by Eden Beck
But the boys just scoff at her now before heading out the door this time, which is somehow ever more unsettling.
“Come on,” Rory says, with a wave of his hand, “we should get out of here before it gets much later. I think we still have time to hike up to the ridge.”
“Unless, of course,” Marlowe says, his breath growing hot on the back of my neck as he draws close, one arm wrapped around my waist, “you’d rather stick around here. We could always call a car to take you home.”
As much as the heat rising in my face and pooling between my thighs makes me want to stay, to look for some dark nook here in the house where we won’t be disturbed, it’s quelled by the fact that Lydia is standing just a couple feet away. She doesn’t look away until she catches me glancing her way.
I know these shifters have a different idea of intimacy than humans do, but it’s still enough to send me leaping up to my feet and heading to the door alongside Rory.
I glance back once at her as we leave and see the same crease between her eyebrows mirroring mine. I haven’t seen the boys act with such disregard to her before and it’s a bit troublesome to be honest. I know there’s a growing tension between all three of them and their parents, but I thought it’d started getting better. I’ve come to like Lydia, as odd as she may be, and even Romulus has been growing on me lately. We, at least, have come to something of an understanding.
Or so I thought.
We’re supposed to work on the school project after school today, but lately I’ve been caring less, and seeing as Rory, Marlowe, and Kaleb have literal centuries to finish high school if they want; they don’t seem too worried about it either.
My feelings must be visible on my face, because we’ve barely reached the forest’s edge when Kaleb slips up beside me and jabs me in the side with his elbow.
“What is it? Why the long face?”
I roll my eyes and wriggle free of the elbow trying to jab into me a second time, this time looking for that spot in my ribcage that makes me squeal when poked.
“It’s something I don’t understand,” I say. The three boys exchange a quick look, which only serves to make me talk faster. I have to get this out before one of them finds a way to distract me again. “What I don’t understand,” I say again, “Is that if there are some of you that accept and protect turned wolves, and some of you that don’t; what’s to keep all the packs from getting into fights with each other?”
“There’s a treatise,” Marlowe says, glancing back from up ahead. “About a century or so ago, the packs entered into treatise with each other to follow a certain set of rules that made sure we didn’t encroach on each other’s territories. Most of the packs have human neighbors, and something needed to be laid down so that humans weren’t turned recklessly.”
Kaleb squeezes my hand. “Once the treatise was enacted, it became forbidden for humans to be turned. It was always kind of frowned upon before that … but it was more of an unspoken taboo.”
“And if a human was accidentally turned,” I say, trying to keep my voice light. “What would happen?”
Up ahead, Rory stops in his tracks. The lighting here under the trees is dim, but I can still make out the look on his face. He’s distracted today.
“It depends on the pack. On the circumstances,” he answers. “It’s not looked on kindly, that’s for sure. Humans tend not to feel the same allegiance to pack rule that full-blood shifters do.”
I wanted to ask another question; I want to ask what about if a human wanted to be turned. But I kept that question to myself for fear of the reaction it would cause. Instead, I ask about something else that has been burning in my mind for days.
“I want to come,” I say suddenly, glancing down at my feet so as to not see their faces.
“Where?” Rory asks.
“I want to come with you tonight. I want to see what a full transformation is like.”
“You can’t,” Rory says so suddenly, and so sharply, that I freeze in place. “You can never come with us for that.”
I expected some resistance, but I don’t expect this.
“Why not?” I can’t hide my disappointment when I look back up, forcing myself to meet his eye.
“It’s not safe.”
Not safe.
I have to stop myself from letting out a bitter bark of a laugh myself. Not safe?
I’ve spent the last year running, looking for safety. Now that I’ve found it, they want to try to tell me they’re worse than the danger I’ve been running from?
It’s a good thing Lydia isn’t here to listen to my thoughts, or she might be shocked.
“Come on,” I say, my frustration seeping into my voice, “I know what I’m asking. None of the three of you will hurt me, not even while you’re a wolf.”
“You don’t know that,” Marlowe says, my pleading eyes having no effect on him. “Shifting is unpredictable, even for us.”
I feel betrayed. Et tu, Marlowe?
For once I wish he’d just take my side instead of playing along with Rory or Kaleb.
“I know that you won’t hurt me,” I say again. “I want to come. Please. I want to understand you better.”
“You can’t come,” Rory says, not even trying to hide the sharp edge of his voice. “You can never come, so you’re just going to have to put it out of your mind.”
Kaleb starts to interrupt him, but Rory flips around and gets in his face with a dominant posture that looks as if it is meant to quiet Kaleb down. It has its intended effect.
What did Romulus say to them this morning? Whatever it is, it’s put Rory in a mood—arrogant, short-tempered, stubborn—just like when we first met. I knew I’d see this time of him eventually, I just didn’t expect it to come so soon.
And I didn’t think he’d treat me like this again. Like a nuisance. Like a silly girl who doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into.
