The Wolf Stories

A place for everything Wolf Stories related!

[tws-official]

Chapter 2

My alarm went off at 6:45 the next morning, and the first thing I did was reach over and slam down on the snooze button on top of the clock.

Five minutes later it went off again, and I got up reluctantly to start my day.

After pulling on some clothes for the day and grabbing my school bag, I opened the door and walked down to the common area at the end of the hallway.

Harlow was already there, lying on one of the couches. She nodded at me. “Morning, Wolf.”

“Morning, Harlow,” I replied, plopping down in the armchair next to the couch. I checked my watch. It was 6:55. I looked down the hall again and pulled out my book. Naomi and Brazen would be at least five minutes, which gave me some quality reading time.

I was reading a book called The Lost Temple. Basically, a group of kids were exploring and found a… you guessed it, a lost temple. They get trapped, and only have a week to get out. It was a really good book, and part of a series too.

I heard footsteps and looked up. Naomi smiled at me as she walked up to us. “Good morning!” she said cheerfully.

I returned the smile and looked back to my book. Harlow and Naomi struck up a conversation for another few minutes until the final member of our quartet came bouncing down the hall. 

“Top of the morning,” Brazen said with his signature grin. It was 7:03. We had another two minutes until we normally headed to breakfast, so Brazen leaned over the back of my armchair and looked over my shoulder.

“What’re you reading?”

I kept my finger where my page was and closed the book, letting Brazen see the cover.

“Oh, that one’s a good one. First time reading it?”

I nodded, opening the book again.

“I won’t spoil it. Enjoy yourself.”

I smiled and nodded again. He didn’t move, continuing to read over my shoulder until the breakfast bell rang at 7:05.

Breakfast was great, as usual. The cooks always outdid themselves for every meal. The endless buffet had something new every day, and it was impossible to get tired of the vast spread of food.

Our first period of the day started at eight in the morning, and it was different amongst our group. Naomi and Harlow had Literacy, which was more reading focused, while Brazen and I had a more writing focused class with Professor Raymond, who taught Creative Writing.

Brazen drew something he wouldn’t let me see and I read more of my book while we waited for Professor Raymond to start the class.

“Alright, class!” Professor Raymond called, and everyone stopped what they were doing and looked up. 

“Today’s a simple catch-up day! Work on any assignments you’ve missed, and keep in mind that the Remake Reality essay is due Tuesday of next week! If you’ve finished everything, then do as you please, but kindly make sure that it is quiet!” She flashed a smile. “Now, write away!”

I spent most of the class working on my Remake Reality (which was about if I’d never been bitten) and trying not to stress about the upcoming Enchanting test.

At 8:50, Creative Writing ended and Brazen and I went to Spell-Casting. Naomi and Harlow joined us too.

Yesterday, we’d learned a new spell called the Pain Curse. It was one of the spells that we were not allowed, under any circumstances, to do on partners. When cast, the curse traveled to the part of the victim’s body that would cause the most pain. 

The specialized dummies for the spell would be hit in the same place we would, in the unlikely event that we ourselves were hit with the curse.

I, for example, would be hit in my right shoulder, where the werewolf bite was.

The spell was a difficult one, and, as usual, if we were still struggling a lot with the motion, we’d go to one side of the classroom, and if we were mostly confident, we’d go to the other.

Naomi was confident. Very confident. She always had an easy grasp on spells, and sometimes it was scary. I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of any of her spells, even if it was a relatively harmless spell like the Jelly Jinx.

I was mostly confident. I had the motion down and it always hit the correct spot, but I was a little uncertain if I could do it under pressure. Not that I thought I’d ever need to, just… you know, it never hurts to be prepared, right?

Harlow couldn’t quite get this one down. She was always the quiet one in our group, and I guessed it didn’t quite sit right with her to learn a curse designed to cause someone maximum pain. It didn’t sit right with me either. Her curse kept missing, not hitting the left knee like it was supposed to.

Brazen was one with varied results. He’d get one perfectly spot on, exactly on the left wrist, but then the next would hit the left hip instead. It drove him crazy, I could tell, but he could help his twin out and vice versa.

Our next class was Potions at 9:50. We were finishing up our unit on shifting potions with a human-shifting potion. I thought back to the note from last night and made a mental note to commit this potion to memory. We weren’t allowed to brew potions in our dorms for obvious safety reasons, but it was a pretty easy potion to come by and Professor Brooks was nice. He’d have no problem with students brewing recreational potions.

If it wasn’t for Brazen’s non-stop chatter, I would’ve messed up the potion from stress about the Enchanting exam coming up. Brazen and Harlow had Astronomy next, so they left me and Naomi to go to Enchanting.

