling as though it were a joke of an idea, “don’t care about the sad puppy energy, you have to walk back on your own. I still have a reputation to uphold.”

  “I’m going to try taking my time then,” I answered, sipping on the soda as I watched the woods and tried to not think about my situation.

  Eventually I finished, and Alpha gathered our trash in the grocery store bag as he looked at the sky in thought. After a moment's hesitation, and giving a small sigh, he told me, “Tracker’s ceremony isn’t going to be that much longer. It’s a several hour prayer, but always ends before sunset.”

  “I’ll start walking down,” I said sadly, knowing it was going to take me four times as long as him, “what should we do with our trash, I don’t think we had a can at the camp.”

  “I’ll get it,” Alpha answered and, taking up the bag, he walked it to the edge of a rock and chucked it into the woods. I instinctively went to yell about littering, and realized the irony of it with what we were.

  We were werewolves.

  We were monsters.

  I was a monster.