Though he doesn’t say as much, it’s as if I can hear their thoughts in my own head. I know what they’re thinking, because it’s what I’ve been thinking too.
No matter how close they get to me, no matter how much they fall for me, or even if they discover the way I’m falling for them in return; I will never truly be a part of them. It’s the same truth I’ve been trying to avoid for weeks now.
They’ll go to pack rituals that I won’t be able to attend, and in turn, I’ll be left out of all their family protects and holds sacred.
No matter how I feel for them, so long as I’m here with them, I’ll be forced to live a double life.
I don’t know why it hits me here, in the dark cool of the forest just before sunset.
I don’t know why it didn’t fully dawn on me in all the weeks before—when I first discovered their wolfish nature, when I was told I couldn’t be turned, or even when I was first told we could never be together.
It doesn’t get any plainer than that.
But it’s here, now, with trembling lips and vision that’s started to grow dark at the edges, that it finally crashes down on me.
And Rory, and Marlowe, and Kaleb … none of them see it.
I felt the start of this realization weeks ago. I knew this wouldn’t work, that it would be better to end it then, before we became more attached. I never should have let Marlowe convince me otherwise.
Rory checks his watch and looks back up into the forest, his eyes scanning the deepening colors without a single sign that he’s sensed the way my world is crumbling in around me. It’s never been so painfully obvious that he definitely didn’t inherit Lydia’s gift.
“We should probably just take you back to the cabin,” he says. He holds out a hand behind himself towards me, but I don’t take it. “Come on,” he repeats, stretching out his fingers. “We don’t want you caught out here at night.”
“So what was this?”
He half turns, confusion on his face as he takes me in.
I wave my arms around me, motioning to the forest around me. “All this? Was it just a
n excuse to get me away from the house so you could remind me that I’ll never truly be one of you?”
My voice sounds hollow, empty.
Like me.
Rory stares at me, unseeing. “What are you …”
“Well, I’m tired of it.” My temper flares, and with it, so does my adrenaline. “It’s not fair, Rory.” I turn to glare at Marlowe and Kaleb. “And you two, you’re no better.”
“Sabrina …” Kaleb’s voice is cautious as he reaches out to me. He alone seems to be able to sense how close I’ve drawn to the edge of the precipice.
“No!” I swat his hand away and stumble a step back, off the path. My head is shaking back and forth so quickly that all I see is a blur of their faces between the green tree trunks. Tears, unbidden, streak my vision further. “No, Kaleb. No, Marlowe. I’m done.”
As soon as the words leave my lips, all the world stills.
I lift my eyes up to meet them, and it’s as if the whole forest is waiting with bated breath.
“I’m done.”
When the words leave my lips again, there’s nothing left to do but turn on my heel and flee.
I hear them calling at me, but then I hear Rory scold Kaleb when it sounds like he tries to come after me. Because that would be the worst thing, wouldn’t it?
Every other time, they’ve insisted on following me. Walking me back.
This is the time they don’t choose to follow?
Marlowe’s shout carries above the others, a warning to me to stay in my house until the full moon passes tonight.
Screw them, I’ll do what I want. Just like I always do … depend on no one.
I’m half surprised that they don’t chase me to my front door, but then again, I suppose they have more important full-moon things to get ready for tonight. Things I’ll never be allowed to be a part of.
Whatever. I’m going to watch a Netflix marathon about fictional werewolves that are less righteous and have more sex appeal.
Even in my furious state, I know I’m kidding myself if I think that there are any wolf-shifters with more sex appeal than Rory, Marlowe, or Kaleb; but at least it makes me feel a bit better to pretend.
But as soon as I kick in the door to the cabin, I realize just how wrong I am.
How wrong we all are.
I’ve been focused on all the wrong things. Worried about all the wrong things.
My chest freezes in the middle of an inhale, leaving me feeling like I’m both about to burst and like I’m suffocating at the same time. The boys warned me to stay inside my cabin so that I would be safe. All this time I’ve been watching out for rogue wolves running loose in the forest; but it was never the wolves that I should have been worried about.
I was so careful, I think to myself, crying inside of my own head.
SO CAREFUL … up until the point that I wasn’t. I’ve been so distracted by the boys, and by the fantasy that I suddenly found myself living among the supernatural, that I let my guard down where it really mattered. I forgot what led us up here to this place, to Washington in the first place, and now it’s cost me everything.
Because when I open the door, I discover that my mother is home for what feels like the first time in weeks … but she isn’t alone.
Just as I knew this would happen. Just as I feared.
My father, after all this time, has finally found us.
31
Sabrina
I’ve always known it would come to this.
I always knew he would find us.
It was never a matter of if. It was only a matter of when.
My mind instantly reels, trying to find the moment when I messed up, the moment I inadvertently led him straight to us. But then my gaze lands on my mother, and it all falls into place.
“Hi sweetheart,” mom says, a shaking smile spreading across her face as she looks up at me through a bruised and swelling eye. She’s holding a napkin up to her nose to soak up the blood gushing from one nostril. “Look who’s come to visit.”
