“ANDRE!”

  “AAAAANDRE!”

  Andre didn’t slow down even slightly. If anything, he sped up.

  With every step, he felt his busted up toe even less. His stomach churned more aggressively, but his lungs opened and his legs moved even faster.

  He ran away. He pushed past the walls of his prison-like home and the empty words of his mother. He reached for the world beyond where answers waited and experiences existed for everyone as naturally as the grass under his blurring feet.

  The next closest city was sixty miles away. In all his anger and energy he felt like he could run the whole thing. He was sixteen with the physical capability of an olympian. His mother always said he could do more. Her words echoed in the back of his head.

  “More.”

  “You can do more.”

  He did.

  He blasted through bushes. He broke apart walls of intertwining branches in a blur.

  A hill drop-off approached, making it look like the world was falling of a cliff in the distance.

  He ran faster and jumped, soaring above ground before landing at the bottom of the hill. Barefoot and pain free.

  Once again, he was on the move. Every piece of him was focused on going forward.

  Maybe that’s how he missed the trees. The deep scoring on the bark and the clumps of thick brown fur that spun off the trees in his passing.

  He kept going forward. He kept missing it. The shake of the ground. The deep and throaty chuffing sounds inching closer. The absence of all other wildlife.

  In his eagerness and desire, he missed the very same things aimed at him until a paw twice the size of his head was swatting at his back with the force of a car and sending him tumbling through the forest.

  Like a rag-doll, he rolled and rolled until he crashed into a boulder in the forest, sending blinding waves of pain through his shoulder.

  He lay bleeding— barely hearing the starved roars of the beast as it approached. His back sizzled with the pain of deep claw-cuts near his spine. His arms were scrapped and banged black and blue.

  His nostrils flared. He could smell it. Like wet dog and fish. He could feel it beating against the earth. Slowly, his eyes opened and his vision stabilized enough for him to make out the largest grizzly bear he’d ever seen closing in on him.

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  Andre was petrified. All he could do was gasp as the bear suddenly latched onto his shoulder. The thing felt heavier than anything he’d ever experienced. It’s fangs were like dull knives that pierced his skin purely on account of superhuman force.

  Andre screamed in pain. Seemingly loud enough to stun the bear as it shook him, causing it to let go and send him rolling through the forest.

  He rolled to his feet— pulsing with enough adrenaline that he didn’t feel how mangled his arm was.

  The bear spun around, flinging froth and blood from its loose-lipped maw and ran at him again.

  Andre turned and ran—

  The bear swung its massive paw again and tore open his back even further. The impact was so strong he hit the ground face first.

  As the bear descended on him again, he heard his mother calling out to him still.

  “Andre…!? Andre!…….”

  The bear bit into him again.

  “AZLAN!”

  The heat became a fire beneath his skin. Followed by pins and needles everywhere and his stomach writhing like a snake.

  The bear flipped him over in its hungry rampage. Andre went with it. As he rolled over onto his back, he swatted at the bear's face.

  The bear stumbled backward and yelped, shaking its head and revealing one of its eyes had been clawed out.

  Andre was already on his feet. His senses warbled. His muscles twitched. His skin felt odd.

  The bear roared.

  Andre let out a hissing growl. An inhuman sound that caused the bear to stand up and try to intimidate him again.

  Andre charged the bear. More accurately, he felt himself move. It was all so distant.

  The bear came down, trying to stomp him with its massive front paws. Andre dipped left with unnatural grace, skipping past the bears frontside and jumping onto the bears back from the side. As it stood up again, Andre used his only movable arm and dug his nails into its shoulder to hold on. He felt his fingers punch through fur and flesh with ease. It roared. Thick spurts of blood ran down his arm where he could see the skin turning to a dark midnight-blue coloring with circular spots.

  The bear screamed. He could hear the blood flowing in it’s thick neck. He could smell it. It smelled good.

  He lunged, biting into its throat, not thinking much of it. Not thinking at all. Hot blood filled him, pushing him to bite down and force more flows. He bit deep and ripped out chunks until pink muscle flexed and twitched. He removed his hand from it’s shoulder and reached into the hole in it’s neck.

  The bear was going manic.

  Andre reached into it’s neck, pushing past muscle and tendons until he gripped the spine and ripped it out of its neck, tearing it from the brain.

  The bear collapsed almost instantly.

  Andre fell with the bear, rolling back onto his feet before standing up and turning to face the bear.

  Partially crouched. Alert. Still in the throes of an animalistic adrenaline rush, causing him to have a delayed reaction to it all.

  Eventually the taste hit him. His stomach twisted as he tried not to gag. His eyes watered from the pain. His heart froze from the piece of bear spine in his hand. That and the fading sight of bluing skin with leopard-like spots, claws tipping his fingers and muscles relaxing underneath his skin.

  He looked back to the bear where it laid at his feet. Its head was partially disconnected.

  Even as he saw it, he couldn’t believe it. He decapitated a grizzly bear with his hands…

  And teeth.

  “Andre…” His mother gasped as she emerged from the bushes and saw him covered in blood and cuts. Carrying part of a bear spine. His muscles bulged and his eyes. They were undoubtedly feline with slits and a deep green glow.

  “Mom….”

  “I know..” Cora replied.

  Andre stumbled.

  Before he could fall, she was suddenly catching and lifting him up like he weighed nothing.

  With a fading consciousness, he watched her as she walked through the forest, looking around with an intense hypervigilance.

  She looked down at him once with the same slitted eyes and fangs, “We can talk now. About everything. There’s not much choice anymore.”