Chapter 226

Sideburns’ deep voice boomed over the square as he announced the opening of the Moon Ceremony and its significance. He was good at making a grand speech. Fucker had been groomed to be the heir since he was born.

While everyone listened intently to his inspirational speech, his words passed through my ears like a cool, autumn wind.

The more he talked, making a big deal out of this spectacular event, the more my stomach twisted into knots. What if I failed to shift while everyone else did at the Alpha Heir’s command? So far, I knew I was the only one in the entire school who hadn’t shifted into my animal form.

I shouldn’t have come with Shade. Now I was going to be the number one embarrassment in public. Before I could come up with an exit plan, a wild wind swept over the square, answered by howls.

Then, all around me, everyone tore away their clothes and began to transform.

One second, they were all human, the next, wolves, bears, panthers, and tigers surrounded me, but wolves held the majority.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Shift! I commanded. Please, wolf, if you’re here. Please just get the fuck out, even if you have to claw your way to the surface. Turn my skin to fur and my face to a muzzle. Just do it!

I didn’t hear a howl inside me to answer my call; not even a whimper. How could I pull something from nothing?

 I tried again, using Danielle and the girls’ method to peek deep within me, my eyes squinting so hard they ached. I groaned when nothing happened.

Still me, the same ol’ Pip, vicious and curious, but none of those qualities could help me shift.

As if they could smell my frustration, every eye, animal and human alike, stared at me, waiting for the last member of the hunting party to shift, so they could run into the forest to hunt.

I darted my panicked gaze around wildly, trying to locate Summer’s and Paris’s wolves, only to be met with a lot of glares and growls. Only the high-ranking shifters hadn’t shifted yet, since they’d let everyone else get a head start. And now I was wasting everyone’s time.

Standing on the terrace, Danielle gestured frantically for me to roll with the punches and just shift.

“Uh?” I shrugged helplessly as chaos crowded my mind like hundreds of buzzing bees.

Shade snapped his fingers and mouthed, “C’mon, Catnip! You got this!”

I got nothing! I clenched my teeth to fend off waves of anxiety slamming into my chest and wiped beads of sweat growing larger on my forehead.

I desperately called to my beast. At this point, I’d settle for shifting into a mouse if I could, but only mocking silence returned my frantic pleas.

Maybe this shifting thing just wasn’t for me. Everyone had mistaken me for a shifter. The joke was on them.

BJ, her cold gaze focused upon me, sneered loudly from the terrace.