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Dead silence falls over the clearing, the only thing that can be heard is the steaming of the heated weapons and the dripping of blood. Kade turns to his mentor, confused and unsure. He never once regretted taking down a shifter, but this was a slaughter. Plain and simple.
A bird chirps from the tall grass and takes flight, but without looking away from Kade, Guy aims his pistol and fires. Destroying the bird in mid-air. “Could have been a shifter,” Guy explains before holstering his weapons and walking back towards the forests surrounding the clearing.
“Guy?” Kade calls after him.
But Guy doesn’t turn. “You want to protect the girl, well she’s protected.”
“And the questioning? You said we couldn’t kill him, we needed information,” Kade insists. He runs up next to Guy and grabs his shoulders, turning the older man to face him. “Tell me why we just killed a whole unit without getting any information.”
“We got what we came for!” Guy yells, shoving Kade back forcefully.
“And what did we come for, really? Because it wasn’t to question the enemy, was it?”
“We came to find out if they knew anything they shouldn’t and they did. So we killed them,” Guy explains as if it was the most obvious answer in the world.
“And what about how they found out about Elara? What they plan do with that information? We need to know!”
“Would you rather Elara be dead?” Guy snaps, turning to face Kade with his finger inches from the younger man’s nose. “Would you rather we let them live, and then they believe the rat and go after Elara? Is that what you want?”
“No, I?—”
“Then stop questioning and obey me!” Guy roars.
For a minute Kade just stands there, shoulders slumped and jaw slack. Never once has Guy ever raised his voice to him. Not in all the years he’s been with him.
Guy sighs, putting his hands on Kade’s shoulders and pressing his forehead to Kade’s. “Trust me, my boy. I’m doing everything we have to do to keep that poor girl safe. I won't ever let her down, she’s too important.”
“What aren’t you telling me, Guy?” Kade asks.
But he’s already turned and walked away.
16
Elara
Elara returns home, no longer comfortable sleeping in her dorm, shoving the business card into her pocket. Part of her wants to immediately say yes, but she needs to sleep on it. She's shocked at all the information Denzel had given her, but that’s not her biggest problem at the moment. How has her life changed so quickly? It felt like ages ago that she was scratched by the wolf, but despite everything that’s happened since then, not much time has passed.
All she knows is that things will never be the same.
How can they be, now that she’s learned witches and werewolves exist? If her visit with Denzel has done nothing else, it’s at least convinced her she should believe in magic, since that's the only explanation that made sense here.
But doing that opens a whole new can of holy-heck.
As she climbs into bed, Elara tries to grasp this new, uncertain future. What magic is she capable of? What will happen at the next full moon? What will joining Denzel’s pack mean? Shaking her head, she pulls up the covers and settlesdown. She needs time to process. To grasp it. To not hate what’s happened to her.
She never wanted this. Would never have chosen it.
But it’s happened.
She’s different now. She’ll never be the same.
After half an hour, Elara sighs in frustration and flings off her covers, finally resigning herself to the fact that she can't sleep. The house is quiet, meaning her parents are asleep, but she doesn’t want to wake them. Pretending she’s okay would be too hard now. So she pads to the back porch and then out the back door, her bare feet soft on the stained wood.
Her eyes widen as she realizes her mother has turned it into some sort of garden, something that had never been back here before. Especially when her mother’s never particularly been one for gardening, or perhaps it’s been here for weeks and Elara hasn’t been home enough to notice it. Her lips twist in a wry smile. At the same time, her mother is famous, or perhaps infamous, among her family and friends for choosing a hobby, sticking with it for a few weeks while she almost obsessively dedicates her life to it, before becoming bored with it and moving onto the next thing. There was scrapbooking, macrame, the French horn, paper quilling, tap dance classes, handmade jewelry, foil art, and decoupaging everything from picture frames to their dresser.
Elara considers the wet grass and her bare feet, then shrugs to herself and steps off, not caring if she's going to get her feet wet. She has to admit, when her mom throws herself into her latest craze, she goes all out. There are flowers everywhere, and it makes the yard seem like a sort of jungle paradise, even if she's pretty sure most of these flowers don't come from the jungle. The red, blue, purple, yellow, and green flowers all shimmer in the light of the waning moon. However, out of all of the flowers in the yard, there's only one that draws her attention. It's a sortof silvery purple, and it almost seems to glow in the light of the moon. She pads closer and reaches out, tempted to pull it closer to her face so that she can see if it has a smell.
Her fingers brush a petal and she yanks her hand back with a hiss, startled by the sudden pain in the tips of her fingers. Frowning as she holds her hand to her chest, Elara looks more closely. There were no thorns that she could see, nor anything else that would explain the sudden burning sensation in her fingers. She breathes through the sudden burst of unexpected pain, trying to understand what just happened. She flips her hand over so that she can see the red marks on the tips of her fingers, already fading away as if nothing had ever happened. Another example of how quickly she heals, which is a good thing, because that seriously hurt.
