Chapter 34: Lena's First Shift

No one expected it at thirteen months.

The first shift typically came between ages four and six for wolf pups, the supernatural biology developing at its own pace, the animal emerging when it was ready and not before. Grace had known this, had prepared herself for years of watching Lena develop toward that milestone, had accepted that she would not see her daughter's wolf form for a long time.

Lena had opinions about timelines.

It happened on a warm April morning in the compound's central courtyard, where Lena had been walking with the increasing confidence of someone who had been ambulatory for two months and was now running experiments with speed and direction. She was chasing a leaf — a large autumn holdover that the spring wind was moving across the courtyard with tantalizing inconsistency — with the focused joy of a child entirely in the present moment.

She caught the leaf. Looked at it. The leaf disintegrated.

And then the shift happened.

It was faster than any shift Grace had ever witnessed — not the extended, effortful process of an adult wolf but something more elemental, more instinctive, a pup's body moving into its animal form with the ease of breathing. One moment Lena. The next: a wolf pup.

She was silver. Entirely, startlingly silver — Grace's coloring exactly, rendered in the soft thick fur of a very young pup, enormous ears that her head had not yet grown into, paws that were similarly disproportionate. She looked up from where the leaf had been and appeared to assess her new situation with the judicial seriousness that Grace recognized immediately and completely.

Then she sneezed. And shifted back. And sat on the courtyard ground looking surprised.

Grace, who had witnessed this from five feet away, sat down on the courtyard ground beside her daughter because her legs had made a decision of their own.

'Lena,' she said.

Lena looked at her. Looked at her hands. Looked at Grace again.

Then she reached her arms up in the universal communication of a child who wants to be held.

Grace held her. Her heart was doing something enormous. Her wolf was doing something enormous. The specific, layered response of a mother wolf whose pup had just shown her first shift — protective and proud and awed and an entirely new category of love that she had not previously experienced because she had not previously had occasion to.

Fen appeared from the direction of the institute at a speed that suggested someone had communicated the situation to him faster than Grace had managed to move. He sat beside them on the courtyard ground without asking, which was exactly right.

'Thirteen months,' he said.

'Thirteen months,' Grace confirmed.

'She's extraordinary.'

'She is.'

Lena, from her position in Grace's arms, looked at Fen with the expression that she reserved for him specifically — the warm, decided expression of someone who had made up their mind about a person a long time ago and was settled on it.

Then she reached one arm toward him, the invitation gesture, and he took her and she settled against his chest with the boneless comfort of a child entirely at home.

Dr. Amara, when she examined Lena that afternoon, confirmed what the shift had implied — that the pup's supernatural development was significantly accelerated, running well ahead of the typical timeline. 'It's unusual,' she said, with the careful precision of a medical professional presenting a finding without overstating its implications. 'Not unheard of. Pups with strong bloodlines sometimes develop early. It doesn't necessarily predict anything specific about her adult abilities, but it does suggest the wolf side of her heritage is — vigorous.'

Vigorous. Grace thought about this word and what it meant in the context of Lena's specific inheritance — a mother who had been running thirty-mile midnight exiles and designing defense systems, a father who was one of the most powerful Alphas in the region.

Vigorous seemed like an understatement.

She told Kaden on Saturday. She told him fully — the courtyard, the leaf, the silver pup, the returned-to-human form with its expression of mild surprise. She told him because he deserved to know and because it was, undeniably, also his news.

He listened without speaking until she finished. Then he said: 'Silver,' in a voice that was not quite steady.

'All of it,' Grace said. 'Exactly my color.'

A pause. 'Is she — did it frighten her?'

'No,' Grace said. 'She was surprised for about thirty seconds. Then she wanted to be held.'

He was quiet for a moment. She could see him processing it — the specific, enormous fact of a daughter who had shifted at thirteen months, silver as her mother, vigorous in her inheritance.

'She's going to be something,' he said.

'She already is,' Grace said.

They were both right. They would keep being right, for years, in ways neither of them could yet fully anticipate.

That evening, with Lena asleep and the April night warm at the window, Grace sat with Fen and thought about the silver pup and the enormous ears and the expression of mild surprise on her daughter's face after shifting back, and laughed — the full, complete laugh of someone whose life contained things too extraordinary to hold quietly.

'What?' Fen said.

'She sneezed herself back,' Grace said. 'She shifted, looked around, sneezed, and shifted back. That was my daughter's first shift.'

Fen's expression moved through several stages before settling on the laugh that she loved, the real one.

'Of course she did,' he said.

'Of course she did,' Grace agreed.

The night held them, and the spring was fully arrived, and somewhere in the nursery corner a silver wolf pup slept in human form and dreamed wolf dreams, and everything was extraordinary and fine and real.