Perception

by Girl, Breukelen

The body automatically kicks it up a few notches. My sense of smell is stronger, my night vision is sharper than it’s ever been, my hearing is exceptional. If I experience pain, it’s far worse than non lunar time.

  As much as my pain threshold goes up, the sensation of pain on my body goes up even more. That’s the difference now, if I weren’t a werewolf, my body would remain the way human bodies are designed to remain.

  Functional but with these smart systems built into them that also have mechanisms to protect the body from trauma, pain etc. To help the human body get through extreme conditions, certain unexpected situations. As a shape shifted werewolf, my body lacks that compassion. It looses those inhibitors totally during a lunar week.

  Nobody tells you that part. But I know now. Not just because of the shape shifted sensations that course through me constantly. My mind hasn’t let me forget it and all my other senses, as much as they worked for me after I shifted, they also worked against me.

  I can still smell the lycan because her scent is locked into my olfactory system. Anytime I recall the memory, the scent registers with me. Which is why I can’t let it go. Literally.

  “Are they going to make it?” I don’t know why I’m asking this question. It seems redundant. Survival rates from a werewolf attack are not good.

  That’s because when someone says werewolf bite, what they mean is gnashing, tearing of skin and flesh. Peeling back layers of muscle and sinew with razors for teeth. Ripping at the softest bits of body and pulling it apart, from bone, dripping in blood. Shaking whatever will fall loosely from it’s placement and hold.

  It’s not actually a bite as such. Not like a dainty little hickey or vampire bite crap. It’s about destroying the prey in your mouth as quickly as you can. It’s not even about being efficient. A werewolf or lycan bite is just about being deadly.

  “They’ve both been put into medically induced coma’s to better their chances of surviving.” Aksel answers me.

  The lycans that had me thought I was a human. They thought they could bite me and change me into one of them as a present, to one of the lycan males in the pack. So he could have a female mate.

  I don’t know much about those lycans but I do know, they must not have know much about how werewolves and lycans work. Otherwise they’d have realised it wouldn’t take more than one of them to turn me, if I were human.

  But the more I think about it, the more I think their pack probably got off on attacking me all at once. Like it was fun for them. Turning me was probably just a secondary consideration.

  Destroying me by opening up my flesh and making me bleed, was probably a regular evenings entertainment for them.

  “We’re taking turns to monitor they’re progress, should they wake up again.”

  “I hope they die.” I say swinging my legs down off the chair and standing up. I start walking off. I have to get ready for my shape shift.

  “Bg,” Bodil calls out after me, jogging over to me. “You don’t mean that, right?” She’s looking at me like I’ve done something very wrong here. Said something taboo I shouldn’t have voiced out loud. I wonder if she thinks I’ve left the humanity in me behind because I’ve become a werewolf.

  “It’d be merciful them to never wake up again. They shouldn’t have to remember, any of it.”

  10

  Bodil walks into my bedroom uninvited and sits down on the end of my bed looking at me.

  “Bg, Cadey,” She says correcting herself . “You can talk to me, you know that right?” I nod my head back at her silently. “It might help to talk about it. About what happened.”

  What happened. That’s how we refer to this now. What happened was I was abducted, savagely attacked and hunted by lycans for hours. They had me a long time before my pack found me. That’s what happened. What can’t be undone.

  “Father doesn’t want me going to a psychologist, till he can find one that you know…knows about us or something.” I mutter back at her.

  “You can talk to anyone about this, doesn’t have to be a psychologist. I just think, it might help you, to you know…get it out. Let it out.” She says looking at me wearily. I think she knows I haven’t told my family everything about that night. She’s cluey Bodil and she takes after our father too. Alpha, pushy and protective all the same.

  “You do not have to be concerned about me Bodil.”

  “You’re my pup sister, so yeah, I do.” I sigh loudly and adjust the pillows behind my back on the bed.

  “I’m not going to apologise for what I just said out there, with you and Aksel. It’s true it would be more merciful if they died. It’s what I wanted.” I throw back at her, pulling my knees into my chest and wrapping my arms around them.

  Her eyes go wide and she moves closer to me and I tighten up my hold. Bodil stops and pulls back a little.

  “I’m glad you didn’t.” She says instead. “We all are.” I nod my head back at her. Time to switch the topic. I’m not going to talk to her about what happened to me. I’m just not.

  One of us suffered through that. I don’t see why anyone else in my family should have to go through that experience also. Even if it is just talk. Memories are powerful. They can haunt for as long as your mind sees fit to function at full capacity.

