11. Angelina

Chapter 11

Angelina

I know the full moon has come.

The pain in my chest stops, turned off like a faucet, and a burn starts in my heart instead, but it seems so far off. I can feel the burn, but it has no grip on me. It feels like something's happening miles away, even though it's in my body.

Since finding out that I was half Lycan because my mother was a full one, all my fears and trepidations had melted away. It had left a fresh layer of hurt instead of the old wounds caused by their imagined abandonment.

It hurt that I wouldn't ever get to meet my parents, and that I couldn't remember anything about them. I couldn't even think about my mother without crying.

I had spent so many nights crying into my pillow while wishing I had my mother with me, and to know they both had been taken away from me by rogues had me fuming.

It wasn't fair. None of it was. I should have gotten time with my parents.

Everything changes around me and it feels like waking up. One moment I am trapped in black nothingness, and the next, I am awake, walking in a forest dusted with the lightest of snow.

It feels like one reality had blended into the other, and now I wasn't sure if I hadn't dozed off for a moment and hallucinated the darkness.

I am dressed in a silver flowing robe that feels like silk. I look around, and all I can see around me is pale and bare branches, moving slowly in the light breeze that's blowing through them and my hair caressing my face.

"Hello Child"

I am not startled by this voice. It is warm and soft, feeling like home, warm bed sheets in winter, and a kind hug.

The woman who speaks is beautiful. She is dressed in a robe similar to mine, but with more frills and ribbons. She has dark black hair which highlights the bone crown that pins it back.

She looks almost too young, like she should be worried about classes and boyfriends instead or walking in an eerie forest, but her eyes give her away. They are ageless.

Bottomless, they look like they had seen the rise of several civilizations and their ends too, held deep and ancient knowledge, but still remained kind.

Those eyes stare deep into my soul, measuring without judging, like a parent, and it would seem absurd to someone observing from a distance, but in my heart I know the greeting I should speak to her.

"Mother." She is mother to all of us. To the Lycans, humans, everything in between. "Sie'f Luna." I completed.

"I never…" My voice breaks and I have to take a breath before I can speak. "I never imagined you were real, I mean, the Lycans talk, and I thought it was just faith."

"Come." She stretches her hands out and I run into them. She holds me gently, and even though I can't remember getting a hug from my parents, I know this is what it should feel like.

I have so many questions, and she patiently answers them all for me.

She speaks to me about several things.

Sie'f Luna tells me of the origin of the rogues, made through the perversion of the mating ritual.

Originally meant to change human mates into Lycans so they could share the moon together, the mating ritual was meant to bring mates together regardless of their species, but a lycan hungry for power and desperate to conquer turns it inside out, birthing monstrosities.

She tells me of the need to eliminate the original rogues, created by the first, they were almost immortal, and only by cleansing them can this plague truly end.

I know I won't remember much of this conversation when I wake up but I hope to not lose the most important details.

"Will I remember you?" I ask her, as I feel my surroundings change again.

"None of my children have forgotten me yet, beautiful girl, and you won't be any different."

Feeling the change come over me is a new experience and I have nothing to compare to, no reference at all.

It hurts like nothing I had ever experienced. It feels like I am breaking every single bone in my body over and over again, as my body reconfigures itself into what will be my new reality. My second form.

First the bones in my limbs twist and break, new joints forming instantaneously. It is like taking eight years equivalent of growing pains, and inflicting it all on me in a few seconds. I scream. I just have to scream so I won't go mad.

And finally, it ends.

I open my eyes, eyes that are too close to the ground, capable of seeing spectrums of light I didn't know existed before. I take the first step with a paw finding purchase in the ground beneath me.

I am a wolf.

I am Lycan.