The Reluctant Wolf: A Paranormal Romance (Werewolves and Shifters)

by Susan G Charles

  Chapter 7

  The two moonlit nights came and went – Morgan hurriedly packed up the third morning and headed for home. He couldn’t get there fast enough. As soon as the sun rose on that third morning he started grabbing his things and stuffing them into his car as fast as he could– no rhyme or reason was needed, just get it all in there and go, that’s all he was thinking. If anyone had been taping him as he packed his car it would have definitely been a Youtube favorite.

  Morgan sped home like a demon, almost cutting the trip in half time wise. Finally, he got to the house he shared with Bailey, pulled into the driveway, threw the car into park, flew out of the front seat without even closing the drivers side door and ran up to the front door without even unpacking. He never even noticed that her car was gone. He selected the front door key from all the other ones on his keyring as he was running up the stairs, put it in the lock, turned it and pushed open the door. The house was quiet. Too quiet for this time of the morning.

  “Babe, I’m home.” Morgan shouted in his best 50′s house husband voice.

  No answer.

  “Bailey? Where are you, hon?” he asked as he slowly walked deeper into their home.

  “Bailey… are you in the shower?” he asked.

  No answer.

  He walked past the living room and kitchen and headed for the back of the house. “Bailey?”

  Still no answer.

  Finally he made it back to the bedroom they shared where he noticed that her clothes were all gone because the closet and dressers were empty with doors standing wide open. At that point it hit him – she had left him days ago. Her scent was faint – he instinctively knew she had been gone for at least two days. And with that realization Morgan slowly pulled out his cell phone and dialed her number without even thinking as his hands trembled. He could hear the phone ring long before he put it to his ear.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” was all Bailey said, then instantly she hung up.

  “Dammit, dammit, dammit,” Morgan said to himself as the tears formed in his eyes and slid down his non-shaven face, getting caught up in his stubble. He dialed her once again hoping to talk to her this time.

  As soon as she answered his call she hung up without a single word. She did this to him 3 more times. Finally on the fifth try she answered. As soon as she answered on the other end he started, “Baby, please…”

  “I still don’t want to talk to you. I told you – please respect my wishes. Don’t contact me again.” Bailey replied, her voice was a distant, emotionless whisper.

  Morgan responded, “Baby, please…“

  Bailey hung up on him again. He hit redial immediately. The phone rang and rang but no one answered this time. Finally, it just went to her voice mail. Her usual cheery message came on and he hung up long before her message finished, completely defeated. He didn’t know what to say to her and she had made it completely clear that she was not in the mood to have a conversation with him. So he simply did nothing.

  He stood there a long time, unable to believe that she wouldn’t talk to him. He was in total shock at the events of this morning and all that had happened for the past few days. He just stood in there for a few minutes though it seemed like forever. Overwhelmed, he simply yelled – and then he yelled again, five or six times – a sound that echoed over and over throughout the empty house.

  Afterward he lost it – he pulled over several pieces of furniture, and just started wrecking everything in the house, not stopping until he was done. Then he collapsed on the floor and just lay there with his head in his hands and cried like a little baby for the better part of an hour.

  Days came and went, and eventually turned into weeks, since he had last talked to Bailey. He had tried repeatedly but she hadn’t answered since that one day almost a month ago. Morgan simply went through the motions of getting up, going to work, then coming home. He looked terrible and it was evident that he had switched his mind off, hardly ate, and wasn’t getting any sleep at all. By the time the next full moon came round again, he just stayed at home because he simply had no reason to leave.

  The transformation that night was fast and bloodlust took over his body in just a few minutes. There would be no holding back now – Morgan, now a werewolf, went out into the night and satisfied his cravings in a way he hadn’t allowed him self to do in years. But without Bailey he simply did not care what happened. That was the first full moon without her.

  By the time the second full moon came around he was completely exhausted. He hardly ever slept anymore, he refused to eat (other than when he was a wolf), he stopped working, hadn’t shaved in weeks and just looked terrible. A starvation diet was the path he had chosen to not only rid himself of the wolf but to rid the world of him as well. Finally, the time had come and the change happened quickly. But the wolf was weak and cranky and ready to search for food.

  As the wolf he decided to find his old mate though so he ran through the night to find her old house, the one she lived in before they had gotten together years ago. That was the only place he thought she might be even though he had never been inside the house itself. The wolf didn’t want to kill her. He just wanted to be near her. Even the wolf ached for Bailey though Morgan was unaware of it. She had been his only relief in life, and without her he knew he wouldn’t carry on. Soon enough he would be dead.

  As soon as the wolf found the old house he paced up and down in front of it all night long, growling and grunting as he fought his urges to enter and meet her face to face. His horrible howling could be heard for miles. He hadn’t been there but for a few minutes before he realized that she was inside, he could hear her heartbeat, smell her scent now and his heart ached with every pitiful howl.

  Finally, the next morning, after the night of the full moon, he transformed back into a man right there in her own yard. He was so weak due to his bad eating habits, lack of exercise and terrible sleeping patterns over the past two months that he only had the strength to lie on her grass, completely nude, breathing in shallow gasps. He didn’t care what would happen to him now – at this point he hoped someone would come by and just finish him off.

