Penny

Thirteen-year-old Penny and her best friend Bobby walked to school like any other day. It was a crisp September morning. About as crisp as any morning gets on the Delta. She wore her plaid pleated school uniform skirt and gray cardigan.

She had just told Bobby she had gotten her period that morning for the first time. That’s how close friends they were.

So when she told him that, something clicked. He changed. He walked closer to her. She thought she could sense him smelling her cardigan. Weird.

Jimmy and Charlene, parents of their friend Ash, had been coaching Penny and Bobby and a gaggle of other friends on how to react when they first began to sense their inner beasts. None of them had yet wolfed out, but the Boudreaux family had taken them all under their wing after determining they had the “gift.”

And they needed all the guidance they could get at the age of 13.

The boys at school had been teasing Penny since she was 11, when her breasts developed early.

Lately, they’d even been so bold as to start snapping girls’ bra straps. She hated that with a raging fire. Seriously, sometimes she thought she might snap and kill one of them. But Charlene had taught her that that was her human and wolf hormones getting mixed up and confused. So she breathed through it and got help from teachers whenever possible.

But these days, with the teasing ramped up, Penny felt like a broken record every time she asked for help from a teacher.

And so, Bobby had started taking matters into his own hands.

That morning, Penny decided to have a difficult talk with him.

“Listen, Bobby? Could you maybe stop punching everyone out when they snap my bra?”

“I can’t help it,” he said with a glower.

“You’re gonna get suspended.”

“She’s right,” said Ash as they made their way up the street to the middle school. “My mom can help you control your anger.”

Just then Gavin and Vann met up with them; they walked to school together in a cozy, familiar pack.

“What’s she right about?” asked Gavin, sort of teasing.

“Bobby’s going to get suspended if he can’t control his knuckle sandwiches,” said Ash.

Vann licked his lips. “Yum. You said sandwiches.”

“I’m with Bobby,” Gavin said. “You need extra muscle, just say the word, bro.”

Penny hugged her cardigan tightly around herself. “You’re all idiots.”

This pack of wolves all came from different backgrounds. Some had parents who were shifters. Some had parents who were not shifters at all. Others had parents who were absentee. They had all found each other for the same reason, though some of the parents were in denial about their canine proclivities. Whatever their differences, they were connected forever.

Later that day, Penny did not get her bra strap snapped by a boy. Instead, during lunch break, something much, much worse happened.

Todd Connors, star middle school quarterback, crashed into Penny. Her lunch tray went skidding, his pizza toppled to the floor. In the commotion, Todd reached out and blatantly grab Penny’s breasts as she bent over to pick up spilled food. It was stupidly obvious, and everyone saw it.

All it took was a shriek from Penny and it was like a light switched on inside Bobby. He was no longer in control. The wolf was now calling the shots.

The screams—from Penny, from Todd, and from the other random girls in the room—bounced off the walls like an echo chamber and seemed to heighten Bobby’s protective instinct all the more profoundly.

When the wolf’s massive teeth sank into the quarterback’s shoulder, that was the end of Todd’s football-throwing career.

Watching Bobby shift for the first time into his wolf shape had triggered something in Ash, Gavin and Vann all at once. Earlier that morning, they may have bragged about being able to control their wolf selves, but now the truth was laid bare. None of them knew what they were doing with the power they had.

The three male wolves all surrounded the scene. Ash, Gavin and Vann bared their fangs and stood there snarling, daring any of the other jocks to come close to try to rescue Todd.

At some point, Bobby stopped clenching his jaws on Todd’s shoulder. He glanced up and saw Penny, watching him. She had not shifted. Human Penny was staring at him, her mouth open, her eyes wide in shock and terror.

In response to Penny’s reaction, Bobby let Todd go.

* * *

Bobby

He knew he should have stayed to make sure Todd was all right. But he left. He took off and ran out of the school and disappeared for days. Nobody could find him, including the police.

While Bobby was gone, the Boudreaux family swooped in and cleaned up the mess. Penny, Gavin, Vann and Ash were all pulled out of school. Todd’s parents were paid off in a settlement out of court and agreed not to sue the school. The rest of the children who had witnessed the event were told that a hallucinogen had been slipped into everyone’s food that day and that the person responsible had been dealt with. Anybody whose families didn’t buy the hallucination story was paid off handsomely.

Penny eventually found Bobby hiding in the trees behind her house one night.

She had come outside when she had first felt the urge to shift. It had been a full moon. She had just been about to corner her first rabbit when Bobby, in wolf form, pounced first.

Bobby saw the look again from Penny. Horror, betrayal. Bobby nosed the little rabbit carcass over to Penny and felt so ashamed he shifted back to his human form right then and there.

But that had been the wrong move, apparently. After watching Bobby shift again and watching expectantly for her to eat the rabbit, Penny instead pulled a Bobby. She took off running and he didn’t see her again until the next morning.

They all gathered at Jimmy and Charlene’s estate to begin their homeschool education for the next few years. It took weeks before Penny and Bobby could look each other in the eye again.

Over time, things got better. They learned to hunt as a group and eventually came to enjoy the shift.

At the age of 16, Charlene hosted a cotillion at the Boudreauxs’ country estate, specifically for shifter kids. Penny’s father even showed up to present her to society. She was a real, authentic debutante.

At the dance that followed the presentation of all the 16-year-old girls, Bobby danced with Penny. He had wanted to kiss her so badly. He thought maybe she wanted him to kiss her, but every time he thought he might dive in, all he could see in his mind was the terrified 13-year-old Penny staring at him, the monster.

At the age of 17, the wolf pack enrolled in public high school. Charlene and all the other parents agreed it was time to teach the children to mix with other kids to prepare them for the real world. Although they stuck together like glue, Penny did not go to prom with Bobby as her date. He wanted to ask, but he hadn’t. He still desperately hated himself and loved her. So, as he saw it, she deserved better. The violence that he had done in front of her—the mess he had made of everything—would keep them apart. He knew she would only ever see a monster when she looked in his eyes.