by Casey Morgan
He’s already gone back home, Ava, I tell myself soberly as I step into the stage lights preparing to take on my role of Dora, just like you wanted. Just like you asked. He’s gone home to his town. Somewhere in the South. He is probably already well on his way there by now, thanks to your insistence he had no place here, or anywhere. Not in your life. And now, you gotta a deal with it. At least until this show’s over. The play fails or succeeds with you and Sarah trying to make up for what will obviously be lacking.
Over these thoughts, I begin to deliver my lines. I tell Edward about the mystery in the village: the missing Christmas presents, the sad children and the thief that’s been spotted dragging them into the forest. I beg him to let us help the children, to change form and use our noses to find the thief and bring him to justice.
Edward speaks his lines, he asks me how I know what I know.
I tell him I do know, based on what I’ve seen with my own eyes, what I have smelt with my own nose. A child who often accompanies me on my errands into town, cried to me because he saw the thief slinking away with a bag full of toys. So together, the child and I watched another’s house to see the thief steal away in the night a sack full of presents.
To this twist on a bit of an old fairytale, I hear some of the audience members laugh. I hear them chuckle uncomfortably about the corrupted reference and congratulate myself on that much. I’m glad that they aren’t hissing or booing my way yet.
Soon, though, the scene ends, and I transition to another one with Sarah. As Edward, she’s just attempted to rob a house of its presents, to use as bait for the thief. I, as Dora, abhor Edward’s actions. I tell him to listen to me and my plan. I want to shift and wait in wolf form outside a house that night and follow the thief on silent paws. Edward doesn’t want to shift and go into town. He fears the possibility that someone in the village will see us and kill us on sight. We fight, and I am forced to go along with his plan to trap the thief with stolen presents.
In between this scene, and the next one of mine, I check my phone. Though I know there is no reason to hope, or to keep checking (I did this when I first became obsessed with Cole, to no avail), I do. I keep searching for some residual energy of his, some mark or sign from him. That he might be coming back to undo my mistake, but there’s nothing.
So, with an even heavier heart, I step into my next scene. It’s nighttime, the thief has taken the bait; he has filled his sac with the presents that Edward stole and taken off into the night. Edward and Dora follow, but he senses us and circles back. Sneaking up on me, the actor who is playing the thief pulls my arms behind my back and wrenches them, so I can’t move. I am his prisoner and he drags me along to his hideout, cursing me the whole way.
With these words, Sarah is due to appear. She’s supposed to come on stage in her wolf costume and transform into a man in front of us, to scare the thief and leave an impression on the audience. The arrival of the fame and feared werewolf happens, but it’s not Sarah.
As I speak her verbal cue, a huge gray wolf steps onto the stage. The same gray wolf I saved a few nights ago and thought had all but disappeared. The wolf walks forward to surprised and pleased murmurs from the audience, but I barely hear them. I’m ensnared in the glowing amber eyes of the wolf. Eyes I more than recognize a similarity to now.
I’m speechless in life, and in the play. I’m supposed to be.
True to his acting ability, the young man playing the thief improvs his fear and shrieking, even though it’s not Sarah in a costume. Impromptu or not, this is an authentic reaction. He actually hates, and fears real wolfs.
But I’m barely paying attention to him, or to the play I’d been so worried about. My eyes and heart are locked on the wolf in front of me. I’m frozen by the chills and supernatural gratitude I feel overwhelming me.
It can’t be, I think, not daring to breathe or hope I’m right. Can it?
***
Cole
Right on cue, right on time, I’ve arrived at the play. I’ve climbed on the stage to the shock and awe of her play and business partner, Sarah. But Sarah doesn’t know it’s me. All she sees is a big gray wolf. I brush past her, smiling and laughing inwardly at her awestruck panic. At her inability to stop me from going onto the stage, and walking through the curtain as she was supposed to.
The thief has just delivered his lines about not being foolish enough to fall for my trap or fall for my plan to bait him and capture him, though he already has.