  He went in and out of consciousness as he lay there in the early morning sun. What seemed like hours to him was really only minutes. The next thing he remembered was hearing the front door of the house squeak as it opened. He struggled to move, to get out of sight but he was simply too weak to move in his current state. The next thing he saw, before he completely lost all consciousness, was Bailey walking across the yard with a blanket in her hands. Tears covered her cheeks as she bent to cover his nakedness with the blanket. Then he was out.

  Hours later, as the mid afternoon sunshine peaked through the curtains, he awoke, somehow finding his way to his own bed. How did that happen? Did he manage to get home on his own? Had he only dreamed the other stuff about Bailey and the blanket? He was so totally confused.

  He knew by scent that he was at home. In his own bed. Dressed only in his pajama bottoms. He smelled again – a wonderful aroma wafted through the house and he immediately recognized it was coffee. He rolled over and found a saucer with toast on it and a cup of cold black coffee next to it. Bailey was here! He immediately sat up, hoping against hope that she was out in the kitchen having a cup of coffee herself. But after a few seconds of careful listening he realized that really the house was empty other than him. The same way it had been for the past couple of lonely months.

  Chapter 8

  Three full moons after “the incident” Bailey was awakened again by the same kind of mournful howl that awoke her in the past. And it was very close! Instinctively she grabbed her silver dagger from her bedside table and immediately strapped it to her leg. She didn’t wait for the wolf to enter her home this time, but immediately ran to her attic, pulled down the folding door and climbed up the stairs where she pulled the door shut behind her. In less than two minutes she was safely inside her attic where she closed the latch she had installed a few weeks back on
the attic door behind her.

  Bailey knew that the wolf knew exactly where she was, but she wanted to make it as difficult as humanly possible for the wolf to find her inside her own home. And to her knowledge, wolves still couldn’t operate door latches. So she felt fairly safe with her new addition. Barely a split second had passed as she shut the trapdoor behind her before she heard a crash as the wolf jumped through her bedroom window.

  She sat there in the comfortable dark, breathing hard yet trying to be as quiet as possible, the adrenaline still pumping through her veins. She was safe, she kept telling herself over and over. As soon as the sunrise comes back around she would be fine. So she sat there in the dark listening to the sounds of her home being torn apart by the creature.

  This month was different though, because the wolf had other plans that she was unaware of. As soon as Bailey locked herself up in her attic, the wolf went outside and jumped onto her roof. Bailey sat there quietly and just listened, what else could she do at this point? After a few minutes of what seemed like searching from out on the roof she heard a scratching sound begin directly above her head. And then it got more intense. Almost like a polar bear scratching after a seal pup underneath the snow.

  She sat there in horror and did her best to wrestle the trap door open again. She didn’t want the wolf to hear her exiting the attic if at all possible so she did it as fast and as quietly as possible. But she managed to get it open and was halfway down the folding stairs when the wolf changed position suddenly, jumped off the roof and charged in through her bedroom window. It immediately jumped at her with teeth bared, but she was ready. Without even thinking she instantly pulled the silver dagger from her leg strap and stabbed it in the side as she pushed its body away in mid leap.

  The wolf screamed in pain, then fell into a shuddering heap on the floor. Then, right there, in front of her eyes, the wolf started… shrinking? Was this possible, Bailey thought to herself? Something weird was obviously happening to it but she wasn’t exactly sure what. Its fur was quickly receding all over the animals body and its entire face was changing in shape. The next thing she noticed were its claws… transforming into… hands? Were those human hands?

  Minutes later, once the transformation was completely finished, Bailey gasped in horror… Morgan was lying on her floor, bleeding furiously from his side. Morgan had been the wolf hunting her. It was too much to take in. How could this happen? And why would he want to hurt her? She didn’t know what to do next so she just stood there for a few minutes. She was in shock.

  After a bit she managed to get herself back together and instinctively crouched next to the man she once loved, looking at the wound she had given him, not realizing that it was him, her right hand stroking his scruffy cheek. She grabbed some curtains from the floor, shook out the broken glass and pressed them hard against the wound on his side that was bleeding freely by now. He looked terrible. He was thin, super white, unshaven for weeks and frail looking plus had circles under his eyes all the way down to his chin. He moaned at her touch and kind of smiled… but didn’t open his eyes.

  Bailey continued to hold the fabric firmly against the wound with one hand and touched his forehead with the other. Next, she closed her eyes and concentrated like she had never concentrated before, forcing all her healing energy into him. He was almost like a battery that needed a charge and she was the charger. But in his current state she wondered just how much she would be able to help him – and that wasn’t even taking the fresh wound into consideration.

  She sat there quietly, not aware of how long, simply holding the bandages in place as she kept constant contact with his skin – first the forehead, now one of his arms. The entire endeavor took a lot out of her… and it took a really long time too. For a while she feared she wouldn’t be able to help him, but finally, an hour or so later, the bleeding stopped as the knife wound slowly shrank in size. After the wound closed she continued to hold on to him for a while longer. When Morgan finally opened his eyes and smiled at her, looking better now than he did right after the transformation, she let go of him.