“You’ll do fine, Wolf,” Naomi reassured me as we walked to the class.

I just nodded. I understood Enchanting and all its aspects perfectly, as I did with most classes, but for some reason I just couldn’t get enchantments down one hundred percent of the time.

Professor Smith called us up one by one to take the Enchanting Exam. Each of us were given two objects to enchant and specific spells to enchant them with.

I went somewhere in the middle, due to my last name starting with a K. The rest of class was spent doing something productive, whether it was an Enchanting Bingo or work for another class.

My two objects were a locket that I had to enchant with invisibility and a shadowstone to enchant with teleportation.

Okay, first up, the invisibility spell… then convert it to the enchanting version… then target the locket… and cast. 

I slipped the locket over my hand to check that it worked. Seeing as how I couldn’t see my hand, it had.

One down, one to go.

Okay, now for the shadowstone. Due to the nature of the stone, it could only teleport to one place: the shadow realm. I couldn’t check this one for reasons I’m sure a smart one like you can understand, so I’d have to just be sure I did it correctly.

Teleportation spell… convert it to the enchanting version of the spell… nope, I messed up, now that’s the telekinesis enchanting spell… try again.

Teleportation take two… correct conversion this time… target the stone… boom!

The stone glowed with a slight purple tint, and I’d done this enchantment enough to know that I’d done it correctly. I handed both newly enchanted objects to Professor Smith and sat back down.

I found out later that I passed the exam; not perfect, but a ninety-five percent out of a hundred isn’t bad. Naomi aced it, in case you were wondering.

Brazen and Harlow met up with Naomi and I for Healing. We were learning the spells for healing broken bones. It was pretty interesting, and decently simple once you understood it.

Lunch was a well-needed break for forty minutes. Brazen made corny jokes, Naomi would chime in occasionally with some obscure fact about the topic that no one was ever sure how she knew, Harlow was our go-to for discussion topics, and I asked enough questions to keep the conversation rolling.

In the last twenty minutes of Lunch, there was an optional outdoors activity. Sometimes it was a game of soccer. Sometimes it was a basketball game, or football, or a race. But there was always a variety, and never the same game twice in a row. There were also sports available on Saturdays for both the school and the nearby villages. 

My personal favorite was frisbee golf. Harlow loved basketball, Naomi enjoyed flag football, and Brazen was practically a god at soccer. But it was raining today, so there was no outdoor activity. 

In Math, Professor Lopez was teaching us algebra. I loved this subject, as it was practical compared to the magic and fantasy of Welsburry School of Magic. Don’t get me wrong, the fantastical elements of Welsburry were wonderful, but sometimes you need something to ground you, you know?

Brazen and Harlow went to Enchanting while Naomi and I went to Astronomy, one of my favorite classes. We were going over star charts. This was the subject Naomi struggled in, but I hadn’t seen anything yet that Naomi Peterson couldn’t memorize.

And the final class of the day, Special Powers. We were just finishing up our unit on Glowers, people who could control light. It didn’t sound like much of a dangerous power, but every power out there could be dangerous, even Healing.

Professor Jones announced that our next unit would be Telepaths and their subsets. Naomi looked particularly excited for this one, and I couldn’t blame her. If I had a cool power like Memoria, I’d be excited to learn about them too.

After dinner, I sat in my dorm, writing in my notebook. Professor Raymond thought that my stories were very good and that I had real potential to be a famous author one day, so she’d told me to practice. I wanted to write a novel, but I wasn’t too sure what to write it about. There were so many things more exciting than what I knew that I wasn’t sure where to start.

It’d never occurred to me that maybe, the most exciting things were where we least expected them to be.

[tws-official]

Chapter 1

I sighed, looking at the calendar on my wall. The full moon was in two days, and so was my birthday. Of course it was.

My name is Acwulf Kaiser. My friends call me Wolf. If you were in my shoes, you might think that nickname is a slap to the face. But I chose the nickname because I liked it, and I’m not gonna let this curse ruin my name for me, too.

What? You’re wondering what this curse I’m on about is? You’re a curious one. I’ll have to keep that in mind.

Well, go on. Have a guess.

That’s right. I’m a werewolf. In two days, I’ll turn fifteen. And all signs point to me turning into a wolf for the night, too. Quite the birthday present.

I turned away from the calendar and back to my schoolbook. There was a big test for Enchanting coming up, and if I didn’t study, I was screwed. I was good at school and enjoyed it most days, but everyone has a bad subject and mine was Enchanting.

There was a knock at the door. “Yeah?” I called.