I step forward, acting like the perfectly trained show animal. I allow the stage lights soak me up, as Ava’s big-as-saucer eyes find me. They do in seconds, and again I smile and laugh inwardly. She looks out of her head, completely and totally gob smacked by the presence of a live wolf. But not just any live wolf. The same live wolf she “rescued” a few days ago, and who is about to transform into the same man who rescued her then, and who is about to rescue her now.
Ava’s speechless for a long moment, and, as the thief begins his theatrics of screaming and pointing at me like I’m the devil, I gracefully transform. I do so under my own will and desire, not with an elaborate costumes or makeup.
I don’t know what the audience members think. Whether this is some kind of elaborate illusion, some miracle performed by the lighting and special effects crew. Whatever they think it is, I make sure they are all enraptured by it. They are entranced by it with a bit of that same magic, and I smile at Ava. I give her the same smile I gave her when we first met.
The shock and speechless quality doesn’t leave her, but I’m not the only one who’s changed in front of someone’s very eyes. She has, too. Her eyes. Her face. Both have had a powerful, subtle transformation in color, and appearance. I feel calm and at peace looking at her, though I know my “character” the role I’ve stepped in to play—feels lust but not trust—for her.
I smile. Chuckle, seeing that Ava knew it was me before I even transformed. She’s understood where that wolf finally went. What finally happened to him. He ended up rooming with Ava, loving her, fucking her, and binding himself to her totally and completely.
I choose this moment to deliver my lines. “So, you don’t believe in my ability to trick you, do you human?” I stroll toward the thief, watching as Ava shivers. The actor playing the thief backs away. He doesn’t have to focus on acting anymore. The fear is really how he feels. “You think you are above falling for any trap I’ve set for you, do you thief?” I close the distance again, willing Ava to see the smile, the love for her in my eyes. “You’ve already fallen for it, foolish boy. You think you captured my mate. Just like I wanted you to. But I was tracking you the whole time and now we will bring you to justice.”
I lean over Ava, release her bonds, and bark at the thief to turn around so I can bind him. Then I proceed to back the thief up against a wall, till he hits a table in his “cottage” delivering the rest of my devious plan.
I lick my lips. I smile widely, showing bigger, thicker teeth. Ava and the thief become transfixed, exactly as they should.
“But not as my evening meal,” I breathe, sniffing him loudly, as the script doesn’t necessarily direct. “But as our breakfast.”
Speaking those lines, I take this play from its jerky, almost-failing orbit and launch it for real—into the stratosphere, where nothing but success and critical acclaim await.
Chapter 20
Ava
Having Cole play the part of Edward the werewolf is an enchanting, ensnaring, empowering experience. From the first moment we meet in the play, all throughout what’s left of the first act, and through the second act, where our relationship ruptures and complicates, where he has me begging him not to hurt the thief, all of that blurs by. As we deliver our lines back and forth, I’m feeling healed and whole.
Our fight for dominance is gone and, in its place, I feel peace. I feel control over my anger and acceptance, even when the script demands that Cole and I have a fight onstage. We start a shouting match over whether I’m good or obedient enoug
h for him. Whether it’s fair or just for me to have to prove my love and devotion to him by following every order he gives, and weather I deserve to be expelled from his home due to my disobedience. In all of this, I channel my own sadness and my own confusion and rage, something I don’t technically feel for Cole anymore, but I know everything about.
And Cole, he plays his part beautifully, too. He has no trouble channeling his own rage at me and at the situation. If it weren’t for the small glow of love and pride in his eyes, I might actually think he was that pissed. Part of me says he is, for telling him he doesn’t deserve me in real life like I’m about to now in the play, but I forgive myself for it. I tell myself he’s forgiven me, based on the light and love shadowing in his gaze.
Our onstage fight reaches a crescendo, and I bolt off to the opposite side of the stage, while Cole takes the other. As I do, I want nothing more than to meet with him behind the stage itself, but I know I can’t risk that now. Not when we have the third act to head into. The act in which I am captured by the guard, threatened with death, and have to wait for Edward’s mercy and love to save me.