  She lay down on the floor, completely drained and unable to hardly move herself now.

  “Bailey? What’s wrong – are you all right? Baby… talk to me! What happened? How did I get here?” he asked her. At that moment she realized that he knew nothing at all about what he’d done. As she lay there on the floor, she told him exactly what had been happening the past few months. When she finished telling him everything, instead of hugging her, as she’d hoped he would do, he pulled away from her.

  “Morgan, are you okay?” she whispered.

  “I have to leave,” he muttered under his breath, “If something happened to you… and if I was the one to hurt you… I could never forgive myself.”

  “Morgan…” she hesitated, “I know of a really gifted healer, much stronger than me, if you want. I could arrange a meeting… you could go see him… I think he could help you if you truly wanted to change.”

  The expression on Morgan’s face changed in a second and instantly went dark. Why would he want to see a healer? There was nothing wrong with him. Plus, he felt better than he had in months. And now he felt angry on top of it all. Werewolves were a bit hot tempered anyway and with his current vigor, he let her have a bit of that anger at her ridiculous suggestion.

  “I come from a long line of people who have the same trait. How could you expect me to give my heritage up?” Morgan’s voice raised, louder and louder.

  “You’re not exactly normal either you know,” he argued, “and I wouldn’t ask you to change that.”

  “But I didn’t try to kill you, Morgan,” she shouted back at him, trying to convince him to do it but his eyes immediately went blank.

  “I can’t believe that you would even suggest that to me! I won’t give up my heritage,” he said firmly, looking at the wall now, refusing to look at her.

  “Then, you need to leave and never come back,” she finally said quietly, looking directly at him.

  Morgan got up, wrapped the bloody curtains around himself and walked out, never looking back once. Moments later she heard the front door slam.

  Chapter 9

  Bailey got up from the trashed bedroom and walked slowly to the kitchen where she poured herself a glass of orange juice. She was literally drained and drank the juice to help. She was just empty. She didn’t cry as she sat there, and she wasn’t angry either – but there was nothing left in her. She was drained of her healing powers temporarily, she knew that, but her energy was gone too. And she knew if she didn’t replenish it by eating or drinking that she might get sick too. So she drank the juice in silence, sitting at the empty kitchen table.

  After the juice had been in her system for a while she got up and warmed herself a can of tomato soup. She sat there alone at the kitchen table and ate the soup and drank the juice. Slowly her energy seemed to return. She really didn’t want the food but her body thanked her for it and hungrily accepted the offering. She knew she needed the energy to be able to clean up her newly trashed house – again. So she ate, and drank and rested – until she felt good enough to do what needed to be done.

  Several weeks passed after that night. Bailey, for lack of anything better, went on doing what she always did, volunteering at shelters, and spending time with those who had no one else to be with. She also found it was harder to heal others since that night with Morgan. But she kept on trying because she didn’t know what else to do. And she refused to let herself miss him. That was simply not an option.

  Then one day about six months later, Bailey heard an unexpected knock on her front door. She went to it half expecting there to be a nosy neighbor or someone else on the other side but was surprised to see, when she opened it, that Morgan stood there. He looked terrible again and she instantly cringed in pain inside at seeing him this way.

  “So, I went to a healer like you wanted,” Morgan blurted out before she could say anything else. “My entire family hates me now b
ecause of what I did. They threw me out. But… all I could think of was you….”

  She just stood there, not sure what he wanted. She wanted to hug him, he looked so sad, but he also looked very guarded. So she decided not to hug him but to invite him inside where she made him coffee. Once inside he told her everything that had happened to him over the past several months. He’d fought with his family and they eventually kicked him out. They didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. So he had to make a tough choice. He just knew that he couldn’t live without her anymore. He had tried it and it never worked.

  Morgan’s life had never had a purpose until he’d met her. So he gave his old life up, and got the transformation done. He was only human now, and he broke into tears as he begged her to be with him again. Bailey’s tears ran freely down her cheeks as she half-laughed, half-cried, and ran to hug him tightly in her arms. He weakly hugged her back as he continued to cry.

  And then it just dawned on him! He had an epiphany! It was her love and special healing powers that had stopped his change in the past, and that gave him the strength to control it. Without Bailey he was just a monster. Her love had given him hope, the strength to go on and a purpose in life. Her love had even allowed him to stop the change! He was completely flustered that he had never realized her calming effect on him before now!

  “Bailey, I love you still,” he said as she hugged his neck, wondering if he should say anything else, and then, “without you I’m nothing more than a monster. Please, baby, take me back. We can do this together, if you’ll just give me a chance.”

  Bailey pulled away from him a bit and stared at him straight in the face before she spoke again, “I’m not going to lie that I’m not afraid of you,” she started, “You broke a lot of things between us.”

  Morgan’s eyes teared up again, “Bailey, I’ll do whatever… I just can’t do this without you. I know that now. I was an idiot before and I’m so sorry…”