“Erin, please. He’s so close; I fear for you.”
“Mom—” Erin was about to moan about the vague warning when she noticed that her mother’s hands were trembling, causing the bone china cup and saucer she was holding to rattle manically.
Erin swiftly took the cup from her hands and gave her mother a long, level gaze.
“I’m fine, Mom, really, you need to stop getting yourself so worked up, it’s not good for you. The doctors said that you need to rest.”
She knelt by her mother and fondly stroked her head.
“I’m a big girl, stop worrying about me,” Erin smiled, trying to reassure her.
“He will find you soon, he’s been hunting you for a long time; your darkness will guide him to you.”
Rolling her eyes, Erin stood up; it was evident that she wasn’t going to get her mother to speak any sense.
“I’ll see you again soon, Mom,” she bent and kissed her mother on the cheek before scooping up her purse and jacket.
“He will be a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” her mother stated, her voice quivering. “And he will destroy you.”
The following day, the first murder had occurred in Erin’s town along with the onset of her nightmares. And three weeks later, she first met Sean.
***
“Sean, look, whatever you’ve done and however bad you think it is, I’m there for you. I don’t care. But you need to start opening up to me, you need to trust me.”
Sean sighed and ran a hand down his face.
“Erin, please. I can’t risk you knowing anything, it’s too dangerous.”
“Why, are there people after you? Do you owe money for drugs? Is it gang-related?” Erin hammered out her questions in rapid fire succession, determined to find the answers she so desperately sought.
“None of the above,” Sean sighed.
“Then what is it that’s so terrible that you can’t tell me?”
Sean turned to face her, his eyes wild and alert. There was something about his gaze that frightened her and made her suddenly aware of the fact that they were alone in her house and he was apparently capable of terrible, unspeakable things.
“It’s a matter of life and death. I can’t possibly explain.”
“But you have to explain!” Erin declared, nervous beneath his intense look. “Since we were together…I’ve felt out of sorts somehow. You owe me answers.”
“Out of sorts?” Sean frowned at the words and suddenly looked extremely anxious. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t make me spell it out!”
“No, tell me, what’s been wrong?” Sean urged; it was his turn to become the interrogator.
“I’ve been tired, feeling sick, smelling everything much more potently than normal, and there have been these nightmares,” Erin was surprised at just how much she was willing to tell Sean.
“First they were about a killer lurking, I thought they were connected to the murders in town, but now I dream about being chased and torn apart by angry dogs.”
She blushed slightly, aware how crazy she must sound. She half expected Sean to tease her, but his expression was stony and he was silent.
“I started to worry that perhaps I’d…caught something from you,” Erin dared to be direct with him about her fears.
“I mean, we didn’t use anything any of the times. And if you knew about something I could have caught, the decent thing to do would be to tell me about it,” Erin was talking quickly as she became increasingly nervous. Still, Sean remained silent.
“The sickness, the tiredness, I’ve no idea what it is; maybe it’s nothing, but I don’t know you or anything about you, as demonstrated by the empty apartment, so I’ve no idea if maybe you did give me something. I’m not calling you dirty of judging you, I just want to know.”
She looked at Sean with an open and earnest expression. She wouldn’t hold him accountable for whatever she’d caught; they were both responsible for the lack of protection used. She just wanted the truth so that she could deal with whatever she had.
“I’ve not given you an STI or anything,” Sean growled, his voice low and guttural.
“Oh good,” Erin sighed, feeling massively relieved. She’d had an STI once before and it wasn’t an experience she was looking to repeat.
“I’m afraid that I’ve given you something much worse,” Sean added, the words making Erin’s stomach plunge in fright as though she’d just been pushed off the top of a high mountain.
“What do you mean?” Erin asked her voice small and uncertain. She watched Sean intently, pulling her legs up beneath her so that her knees were touching her chin. She suddenly felt extremely vulnerable and exposed.
Sean got up and paced before her, shaking as head as he did so, in a battle with his inner demons.
“Sean!” Erin called out his name and he ceased pacing and stared down at her. There was a sadness within his eyes that disturbed her.
“I should have been more careful,” he muttered, half to himself and half to Erin.
“I’m not exactly without blame,” Erin said, biting her lip guiltily. “But what’s done is done; we can’t go back and change it. You need to tell me what it is you’ve given me. We can fix this.”
Sighing in torment Sean ran a hand across his face and shot Erin a pitiful look.
“I’m sorry I’ve dragged you into all this.”
“All what?” Erin asked, bemused, in her mind still considering that her theory about gangs and drug money had been accurate.
“I was reckless, but when I’m around you I just…lose control.” He was pacing once more, unable to keep still.
“Like I said, it’s my fault, too; I just need to know what you gave me.”
“You don’t understand,” Sean shook his head, his feet hammering across the wooden floor as he continued to move back and forth along the length of the lounge.
“Just tell me!” Erin demanded, running out of patience. He’d admitted that he’d given her something so her strange symptoms were a result of their time together. The least he could do was tell her what was going on so she could go and seek some relevant treatment.