  “So what’s going to happen to the two guys who were attacked?”

  Bodil blows out a heavy breath and runs a hand through her long hair. “I don’t know exactly. Assuming they manage to survive and that’s a pretty big assumption, Lycans are escorted out of our territory, told not to return lest they be set upon, again.”

  “What?” I whisper at her in shock. “That’s horrible. You displace them because of something that was put on them. A circumstance outside of their control. Because they’re not one of us, naturally?”

  Bodil looks away awkwardly. “Yeah. That’s the Breukelen way, it’s always been that way.”

  I unlock my arms and push my legs out and into a cross legged sitting position. “That’s….bullshit!” I state angrily. “They did nothing wrong those two guys in the hospital. They probably don’t even know that werewolves exist!”

  Bodil looks at me weakly. “I know.” She replies softly.

  “Let alone whatever the fuck is happening to them because of some lycan attacked them.”

  “We don’t know if it’s a lycan or a…”

  “That doesn’t matter!” My voice is rising. “That is so not the fucking point!”

  “Bg,” I can hear the reprimand coming out in her voice for swearing and being essentially angry over this werewolf ruling.

  “They’re innocent victims. Victims Bodil. Do you know what that means? What it makes them? It makes them unfortunate, not a threat. It makes them suffer, for something someone else did to them. It makes them unlucky for circumstances they couldn’t have possibly seen coming. It means they can’t be held accountable for someone else’s actions. It means, the Breukelen have a responsibility to protect them, as they would anyone in their jurisdiction. It makes them strong, for having gotten through it, it makes them miraculous for surviving this far against the odds stacked against them!”

  I’m practically screaming by this stage. I’m not even aware I’ve gotten up onto my knees and moved closer to yell my message into her face.

  Bodil’s looking at me in surprise and something else. Wonder, or happiness? I can’t be sure because suddenly I’m bursting into tears and throwing myself into her.

  Bodil’s arms wrap around me tightly and she soothes me. An arm patting down my back, over my hair.

  “You’ve got to let me help you.” She mutters into my hair as the sobbing racks me. “Please.” Her arms tighten around me. Squeezing me in their plea to be let into my fucked up emotional state.

  I keep my head buried in her shoulder, till the tears run dry out of me. Then I let her hold me, hug me to her, for a long time. The longest time I’ve allowed anyone to hold me since before four months ago. Finally, tiredness creeps into me and I pull back to look at he
r.

  “I want to help them. The guys in the hospital.”

  Bodil frowns heavily. “But they’re…” She doesn’t need to say the word lycan for me to know that’s what would end that sentence.

  They’re only lycans if they survive the infection. They have to get to that stage first. And to say they’re lycans, well it’s just a damn label isn’t it? It doesn’t make them who they are. Just like the label victim doesn’t mean you can’t be more than what has happened to you.

  “Just like me.” I finish for her calmly. Feeling more at ease than I have in the past four months all together.

  11

  I’m told that lycanthropy as an infection is devastating. It tries to totally decimate the human body.

  Those whose immune systems are strong enough, those dispositional to good health, fight it off. At least, that’s the way it looks to the doctors. To the person who got bit. But the reality is, once lycanthropy is in your body system, there is no getting it out. What’s been done, is done, can’t be undone.

  There is nothing pleasant as far as I can tell about becoming a lycan. You get mauled, then you get infected. Then you get filled with a false sense of hope that everything is over and it’s all behind you. Just some sort of bad dream you lived through.

  Then a month later, if you haven’t already started to figure out you’re not really yourself anymore, there is the shape shift.

  Not all lycan victims survive the shift. Again, it’s something else they have to get through, another hurdle to living their life. Another circumstance outside of their control. Another assault on their body.

  So becoming a lycan is about as personal as it gets. Because you can not escape it, once it is in motion.

  I’m sitting in my father’s office, my legs tucked up under my dress, in the old leather chair, looking at him, in the chair opposite me. We’re trying to have a conversation. But my father’s finding it hard to fathom. What I’m asking of him.

  “We have a responsibility to them.” I state yet again at his silence. He quirks an eyebrow up at me. I fight the urge to shrink down a little in my seat. I see this as a business meeting. Not really a daughter and her father talking. Rather a beta Breukelen wolf proposing something to the Alpha Pack Leader.

  “How do you figure that?” He asks me honestly. He’s trying to engage in this discussion, to take me seriously.

