I ran through the forest. Pitch-black and cold, the breeze in the night swayed through the trees like a bitter poltergeist taunting me. My feet stumbled over leaves and fallen limbs while low-hanging branches reached to snag me in their sharp embrace.
Thin, cold air did nothing to fill my lungs. I stopped and tried to find the light, the way to the road, but all I found was a pair of sick golden eyes staring at me. They neared until the glow revealed a face I knew too well.
Nate smiled at me, fangs peeking out of his lips. He cocked his head as his eyes greedily drank me in. “I told you that you couldn’t run from me,” he said coolly, before lunging at me.
My eyes opened as I gulped a breath of air. Pain greeted me like we were old friends, radiating through my body down to the place in my leg where I could feel my own heartbeat. I grabbed the sheets next to me, my toes fidgeting under the blankets.
“It was just a dream,” I murmured to myself as my head rolled to the side. It was dim in the room, a small lamp providing the only source of light.
It looked like a cabin of some sort. Wood-paneled walls decorated with different trinkets. A photo of some ducks, a wooden bass with gold hooks for hanging coats, and a deer head mounted on the wall.
I tried not to panic. These people had saved me after all, whoever they were . . .
I tried to push myself up. Searing pain shot through my leg and started to slowly kick drum to life. The pulse in my thigh thump-thump-thumped, drawing tears to my eyes and causing me to col apse back on the bed.
Deep breaths.
My eyes slowly drifted down the plaid comforter to my leg. Fingers slowly peeled back the blanket to find a large bloodstained bandage wrapped around it. Memories poured back to me: that night. The wolves. The creature. The bite.
My heart raced as the images of my attack poured into my brain. Wolves. Big-ass wolves. I had never seen anything like them. I tried to push away those images. Push away the images of the wolf tearing into my leg, or of the golden-eyed devil who had tried to sate his needs with my body.
Tears tried to push their way out. A sob yanked through me. It was like I could hear Nate next to me, shushing me and telling me he was sorry but he couldn’t help it when I made silly mistakes. I covered my mouth and pushed the pain down. I wouldn’t cry. Now was not the time. I needed to get up and figure out where the hell I was, and who had saved me.
The sound of murmuring snapped my gaze to the green door across the room. I pulled the covers up while my heart danced in my chest.
Voices outside grew louder while the air around me felt like it was also holding its breath.
“She’s just going to be a burden and a royal pain in my ass,” a man groaned from behind the door. His voice gravelly, and ice-cold.
“You don’t want this on you!” another man pleaded, his voice so smooth it almost sounded like a song.
“I’ve had enough of this!” the ragged voice growled, causing the green door to shiver.
My eyes went wide as I watched it vibrate. “What the fu—”
Light pooled into the room as the door was thrown open and the lights were turned on abruptly. I had to shield my eyes with my arm so they could adjust to the harshness.
I tried to make out what was happening as loud footsteps thundered toward me.
My eyes opened to meet the end of a double-barreled shotgun.
I screamed and grabbed a pillow to shield me. I tried to squirm away but the pain radiating through my injured leg only turned me into a flopping seal on the bed.
It was the man. The gray-haired goon who had told me to get off his property. He cocked the shotgun as his frosty, silver eyes narrowed at the sight of me. Silver eyes that I couldn’t forget. Silver eyes that looked like the ones I’d seen before it all went dark.
He was the one who saved me?
“Levi, stop!” the man behind him barked.
Levi looked back at the man, then at me, his blazing silver eyes finding mine.
“She won’t make it, Derek!” he spat back.
“Wha—stop— please!” My words tripped over themselves, struggling for survival as they left my lips. “Please don’t. Please don’t do this!”
“I’d be doing you a favor,” he replied with a disturbing gentleness.
Would he? Part of me wondered if my life was better off nonexistent. Then a better part of me stomped it out. I hadn’t made it this far only to die.
“Please don’t.” My fingers gripped the pillow I was holding in front of me like a shield. “Just let me go. I won’t say anything!”
“Levi—Levi, stop. You don’t want her blood on your hands,” the man behind him said. Levi scoffed, and the dark-haired man stepped closer, determination in his deep-brown eyes. He looked at me sympathetically, then back at Levi, who was nothing but an unforgiving mountain. “Levi, it’s the law. You know the law.”
“You think I give a shit about that law?”
“You should! You want the council down here doing an investigation? Or human police sniffing around? Have fun explaining all of that to your brother!” The dark-haired man snarled as he pushed his fingers through his locks. They were as close to black as you could get. “It’s not your decision!” he hissed. “It’s hers!”
“You know she won’t survive the turn, Derek. Look at her!” he said, breaking eye contact with me to look directly at Derek. “She’s already a black-and-blue skeleton as it is.”
I winced because it was true. My body felt like someone had steamrolled it and then fed it to the pigs.
“I don’t know that and neither do you!” Derek snapped.
“She could make it. You don’t know the future. You don’t get to decide for her!”
“Make what?!” I desperately asked.
They ignored me.
“The success rate is low!” Levi yelled.
“You can’t just kill an innocent person!” Derek screamed back.