“Erin, I’m cursed,” Sean blurted, ceasing moving and looking directly at her. Erin’s eyebrows shot up in shocked amusement. Cursed. Internally, she released a wearied sigh. Sean really was crazy; she assumed it was the drugs twisting his mental state to the brink of madness.
“If you’re not going to be honest with me, then fine,” Erin replied angrily, standing up and making to leave the room. She was in no mood to entertain any of his paranoid delusions.
“I’m being honest,” he told her pleadingly. “I know how crazy it sounds, but I am cursed.”
Erin frowned upon hearing the word. The term had haunted her childhood, uttered from her mother’s lips whenever she did anything which could be remotely considered wayward. The word cursed meant nothing to her. It was the laments of a scared old woman, an old house wives tale. Curses had no relevance in the modern world. Erin was disappointed in Sean, resorting to such lame excuses, and it showed.
“That’s your explanation?” she scoffed in disbelief. “That you’re cursed!”
“Just let me finish!” Sean begged.
Erin considered his request. So many of her beloved bad boys had felt cursed, like their reckless behavior wasn’t their sole responsibility, and some greater power was forcing their hand. Fate and destiny are all themes which allow people to not accept the inevitable or face up to their actions. People do bad things because they are inherently bad, not because they are cursed. Curses don’t exist.
“I know what you’re thinking, that curses don’t exist.”
“They don’t,” Erin replied curtly.
“But they do, you have to trust me on this, it’s important.”
“Why?”
“Will you at least hear me out?”
“Fine,” Erin slumped back down on the sofa, her accusing eyes boring straight into Sean. He’d need a pretty impre
ssive explanation to crawl himself out of the hole he was currently standing in.
“You know all the murders lately, where women have been found mauled to death?”
“Yes…” Erin answered uneasily, fearing that her own paranoid feelings were about to come true, that she was linked to the killer, that he was standing before her in her own living room, that her own grizzly fate was terrifyingly imminent.
“They think an animal did it, right?”
“Initially, but then the authorities considered that it was just some sick, twisted psycho,” she regretted dropping the insulting labels upon the killer since it could actually be Sean and the last thing she wanted to do was antagonize him unnecessarily.
“They were right with their original analysis.”
“That it was an animal?”
“Yes.” Sean nodded.
“How could you possibly know that?” Erin asked, feeling the air in the room grow colder as her suspicions intensified.
“Because it was me, I killed them,” Sean admitted, lowering his eyes in shame.
“But…you said it was an animal,” Erin countered, drawing her arms protectively around her. Her mind was racing, panic rising within her like a flood. Sean was the killer; he had just admitted it to her. She was alone in her house with a serial killer. She felt sick at the prospect that she was about to become his next victim. She held back tears as she thought of her mother, how it would crush her to hear the news that her daughter had been savagely murdered, how she’d blame the darkness which she insisted had haunted her all her life.
Cursed. Had Erin been cursed? Was this the dark fate her mother had tried so desperately to steer her away from?
“It was an animal,” Sean clarified.
Erin squinted in confusion.
“Then how could it have been you?” her initial fears thawed when she realized that Sean couldn’t be the killer, he was just crazy.
“Because I’m cursed.” Sean answered bluntly.
“Sean—” Erin waved a hand dismissively but he cut her off.
“At night, beneath a full moon, I turn in to something else. Into an animal. But lately it’s been happening more and I’ve been losing control because I’m…in heat.” Sean squirmed as he stood before her, revealing his truth, aware of how insane he must sound.
“You turn into an animal at night?” Erin asked in complete disbelief, her tone mocking.
“I turn into a wolf.”
“You turn in to a wolf? Like a werewolf?” Erin could barely say the words it was all so ludicrous.
“Exactly, a werewolf.” Sean’s eyes shone menacingly as he said the word but it had little effect on Erin, who was now entirely convinced of his crazy mental state.
“So let me get this straight,” she began, sending him a hateful glance, “the reason you have treated me so badly, and live this mysterious life, is because you are a werewolf?” her voice pitched on the final word.
“I can’t risk remaining in one place too long,” Sean explained. “My curse forces me to live like a drifter.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?”
“Erin, please, you must believe me,” Sean implored, coming over and kneeling before her, his hands resting on her knees. He was strangely hot despite the cool of the evening.
“Why? Why should I believe you?” Erin demanded, feeling hurt by all his crazy lies. She’d hoped he would confide in her, tell her the truth about who he was, about the drugs, but instead all she got was this obscene façade about being a werewolf. Yet again, Erin had managed to pick a completely unsuitable guy; her mother would have a field day if she found out.
“Because of that thing that I gave you,” Sean spoke softly now, his eyes drifting down and settling upon Erin’s stomach.
“Erin, you’re pregnant; you’re having my child.”
The words made Erin freeze in shocked disbelief. She looked at Sean, waiting for his face to crack into a smile when he revealed that he was just joking with her, but his features remained locked and serious.
“You’re saying I’m pregnant?” Erin couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The words sounded ridiculous even coming from her own mouth. She knew she had been stupid not to use protection when they had sex, but there was no way either of them could know if she’d become pregnant from their time together, at least not yet.
