Chapter Thirty-one: The Ceremony

“Hello all, welcome to our monthly ceremony of the new Moon, where we will watch her rise and provide the latest announcements for the pack…..and as such she has already started.” Elder Irish says whilst pointing to the other side of the lake, where we see the tip of the Moon appear on the horizon.

Elder Wright looks at me and wiggles his fingers telling me to come forward. I give Lukas a small look before walking up to the Elders and standing in-between Elder Irish and Elder Wright. Elder Wyatt keeps his eyes on me but doesn’t move from the side and has a poker face, giving none of his thoughts away.

I stand beside the Elders and look towards the rest of the pack. There must be hundreds of wolves here. I expected a few to turn up but not the majority. I see Melinda and Markus, along with all of the ranked members and their families at the front.

My palms start to get a bit sweaty as I think about what’s about to happen. I hear the Elders shuffling slightly beside me before Elder Wrights booming voice takes over.
“Today is not just our normal new Moon gathering with some of our normal announcements. No, today we officially welcome the Alpha’s mate, Aliana.
Aliana has come to us under, rather strange circumstances. She was not born or is accustomed to our ways, so we will all take the time to greet her, and respect her, and we will all help her learn our ways.
Another reason why today is special is because Aliana will shift for the first time, into her wolf, who she has only met recently.”

Quite a few gasps and confused stares were aimed at me. I look towards the floor as I don’t want to face the questions I’m sure they’ll all be thinking. Luckily the Elders haven’t said anything further, and I'm glad they didn’t call me Luna and have respected the decision I’ve not quite made yet.

Elder Irish moves away for a moment and grabs a silver gown from behind us and unfolds it from its neatly folded structure, and passes it to me.

“There’s no need to remove any of your clothes, but you can wear this if you want.” He whispers to me, trying to ensure no one but us hears his words. I smile, it’s as if he knew I’d be slightly afraid and unsure, all new to the whole nudity thing.

“Thank you Elder. Will my clothes not be ruined?” I look at him and around us, a bit unsure where I’m meant to get undressed. I can’t say I’m bothered if they were to be destroyed, but I’d rather that then strip in front of everyone here.

“Yes, they will tear, but that’s no issue. I’m sure the Alpha will provide much more.” He says while giving me a warm smile and a wink.

I feel sad that the lovely blue garments will be destroyed, but I’m excited to see what Athena looks like.

I look at the other two Elders who are watching my interaction with Elder Irish, obviously interested in my transformation. I then turn to face the crowd that’s gathered who are also watching with interest, probably to see what colour wolf their Alphas mate, or potential Luna will be.

I look at Lukas who mouths I’m with you, which relaxes me slightly and I end up releasing some tension I didn’t realise I had building up.

I put the gown on over my clothes, just because I know it’s a tradition here and I don’t want to seem like too much of an outsider to the wolves here. The gown feels silky over my arms and hands which gives me slight chills sliding against my skin.

I look to the Moon which is rising in the sky that is now turning into a darker hue of blue. It’s risen fairly quickly that I can now see the large reflection of it in the lake below us. I take a deep breath and close my eyes, trying to focus my mind on looking for Athena so she can take over.

“I’m with you Aliana. Are you ready for this? Once we start, I can’t guarantee I can stop.” She says warmly to me. I can tell she’s as excited as I am but we’re both also unsure on how painful this will be.

“Yes. Let’s do this. I can’t wait any longer and I want you to be free too. Let’s experience this together.” I say, adamant we’ll get through this.

I feel her take some control, and I felt more like I was in the back seat in my own mind. I felt like I was in a space I had never been into before, looking in from the outside. I could feel Athena’s power surge through my body, and we both felt a shot of electric run through the course of my body, getting it ready for change. That’s when the first wave hit.

We grunted in pain, and I could hear both my own voice and a slightly altered voice make its way through our mouth. We looked at Lukas who looked a bit uncomfortable, but felt a sort of power coming from him, so we endured it.

We looked at our hands and saw our fingers shrink and fatten slightly, our nails curving and moving more into our….paws?

The next wave of pain came through, this one even more unbearable. We could see the end of our nose elongating, and we had no choice but to double over as our legs got shorter and multiple bones were breaking and being re-shaped at once. We both screamed in pain as it felt like our insides were on fire, and I could feel tears running from my eyes.

The pain was like nothing I had had before.

Our breathing was erratic and my head hurt really bad we had no choice but to close our eyes from the pain my body was going through.

Our body kept convulsing, and eventually I could feel hair…no, fur sprouting from different parts of my body. The pain started to slowly ebb away from my body, and I started to feel a new kind of power rushing through my veins.

I kept trying to find Athena but the pain was still unbearable. I could feel where my arms and legs were but they felt strange, as if they were in the wrong place. Well, I guess they were for me, but this is not just my body anymore, its Athena’s as well.

We took a deep breath, which again felt weird. We moved ourselves into a lying down position, waiting for the pain to subside. It now felt like the transformation was complete, but we just wanted to allow ourselves a few minutes to readjust. We take a few breaths, trying to slow down our racing heart.

“Are you ok Athena? That was….horrible.” I state, glad that it was over with.

“Yes…that was painful for us both. Let’s hope it’s not too bad on the way back.” We both hate to think about it but we can’t stay in wolf form forever.

I allow Athena to take full control of her wolf body, and she stands up on all four paws, shakes her head, getting used to her body and we stand, in the exact same spot we started our transformation. She feels each of her limbs out, one, two, three, four….five? Oh, we have a tail. Athena feels giddy and I can’t help but feel a bit ecstatic with her.

She opens her eyes, and we’re met with faces of shock with mouths wide open, a few gasps and murmurs when she opened them. Everyone but Elder Wyatt, who has a slight smile on his face.

She stands there for a few moments, and no one moved. She looks to Lukas who also has a shocked expression on. What? What is going on? Oh Goddess I hope I’m not ugly Athena and I both think simultaneously.

Athena looks at Lukas and give him a sort of side glare, hoping he understands we have no idea what’s going on. She then looks towards the Elders but they also just stand there with their mouths open, unusual expressions on their face, probably unsure what to say.

She looks to Elder Wyatt who seems to be the only one in our vicinity with an expression that was not shock, so he moves towards us, walks past us and goes to the side of the podium and pulls out a thin rectangular object.

I was a bit unsure what it was at first, as the back looked like it was just made of something similar to cardboard. But when the Elder Wyatt smiled and turned it round, I could see it was a mirror he’s pulled out, which he pointed at us so we could see.

We could see ourselves clearly now, and can now understand why everyone’s been staring, shocked. No wonder.

Athena was a large pure white wolf, with the same deep blue eyes as our human form.