by Amy Star
then I guess it’s good you can keep your soul!
I need to know if you managed to count how many bears and wolves were fighting in your yard before.
makes it easier to tell which group it was if we have some idea of how many were there.
Elizabeth scowled down at her phone for a brief moment. Of all the questions Mara could have asked, that was one that Elizabeth did not have any true answer to.
No, sorry. I know there were a lot more wolves than bears, but that’s about it, and I doubt that really tells you all that much about the situation. Sorry.
hey, no big deal. given the circumstances, I don’t think anyone actually expected you to count, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. I need to chase down every lead I can find, after all.
Looking for the culprits, I’m guessing?
right-o. Ambrose isn’t happy when other shifters decide to make their disagreements public. especially when third parties almost get hurt. he kind of works really hard to clean up messes like that, so it’s a bit of a sore spot for him.
Understandable. I’ll let you know if I remember anything about it, though I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Their conversation petered out after that, and Elizabeth sort of expected that to be the end of it unless she had something productive to say. Again, she was mistaken.
Mara was a chatty individual; at least a few times each day, Elizabeth’s phone buzzed and presented Mara’s number, and more often than not she was just shooting the shit about whatever she was doing that day. It was refreshing, in a strange way. After all, while Elizabeth wasn’t going to say that she didn’t have friends, she could acknowledge that most of her friends were pretty fair weather. They would lend her a couch for a few nights if she was having a crisis, but they probably would not actually offer up a way to help if it was going to inconvenience them in any truly significant way.
It was novel. That was probably the best way to describe it. Having friends who actually seemed friendly was novel. Elizabeth tried not to feel like that made her pathetic, and to her own surprise, she succeeded pretty well at that. After all, if Ambrose, Yusuke, and Mara were so willing to give her the time of day, then she figured she couldn’t be pathetic. They weren’t pathetic, after all. Why would they waste their time on someone who would drag them down?
It was a comforting thought, and Elizabeth held onto it as best she could.
*
Elizabeth didn’t notice anything off at first. After all, footprints in the yard were pretty easy to explain away when she still had huge furrows in the grass from enormous creatures battling to the death. She had to do all sorts of work on the landscaping still, so she didn’t really pay much attention to something that seemed as tame as paw prints.
When she finally realized that something was off, it was mostly by accident. It was dumb luck.
She was climbing out of the shower when she glanced out the bathroom window; the light was at just the right angle that she saw two pinpricks of green light reflected back at her, and she ground to a halt and stared. Through the darkness, she could just barely make out an enormous canine shape.
Slowly, as if moving too quickly would spell the end, she wrapped herself in a towel and made her way into her bedroom to grab her phone from where she had dropped it on the bed. Holding tight to her towel, she scrolled through her list of contacts until she came to Ambrose’s number, and she tapped on it. For a few seconds, the phone rang, and when Ambrose picked up, he sounded slightly distracted.
“Elizabeth?”
“There’s a wolf in my yard,” she informed him, her voice very carefully level and placid, “a great big one, just staring at the house.”
There was a moment of silence, save for the buzzing over the line, and when Ambrose next spoke, he sounded like he was giving her his full attention. “Alright. Just sit tight, and keep an eye out for a car. But don’t actually go outside until you hear someone honk the horn twice. Got it?”
“Got it,” she replied, peering out the window once again, just in time to see the wolf turn away and begin to walk towards the side of the house. “I’ll see you soon.” She hung up the phone and tossed it towards the bed once again, only glancing over her shoulder to be sure it landed on the mattress, and by the time she looked back out the window, the wolf was no longer anywhere in sight.
CHAPTER THREE
Elizabeth dressed slowly, her movements lethargic and distracted, and she kept returning to the window every few moments to peer outside and see if a car had shown up. Once she was dressed, she packed a few basics into an old backpack; it seemed like she would be away from home for the night, at the very least, and she would rather not have to wear unfamiliar clothes again.
It didn’t take long before a car pulled up in front of the house, though at first the car just idled in the road at the top of the driveway. If she looked carefully enough, she could see someone moving from inside the car, and then one of the back doors opened, and a canine shape hopped out and loped away from the car and into the yard. Before long, Mara, nose to the ground, disappeared around the side of the house, and the car kept idling in the road.
Elizabeth continued to watch until Mara reappeared and headed towards the house, and a moment later, the car’s horn sounded twice in a row. Elizabeth grabbed her phone, her backpack, and her purse as she headed towards the front door, and when she stepped out, Mara was waiting on the porch, sitting down but shimmying in place with blatant impatience. She hopped back to her feet as soon as Elizabeth stepped out of the house, and Elizabeth followed her as she trotted back towards the car. As they got closer, Elizabeth could see that it was Yusuke sitting behind the wheel, and she recalled that Ambrose had sounded distracted when he answered the phone before. She supposed she had called while he was dealing with one of his clients.
