by Dena Christy
“Well now you know. I can also tell you that there is no cure because this is not a disease. I wasn’t born with some defect that makes me inferior to you or any other human,” he said, his lips curling, and she could see how she’d hurt and insulted him. He was born a werewolf, and he’d always been confident in exactly who he was. She knew that her attitude toward her own change implied to him that he was beneath her because he wasn’t human. It was why he thought she’d left him last year, and why he was so angry now.
“I don’t think you’re defective,” she said, her voice husky and low. He grunted as he scooped up the box and headed toward the door. “Where are you going?”
“I’m taking this to work where it can be disposed of properly,” he said as he walked away from her. She followed him, stopping a few feet behind him when he reached the front door.
“When will you be home?” she asked quietly behind him, and it was on the tip of her tongue to ask if he’d be home at all. She refrained from saying anything, in case he came to his senses and asked her to leave. She wouldn’t blame him if he did. In one fell swoop she’d destroyed what they’d rebuilt in the past few days, and she’d insulted him too.
“Later,” he said as he opened the door and walked out. She flinched when he slammed it behind him. She walked into the living room and sighed. She would give anything to go back and not have ordered the silver nitrate. Why had she trusted a word Amanda had said to her since that woman hadn’t even tried to hide her animosity?
She believed her because she wanted to. At that point, she’d been desperate to rid herself of this change, would have done anything to be human again. And if she was honest, at the point she’d been after her first full moon, death would have been a risk she was willing to take if she didn’t have to be a werewolf anymore.
Now though, with the time she’d spent reconnecting with Lee, she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. The thought of the pain the full moon brought still terrified her, and she didn’t know how she was going to get through that. And the full moon wasn’t something that happened sporadically, it came around every twenty eight days. Dany still needed dealing with, and she was wondering if killing him would make things any better. She was so confused. She knew one thing, she needed to mend things with Lee, because she’d seen how much she’d hurt him. Hurting him had never been her intention at any point, and she needed to convince him that the problem was in her not him. She didn’t know how she was going to do it, all she knew was that she had to try.
* * *
Once he finished disposing of the silver nitrate in the hazardous waste bin at work, Lee went up to the top floor of headquarters, to the small gym set up for employees to train. He rarely used it since he preferred to exercise outside in the open air. He needed to today as a hard ball of anger festered in his stomach and he needed to get it out.
He wasn’t dressed for a work out, and he didn’t really care. He stripped off his dress shirt, put on a pair of boxing gloves and made his way over to the heavy bag.
His fist slammed into the bag, and it careened wildly on its chain. He grabbed a hold of it and righted it. It did the same thing when he hit it again, and all it did was piss him off more.
“For fuck’s sake,” he growled as he pulled back and hit the bag. It buckled and swayed, and he reached for it again.
“You know that works better if someone holds it for you,” Nick said as he walked over to him. He looked Lee up and down, his brow raising when he took the sight of Lee standing there shirtless with only dress pants and loafers on. “I have a spare set of workout clothes if you want to borrow them. They’re clean.”
“I don’t give a fuck about what I’m wearing. Just stand behind the bag and hold it,” Lee growled as he raised his fists and squared off against the bag.
“Okay,” Nick said as he went around to the other side of the bag and braced his weight against it. “Go ahead.”
Lee took a deep breath, pulled back his fist and slammed it into the bag. It didn’t move, and he heard Nick grunt. For the next fifteen minutes he said nothing as he pounded his anger out into the bag. Eventually his hands dropped to his sides as sweat poured off his body, and he slowed his labored breathing. The explosive anger inside him had burned itself out, but what it left behind was almost worse. He now knew how much she hated being a werewolf, and by extension what he was, that it shattered the fantasy he’d been living under since they’d first made love to each other again. A hollowed out feeling replaced the anger in his gut, and it was on par with the feeling he had when she’d left him a year ago.
He walked over to one of the benches sitting against the wall and sank down on it. He pulled off the boxing gloves and threw them aside. His arms rested loosely on his legs as his head hung down.
“You alright, man,” Nick said as he came over to him. “I get the feeling that you annihilating that bag wasn’t about working out. Besides, I thought you had the afternoon off.”
Lee gave a dry laugh that had absolutely no mirth in it. “Yeah, well plans change.”
He lifted his head and glanced at Nick. His friend just looked at him, with an open expression on his face.
“You want to get out what’s bugging you?” Nick asked as he dragged a chair over to sit across from Lee. “I think the reason you were beating the shit out of that bag is because you don’t want to take that anger home with you. But, and I could be wrong, I don’t think you’re done unloading.”
Lee sat in silence for a moment as he tried to figure out where to start. So much had happened in the past few days, and Nick was right. He was here because he didn’t want to take his anger out on Simone, and if he was going to deal with her in a way that wouldn’t destroy what they’d built, he needed to rid himself of the rest of the sludge sitting inside him.
“I came home early, and found Simone holding a bottle of silver nitrate salts,” he said. Just remembering it sent pain and fear lancing through him. If he hadn’t gotten the afternoon off, would he have found her dead when he came home that evening? “She’d ordered it off the internet and said she planned on ingesting it. Some asshole at the warehouse told her it could cure lycanthropy.”