Levi tossed a hand in the air. “You lost your damn mind?
It doesn’t work like that, she—”
“I’m sitting right fucking here!” I roared, traitorous tears streaming down my cheeks. “I’m sitting right here, goddammit.” Gulping, I tried to muster whatever courage was left in me. Which was very little once I took another look at the gun. “Now, are you going to tell me what the hell is going on or are you going to shoot me? Seems like a lot of trouble to save me if you’re just going to put a bullet in me.”
Levi opened his mouth but Derek stepped slightly in front of him, partially blocking Levi from me. He cast me an apologetic glance, then faced Levi again. “What is there to lose? Time? Compared to the lifetimes we will live?”
Who the hell were these people?!
Levi whipped his head back to Derek for a pregnant moment, then lowered his gun. A low growl reverberated out of him. “This is your responsibility.”
There was no way a man could growl like that. I must have hit my head too hard. Or lost too much blood.
“It is yours too!” Derek hissed back, his lips rising enough to show fangs.
Fangs.
Fangs were hanging from his gums. Chills ran over my skin.
“She will need you. You know the law, Levi!” Derek snipped. “Don’t make me call Lander!”
Levi growled back and started to speak, but my strangled scream beat him to it. I clamped my hands over my mouth. Every instinct in my gut told me to run.
Derek’s fangs instantly retracted into his gums. He walked carefully toward me with his hands up. “I’m sorry.
Really . . .”
I shook my head, scooting away from him.
Levi leaned lazily against the door to watch. I started to shake.
Derek moved to sit on the edge of the bed. His soft eyes made him seem safe, but the fangs in his mouth said otherwise. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—we didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Who the fuck are you people?!”
“My name is Derek. That lovely asshole behind me is Levi. We, um, found you the other night.”
“Saved your ass the other night,” Levi corrected.
“What?”
“You remember what happened to you?” Derek asked.
I nodded slowly. Like I could forget. “You were bitten. Not just by a dog. But by a . . .”
He paused, turning to eye Levi behind him.
“By a what?” My voice was shrill. “Jesus, just say it!”
“By a werewolf,” Levi snapped.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The pair of them looked at me like I had lost it; I’d lost a lot of blood during the attack, so maybe I was losing it?
There was no way they were serious.
“A what now?” I said, wiping the tears away. Another nervous laugh did a piss-poor job of hiding my panic. “No, but really, what was it?”
“You were really bitten by a werewolf,” Derek said gently.
Levi huffed and rolled his eyes.
This couldn’t be real. Werewolves weren’t real. They were only subjects of strange fantasies and terrifying dreams.
I shook my head slowly. “You can’t be—those are just fairy tales.” My mind reeled with questions I couldn’t believe I was even considering.
Derek pinched his brow. “All right, fine,” he said.
He stood up, turning into a blur of color that zipped around the room. He paused at the wall, looking over his shoulder before taking a step up the wall. He waltzed up the wall and onto the ceiling like he was taking a stroll on the beach. He paused when he was directly above me, a smirk on his lips.
He jumped, tucking his feet into a somersault, and landed gracefully next to me on the bed. “Still feel like laughing?” he asked.
My mouth dropped open. Oh, he was real all right. I clutched the pillow closer.
“Listen, we’re not going to hurt you,” Derek said.
I held the pillow tighter in front of me. “Your fangs—”
“I won’t hurt you, I swear.”
“But he—”
“Levi will not hurt you either.”
“He has a gun.”
“No one is going to kill you,” Derek firmly stated. “Levi, put the gun away.”
Levi’s low growl made me shiver again.
“Stop, Levi!” Derek hissed, his eyes going black.
Levi grumbled out a string of curses as he set the shotgun down and leaned it against the wall. He walked over to a rocking chair with a blue, star-patterned quilt lying over it and took a seat.
Derek took a deep breath. His warm brown eyes were back and the fangs were gone. “Listen, I swear we will not hurt you, so let’s just calm down,” he said with a soft smile.
“Deep breaths. I’m sure the pillow would appreciate that.”
“A werewolf?”
“Yes.”
My fingers clutched the blanket. I looked back at Levi, who was watching me curiously. “Is that what you are, then?”
“Levi, why don’t you show her?” Derek asked.
“Show me what?” I had to get out of this place. These people were certifiable. There was no denying that.
“What you’ll turn into if you survive,” Levi muttered as he stood and started to take his clothes off. “Which you won’t. Humans rarely do. And I would say your odds are shit, since you got bit by a bunch of rogue wolves.”
Derek rolled his eyes and moved in front of me, blocking my view of Levi, who was standing half nude in the center of the room.
There was cracking and breaking as his body began to quickly contort in sickening directions. I felt vomit rise in my mouth. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t help it. I leaned to the side and looked around Derek’s body to see something that should not be real. Hair was sprouting through Levi’s skin, teeth peeked out from his lips, and his head contorted into a muzzle. More cracks sounded as his body shifted and fur rolled over his skin. My mouth dropped.
He had changed into a large black wolf. A black wolf with bits of gray dusting his back. He was huge, more like a horse in the room. He looked back at Derek and me with an expression that seemed annoyed.
