First Moon

After dinner, I throw on clothes for shifting, reaching automatically for the same torn white polo shirt. “You haven’t tossed that out yet?” Owen asks, eyeing me sceptically. “Why bother?” I shrug. “If I’m going to destroy it further anyway, I might as well get what I can out of it.” The rip cuts down from the collar and pulls slightly across my chest when I move, but the shirt still does the job. Mostly. Calix rarely has much concern for what survives a shift, so I make things work where I can. “But...” Owen’s gaze drops. “New sweats?” I glance down at myself, then back at him. “They fit.” His mouth twitches. “That’s usually the aim.” “Then why are you commenting?” “Because you’re wearing a shredded polo shirt with new sweats and pretending there’s logic involved.” I pull the torn collar straight, which achieves nothing. “There is logic.” "Of course.” There is not, Calix says. I ignore both of them. "New joggers feel better," I say lightly. "Softer. More flexible." Owen huffs a laugh, shaking his head. I am not sure why it matters. Clothes are mostly for everyone else anyway. In a few minutes, half of us will be stripping without a second thought. It is normal here. Always has been. It was different at home. Mum and my fae sisters were always dressed, always composed. Dad was less consistent. There had never seemed much point in modesty where Lycans were concerned, not when shifting was part of ordinary life. Clothes were temporary. Bodies weren’t. No one I had grown up around treated that as something worth making awkward. Besides, being comfortable in my own skin had never been the issue. Physical things were easy. Strength. Speed. Appetite. Attraction. All of it had always come without much effort. Even when other things went wrong, even when my head had not felt entirely like mine, that part of me had remained uncomplicated. Reliable. Until recently, I had never needed to think about that at all. We head down towards one of the more central shifting cubicles, further from the residential blocks and usually less busy. I do not fancy digging through a pile of clothes later just to find mine. The final few minutes before shifting always feel the same. My skin tightens, like it does not quite fit anymore. It itches. Deep and relentless. Something I can barely contain. Inevitable. Absolute. My jaw clenches. My shoulders pull tight. The air itself starts to feel wrong against me, as though my body is already rejecting this shape before it has even begun to change. It is never pain. Not exactly. More like pressure building in every part of me at once, demanding release. Then release hits. My body folds and reshapes in less than two seconds, expanding into the solid, familiar weight of Calix. Relief floods through me. Immediate. Complete. The world sharpens. Every scent lifts cleanly from the air: damp earth, stone, sweat, detergent clinging faintly to discarded clothes. The grounds settle beneath my paws, recognisable and steady. It is hard, sometimes, to believe we will be bigger still in just a couple of months. Bigger, Calix agrees, sounding smug. I’d expect nothing less from you. He gives the wolf equivalent of a shrug and starts forwards. It is my turn to lead the howl tonight. We used to do it pack by pack. Now we do it together, led by one of the senior alphas at school and driven by something instinctive. Something that pulls us into one voice, even when we are miles from our own packs. Our pack away from home. The first few times we did it after the bonds returned, the whole thing felt almost ceremonial. Not staged. Not forced. Just newly precious in a way no one wanted to name aloud. Like we all knew something had been given back, and none of us quite trusted it enough yet to speak of it too casually. Now it has become routine. Or as close to routine as something ancient and instinctive can ever become. I have been looking forward to finally leading. Do not ask me how we know when it is time. We just do. It settles through the body before it ever reaches the mind. A pull. A stilling. A collective readiness arriving all at once, as though some thread runs through every Lycan on the grounds and tightens in unison. Calix slows first. Then stops. Not in the main clearing. Not somewhere visible, central, expected. But inside the broken remains of an old stone gazebo. The same place my parents first met. I have heard that story enough times to be bored of it, but I notice the place now. Properly. The crumbling curve of the stone. The ivy working through the cracks. The old roof, half gone, leaving the structure open to the sky. Calix stands within the remains of it, only just fitting beneath what is left. He will not, in a few months. He lifts his head towards the sky, through the broken circle where the roof used to be. Mostly clear. Thin streaks of cloud drift across the moon as September draws to a close. Autumn is coming. There is something good in that thought. Something restless. A change in the air, in the world. Nights growing sharper, the earth preparing to turn, everything shifting quietly towards something colder and truer. Around us, the others still. I feel them more than I see them. Each wolf pausing, lifting their head as the pull of instinct settles over us. Their presence gathers at the edges of my awareness. Steady. Waiting. Expectant. The moon hangs above us. A body of rock and dust, caught in orbit. And still, we answer it. Not because of what it is. Because of what it means. What our people have shaped around it over centuries. What governs us. What calls to us. What made us. The Goddess. I have never been as blindly devout as some Lycans. I know what the moon is. I know what it is not. But standing here, with Calix settled around me, the grounds gone still and the whole school poised on the same breath, it is harder than usual to separate what can be explained from what can only be felt. An odd thought slips through just before it begins. Thank you for bringing them back to us. The mate bonds. For the first time, I am aware that somewhere out there, beneath the same sky, my destined mate might be looking up at the same moon. I do not know how I know that. I just do. Not a thought, Calix says quietly. An instinct. I do not answer. I am too aware, suddenly, of how much that matters. Calix draws in a breath. Then he howls. The sound tears free of him, rich and powerful, rolling out across the grounds. It echoes against stone, tree and open sky, carrying beyond the school boundaries into the darkness. It feels bigger than noise. Bigger than one wolf. Something old. Communal. Impossible not to answer. A second later, the others join. A chorus. It should blur into one. It always has. But— Something else cuts through. One voice. Not louder, exactly. Clearer. Sharper. As though it finds me in a way the others do not. Not across the grounds. Through me. Like the sound knows precisely where to land. It hits differently. Not just in my ears, but deeper, through my chest and down my spine. I stiffen. That is new. The sound is gone almost as soon as I try to isolate it, swallowed by the others, but the impression remains. Clean. Singular. Wrong only because it does not feel wrong at all. Kirsten? I wonder. Could be, Calix says. But there is a pause. Calix does not usually pause. Instinct does not usually hesitate. I do not question it. Not properly. But the feeling lingers long after the howl fades. Even as the others begin to move again, shaking out limbs, drifting back towards the cubicles, the trees, or each other, something in me.