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“He will be back before morning,” I said to Gravy Boat. “Riggs and the pack have to ‘roam’, whatever that means.”
He’d tried to explain it to me, but I didn’t quite get it. Apparently, part of being a werewolf in a pack meant going for wild wolf excursions in the woods together. They’d hunt, play—yes, he’d said they would play—and just run. Apparently, it helped somehow with the whole Alpha thing.
He seemed to think he needed to solidify his claim as Alpha before we could get the pack to help us rescue the others from The Coven. Whether it made sense or not, I was learning to simply roll with things.
My werewolf boyfriend has a wolf in his head that tries to grab the wheel during sex? Yeah, sure. No big deal. He wants to go play in the woods with the other wolves before we rescue my sister from the bad guy vampires? Makes sense.
I was grinning, even though I had no right to be. I should’ve been petrified for what was about to come. I thought part of me was starting to learn to embrace the danger, though.
It was part of living out of the bubble, wasn’t it? You could hide from any and everything. You could put your walls up and live safe in your cage. Or you could kick the door open and go out there. You could take the good with the bad and wake up without knowing what to expect. You could let your mind live or cage it to keep your body alive.
In his own way, Riggs was teaching me to let my mind be free, even if it meant putting my body at risk.
I thought about what we’d told each other last night in the diner. We’d said the big “L” word. I’d always rolled my eyes at movies or books where people professed their love so quickly. “You like each other,” was what I wanted to scream at them. Love was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be this big ordeal that took a long time to cultivate and develop.
Now I wasn’t so sure. I’d tried to talk myself down from the ledge of love ever since last night and so far, failed.
Maybe love wasn’t a finished product. It wasn’t the culmination of years of work and perfect conditions. Love was like a sickness to be caught. It grabbed a hold of you and made you know with every fiber of your being that you were in this for the long haul. Somebody else had crawled inside your heart and mind. They’d spread roots and now removing them would be as painful as removing one of your own organs.
Maybe that’s why they called it falling in love. Except it felt more like this scene I’d seen in a movie once. The girl had been walking on a forest trail and she’d taken one wrong step. That slight loss of footing had sent her sliding down in the dry leaves towards a hill beside the path. Within moments, she was sliding, then the hill got steeper and she was tumbling. Eventually, she was careening down the hill like a ragdoll, completely at the mercy of gravity and momentum.
I smiled. I guessed that’s where I felt like I was. I’d slipped into falling for Riggs, and now all I could do was fight the fall or embrace it. Last night I’d decided to embrace it.
I heard Kyla coming long before I saw her. My new vampire-enhanced hearing really was spectacular. I could even tell it was her because of the pattern of her steps and the weight of them. I tried to do the cool movie thing where I said, “Hi, Kyla,” once she was close without turning.
She snorted. “Enjoying the improved hearing, are we?”
I felt a little embarrassed. She was a vampire, too. I wasn’t going to impress her with the same abilities she’d probably long-since mastered and grown bored of.
“I have to admit,” I said. “I feel a little weaker today. For a while I was feeling like I could’ve ripped a tree out of the ground by its roots or run a marathon without breaking a sweat.”
Kyla nodded. “You’re just young. Your system is learning to burn blood more efficiently. Right now, it’s like a gas guzzling truck that gets two miles per gallon. Give it time and your strength will last longer between feedings.”
“So I should feed soon?”
“You should, but everyone here is a werewolf. You shouldn’t drink their blood if you can avoid it.”
“Why?”
She hesitated. “It’s taboo, for one. Werewolf blood is different than human blood. It gives them some connection to you if you drink it. They’ll be able to sense where you are for a time. Maybe even pick up on your thoughts and emotions. It gives them some power over you, but it also gives you a taste of their strength. It’s a delicate balance, but neither vampires nor werewolves consider it remotely okay to do. Vampires obviously don’t like giving over any control to werewolves, and werewolves don’t want vampires tapping into their strength. Besides, neither side wants to feel like there’s any need for dependence on one another.”
