Swallowed by the lonely darkness, I fell to my knees and wept on the forest floor. Alison had the last word before she left for the cabin. Now, I had to come to terms with the fact that I would never be allowed home. She'd replaced me. She had another man in her life. That man was none other than my brother, Aiden. Until then, I'd been holding onto my marriage, but now it was dead and gone. Now, every last ember of love had died; nothing left but ashes. She'd kindled a new flame with the one who had comforted her through our separation.

But why did it have to be him? He was the reason Alison and I had gotten married in the first place. If he hadn't abandoned our pack to go 'find himself' in Europe, I wouldn't have had to take over the mantle as Pack Alpha in the first place. My father, uncle, and elders wouldn't have pressured me to marry, have pups, and continue our family legacy. I could've discovered myself, fled my pack, and lived a more honest life, whether with a steady lover or not.

Beating my fists into the ground, I bared my teeth and screamed to vent some of my rage. I felt my lips begin to peel back as two deadly rows of canine fangs grew, gnashing in the hollow of my mouth, a guttural growl ripping up from my chest. My whole body quivered as my wolf threatened to break through my skin and slaughter the first living thing in sight.

My transformation was interrupted by a response to my feral release of rage. The sound cut through the night. A singular caw. A plea to halt my madness.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

The claws at the end of my still human fingers that'd speared the ground retracted. My change reversed slowly. Getting to my feet, I heard the flutter of wings that aided his descent from the bough that was his perch. As the amber light of transformation had just about dimmed in my eyes, I glimpsed his black form in the shadow of the fat tree trunk. He didn't pause or hide, he stepped out into the moonlight of the clearing on three clawed toes and scaled, black calves fringed by feathers before they disappeared beneath a coal-coloured kimono. With each step he took, his own anthropomorphism came undone. Soon, he stood on bare human feet, only a few feet from me, his eyes never leaving my own. Unceremoniously, he unfastened the Tasuki, keeping the sleeves of his kimono free of his wings, while the last of his inky feathers fluttered away, leaving his pale arms bare.

"You didn't mean for me to hear your sadness," said Hayashi Kage, calm as ever.

"How much of my 'sadness' did you hear?"

"All of it." He admitted readily. Hayashi was not a liar like I was. "From her weeping to yours."

I shuddered, eyes cast to the ground. I felt sick to my stomach that someone else knew the extent of my shame. The sensation of complete patheticness crushed my chest, choking me of breath and words.

"Cry some more if you want..." He allowed, sounding apathetic. But Hayashi was never so. No, he oozed compassion and empathy. Calm and unmoving as a cliff face to a storm, it would take many a great wave of my salty tears to corrode his stoic facade.

That night was the first of many times that I cried in front of him.