I’m anxious going into this part of the play. I’m fearful and sad in real life, and in character. Which works for me, as I don’t have to work to feel the panic and tears I don’t actually feel. The feelings are right there, ready for me to use and manipulate. Ready for me to throw at Edward, begging and pleading for him to save me and take me with him. Begging him to free me, to let me shift and run with him into the woods, so that we can just find a place to live our lives happily, secluded and away from everything and everyone.
Cole, true to the words I wrote for Edward, says that’s not possible. Not only will we be hunted anyway, no matter where we run and hide to, but he can’t love a mate who doesn’t obey him.
I cry and scream at him, letting him hear some portion of the despair I actually felt this evening, when I realized I might be kept apart from him forever. That I might have made the biggest mistake of not only this life, but of lifetimes upon lifetimes.
To my sound of anguish, I see Cole tremble. He almost breaks down, as the script says he should. I see him fight with himself, with being strong and immovable.
I also see that our audience has filled out. There are now more people watching then there are seats to hold them. They stretch on through parts of the theater, crowding some aisles and walkways. I noticed this with pride and joy. Something I’m not allowed to show right now, but log into my soul for later. Despite all my fears of this play not panning out, it seems to be gaining in success, in popularity.
Turning my attention back to the script and the part I have in it, I allow myself to cry. I scream at Cole, playing Edward who is visiting me in prison, and jab my finger at him. “Then you’re sentencing me to death, you damn werewolf! You’re sentencing me to become a bone for all these assholes to chew on, not the love of your life! Not someone worthy of your love and devotion, or the same in return! Why can’t you accept me as I am?” Delivering these lines, I storm off, giving one last agonized cry before I fall silent, and the scenes change.
The church, the true villain in the story, gets erected through a variety of sets before my eyes. I’m guided onstage by several guards after a slight pause, my hands bound. Right on cue, the moment we step past one particular piece of set and scenery, the priest of the village, my soon-to-be executioner, steps forward. He demands to know if I’m a werewolf, who my alpha is, and tells me that I had better turn him over for execution.
I deliver my line of defiance and prepare my heart and soul for the worst part of this play. Edward comes running to rescue me and gets captured himself. As I start to anguish over being in chains, and watching Cole be put in chains and ropes as well, I hope I’ve made the right decision. I hope the ending I wrote is worthy of the play we’ve gone through for the last few hours.
As I begin to role-play my grief and my fear, Cole, as Edward, starts speaking. At first, I barely hear him, and then his words grow into a torrent of love. Of strength. Of the truth he spoke to me once before, that he’s speaking to me now, so I truly hear him.
“Dora,” he says urgently, struggling with his binds, “do not let them tame you. Do not let them control you. Tie you down. Intimidate you into dying away. Do not let anyone chase you into the shadows anymore, Dora. Not even me.” My heart thumps in my chest, feeling like a cyclone, like a twister or tornado on its highest, deadliest level. “Dora, listen to me. You are not a helpless, powerless woman. Not anymore.”
As he says this, I feel my actual blood surge. I’m filled with lust, hatred for anyone and everything touching or hurting my alpha, my husband, I do something I never could have planned for—in writing or in life. I start to snarl, and make a dry, warning sound in the back of my throat. As I do, Cole smiles warily and tiredly, but also full of confidence and mirth.
“You are a werewolf, Dora. You have been all your life. You were the moment you decided to not run in fear, but instead run into my arms. You found your true self the moment you decided to embrace me as not only a man, but as a lover. A husband forever.” As he speaks, his voice becomes emotional.
This emotion stirs me up further, making me feel anxious. Under his words, I’ve started to feel shifts gripping my body. The liquid, magical twist of my human body turning into something more wild and wonderful holds me like a vice. I shift into the werewolf I’ve just started having memories of turning into the night before. The one who prowled my apartment. My brain and body fight this transformation, fearing and loathing it.