Quietly, she waited for Mara to hop back into the backseat and shoved the door shut, before she climbed into the front passenger seat herself. When she looked into the back, she saw a jacket sitting on the seat beside Mara, and only a moment after Yusuke began to drive off, Mara shifted back to her human form and pulled the jacket over her lap to preserve some sort of modesty, even if she didn’t have a shirt to wear. She made do by leaning forward to put her elbows on her knees and prop her chin up in her hands, her forearms blocking her chest from view.
“So, you’re positive it was a wolf,” she said as the car rumbled along the road. It didn’t sound as if she was asking a question or doubting Elizabeth, but more like she was simply reaffirming what she already knew.
Elizabeth nodded before it occurred to her that Mara couldn’t see her doing so from the backseat. “Positive,” she supplied, her voice quiet. She shifted her backpack and her purse on her lap, her things rustling quietly from inside. “It was definitely not a regular dog, and definitely too big to be a normal wolf.” And that wasn’t even getting into the fact that normal wolves weren’t native to the area to begin with. “Is Ambrose working?” she wondered, sliding a glance towards the backseat.
Mara nodded once, offering a, “Yep,” that sounded strangely chipper considering the situation.
“He wanted to come,” Yusuke added, glancing at her briefly, “but we convinced him it would be best if he focused on his client, considering we’re both perfectly capable of driving you back to his house.”
Elizabeth nodded slowly, her attention sliding towards the window for a moment, as if she was going to see another wolf just casually running along beside the car. Predictably, she saw no such thing, and after a moment, she glanced into the backseat again and wondered slowly, “What were you doing in the yard, anyway?”
Mara made a flippant gesture with one hand. “I needed to make sure that the wolf wasn’t lingering like a case of head lice, or it would make it, ah…less than optimally safe to return to the car. I mean, I’m a big dog, yeah, but I’m nowhere near big enough to take on a wolf shifter if one decides go crazy on me.”
Elizabeth nodded slowly in acknowledgement.
It made sense, considering it seemed pretty logical to assume the wolf wasn’t there for friendly reasons. She lapsed into silence after that, letting the rest of the drive pass her by quietly. She didn’t really feel like talking just then. Mostly she wanted to go to sleep and wake up in her own bed, as if it was just a dream.
Strangely enough, she felt no inclinations to say, ‘as if it had all just been a dream.’ She didn’t want to un-meet Ambrose, Mara, and Yusuke. She didn’t want them to vanish from her life, and she wouldn’t have met them at all without that initial scuffle between the wolves and bears. So, for the time being, she was content to just wish that the evening hadn’t happened, as unlikely as she knew that would be.
It was a short ride. Ambrose only lived a couple miles away, after all. Even so, the drive still seemed to pass far faster than it should have, and Elizabeth wondered just how much she had spaced out during the ride. She supposed it wasn’t important, though, as she snapped back to the present when Yusuke pulled the passenger door open for her, and she slid off the seat and out of the car. Clutching her backpack and her purse close to her chest, she made her way into the house, Yusuke and Mara trailing behind her. There was a pile of Mara’s clothes sitting in the middle of the floor when they walked in, and in an instant, Mara snatched them up and began to get dressed, not dropping the jacket until she had her shirt back on.
Yusuke passed Elizabeth so he could hammer a fist on the basement door a few times, and a few moments later, Ambrose emerged from the basement with a young woman trailing behind him, looking as if she was going to faint at the sight of so many people in one place, even though four people wasn’t much of a crowd. She lingered in the basement doorway until Ambrose ushered her back down the stairs.
“I’ll be right back,” he assured her, his voice gentle. “I just need to make sure everything is alright up here, and then I’ll be right back down.”
The mousy young woman nodded rapidly before she practically fled back down the stairs again, and for a moment the kitchen was silent.
Finally, Ambrose asked carefully, “Are you alright?”
Elizabeth nodded tightly, still clutching her things to her chest. “Yeah,” she offered belatedly after staring at him blankly for a moment.
With a slow sigh, Ambrose held his arms open, and after only a second of hesitation, Elizabeth dropped her things on the floor and launched herself at him. His arms closed around her, and for a long moment, they just stayed like that. By the time they separated again, Yusuke and Mara had made their exits, and everything seemed incredibly quiet once more.
Slowly, Elizabeth gathered her things up off the floor. “I’m, uh…” she trailed off and cleared her throat. “I’m going to get some sleep,” she mumbled, before she turned and made a hasty retreat towards the stairs. After a moment, she heard the basement door open and close once again, and she darted into the guest room. It looked identical to the last time she had stayed in it, though the bed had been made once again.
Pulling the door closed, she dropped her backpack and her purse on the floor and then flung herself down on the bed, landing with a bounce before settling. She pulled her arms and her legs in close and curled up into the smallest ball she could manage.
