Guiding werewolf

11-22-25
The ring slid onto my finger like it had been waiting its whole life for me: size 10½, cold metal kissing skin, the faint click of the hidden compartment closing again. I’d already decided. No half-measures, no romance-novel brooding. I wanted the real thing, the kind that makes people scream before they even understand what they’re seeing.
I sat on the edge of the bed in the dark, heart hammering so hard I could taste iron. My thumb found the tiny catch on the inside of the band (just a flick) and the lid opened with a sigh. A single drop of something black and viscous rolled onto my tongue before I could second-guess myself. It tasted like burnt pine and old blood.
The first thing I chose was the pain. I wanted to feel every inch of it, no gentle fade-to-black. It started in my gums, a white-hot bloom, like someone drove nails through the roots of my teeth. They lengthened, pushing forward, canines first, then the rest crowding in behind them until my mouth didn’t fit my face anymore. I laughed (or tried to) and it came out wet and wrong.
Next, the spine. I’d always hated being short. The vertebrae cracked like knuckles, one by one, stacking higher, forcing me upright even as my knees buckled. My shirt split down the back with a sound like tearing canvas. I felt the new weight of muscle layering itself over bone, heavy and eager, the kind of strength that doesn’t ask permission.
I picked the pelt last because I wanted to watch it happen. It started at the sternum: coarse black guard hairs punching through skin in perfect rows, spreading outward in a wave. Silver tipped each strand, catching the streetlight leaking through the blinds. My chest barreled, ribs flaring to make room for lungs that suddenly needed twice the air. The fur raced down my arms, over knuckles already splitting into black claws. I flexed my fingers and listened to the talons click together.
The face was the worst and the best. I felt the muzzle push forward in a slow, wet grind (cartilage snapping into new shapes, nose flattening and widening, nostrils flaring to drink the night). My ears slid upward, stretching into tall points that swiveled at every sound. Vision bled into monochrome but sharpened until I could count the threads in the curtains across the room.
I’d chosen the mind, too. No losing myself, no tragic beast-within. I kept every thought, every memory, every dark little want I’d ever buried. They just got louder. Hungrier.
When it was done, I stood in the wreckage of my bedroom clothes in shreds on the floor, mirror reflecting something out of an old woodcut nightmare. Eight feet tall, maybe more. Shoulders broad enough to block the doorway. Eyes the color of late-autumn moons.
I opened my mouth and tested the voice I’d picked: low, rough, human words dragged over gravel. Perfect.
The city was waiting, and tonight I wasn’t late for anything anymore. I stepped over the sill, claws ticking against the fire escape, and dropped into the alley below. The ring glinted once in the dark (still on my finger, still 10½) like it was smiling.
I smiled back with too many teeth and started running.
This story is by the person who owned it second. It is now up for sale as they are happy with what they are. This is the only time I have offered this.