My best friend Brazen Anderson opened the door and stuck his head in. “You done studying?”

I shrugged. “I can be.”

“It stopped raining. Want to go outside?”

I looked at the schoolbook. I’d be fine. It’d been raining all week, and who knew when it would start up again. Regardless, fresh air would do me good, as my mom would say.

“Yeah, gimme a minute.”

Brazen grinned. “Yay! See you outside, Wolfie.”

He ducked out and pulled the door closed. He’d called me that nickname as a joke once last year and somehow it stuck. It was annoying, as most things about the prankster were.

I closed the Enchanting book, stood up and stretched, then walked out of my dorm, closing the door behind me.

“Took you long enough,” Brazen called from the bottom of the stairs outside.

I ran down the stairs. “Hey, it only took me three minutes, max.”

“Could’ve been faster.”

“What did you want me to do, teleport?” I asked with a laugh.

“Maybe,” Brazen said with a grin.

“You want me to be fast? I’ll race you down to the woods. No shifting.”

“Oh, you’re on.”

I took off running. Brazen sprinted after me, both of us trying to keep our footing on the wet grass.

I heard the distinct noise of Brazen shifting behind me. “I said no shifting!” I yelled.

Brazen shifted back. “Sorry, force of habit!”

I skidded to a stop about five feet into the woods, mere seconds before Brazen.

“Good job,” Brazen said, panting slightly.

I smiled. “Thanks. Where to?”

“Nomi and Hollow are in the Wolf Fruit Clearing, last time I checked.”

I nodded and followed the Shifter down the path. He knew the woods like the back of his hand. Well, every bit but the shadow part. He was scared of that part, all four of us knew that, and I couldn’t blame him. I could see in there, he couldn’t, and the place still gave me the creeps, in a weird, intriguing sort of way.

A face with blue eyes, freckles, and curly brown hair surrounding it suddenly appeared inches from mine. “Boo!” 

I jumped backward, laughing. “Hello yourself,” I said to Harlow Anderson, Brazen’s twin sister, a Shade, and just as mischievous as her brother, though she acted more behind the scenes.

Harlow giggled, hanging upside-down from a tree branch. “You’re pretty easy to startle.”

“You’re looking pretty easy to knock off that branch,” I countered.

“Point taken.”

Brazen climbed up the tree next to his sister. “Race you to the top?” he challenged.

“You’d better be ready to lose, mister-“

“Makes you wish Raza was here, huh?” the final member of our group, Naomi Peterson, a girl with dark skin, warm brown eyes, and dark hair asked from her spot underneath a tree a few feet away. Her hair was blowing in the breeze, and she had a book open on her lap.

I nodded. “Yeah. You with Carlos, too?” I knew Naomi had a brother, though I didn’t know much about him.

Naomi shrugged. “I guess.”

I walked over and sat next to her. “Ready for the Enchanting test tomorrow?” she asked.

I shrugged. “As I’ll ever be. I think I’ll be fine.”

“You will be.”

“What about you, ready for Astronomy next week?”

“Should be, unless these star charts change on me over the weekend,” Naomi said with a laugh. I smiled.

A purple fruit rolled to a stop at my feet. “Sorry,” Harlow called. “Missed a step. Should be fine to eat, maybe a little bruised.”

I picked it up, turning it over in my hand. She was right, it was a little squished on one side, but it was perfectly ripe otherwise.

Enough for a Moon Potion, if Professor Brooks let me use the other ingredients. And if I had time. If not, it would work just fine to keep me as a peaceful wolf instead of the monster I’d inevitably turn into otherwise.

“Wolf?”

Naomi’s voice jarred me out of my thoughts. “Huh?”

“I asked you what it tasted like.”

“Oh. Um, apples,” I lied. I was usually pretty good at that.

It didn’t taste like apples for me, and I knew that. Wolf Fruits had special qualities that tamed the wolf side of a werewolf, and one effect of this was that if you were a werewolf, the fruit tasted like chocolate. If you weren’t a werewolf, it tasted like a regular apple.

Wolf Fruit trees had to be planted at night, and yielded the best fruit when planted underneath the light of a full moon. The fruit ripens every month, three days before the full moon. I had three Wolf Fruit trees in my backyard back at home.

Naomi nodded. “Been a while since I’ve had one, but they taste like apples for me too.”

“Apples for us, too,” Brazen said, sitting in the tree above us. How he got there so fast and so quietly I have no idea.

Harlow jumped down from the tree, nearly slipping on the wet grass, though all three of us pretended not to see it. “Wolf, any plans for your birthday? Anything you wanna do?”

