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His face glowed, and a low rumble emanated from deep within his chest. I was standing so close to him that I could feel it deep in my bones.
He reached out and held my hand, saying, “Come with me.” I let him pull me back outside, and we stood in the middle of the clearing. “Do you trust me?” he now asked.
There was no hesitation. “Yes.”
He held my gaze as he said, “If it’s okay, I’m going to show you my wolf.”
“Okay.” I let go of his hand and wrapped my arms around myself, bracing for what was to come. The memory of seeing him transform, with lips pulled back and ready to kill, made me tremble.
He noticed my reaction. “I don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said softly.
“No.” I felt whole with Jacob and completely empty without him. His wolf was a big part of him, and I had to get used to him being one and the same. “I want to, Jacob. I need to see.”
My response settled his decision. “Okay.”
A shimmer began to form within the air around him, and I tensed as fur started sprouting from his skin next. He bent over, his hands touching the ground. On contact with the snow, they became paws, and his head was replaced with a long protruding jaw with a snout at the end of it. Where once stood a man was now a huge wolf staring back at me.
His beautiful white coat and black-tipped tail was exactly how I remembered him. A breeze blew through the area, ruffling his fur and causing goosebumps to break out over my skin. Shivering, I watched as he walked over and touched my hand with his snout. His cold nose startled me, and I gave a yelp.
He immediately backed up, and I realized he thought he’d scared me. I crouched down to eye level and reached out with one of my hands. His eyes shone bright under the twinkling lights, never leaving me. I beckoned to him. Slowly, he walked back toward me, and I brought my hand to his snout before sliding it to his head and brushing across the top of his head. He purred. That made me smile, and I did it again. This time, he leaned into my hand, telling me he wanted me to rub him a little more, which I did. As I rubbed his head and back and scratched behind his ears, he was like a big puppy, making contented noises.
His fur was so soft and warm, but the cold air was starting to make me shiver. Jacob, so closely attuned to me, nudged my hand before turning to walk toward the cave opening. I followed him inside and watched him settle on top of the blankets. Without hesitating, I settled myself right next to him, covering myself with another blanket. He was so warm, and my body craved his heat. I felt myself drifting off to the sound of his beating heart.
Jacob
The next morning,I woke up in human form. Looking around the room, Millie was nowhere in sight, but her scent was everywhere. I took in a deep breath of her scent before getting up in search of her.
I found her outside. She was sitting on the large rock by the pond, looking into the water with her hair cascading down her back. She wasn’t in red like the woman in the painting, but the scene in front of me took my breath away. That painting would not be going to Luc or Brandon’s house but to mine. It would hang in my house—our house, if she said yes.
I walked toward Millie and sat down beside her. She leaned into me when I wrapped an arm around her.
“What are you thinking?”
“Nothing and everything,” she whispered, a soft sigh escaping her lips as I planted a kiss on her head.
I smiled. “Tell me what you’re thinking at this moment.”
“How happy I am.”
That warmed my heart, and I sighed in return.
She looked up at me with an expression I couldn’t decipher. “I haven’t told you about my dream,” she said.
I stayed silent and waited, watching as she dipped her toes in the water. Ripples emanated from the movement, cascading across the entire surface.
“You know I’m scared of ghosts,” she began. “My mom tells me that it stems from a house we lived in when I was small. I think I was four or five. The house we lived in was just an old Victorian in an ordinary neighborhood, a place my parents rented for six months. We were living out of a suitcase, and Mom and Dad had twin girls, just trying to make ends meet. Dad was painting in the park every day and would talk to anyone who was interested in his art. People think that kids are too young and not developed enough to understand when their parents are struggling, but kids know. They know it really well.”
I pulled her closer, and she responded by snuggling further into my arms before continuing, “We were the only Asian people in town. Mom said Dad followed his heart, and his heart had taken us to a little town in the middle of Texas. Most people there were nice and welcoming, but it only ever takes one to upset the apple cart. In this case, it was three older kids who lived down the street from us.
“Our house was rumored to be haunted, and that’s probably why my parents were able to rent it. Mom said the kids had taken it upon themselves to come at night and make scary noises behind the house. Of course, we didn’t know this till after the fact, but for three days, I remember being scared out of my mind. By the third night, I had crawled into Mom and Dad’s bed and slid under their blanket. I refused to let them leave me or come out from under the blanket. We moved shortly after that. From then on, Dad made sure he only picked big cities to move to.
“I remember being so scared of ghosts for a long time. Nightmares plagued me almost every night until we moved to San Francisco to be closer to my grandmother. She used to sing to me every night before bedtime, and it was then I started having this dream. It would start off as a nightmare, with me lost in the woods, but then switch to here, next to this lake.”
She indicated our surroundings. “I remember I would be sitting right here, and there would be a wolf staring at me from the cave entrance. The calm that came over me was so welcoming, but it never lasted because the nightmares would eventually take over again. This area was a respite; a break from the horror I would experience.”
“Now you have me,” I said, feeling a lump in my throat. Her pain was my pain.
“And the ring your grandmother made,” she added, twirling it around her finger. “Did you know last night was the best sleep I ever had? I didn’t dream at all.”
