I played it.
Julie stood in the same living room I had seen in pictures from family dinner. She smiled into the camera, wearing a tank top and shorts, raised both hands in a tiny flourish, and transformed.
The white wolf from the patio photograph appeared. The fur at the end of its tail remained faintly lavender. Julie’s wolf turned in a slow circle, then sat with its front paws aligned and its head tilted toward the person filming.
“Six-point-eight seconds,” someone – Hilary, I assumed – said from behind the camera.
The wolf’s tail thumped against the floor, and the video ended.
My legs weakened, and I sank onto the stool at my small kitchen table.
Byron: Mom had a head start.
Julie: Preparation is part of competition, darling.
Byron: This challenge lacks standardized conditions.
A few minutes later, a third video arrived.
Byron stood in a tidy bedroom. Behind him, the books on the bookshelves had been arranged by subject. He put his phone down, then stepped back far enough for the camera to capture his entire body.
“I can’t let my mom win this challenge uncontested.”
His change took longer than Julie’s, though only by a few seconds. His wolf had dark gray fur with a pale patch beneath its chin, and a leaner build. He transformed back before the video ended, his clothes magically reappearing with no rips or holes in them.
I covered my mouth as more videos kept coming.
Mason shifted in a home gym, then immediately checked the stopwatch he had placed on the floor.
Someone I barely knew of sent a video of herself changing into a brown wolf while two small children cheered from a porch.
The videos came too quickly to have been generated in response to my request. Their backgrounds matched homes and personal details already shown in the group chat. The transformations differed from person to person. Some were quick. Some looked uncomfortable. One man lost his balance halfway through and returned to human form sitting on the floor of his bathroom.
Grandma Ruth: YOU ARE ALL PREDICTABLE. ANYTHING TO WIN A COMPETITION.
Trevor: who won
Grandma Ruth: JULIE.
Mason: No.
Grandma Ruth: SHE LOOKED NICEST.
Byron: That was not the metric.
Grandma Ruth: IT IS NOW.
Karen: Everyone stop spamming videos. Some of us are trying to salvage the evening without forty notifications about shift speeds.
Trevor: @Karen live a little auntie
Karen: I am living. Prudently.
Hilary: That’s enough. Everyone put the phones away for the night.
Trevor: yes alpha
Mason: orders received, alpha
Byron: Understood.
Karen: Finally, some authority.
Okay. So. Werewolves existed.
The Blackwell family wasn’t part of some role-playing community. They weren’t dog enthusiasts who had taken an inside joke too far. They were people who turned into wolves, and Hilary was their alpha – whatever the hell that meant.
I had been exchanging memes with werewolves. I had reminded a werewolf to drink water. I had flirted with a werewolf!
The last thought hit with enough force that I stood again.
Hudson.
Hudson had told me that sometimes he shifted on the ridge trail. I’d figured he was referring to getting away from work, shifting to another frame of mind.
My phone vibrated with a private message from him.
Hudson: You created chaos.
I looked at it for several seconds. Then another appeared.
Hudson: Mason is demanding an appeals process for determining the winner.
Under any other circumstances, I would have laughed. Instead, I pictured the mountain ridge in his profile image and tried to imagine him transforming there. I didn’t know what his face looked like, but now my mind supplied fur, paws, teeth, and the kind of physical power that could turn an ordinary trail into something wild.
Butterflies surged through my stomach. Apparently, my terror had poor boundaries.
Sloane: I may have underestimated how competitive everyone is.
My fingers felt disconnected from the words.
Hudson: You encouraged Trevor to film a shift beside open resin containers.
Sloane: I didn’t know about the resin containers. Is that dangerous?
Hudson: Mostly just to the carpet.
He was still Hudson.
That shouldn’t have been comforting because I had no idea who Hudson really was, obviously. He could become an animal large enough to hunt deer. He belonged to a hidden society with councils and secrecy laws.
I tapped on the group information and stared at the
Leave Group button until it began to blur.
I had to press it. This was no longer a harmless misunderstanding. I had entered a secret supernatural community under another person’s identity. I knew information that they went to considerable lengths to conceal. They’d just manipulated an entire school so they wouldn’t be exposed.
If they discovered the truth, leaving the chat might become the least of my problems.
My thumb hovered above the button.
I pictured my life before Grandma Ruth accidentally added me to
THE PACK. Silent mornings. Reading through client emails. YouTube playing in the background to break that silence. A tray of cupcakes, and nobody to share them with.
The loneliness hadn’t disappeared completely, but it no longer filled every corner. Leaving would be safer. It would also return me to the life I had before.
My thumb kept hovering until the screen dimmed. I put my phone down and went to my desk. For the next hour, I researched werewolves with the same intensity I’d put into figuring out if a symptom was a mild cold or a rare terminal disease.
The first search returned folklore, a list of movies, role-playing forums, and a surprising number of businesses called Werewolf Fitness.
I refined the query.
Real shapeshifters evidence.
That took me to conspiracy sites.
One claimed the British royal family transformed into reptiles. Another argued that every professional basketball player over six-foot-seven was part wolf. A third offered a forty-eight-page downloadable report for $19.99 and accepted cryptocurrency.
Shaking my head, I closed out of the window and tried again.
Humans transforming into wolves real video.
Most results were special effects tutorials.
I watched several, looking for evidence that any of the clips I’d seen might be reproducible. The best transformations had obvious cuts, digital warping, and altered lighting, which none of the videos in the group chat featured.
My hands started trembling again.
Patty messaged me while I was reading a forum post titled
Ten Signs Your Neighbor May Be a Lycanthrope.
Patty: You have created a monster.
I stared at the words.
Sloane: Trevor?
Patty: Byron. Julie texted me and said he’s timing himself over and over in the basement and shouting every result upstairs.
A photograph followed. It showed a digital stopwatch resting beside a pile of discarded clothing and a handwritten chart labeled
SHIFT TIMES – OFFICIAL.
Patty: Julie keeps walking past and asking if he wants pointers from her.
I laughed. The sound escaped before I could decide whether laughing was appropriate when confronted with proof of supernatural life.
Sloane: I’m sorry.
Patty: I’m not. This is the best thing that’s happened all week.
Patty: Also, Trevor got resin in his tail fur.
Sloane: Is he okay?
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