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Chapter Fourteen (Luke)
She was driving me crazy. I carried her strapped across my shoulder as we started the journey back into town. It was a long walk back to Nillport, and I knew I was not going to be able to carry her the whole way. I hoped that somewhere along the way, she would see reason and just agree to walk with me. I could have cut the rope and just had her follow behind me because I knew she couldn’t run away, but she wouldn’t walk. She had told me there was only one way she would get into town, and that was with her dead. I was going to find another way.
The problem with this new way was that she was too close to me. I could feel her skin on mine, her breath against my neck, and her scent engulfed me. She smelled of clay and daylilies, and it was intoxicating. The smell was driving me crazy.
“We can’t keep walking the whole night,” she said and tapped me on the shoulder. I acted like I didn’t hear her at all. Her weight against my shoulder slowed me down; if I were walking on my own, I would make it back to town way before sundown. I’d travel faster if I took the trees, but that wasn’t possible with her.
“We need to stop for the night. I am exhausted and need rest. I need to sleep,” she tapped me again, this time with more urgency.
“Fall asleep right there over my shoulder,” I told her.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I—” she started but stopped. “Just put me down.”
I grunted and dropped her to the ground before helping her sit up against a tree. I was tired too, but I could have pushed on. I wanted to get this over with.
“Cut my hands loose, please,” she said.
I cocked my head and smiled at her. “And why would I do that? So you can wiggle your way out of the rope, and then we start the dance all over again.”
“I won’t try to escape. I promise you. Besides, what do you have in your bag there? I am hungry. I have something we can eat in mine.”
I was really hungry, though, and thought it wasn’t a bad idea to have something to eat. But I wouldn’t cut her out of the bounds. She was too much trouble for me to try that. I dropped my bag and went through it, removing a piece of dry bread and a bottle of water. It wasn’t the most nutritious food, but it was good enough for the two of us. I sat in front of her and glowed my eyes so I could see her better in the dark. She glowed hers right back and growled at me, telling me she was ready for an attack.
“Calm down,” I told her. “I was just taking a good look at you.”
I turned off the glow, and she turned hers off too. She was very untrusting; I noticed that immediately. She said she grew up in the street, so I expected that. Mikhail grew up in the streets, too, and at just twelve, he had to work for one of the street gangs, and he didn’t even know what he was then. His ascension was one of the saddest and most painful I have ever heard. Mikhailnever had a pack and had been a lone wolf all his life. On his ascension, he was out with friends, and they had no idea what was happening to him.
“What are you thinking of?” Hayley asked and broke into my thought. She had those sharp eyes of hers on me. There weren’t glowing, but I knew she could see me quite well. I broke off some of the bread and brought it close to her mouth. I expected her to object, but she didn’t. She opened her mouth, and I slipped it in. She started to chew immediately.
“You said you grew up in the streets,” I said and sat on the floor, getting comfortable.
“Yes.”
“Did you ascend on the streets too?”
“Yes.”
“That was scary, wasn’t it?”
She looked away and didn’t answer immediately. I spoke to fill up the silence. I don’t know why I was doing it, but I just wanted to talk to her. It felt right.
“I have a friend. You met him the day you came to the reservation. He grew up on the streets like you, and joined a gang. When he transitioned, he was out with friends. They don’t have a home, so they just spend their nights wiling away. Doing anything and all things they could think of. That night, they wanted to sneak their way into a club. Very foolish thing. They were children, but they still wanted to get into a club to see what it was like. It was his thirteenth birthday, and they thought they should spice up the night. So, they made plans, but they barelygot to the club when his ascension started. It scared his friends as he screamed and thrashed about. It was terrifying.”
I looked at her to see if she was still listening to me.
“I remember the night I did, and I had friends and family there with me, but I was scared. I thought I was going to die. The pain, the delusions, the surge of sudden emotions that you get hit with, and then, there was the urge to kill. He had no one there to tell him what was happening. He didn’t even know he was a werewolf. He was just a kid that had all this power all of a sudden. He killed his friends. All of them, and then ran away. He stayed in the woods for a long time, guilt eating him up and this newfound power terrifying him. He didn’t know what to do with it. He spent almost a year in the woods, surviving on berries and smaller animals. He was scared if he went back into town, he would kill someone. Then, he kept traveling through the woods and found Bonne.”
“Bonne? Who’s Bonne?”
“A friend of mine too.”
“A lone wolf?”
“No. He’s not, but he acts like one,” I said and chuckled. “He acts like he’s not a wolf.”