I hadn’t thought about it much. Not only was my birthday on the full moon this year, it was always on Halloween, so I rarely had any plans for fun activities. “I dunno, maybe explore the shadow part?” I had no explanation why, but that part of the woods called to me, as much as it gave me the creeps.

“Sounds good to me,” Harlow said. Of course it did, Harlow could see. Naomi and Brazen couldn’t, for reasons we didn’t understand.

“Sure,” Brazen said. I could see it in his eyes that he wasn’t entirely stoked for it, but I also knew that he was up for adventure.

After Naomi didn’t respond for a few seconds, I nudged her. “Oh, yeah, cool with me, too,” she mumbled quickly. She was a Memoria, which gave her the powers of a Telepath with the added control over memories. She was prone to zoning out, and she could quite literally get lost in her memories if she wasn’t careful, so all three of us made sure she was as zoned in as possible at all times we could.

“Sounds like a plan, then,” I said with a smile.

The bell tolled three times. “Time for dinner,” Brazen said, jumping down from the tree.

The four of us headed back inside. I could feel a few raindrops as we walked up the stairs and knew that we’d lucked out, as it was going to start raining again soon.

Professor Brooks was standing at the door to the dining hall. “Brazen, do you happen to know anything about some of my potion stock disappearing overnight?” He called over the crowd to us.

Brazen shook his head. He’d gotten so good at feigning innocence I couldn’t tell if it was genuine or not when he said, “Me? I wouldn’t steal from you, Professor.”

Professor Brooks was convinced. Mostly. He’d dealt with the Anderson twins for almost five years. You learned a lot hanging around them for that long.

“Do you know anything about that, Brazen?” I asked in a low whisper as we took our seats.

“Of course not,” Brazen said, and I would’ve believed him if I hadn’t caught his cheeky grin for a second. Brazen Anderson, always up to something.

“What’s our next unit in Special Powers?” Harlow asked, trying to pierce a piece of roasted zucchini with her fork.

“Telepaths and their variations next,” Naomi said. “Then we move on to the different kinds of Seers, then Werewolves.”

I managed to swallow the bite of food I had in my mouth without choking. “Oh. I didn’t know Werewolf was in there,” I said.

“New addition,” Naomi answered. “Along with Spirivatis, Vitanias, and Necronias.”

I nodded. I’d heard of Necronias and Werewolves, obviously, but hadn’t heard of the other two.

I was pretty sure the conversation continued, but I wasn’t paying much attention.

Now, you’re a curious one, so you’re probably wondering why I hadn’t told my friends about my little curse yet.

To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure either.

On one hand, I had a feeling they’d be perfectly fine with it. I also wasn’t the best at keeping secrets, so for all I knew, they already knew. 

On the other hand, these three were the only people to ever treat me entirely and one hundred percent as a person, not like some disease that needed to be contained or a monster to be scared of. My own family couldn’t do that all the time, and I couldn’t blame them, because I couldn’t do it half the time.

If I told them, I ran the risk of losing that freedom, and I wasn’t quite ready to loose that.

We walked back to our dorms after dinner, up five flights of stairs to the fifth year level. Our dorms happened to be very close to each other, mine on the far left, Naomi’s to the right of mine, one empty one next to Naomi’s, and Brazen and Harlow’s shared dorm on the far right.

When I entered my room I noticed a letter on my desk, along with a bottle. I closed the door and crossed to my desk. The letter was written in messy handwriting that I almost recognized, and it was unsigned.

Wolf,

I thought you could use this.

P.S. It’s not what this one is, but in case you didn’t know, if you combine a sleeping potion, a human-shifting potion, and the juice of a Wolf Fruit, you get a potion with the same effects as the Moon Potion.

I looked at the bottle. It contained a potion the color of the Moon Potion, and from the letter I knew exactly what it was. I already knew Mom was swamped with work and couldn’t make the Moon Potion for me this month, and I never asked Professor Brooks for one since I didn’t want to be a burden, so this gesture was a nice one, even if I didn’t know who sent it.

I tucked the letter away to remember the useful recipe and set the potion off to the side in a safe space. This month, at least, I’d be spared the pain of the transformation.

[tws-official]

Prologue

It’s bright, isn’t it?

Were you even looking?

You’re normal. You don’t have to deal with the curse on nights like this, and you don’t even spend the time admiring?

Go on. Look up.

Behold, the beauty of the full moon. You’re lucky. You get to experience that beauty, no strings attached.

You’re not a werewolf. I envy you for that.

You don’t have to worry about the transformation, but be careful on nights like these.

You never know what lurks in the shadows.