The long hours at the nursing home. The extra shifts. The sudden way she urged me to spend more time with my new friends. It was him all along. He didn’t just find us. She invited him back.
After everything.
Still, it’s not her that I’m focusing on. It’s him.
My father stands next to her, stretching out his knuckles as if he’s only just now realized how inconvenient the swelling is going to be. He stares down at the purple color blooming beneath the surface of his skin, and then up to me. The sound of my name on his lips makes my blood curdle.
“Sabrina,” he says, his lips curling up in a sad imitation of a smile, “oh how I’ve looked forward to seeing you again.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask, knowing full-well that this is no little ‘visit’. He didn’t come here to check on us. He came here to take us back.
I can’t bring myself to look at my mother again. This is her doing.
Our undoing.
“I couldn’t go long without my two best girls,” my father says, the sarcasm in his voice so thick it sickens me. I’d vomit if I didn’t know that’d instantly put me at a disadvantage.
A disadvantage … a disadvantage to what?
My father, as if reading my thoughts, paces a step to the side, partially obscuring the bloodied sight of my mother from me. As he does, something about his smile changes. He takes on a manic glint in his eye.
“It’s been too long, too long for us to play any more games. For me to pretend I’m here for anything else.”
I feel my breath shorten. “And what’s that, Dad?”
Dad. The word sounds like a swear on my tongue, a fact my father notices.
The last of his smile fades. “I’m here to get you, but I think you already know that don’t you?”
Even though I’ve known this was coming, known even before he showed up … it still makes my stomach sink like lead. All the other times, we were always one step ahead. Sure, sometimes it was close … but it was always like running away from a shadow before. Now that he’s here, really here, it doesn’t feel real.
But maybe that’s why I don’t shrink back.
“We aren’t going anywhere with you,” I snarl. I finally shoot a look at my mom. “What did he tell you? You know it’s a lie, right? Whatever he said … it’s not true. Nothing’s going to change.”
“Sabrina,” Mom says in that same way that she tried to tell me her last nosebleed was caused from walking into a door, “we should just go with him, honey,”
I take a slow step backward toward the still-open door. My head cocks to one side as I take her in, doing nothing to hide the disbelief spreading across my face.
This can’t be happening. Not now. Not the one time the boys aren’t here to protect me. The one time they don’t insist on walking me home.
Angry tears spring to the corners of my eyes. They shouldn’t need to protect me. Not from my own father.
That was my mother’s job, and she’s failed me. Again.
“No fucking way,” I say. I keep my eyes trained on her as I jab one finger in my father’s direction. “With him? After everything?”
She flinches at my words, her eyes closing to avoid looking at me. “It’s just better this way.”
I freeze.
“How long has this been going on?” I ask, surprised my voice still works at all.
My mother still won’t look at me, our roles now reversed. But I still know the answer from the way her shoulders slump in shame.
Dark circles rim her eyes, her cheeks have grown hollow, even her hair has taken on a dull shine. I knew she’d been growing distant these last weeks, knew she was working hard trying to support the two of us, but I had no idea it was this bad. Bad enough to want to give in to the man who’d scarred my childhood in more ways than I wish to keep count?
Bad enough that she would invite him, our abuser, back?
After everything he did.
It’s my turn to close my eye
s. When I do, all I see is a constant reel of memories. The first time he yelled at me, his voice echoing off the dining room walls. The first time he hit me, his knuckles leaving bruises on my cheeks. Then the last time … his fingers leaving marks that begin on my collarbone and trail upward onto either side of my neck.
The last time.
But if we leave with him now, it won’t be the last time.
If we leave now, it’s all been for nothing. All the moving, all the starting over. And more than that.
Rory. Marlowe. Kaleb.
My heart is beating at a pace fit to burst out of my chest when my eyes fly open again.
Suddenly, our argument earlier feels childish. I was a fool, running like that. If I’d just stayed, if I’d let one of them walk me home … none of this would have happened.
It’s this thought, the thought of them, that gives me the voice I need.
“No.”
“What?” My father steps forward again, his voice dangerously quiet.
I shake my head so hard that the room starts to spin. “I won’t go with you.”
Behind my father, my mother’s face grows pale. She squeezes her eyes shut, but still the glitter of tears builds at the base of her lashes.
She may have already given up the fight, but I haven’t. Not yet.
My father’s eyes bore into mine. He raises his fist, ready to strike, but I don’t wait for the blow to come. Not this time.
This time, I run.
Because this time, I’m not alone. This time, there’s a place I can go.
I turn on my heel and sprint out into the night, screaming for Rory, and Marlowe, and Kaleb—hoping to god that they can somehow hear me. I barely get more than a yard away before my father runs out after me and I feel a heavy, blunt blow to the back of my head.
I stumble forward onto my knees, ears ringing.
I try to call out again, but I can feel warm, metallic blood filling my mouth and my head is throbbing so much I can’t see straight. My voice comes out as a garbled, incoherent mess.