“I know you are,” Sean said with complete certainty. “I can smell it.”
“Smell it!”
“You said yourself that you’ve been out of sorts, smelling things more intently and dreaming of dogs chasing you, it’s because of the wolf blood in your system because of the baby.”
“Sean, you’re crazy,” Erin said softly, feeling like she wanted to cry. She’d liked Sean so much, had felt so drawn to him. What was wrong with her to go after guys who were mentally unstable?
“Please, Erin, I’m not. Like I said, these past few days, I’ve been in heat. It makes me turn unexpectedly; usually I can control my physical urges, but with you I couldn’t. It was as if I sensed something in you that drew me to you.”
The darkness. The words danced through Erin’s mind but she didn’t say them aloud, felt too foolish to breathe life into the notion. Had her mother been right all along? Had Sean been the figure seeking her that she’d wanted to keep Erin away from?
None of it made any sense. Erin’s mind flooded with questions but she knocked all of them back. She refused to offer any credence to his madness but asking him about it.
“And now you’re carrying my child who will be a werewolf too, which means that I need to bring you into my pack and teach you how to cope with them when they start turning on their thirteenth birthday.”
“Why would they turn when they reach thirteen?” Erin couldn’t resist asking the question, it was all so far-fetched and bizarre, utterly beyond belief.
“Your hormones change when you become thirteen, it kick starts the turning phase of being a werewolf.”
“Sean,” Erin sighed and looked down sadly at the floor. She felt bitterly disappointed to have discovered that Sean was crazy. She could almost have excused a drug dependency, but she refused to deal with outright madness and delirium. Sean was clearly living within some sort of delusion and she didn’t want any part in it.
“Just tell me what you gave me so I can go get treated for it,” her voice was low and calm as she tried to reign him back in, wanting only to know how to make herself feel better. Once he told her what he had given her, he could leave and she wouldn’t care if she never saw him again.
Cursed. There was no such thing.
“I gave you my child,” Sean replied seriously, moving a hand to fondly stroke her cheek. “It means we have now become mates, and wolves mate for life.”
All the crazy talk sickened Erin to her core. As much as she wanted to find someone to settle down with, to build a life with, this wasn’t what she wanted, to be some crazy man’s fantasy.
“Sean, I’m not pregnant and frankly, I’m hurt by your insistence on lying to me. I wish you could just be honest about what you have, about what you gave to me. I won’t be mad; I just need you to be straight with me so we can move past this.”
“I’m being more honest with you than I’ve ever been with anyone else my whole life,” Sean clarified, his features softening with tenderness.
In contrast, Erin’s face was stony and hard. She was tired of the lies, of the stories. He owed her the truth and if he couldn’t give her that he might as well leave.
“There are no curses,” she hissed at him. “You don’t become a wolf on a full moon, I’m not carrying your wolf hybrid offspring and I sure as hell am not haunted by some unseen darkness that has tainted my heart!”
She surprised herself as she shouted out the latter part. Clearly, he’d gotten in her head and she was not struggling with her own issues.
“You need to leave,” she ordered, pointing to the door as she held her head in her hands and tried not to cry.
“Erin,” Sean looked and sounded torn as he stood in the doorway.
“Leave!” Erin repeated, refusing to look at him. She felt physically winded by what felt like a betrayal by him. He couldn’t even tell her the truth, he had to concoct some wild story about curses and wolves; did he have that little of respect for her?
Erin suppressed a sob as she recalled all the bitter disappoint she’d had to face as a bi-product of dating bad boys. The times they had left her, cheated on her, lied to her. Still, she seemed unable to break her own patterns of behavior; she refused to accept that these men she was drawn to were beyond redemption. She had to prove her mother wrong.
But as Erin waited for Sean to lie, she realized with a heavy heart that her mother had been right. That the darkness had finally been let in and now it would never leave. Sean had admitted to killing all those women, that he was responsible for the brutal murders. He was mad. He blamed being a wolf when all along he was just crazed. And here he was in her home, with her potentially carrying his child.
A chill ran down her spine at the thought of raising the baby of a serial killer. It wasn’t what she wanted for herself. Yet this must have been the darkness her mother predicted, that one day Erin’s love of bad boys would go too far and she’d invite a killer in to her home, in to her bed.
“Sean, this was a mistake, you need to go,” Erin told him, her voice low and sinister.
She heard Sean sigh as he continued to hover in the doorway, refusing to steal away into the night. It was a strange contrast to the night when he’s skulked away as she slept. Now, she couldn’t get rid of him.
“Fine, I’ll go,” he eventually conceded to Erin’s relief. A part of her was wary not to anger him too much; he’d already told her the terrible things he could be capable of. There was still a very real danger that Erin could soon number amongst his victims.
“I’ll go, but I’ll be back,” Sean promised and Erin’s gaze shot up as she regarded him with terrified eyes.
Phases of Passions (Trilogy Bundle) (Werewolf Romance - Paranormal Romance) Page 9
