37. Lucille

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My blood ran cold as I realized who was up on the stage. I turned to Randall and yelled to him over the howling and clapping, “It’s Lilith!”

“Your roommate?” He squinted in the direction of the stage. We were pretty far back and from where we were standing, it was hard to tell. But I didn’t need to see as much as I could feel her power. I was surprised I didn’t feel it sooner, but that was probably due to all the wolves around me, their own power clouding my senses.

“Yes, my roommate. The vampire!”

“That’s impossible!” He said, his voice a shout over the cacophony. “We would be able to tell if she was a vampire, especially my dad. And if that’s a vampire on stage posing as a werewolf, how does she expect to keep the act up in front of a crowd of a hundred real werewolves? She can’t exactly turn into a wolf if she’s a vampire, can she? What would her motive be?”

“I’m telling you, Randall, that’s her.” How could I tell him why she seemed so much like one of us? How could I tell him the reason why they couldn’t tell what she really was?

I stopped arguing with him as Lilith began to speak, her cool voice silencing the restless crowd. “I apologize for my tardiness,” She said simply, bowing to the crowd in apology.

Quinn moved to the front of the stage, “Let us all welcome to our pack a new Alpha, Lucille.”

I looked over at Randall. “It’s a fake name, of course.” He only rolled his eyes at me and shrugged before returning his gaze to the stage. He didn’t believe me, but I knew it was her.

“Let the initiation begin,” Quinn said as he moved back again, leaving Lilith at the forefront.

“We have to stop this,” I told Randall.

He shook his head, “Maybe we were wrong, Selene. Even if it is her, maybe she isn’t a vampire. I’ve never actually seen or smelled one anyway. I could have been wrong. I could have interpreted things wrong.”

“She is a vampire,” I insisted.

“You know this for sure?”

“Yes!” I was yelling now, but no one noticed. I tried to get him to push through the crowd towards the stage with me.

“How do you know?” He asked as he followed me.

I stopped and sighed, “I’ll tell you after this is over, just believe me. We don’t have time for me to tell you everything!”

“Then you’re on your own. If you’ve lied to me or if you’ve been dishonest and won’t even tell me the truth now then you can go fix it without my help.”

I sighed exasperatedly and pushed forward to the stage through the crowd. What was Lilith doing?

The howling and cheering of the crowd began to build even more, so loud that I felt rattled. Lilith also howled, a feral sound ringing through the night. Quinn looked proud and expectant behind Lilith on the stage, as if she were his child. Lilith took off her clothes, her pale, naked body nearly glowing in the moonlight.

As I finally made it to the front, I could only watch in amazement as Lilith began her transformation. Before everyone’s eyes, she began to change into a black wolf. However, she was not truly changing. No one else seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary, judging by how they were acting, but I saw it. She wasn’t really growing fur and a tail, it was only an illusion. However, that illusion was truly flawless. I assumed that the only reason I could even see through it was because of my bond to her, which further strengthened her earlier threat of how closely we were bonded together. If our bond allowed this, I didn’t know how strong it truly was.

As she “changed,” I could feel the pull of our bond. This power she was using derived from what she took from me and it reacted unfavorably with my own power, pulling at me, forcing me to change against my will. No one else had begun to change except Lilith, which was the custom for this evening. It was her time to be the center of attention. I tried to stop myself, tried to hold in my animal side, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t even problem with fighting against Tala. I was being forced to change and even she didn’t like it from the sounds in my mind. As the black fur seemed to sprout all over her body, I could feel the itchiness and tickle of my own white coat began to grow along my skin, to creep over my body. The pull of her power forced me to all fours as I agonizingly fought a losing battle of wills.

I heard disapproving whispers from the crowd around me as I continued to change against my will. Some thought it was a stunt in protest of the new Alpha female. Others thought I was just too weak to hold myself in the presence of another Alpha until she was finished.

When she finished, others saw a large, black wolf standing on the stage. That’s what they had to have seen, because no one seemed to notice something wrong. I saw something much different, a girl standing on the stage, still naked, the shadow of a wolf outlining her, enveloping her like a spirit, a shroud, but more solid. She howled once more, exciting the crowd. I could only sit back on my haunches in disbelief as the rest of the Pack changed together. I struggled to push down my anger, to not let it get the better of me as Lilith stood in front of the Pack, like she belonged. They accepted her. They howled and cheered for her and she wasn’t even one of us.

When we ran, Lilith ran at the front of the Pack with Quinn and his Sylvea. Randall was up either at the front with them or close to it. I ran in the middle of the Pack, a white speck drowning in a sea of dark fur. I felt like I was alone even though I was surrounded by everyone else. As we ran, instead of relaxing and becoming free in the night, with every footfall, I became more depressed and more frightened of the future. What was Lilith’s plan for the Pack? Whatever she was plotting, it was confusing and I knew it wasn’t good. All I could feel was a sense of foreboding and sadness because I knew all that could come of this was misery and anguish.

* * * * *

Lilith disappeared before sunrise, of course. She played the part of looking incredibly exhausted upon reaching the clearing once more and “changing” back into her human form. As she changed once more, I felt that unfightable pull on my own power, forcing me to return to my naked, human form. She was naked and dirty, but she didn’t seem as bothered by her exposure as I was. She said goodbye to Quinn and the elders, politely rejecting their invitations to breakfast, telling them she had an early class she needed to attend after cleaning up.

She picked up a small bag she’d left near the stage and dressed quickly before disappearing. I wanted to confront her, but I didn’t want to do it in front of the Pack. Many of them, including Randall, were still in wolf form, but were slowly changing back. I left, embarrassed by nudity, sprinting back to the house where my spare clothes were, hoping not to run into anyone else, even though they’d all just seen my unclothed body anyway.

Up at the house, I showered but I couldn’t find my clothes. I was so tired that I could barely keep my eyes open. I didn’t want to keep looking, so I just went to bed naked in the guest room, closing the blinds and curtains to keep the room dark when the sun fully rose.

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A/N: Here's that extra chapter I've been promising for a while. Monday's chapter was fairly short but I didn't want it to be part of this chapter, so I broke it apart.