The day should've been perfect.

The air felt cool against the skin and the breeze swayed through the colorful trees with a gentle touch. The sun stood high in the clear blue sky, its rays kissing the skin without leaving a mark. Recess started at the Moonshade schoolhouse and children's laughter floated over the ambient rustle of fallen leaves.

My belly felt full after a warm lunch of pulled pork sandwiches, baked beans, corn, mashed potatoes, and an assortment of other home comfort foods. I was well rested from a night in bed with my handsome, doting mate. He sat a little ways from where I stood, reclined against a charming wooden bench in the small garden behind the pack manor home. Beside him sat my brother, one of the few people I truly missed from my previous life.

It all felt so perfect. Yet, no matter how quaint the world looked, I could not forget the cloud hanging over me, my family, and the entirety of Whisper Valley.

"After this, can we go home?" Victor asked the same question every day, multiple times a day, and each time it chipped away at my heart.

"We can talk about it some more," I replied. "That's all I can promise right now."

I wore an old t-shirt and a pair of ragged sweats I got from Luc. I hadn't been in Whisper Valley long enough to have expendable clothing, and I didn't need to add to Victor's trauma by transforming in front of him while also being naked.

"What is there left to talk about?" There was a nervous chuckle bobbing in his throat and he looked over at Everett with a smile that was far too wide. "Maybe I was a little eager to drag you out of here since it looked like a cult kidnapped you, but I definitely know now that Everett isn't some crazy lunatic trying to brainwash you."

His tone was far from confident, but he may still have been honest. My brother is small enough to be snapped in half by my muscular alpha mate, so he may have genuinely feared Everett for that reason alone.

"I don't know," said the burly werewolf with a shrug of his massive shoulders. "I am a bit of a lunatic."

Victor's uncomfortable laugh kept me from mentioning that Everett wasn't necessarily wrong.

My brother then cleared his throat and scooched farther towards his end of the bench.

"Anyway," Victor continued, "I'm past that and you don't have anything left to prove to me. Can't we go back so mom and dad know you're okay. Everett can come too, though they might have the same fears I did."

I had no doubt my parents would instantly assume Everett was an unsavory monster given he's hid me away in this town for months without making any effort to contact them. Which was another reason why I needed to Victor to understand the truth of the situation. He needed to stop spending every waking moment trying to get me home.

That being said, I did want to go home. I missed my parents and, quite frankly, I wanted to show off Everett. However, until Graham was dealt with, I couldn't manage a trip beyond the pack lines. We needed to take things one step at a time and having a murderous Archmage running the town was a major hurdle in our way.

Getting Victor to realize he was in a town full of supernatural creatures was also proving to be a challenge.

To be fair to Victor, we were purposefully going slow.

We could have tossed him into the deep end like I was when I first came to town, but given the fact Everett wanted Victor to be immediately housed with the pack, it seemed easier to go slow.

There was some pushback from the elders, particularly Graham and Kyra, about moving him straight to Moonshade, but at the end of the day, he is kin to an Alpha. Also, given the strange circumstances around my transformation, there was a real possibility that my family was genetically predisposed to being a werewolf. Once Kyra accepted our reasoning, Graham was outvoted.

However, even I started to believe that we may have made the wrong decision.

He hadn't seen a vampire draw straight from the source or caught a ghost passing through a wall. He hadn't wandered into Tuck to find a zombie buying rotten human flesh or sat down at the Brew & Stew to see Hen perform a magical flurry of color. All he'd seen was the pack transforming after dinner and he dissociated from the experience so fast, that he had convinced himself it was all an elaborate trick of smoke and mirrors. He even asked Everett if the pack had ever taken their act to Vegas.

He needed to accept reality, but I was still afraid about what he'd do when it finally hit him. My brother may be a friendly ball of energy, but he's also incredibly skittish. If everything clicked while in the middle of town, I'm not sure what would happen. He'd likely find the safest hole to bury himself in and remain there until he starved to death.

We didn't know what the right decision was, or if there even was one. However, taking it slow within the safety of the pack didn't seem to be the answer. It was time we kicked things up a notch and that meant hitting closer to home. Specifically it meant me transforming. Up until that point I'd been skipping out on the pack runs so I could be with Victor in case he had a revelation while the whole pack was gone.

"Look," I said after taking a steadying breath, "Victor, this will all make more sense once I show you something. And I want you to know that I am okay. What you see doesn't hurt me. Everett is also here to answer any questions you have, okay? So keep an open mind and know that everything you see was intentional and I'm fine. Okay?"