Why did this all need to be happening to her? True, she had never been one to indulge in ‘why me?’ whining when her time would be more productively spent fixing whatever the problem actually was, but just for that moment, she let herself relish in her own self-pity. Why her? What had she done? She hadn’t even known animal shifters existed until she found them in her yard, and suddenly at least one of them had a strange sort of fascination with her, and she couldn’t even figure out why. She wasn’t that special.
Maybe it was still part of that territory dispute. Maybe the wolves had won, but they wouldn’t consider it to be theirs until she was gone. Maybe if she had stepped outside on her own, the wolf that had been patrolling her yard would have gobbled her up like a dog biscuit.
But all she was doing at that point was upsetting herself when she was already plenty upset. Her thoughts weren’t going in any sort of productive direction, and she didn’t have the mental energy to spare for it. She tried to simply squeeze her eyes closed and go to sleep, but after twenty minutes of staring fruitlessly at the insides of her eyelids, she decided it wasn’t going to work out. So, with a slow sigh, she opened her eyes and sat back up, running a hand through her hair as she did. She made her way out of the guest room and headed back down the stairs, making herself comfortable in the living room.
She sprawled out over the larger couch with the television remote in her hand, and with the volume on low, she scrolled aimlessly through channels, pausing on one for only a few minutes at the most before she continued scrolling once again. She wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but it was a reasonably mindless way for her to keep herself occupied for the time being. She wasn’t sure she would be able to do anything that actually required her to use her brain for the rest of the evening.
Eventually, the basement door opened once again, and the mousy young woman poked her head out before carefully venturing out and bolting towards the door with a folder clutched in her hands like a lifeline. Granted, given Ambrose’s chosen job, it likely was some sort of a lifeline.
Elizabeth sat up as Ambrose emerged from the basement, and he paused for a moment once he caught sight of her. “I expected you to be in bed by now,” he observed eventually, closing the basement door once again and making his way over to her, taking a seat in the space Elizabeth freed up again.
“I tried that,” she admitted readily enough. “It wasn’t working out so well, so I decided not to drive myself crazy for no reason.” She shrugged and gestured around the room with one hand, the motion mostly encompassing the couch. “So, here I am.”
“Mind if I join you?” Ambrose wondered, though he was already on the couch by then.
“It’s your house,” Elizabeth pointed out. “Your living room and couch, too,” she added. Though, rather than demanding a price as she had with Yusuke, instead she simply toppled back over sideways, so her head landed in his lap. She wasn’t even sure what possessed her to do it, but she was comfortable, and Ambrose didn’t seem to mind the intrusion into his personal space.
They didn’t really talk about anything. Soon enough, they weren’t even paying attention to the television anymore, though neither of them bothered to turn it off. Instead, they simply let it continue to drone on in the background until it faded into white noise.
Elizabeth’s eyes felt sandy, and the world seemed to be slowing down the longer she lay there. When she had lain down, she hadn’t intended on falling asleep on Ambrose’s lap, but soon enough it was obvious that it was going to happen, and she felt strangely powerless to prevent it.
To her own surprise, her dreams were quiet that night. There were no gleaming teeth or eyes like mirrors. She just slept peacefully, albeit a bit awkwardly given the position she was in.
It was a relief.
*
Elizabeth was slow to wake up, and when she did, it was to the feeling of fingers running through her hair in slow, methodical motions. The television had been turned off at some point, and the room was silent. Elizabeth was sorely tempted to fall right back to sleep, but she fought the urge off, slowly cracking one eye open and then the other.
She blinked up at Ambrose, and he smiled down at her quietly. “Sleep well?” he wondered, fingers still sliding through her hair in an almost absentminded manner.
“Surprisingly, yes,” she returned, her words breaking around a yawn at the last instant.
For a little while, she was content to stay there, and Ambrose seemed content to let her. He tended not to have clients until the evening, so she supposed there was no reason to hurry, and she was content to enjoy the peace and quiet for a time.
Eventually, though, she sat up slowly, rolling her shoulders and stretching her arms up over her head once she was upright. She looked at Ambrose, nearl
y nose-to-nose with him by then, and anything she had planned on saying swiftly fled from her thoughts as, instead, they simply stared at each other for a moment, as if they were simultaneously trying to puzzle something out.
It was Elizabeth who shifted until she was in Ambrose’s lap, so she could properly lean up to kiss him. It was slow at first, just a press of lips against lips until Ambrose’s tongue traced along Elizabeth’s lower lip until her lips parted.
Even then, the kiss remained slow, but deeper and exploratory. It was new ground for both of them, after all, and there was no sense in hurrying things when they had nowhere they needed to be, and it seemed like it would be such a waste not to enjoy it as they explored.
His hands drifted down her back to her hips, pulling her closer, and she shifted to get comfortable, curling her hands around the back of his neck and pressing even closer on her own, until they were pressed together chest to chest, hardly any space left between them to even breathe.