“Jesus,” Nick said as he sat back in his chair. “Why would she do that? She’s been a werewolf for a year, surely she would have accepted it by now. I could see her trying something like that when she was first turned, but after a year?”
“She’s never completed her transition, so she hasn’t fully experienced everything. She thinks of herself as a monster, and if the only werewolves she’s been exposed to in the past year have been the ones who work for my father, it’s no wonder she would think that.”
“Wait, what do you mean she hasn’t completed her transition? There’s no way that wouldn’t have happened by now.”
“I’ve concluded that David O’Connell was a worthless piece of shit. Instead of taking responsibility for turning her, and guiding her through her first transition, he dumped her off with an equally worthless piece of shit. So on the night of her first full moon, she was left alone, with no one to guide her through the change. She got stuck.”
“Christ, that must have terrified her,” Nick said, his face pale.
“It did, so she’s been drugging herself with Quaaludes every full moon since, so she doesn’t have to go through it. I only found out when I came home later than expected on the last full moon, and she’d driven herself into such a frenzy of pain that she couldn’t relax, couldn’t change, so I had to sedate her. And then I came home today to find that she was prepared to kill herself to cure her disease.” Lee said, spitting out the last word with an extra edge of bitterness. That’s what really stuck in his craw, that she thought being a werewolf was a disease, something that could be eradicated with a little silver nitrate. He couldn’t help but think that she saw him as some defective sub-human. It was a wonder she’d let him touch her at all.
“Did she know it would kill her?” Nick said.
“No, but sure
ly she would realize it would harm her since she saw what silver cuffs did to her. I thought things were getting back on track with us. Why would she want to harm herself like that?”
“From what you’ve told me, she hasn’t really been given much information about being a werewolf. It’s easy for us to sit and judge her for being careless with her life, but we have the benefit of an entire lifetime of experience. She’s been a werewolf for a year and has received no useful information. And someone fed her a bunch of lies that could have killed her. Her first transition was a disaster, can you really not understand why she wouldn’t want to go through that again? Can you not see how all that pain and fear would fuel her desire for revenge? How it would taint everything in her life?”
Lee sat silently for a moment. He’d never really tried to consider what it was like for Simone. It was easy for him to sit in judgement, since for all his father’s flaws, he’d at least guided him through the process of becoming a werewolf, and had instilled in him a sense of self-worth about who and what he was. Simone had been given none of that, had been given no guidance at all. It didn’t mean he still wasn’t hurt by what she’d almost done to herself, but he could see how she would come to that pass. And perhaps she truly hadn’t realized that the silver nitrate would kill her. He looked over at Nick.
“Thanks man,” he said as he stood.
“Go talk to her, be honest with her, and don’t let this hang between you,” Nick said as he stood and clapped Lee on the shoulder. Lee turned away and grabbed his shirt and shrugged it on, not bothering with the buttons.
He left Nick in the gym to complete whatever workout had brought him in there and made his way down to the parking lot. His mood was much more subdued than it had been when he arrived, but he still wasn’t ready to go home. Nick was right. He needed to talk to her, to get everything out in the open. They’d grown closer over the past few days, and he didn’t want that destroyed. And he wanted to be in the right frame of mind to do that.
He walked a path leading to the lake. He found a secluded spot and sat, looking out on the water. The breeze coming off the lake swept away what little anger remained inside him. There was still a lingering hurt, a small kernel of doubt inside him and he suspected that no amount of talking would get rid of it. The only thing that would take care of it was time with Simone, and he sincerely hoped that after what had happened today that they would still have the luxury of time.
Chapter 11
Simone ran into Lee’s bedroom to answer her ringing cell phone. Lee had been gone for what seemed like forever, and she now worried that he wouldn’t be home at all. As she picked up her phone, she looked at the number, hoping that it was Lee. The number displayed on the screen was one she didn’t recognize, but it was originating in Kingston, so maybe it was Lee calling from work. She answered the phone and disappointment and a small kernel of fear curled up inside her when she heard Cadric’s voice on the other end.
“I’m just calling to check how things are going. You haven’t provided me with any status updates, and perhaps I wasn’t clear enough that I wanted to be informed of everything that is happening. Have you contacted Dany yet?”
“Yes. I called him, but he didn’t answer. He sent me a text, wanting to know what I wanted, and I let him know that I’d escaped the warehouse and wanted to meet. So far he hasn’t gotten back to me,” Simone said as she sat down on the edge of the bed.
“And how long ago was this?” Cadric asked in a brisk business like manner. They could have been talking about the weather for all the emotion in his voice.
“Almost a week ago,” Simone mumbled. Had it only been that short amount of time since she and Lee had first made love? It felt longer, her text exchange with Dany more distant than that.
“And you haven’t followed up?” Cadric said, his voice taking on a note of incredulity. “You said this was what you wanted. You want Dany brought to justice, and we have a clear bargain. How are we supposed to catch him if you are sitting around waiting for him to make the next move? What have you been doing for the past week?”