Cole speaks to me, as if he knows and can see. “Stop fighting it. Stop denying me, Dora. You’ve hidden yourself away. You blocked yourself into a mortal, suffering existence to try to escape pain. But you’ve only created more. And what’s worse, you’ve created confusion. A splintering within yourself.” Under these words, I moan, sigh and whimper, beginning to unleash some of the chains in my soul, in my body, that are keeping me from becoming my true self. “Stop fighting me. Stop fighting who you are. What we are together, and what we can be again, if you stop being ruled by terror and the need to control. Stop being ruled by the injuries done to you.”
With these words, I unleash the wolf within me. My teeth elongate, and I gnash my fangs. Though I’m afraid of what the audience makes of seeing all this, they seem transfixed. They are amazed by the special effects or by the makeup job or something. Some silly, human explanation for something very obviously inhuman and unnatural happening before them.
I don’t question it, or the people on stage I know are freaking the fuck out right now in real life but are hiding it in playing their roles.
Trotting up to Cole in wolf form, I snap the ropes easily with my werewolf strength. He changes into wolf form, so that we are the same. I pull the ropes off of him and rub against him, before biting him, out of love and irritation. A motion that says, “I still love and hate you, Cole,” as he then pushes me to my feet, and we run away. Run off stage.
We do only momentarily. We circle back around, as the lights are changed to make it look like a full moon pouring down on us and we shift to human form. Walking together on stage, we cling together. As we do, I know exactly how this damn play needs to end. I kiss him. I climb his body like vines on a tower and consume him. I wrap him in every bit of my body, as he submits to it all.
I kiss and nibble him, saying my lines—lines I come up with on the spot—flawlessly. “In life or in death, Edward, I will always love you. I will always be your wife. I will always be your mate, whether that’s in this century or in the next. No matter how long we live, or how much society is determined to change slowly and incrementally, I am proud. I am blessed to call you my own.” I pause, choking back actual tears. Things Cole brushes from my cheeks. “My love forevermore.”
With that, the lights go down, and I’m left where I really want to be. In Cole’s arms getting drowned in kisses and feeling a bit of hard wood growing between us. It’s something I’d like to seek refuge in
more than bask in the praise I know I’m due, but the applause soon becomes too deafening to ignore, and Cole and I have no choice. We have to move into the praise for “The Wolf Who Saved Christmas”, it’s successful, flagship production and soak it up. We bask in it.
Cole releases me, putting a hand on my ass as he walks forward to take a bow with me. As he does, I hear his baritone loveliness in my ear, “Wonderful, luv. Congratulations. We’ve both been waiting for that ending for a long, long time.” As we bow, I see a bright, crystal tear cut down his cheek.
And we finally got it, I think, bracing myself against tears of joy and the rousing, thundering applause. And now no one can ever take that away. Not now, not ever again.
For hours, it seems, the praise and congratulations continue to flow. It continues to come mine and Cole’s way, though I want nothing more than to disappear with him somewhere. Preferably a dark and lonely place, where we can continue all that bad, delicious kissing and touching we started at the end of the play.
I’m still riled up from it, still feeling hot and bothered, and it’s not helped by the sideways glances, the mischievous grins Cole keeps giving me out of the corner of my eye. The squeezes and pinches he gives to my ass. The way he keeps slipping his fingers down past the waistband on my pants and underwear, every time someone comes to give me a word of praise, and I bow out of gratitude.
But, just when I think I might be able to sneak away with him, and finally have my own special “after party,” my mother appears out of the crowd. My adopted mother. She walks forward, full of tears and congratulations for me. And also, over two dozen roses in her hands. She’s a classy old lady, looking like she belongs in the twenties or thirties, not in this time and place. She’s got short, white hair, piercing green eyes and a sculpted, beautiful face. Audrey Hepburn beautiful, except expertly aged. She hugs and kisses me, as I take the first dozen roses, and Cole takes the other.
