AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Fine, I can tell you. But pretend to be surprised when Nick comes over tonight to announce our engagement.”
My stomach dropped. No one had told me she had a serious relationship, and they sure as shit didn’t tell me she had one with Nicholas. And when did he start going with a nickname? He’d always been anti-name shortening. It was one thing we both agreed on.
She’d told me she’d run into him, but I didn’t realize that it was recurring, that a relationship had formed.
Blood roared in my ears, and a ringing noise filled my head as if I’d just had an airhorn blasted next to my ear. I could hear nothing else, see nothing else except my sister and her shiny diamond ring on her finger. Getting married.
It was bad enough that myyoungersister found love before me, but the fact that it was my love that she’d found and taken away from me… that was too much to handle.
“I gotta go.” I didn’t wait for any explanation. I didn’t need nor want one. What I wanted was out of this house—this town—all of it.
I bolted out the back door and ran straight into the woods behind my house. Our street was on the edge of town. If I went south, I’d be taken deeper into the subdivision, but this way was the end. The edge of the city and the edge of civilization. At least it had felt that way to me as a child. I’d often wandered through the woods, enjoying the solitude and quiet, much to my parents’ dismay. They’d warned me of the dangers of the woods—about sightings of bears and wolves, though I’d never seen any evidence of them. If I did, right now I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be close enough for my family to come out and try and explain. I didn’t need an explanation. I needed to breathe.
My feet hit the ground with a thud, each step booming. I didn’t care. It wasn’t as if anyone lived out here. I ran and ran and ran—harder—faster—not even pretending to look where I was going until it was too late and I found myself deep in the woods.
I thought coming home wouldn’t be that hard. I thought I could handle it.
Years. It had been years. It wasn’t normal for a person to be so hung up on a crush—one that had only just started when Nicholas had been taken out of my life. It wasn’t fair, and not for the first time, I hated the fact that I couldn’t escape it. I couldn’t hook up with other guys or girls, I barely even found other people attractive. If I did, I was very quick to note how much they resembled Nicholas.
Brother-in-law. That’s what he was going to be to me. He would be my sister’s husband, father to her children.
Not mine any longer. He never was mine. Now he never would be.
I dropped to my knees in the forest floor, letting the tears fall. I mourned the loss of hope. The shred that I’d had left that whispered in my ear that Nicholas might come back to me someday. My tears hit the dirty snow mix that I sat in, and the palms of my hand rested against the cold ground.
The forest around me went quiet, as if giving me a moment of silence for my grief.
It took me too long to realize I wasn’t alone.
When the roaring in my ears finally subsided and I blinked away the tears, I lifted my gaze and found myself surrounded by wolves. Three of them that I could see—larger than any wolf I’d ever seen in real life. I’d only ever seen them at the zoo. Never this close. Never close enough that I could stare into their eyes. But I could now.
And worse than that, the wolves looked like they were about to pounce—on me—all of them.
Chapter Four
Nicholas
Whenmymomwrotea list, she wrote a list. I had an entire grocery cart full of food and still had the dairy aisle to go. I was glad for the distraction, though hearing that Christopher might be here for the holidays had messed with me. So much time had gone by. And sure, he hadn’t written to me, but that was a lot to expect from a teenage boy. And sure, he couldn’t mail them to me, but… I was a kid and away from home and missing my best friend and having dreams of… kissing. Dreams of him. The only person I wanted to talk to about it was him.
The first time I’d been allowed out to visit family had been nearly two years after leaving. I came home, and I ran up to my bedroom expecting to see at least one letter on my bed. Instead I found everything as I had left it. I guess in the back of my mind I always assumed that he would be there waiting for me when I got out. That he’d have sent me Christmas cards or pictures of the float we helped plan for school or I don’t know… something.
But why should he? I left him in the middle of the night. And I hadn’t written either, or more accurately, I hadn’t sent them because my parents wouldn’t let me.
Which had me even being little upset over the letter thing, one of the argh-est stances I’d ever had. I couldn’t mail them to him and he couldn’t mail them to me. Why should I be mad at him for that? Where was this anger coming from?
I wasn’tmadat him. That was entirely unfair. It was the long held sadness at the whole situation that had turned to anger that I was feeling. Why did I have to be a stupid wolf?
That was a question I asked myself over and over again. I loved my beast and my pack and my family. But to be human like Christopher, for us not to have been separated in the first place… That was the dream. If only that could’ve been.
On my darkest of days, I’d fantasized about that for a long time, imagining what life would have been like if I had been a regular human and Christopher and I had gone to college together rather than being separated once my beast came forth.
Not once had I wished that he’d have been a wolf. I liked him just the way he was—human and all. Or at least I did like him that way. It had been so long. We’d both changed so much. As it should be.
I put the last of the cheese on the list in the cart and checked out. The look on the woman’s face when she saw my total had been humorous.
“My teen brother and cousins are eating as fast as we can buy it,” I teased, flashing her a bright smile that I didn’t feel.
“That would explain it for sure.” She had me tap my card and then helped me bag everything up.