Simone bit her lip. What could she tell him? She’d been making love with Lee for a week, and her bargain with the Order had been shoved to the back of her mind? She was sure that would go over real well. “Nothing,” she said in a small voice.
“Well, you better do something, tout de suite,” he said, using the French term for immediately. “Or did you enjoy your time in the cell so much that you wanted to go back there. We had a bargain, and I’ve held up my end. You are relatively free at the moment, and if you want your freedom to become a permanent reality, I suggest that you do whatever you need to do to get Dany on the hook.”
“Yes sir,” Simone said, her body curling in on itself as she cradled the phone against her ear.
“I’m glad we’ve reached an understanding on this. Don’t disappoint me Simone,” Cadric said, the icy threat in his voice causing Simone to shiver when she heard him disconnect the call.
She opened her texting app and found Dany in the short contact list. She wanted to strike now before she got sidetracked again. When can we meet? She sent the message and set the phone aside on the bedside table as if it would bite her if she held it any longer. The silence in the room grew heavy as no reply from Dany was forthcoming. A shadow fell across her and she looked up to see Lee standing in the doorway. He looked a lot rougher than he had when he left, and she swallowed hard as she looked up at him.
“Hi,” he said, his voice quiet and subdued.
“Hi,” she replied as he stepped into the room. For the first time since they’d been intimate, this was his space and she didn’t want to be an intruder so she stood up. “I’ll get out of your way.”
“Please don’t. I need a shower, and then I thought we could talk. I’ll only be a few minutes, so please just stay,” he said as he came to stand in front of her. She nodded her head and sat back down on the bed. He turned and went through the door connecting his bathroom to his bedroom. She picked up her phone, turned off the ringer and set the phone to vibrate. She didn’t want any messages she got from Dany to interrupt them when Lee was finished with his shower.
True to his word, he was under ten minutes in the bathroom and he walked back into the bedroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. She looked into his eyes, trying to avoid seeing his partially naked body. This talk was too important for her to get side tracked and his body was definitely a distraction. She took a deep breath, knowing she needed to be the one to speak first.
“I honestly don’t know if I would have had the nerve to take the silver nitrate. To be honest until I saw the box sitting on the porch I’d completely forgotten about it. Believe me, Lee, I didn’t know it would kill me. I would never have ordered it if I’d known that.”
“I believe you. I’m sorry I blew up at you, it wasn’t fair for me to jump to the conclusion that you wanted to kill yourself without hearing what you intended. I’m glad I came home when I did. Even not knowing what it would do to you, it would have killed you.”
Simone swallowed hard as she looked down at her hands, knowing that she’d made a lucky escape. She wasn’t sure if she would have gone through with taking the silver nitrate, but if she had that would be it for her. She knew now that as much as she wished she could be human again, she knew she didn’t want to die.
“I know, and I’m glad you came home when you did. It scares me how close I came to hurting myself. Amanda, the woman who told me about the silver nitrate, must have really despised me. I only ordered it because the last full moon made me a little crazy. I ordered it,” she said as she licked her lips. “Before we became intimate again. It was a moment of madness that I forgot all about.”
He came over to her, and he put his finger under her chin. He lifted her face up to look at him, and she could see the concern for her etched in his face.
“It would have killed me to come home and find you dead. I grieved for you once, Simone. I couldn’t go through that ag
ain,” he said, his voice hardly above a whisper. “I thought you were lost to me for the past year, and you can’t know how glad I am that you are alive and well. I know the past year has been horrible for you, and that being a werewolf was not something you asked for, or something that you want.”
“It wasn’t. I’m so scared of it, Lee,” she whispered as a prickling came to the back of her throat. “That’s why I did it, why I’ve been sedating myself on the full moons. I’m scared of it. You have to know that the werewolves I’ve met, except you and my sister, have not been good. One hated me so much that she lied to me about the silver nitrate, knowing full well that it would kill me. Your father wanted to have me killed for dating you, and David turned me against my will. The werewolves at the warehouse were taking part in your father’s scheme to strip countless women of their humanity. How could I want to take the chance of turning into a monster like them? And they are monsters Lee.”
He drew her to her feet and cupped her face with his hands. “I know they are. But I’m not like that, Kate’s not like that and you are not like that.”
“How do I know I won’t end up being like them?” she whispered, as he blurred in front of her. Hot tears fell from her eyes and ran down her cheeks. Everything she’d been experiencing since the Order had raided the warehouse came rushing to the surface.
“Oh sweetheart,” he whispered as he pulled into his arms and held her. She buried her face into the bare skin of his chest and let go. She grieved for her lost humanity, for what had been done to her, and for what she’d almost done to herself. She clung to him as her emotions raged through her, and he stood with her, steady and strong. He offered his strength to her as he held her in his arms, and she took it.
Finally the tears stopped, and she sagged against him, spent from the storm that had raged through her.
“It will get better,” he promised, his voice a deep rumble in his chest. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but it will. You are one of the strongest women I’ve ever met. You’ve survived so much already, you’ll get through this.”