  “They’re going to need help now that the fever has worn off. They’ll need information, assistance and guidance to get through the next stage.” I say going over what I had already gone over quite a few times in my head already before asking to met with my father on the subject of the two werewolf victims in the hospital.

  Aksel updated us in the afternoon that both they’re conditions had improved, and the fever had broken. Stage one complete.

  “I understand that, but how is it the Breukelen’s responsibility to deal with that.”

  “It’s called humanity.” I snap at him.

  My father’s mask of calm slips firmly into place. It’s like I slapped him and this is what greets me after it. Silence of defiance and strength. Of knowing how to not give anything on that handsome face of his away.

  “We’re not human, we’re werewolves.” He answers me with. Typical Alpha werewolf thinking. Ever the werewolf not the man.

  Makes me wonder how he was raised. I never got to know my Oma or Opa, his parents, but I know he comes from two Alpha werewolves.

  Which makes me think of the assuredly they must’ve had in themselves, and their race. The utter belief in everything werewolf.

  I shake my head. “That doesn’t work here.” Again that eyebrow asks me without his words how that can be. Where is my head at on this?

  “I’ve always been brought up to look out for those that can’t take care of themselves. To be a good person. To cherish my heart, and all that comes with it. These guys are lost. They don’t even know it yet. You’re setting them up for worse than need be. Because they weren’t born to werewolves. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “You’re young, you don’t understand the full ramifications of what lycans and werewolves together are like.”

  “It’s not. You can’t slap me with my age as a barrier. Circumstance, fate, lycans, whatever you want to call it, did not care about my age four months ago!”

  “Cadence,” My father starts. My name from his lips sounds pained. I can’t help but wonder how much pain he carries with him for what happened to me. I hold no blame against him or anyone else, except those responsible.

  “It didn’t and look what happened! It’s the same thing here only we’re not in the woods anymore. We’re in a place that is supposed to be safe. Supposed to be controlled. Supposed to be civilized.” I paused to wipe my hand over my mouth.

  I’m trying not to be driven by anger and absurdity of this ingrown pack thinking. But there are walls to overcome.

  Big walls that have been built in place of this world and how to live in it, for eons. Walls and rules my father helped put there. Sometimes I think alpha’s lack the ability to see both sides of an argument.

  They pay off is of course, they’re brilliant at strategy and winning whatever it is they want. I unfurl my legs and lean forward on my hands, my legs back on the floor. “You didn’t fail me.”

  The silence in the room is deafening. “I failed me.” I lean back into my seat.

  “Cadence, you can’t possibly think that.”

  “I do and I know that.”

  “How could you know a pack of lycans would ambush you? How?” I raise my eyebrow at him in silence. Making my point. He smirks at me and leans back in his high backed chair, sighing.

  “I underestimate you too much.”

  “I get that. I’m fifteen.” I smile back at him broadly. “I’m lucky, I got rescued. My pack came for me. I had pack to look after me afterwards. I had somewhere safe to go. I have werewolves looking out for me. I’m constantly assured that I’m loved, dispute how I feel. How that night makes me feel.” I can see the sadness seep into my father’s blue eyes.

  “Those boys, they’re not going to have that. They’re going to thrown out like they’re the problem. Like they’re at fault here. We don’t even know who attacked them, so other than you, who is to say they can’t stay with us. Be a part of this pack if they’re human and they have no other allegiances?”

  I reach for the soft drink on the corner of his desk. We’ve been talking for over two hours about this. My father has cancelled the rest of his afternoon and evening pack duties to give me the attention I told him I require to argue this case to him.

  I want the werewolf victims, included in our pack. I have no idea who they are, where they come from, or anything else about them that Bodil or Aksel haven’t already told me.

  I don’t know them from a stranger. But that doesn’t mean I think they should suffer further because of antiquated werewolf ways of thinking and rules that don’t make sense. Especially for a pack like the Breukelen.

  “You’re leadership of this pack is not in question. It’s you’re decision making skills that are being tested and they’re the ones that those outside of this room, your hierarchy, the rest of the pack will discuss. Much like they do when they see me. Words can only wound, if you let them. But they don’t hurt as much as making a bad decision. Of not doing the right thing, when you know you should have. I’m asking you to make a good on a tough call. But I wouldn’t even consider approaching the alpha of this pack if I didn’t think he had it in him to deal with that.”

  My father smile grows on his face. “You’re such an old soul. Wise.”

  “Take after my father.” I smile back at him over the top of the soft drink can.

  “Hmmph.”