He raised his brow and leaned back as if I was a bomb about to explode. He then looked to Everett with a twitching smile while his knee bounced with agitation.

"Yeah, whatever you say, sis. You going to show me a magic trick they taught you?"

"It's not... Well, it might be magic. I think it depends on who you ask."

"Not sure that explanation is going to help him with acceptance." Everett sighed and offered me a loving, but concerned smile.

"Right, so Victor, this is not magic. This is 100% real, okay? So just, like, trust the process."

Yeah, this is going to go great, I thought with a groan.

"Alright," I said with my own uncomfortably wide smile, "here I go."

To say I hadn't practiced transforming since my first emotional surge, would be a lie. I had...occasionally. Shifting without the fierce fire of anger propelling more forward, proved to be a lot harder than I thought. There were times where I wondered if my transformation was a fluke or a collective hallucination. However, with encouragement and patience, Everett helped me improve little by little.

I just had to hope that it was enough. Nothing would shock my brother more than seeing me stuck in mid-transformation with bones jutting out at odd angles and patches of torn skin sprouting fur.

I closed my mind away from the worries and centered on my breath. Somewhere inside me, a wolf prowled—I prowled. A piece of me that was wild and untamed, fierce and protective. I just needed to take hold of it and bring it to the surface. The call of my wolf vibrated in my veins and I clenched my jaw against the coming transition.

I felt like a puzzle smashed into its individual pieces. It wasn't a tearing, wrenching, stretching experience. Just like a puzzle, my pieces were clean cut and whole, ready to be reassembled when the time was right.

I let those fragments break away into an amorphous other space that existed within the intangible realm of magic. Then, once all my pieces were free from my human form, I snapped them back together in a new, furrier configuration.

The time it takes for me to find the pieces and reassemble them is what delays the process. If I can't form the new image of myself in my head, then the transformation becomes mangled and painful.

Shifting before Victor, I felt a few twinges of discomfort and reminded myself to breathe and focus. Identifying the pressure points, I'd slide a piece here or there and the pain evaporated. It wasn't a seamless transition, but I felt whole and at ease once I was finished.

With eyes closed, I stretched my four canine limbs and opened my long jaw in a deep yawn. My fur fluffed and I shook out my coat. With nerves settled, I blinked my large, watery eyes and looked to the bench before me.

Victor sat exactly where I left him. He may have had his nails digging into the wooden planks with enough force to split it into splinters, and he may have lost all color from his now mortified face, but he was there. And best of all, it seemed like he finally understood that this was no magic trick.

Or maybe it is. I'm not sure I will ever truly understand how shifting works.

"It's okay, Victor. I'm fine."

It was unclear if Victor was receiving my mind-speak. Perhaps he couldn't without accepting his werewolf identity. Or perhaps it did and he was too traumatized to respond.

Just in case, I stuck out my tongue in a happy pant and yipped with delight like any good dog would.

"Just take it easy, Victor," said Everett as he grabbed the folded robe that had been sitting between them on the bench. "That's still Delilah. She's just transformed into a wolf, just like you've seen the rest of the pack do. And just like them, she'll transform back into the form you recognize."

My mate waited to see if we'd completely paralyzed my brother or if he would offer some indication he heard us.

After some time, he gave us a nearly imperceptible nod. Still, he nodded and that was good enough for us.

"I think it will be easier for us to all talk about this once your sister is back into her human form. I'm just going to take a robe over to her. Only our bodies transform so clothes never survive the shift."

He watched Victor for a few more seconds before patting his knee and rising from the bench to bring me the robe.

Everett made a few paces forward before Victor jumped off the bench and darted at full speed towards the main road.

***

Hello and welcome to book 5! I'm so glad to finally have Victor in the mix, I've been looking forward to adding him for quite some time. I hope you all end up enjoying Delilah's little brother. Where do you think he'll run off to and what will he find there?

As I mentioned in my intro, I am neck deep with working on my Wattpad Originals serialized story, Treasured by the Dragon. It is all consuming at this point. The thing is, that story is present tense and this one is not. I always do at least one pass over my drafts before posting and, by far, what I had to correct the most was tense inconsistencies. It's so hard to jump between the two... So if you see tense problems, I apologize. I'm trying to get my past tense mindset back. I appreciate your patience with me!