Chapter 5 - The Metamorphosis
The explosion of crystal glass against the hardwood floor was instantaneous, but the sound was instantly swallowed by something far louder, far more violent tearing through my own skeleton.
My bones seemed to catch fire.
My roommate Mia—who had driven up from Boulder just that morning to visit—backed into the refrigerator with a sharp gasp, her hands clamped over her mouth. “Chloe?” she whispered, her eyes wide with unadulterated terror.
I tried to answer. I tried to tell her I was sorry, that I didn't know what was happening, that my skin was suddenly too tight for my flesh.
A roar came out instead.
Not a human scream. Not anything that belonged in a civilized world. It was a guttural, earth-shaking roar powerful enough to rattle the heavy iron pans hanging from the ceiling.
Then the floor beneath me simply dropped away.
My hands slammed into the hardwood planks, except they were no longer hands. They were massive, black-clawed paws the size of dinner plates, thick dark brown fur instantly erupting across my skin. My clothes tore with a sickening rip of fabric as my spine elongated, my muscles expanding and shifting with bone-crunching force until I was no longer a woman, but something enormous, terrified, and utterly impossible.
Mia slid down the front of the refrigerator, her legs giving out completely as she stared at me with unblinking horror.
For three terrifying seconds, neither of us moved. The kitchen smelled of ozone, cedar, and wild musk.
Then Mia whispered, very carefully, her voice trembling violently, “Okay. I would like to formally apologize for every time I called your mountain stepbrother weird.”
I would have laughed if I had still possessed a human mouth or vocal cords.
Instead, somewhere beneath the panic and the roaring rush of animal instinct, one thought became terrifyingly, blindingly clear.
Rowan had warned me that loving him could change everything.
He had never said he meant it literally.
And he had definitely never told me there might be a baby.
Heavy boots pounded down the stairs. Rowan burst into the kitchen, his breath catching in his throat as he took in the shattered glass, the terrified human girl flattened against the fridge, and the massive, brown-furred bear trembling in the center of the room.
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He didn't run. He didn't yell.
Instead, Rowan’s shoulders dropped, a heavy, resonant sigh escaping his lips. And then, right before my eyes, his own clothes began to shred. His skin darkened, his bones snapped and rearranged with frightening speed, and within two heartbeats, a second bear—towering, midnight-black, with a heavy silver slash across its chest—stood where my stepbrother had been a moment before.
