It was almost 1 o'clock at night, and Helen opened her eyes as her boyfriend walked into their bedroom. She was already under the covers, Chris on the other hand had just arrived from going out with a few friends. The love couple were both still in their early 20's, so it wasn't uncommon for them to just head to the city with friends, as both of them were still studying. They shared the same study, that was where they met.
Chris noticed Helen was still awake, and came near her, brushing her brown, curled hair away from her face. "I'm sorry sweetheart. Did I wake you up?" Chris asked. Helen just shrugged as an answer. "I'll get ready for bed too." He said.
Quickly, Chris jumped out of his clothes, leaving him with only his shorts and t-shirt, and he slid underneath the covers. He noticed Helen was shaking, her teeth gritted, but not showing, as her mouth was closed. Chris noticed how cold she was and spread his arms around Helen, spooning her, so she would warm up. Because of this, he couldn't see Helen's panicked expression on her face. Even though she was a bit in a daze just earlier, her eyes were now wide open, realizing how cold she was, even with the covers over herself. Her whole body was stiff, she was barely able to move a muscle, let alone stand up to look for somewhere hot. As time progressed, the tension was softened a bit, thanks to the comforting warmth Chris was emitting. He'd fallen a sleep as soon as he closed his eyes, and she didn't want to wake him up anymore. A tear flowed out of the corner of her eye, and she soon also dozed in again.
...
Chris woke up thanks to the movement on his left side. The first thing he saw, was Helen sitting upright in her bed, looking down at herself. Her arms were still clamped around her middle, clarifying that she was still seemingly freezing. That same thing he'd noticed the night before. She was clapping her teeth all the time and twisted in her sleep a lot.
Now also sitting upright, still looking at Helen's face, he asked what he wanted to ask for a while. "Helen, are you alright?" His girlfriend slowly turned at him, the muscles in her neck as tense as any other body-part. As Helen faced Chris, he looked into very unfamiliar eyes...
The eyes couldn't be unseen. Hers were wide open, even with the dimmed light coming from outside, her now yellow eyes almost seemed as if they were emitting light by themselves. Chris was staring in those fearing, hypnotizing eyes, looking at how the pupils were slit like those of a snake. Helen's mouth was half open, and as Chris looked in it he could clearly see her teeth. Were these... fangs?
Helen saw how her boyfriend spotted the fangs inside her mouth, and quickly closed it. With that came a reflex she had only felt before a few times, all of them this morning, as she woke up. The scent of their room was picked up as her now forked tongue had a mind on its own and slid out of her mouth, the aroma filling her brain. It was why she hung her mouth open a bit, because of it, that reflex wasn't needed to taste the air, her new tongue just did so anyway. She looked at Chris, whose surprise had grown even bigger, and she quickly put her hands before her mouth, showing an even clearer sign of the obvious fact that she'd changed.
Chris was with one foot out of bed, ready to run away if he needed to. His girlfriend had just stuck her tongue out at him, not in a sexy way a girl could, but out of... instinct? Her tongue, he saw, had become forked, and looked as blue, thus as cold, as she had to be right now. She wasn't alert at all, and as Chris had already long seen her tongue flicking in and out of her mouth, she quickly put her claws in front of her mouth, still trembling, the claws twitching.
Then Chris looked down at where she looked in the first place. She was wearing the pajamas she casually wore, shirt with short sleeves, same went for her pajama pants, but looking down now, one of the holes in her pants had no function, while the other was stretched out to its limit. Emerging from underneath the covers, was a massive tail, all leather and muscle, looking exactly like that of a snake...
Helen had to face it, her body cold, even colder as her boyfriend observed her in a state she'd never been in before. She braced herself for how Chris would react.