He stepped to us, his muscles rippling beneath the fur.
“What the fuck?”
A rumble came from his chest. My mouth clenched shut.
“Levi,” Derek warned.
The wolf turned to the vampire, whose fangs had started to peek out of his lips defensively, and snorted. He cocked his head, silver eyes almost amused with me before they vexed over into something else.
“Levi,” Derek snarled.
Levi huffed and reluctantly turned away, walking on four legs out of the room. There was more cracking that sounded again in the cabin followed by a series of curses. I heard another door open and slam shut. Derek looked down the hall.
“Where’s he going?” I asked, because I wanted to make sure I stayed far, far away from him.
“On a run,” Derek said simply, like it actually was.
“Am I going to die?” My voice cracked. I felt like the walls might start to crumble at any second.
Derek sat back down on the bed. “On the third full moon from the day you were bitten, you will shift.”
“Into what Levi is?”
He nodded. “Yes, into what Levi is.”
My hand flew over my mouth to hide the sobs. This couldn’t be happening. I was trying to start over. I was going to start a new life. How did all of that get flushed down the drain so fast?
Derek tugged at his hair, watching me carefully. “What did you say your name was?”
Should I tell them my real name? Do I give that part of me away? “Renee.”
He narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. “Your real name.”
Apparently, using my mother’s name was not going to work. I guess it didn’t matter.
“Charlotte.”
He smiled gently again and sighed. “It’s going to be all right,” he said. “I think you just need some sleep, and then maybe a stiff drink? Yeah? There’s a lot you need to know. I know this is probably overwhelming.”
“Is he going to kill me?”
“No,” Derek said firmly. “I promise.” He stood up and headed for door. “I’ll let you rest. We’ll talk when you wake up.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Well, I’d rather you not die. Don’t you agree?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer. All I knew was that I’d seen what I’d only ever read about and seen on television just unfold in front of me.
Derek left me alone to lose it in solitude. If they were right, there was no escaping now. My body was a time bomb. I could run a thousand miles away and still not escape it.
I lay back on my pillow and wished Nate was here. For a moment it felt like his nose was touching mine. The thought itself broke me. I hated that it broke me. I hated that I still craved that feeling of butterflies in my stomach that he gave me.
I closed my eyes and tried to think of something happier, but all I could hear was Nate laughing at me. I could see him perfectly, looking suave in his Ray-Bans and with his chambray shirtsleeves rolled up to his forearms. The sunshine made his hair look almost gold.
He looked over at me and pushed his glasses onto his head. What have you done, Charlotte? He chuckled, delighted by his own joke. His laughs felt like sandpaper; his fingers, fillet knives carving up my skin. His smile twisted, opening wide with sharp teeth descending past his lips and out of his mouth. Fangs.
What have you done, Charlotte? he asked again, his warped voice haunting me and his eyes filled with a hunger that was nowhere close to love.
He walked toward me with blood dripping down his chin, golden skin slowly fading into sandy-brown fur. He moved behind me and wrapped his arms around me, a position I knew too well with him.
His teeth raked across my neck, over goose bumps and throbbing veins. I could feel his fangs pressing into my skin before there was a scream— mine.
I bolted upright in bed, hands flying over my mouth to stop the sound. Violent sobs broke through my fingers.
I somehow stumbled to the bathroom. I turned the knob on the old, rusted sink, splashed water on my face, and looked in the mirror, then wished I hadn’t.
It wasn’t the bruises. It was my eyes. They were a raging blue storm glowing like the neon sign at Shirley’s diner.
“No,” I snapped, my chest aching.
The door flew open. Derek looked around frantically, then down at me. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re safe. Okay? No one’s coming for you.” He reached for me but I twisted away until my back hit the bathroom wall. “Okay. It’s okay.”
The tears took over. “My eyes.” I panted.
He nodded, looking at me carefully. “It’s normal.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve seen many werewolves shift, and a few humans.
Come,” he added, “let’s get you to bed. We’ll talk in the morning.”
I shook my head at him. He sighed and sat down opposite me, leaning against the cabinet. I felt tears start to run down my cheeks as sobs ripped through me.
I couldn’t remember getting back into bed or falling asleep. He must have waited and then carried me back.
• • •
I woke up to something cold on my leg. I winced slightly as a prickly feeling took over.
Derek snapped his eyes to mine, his fingers covered in the same white cream smeared over my mangled flesh.
“Sorry, I know it stings. I thought you were out cold. Can I?”
“Sure,” I answered, while my groggy mind started to slowly churn to life.
Carefully, he dabbed more cream on with featherlight touches. “There’s a bottle of ibuprofen on the nightstand.
You’ll want to take some.”
I reached over and unscrewed the top, then shook out four pills. Derek handed me some water, and I gulped it down with them, praying they would kick in soon.
He took my glass and set it on the nightstand. “So . . .”
He bit his lip and reached for some gauze. It was woven, soft from the looks of it, but still felt like sandpaper going over my leg. I clenched my mouth shut and tried to be a good sport, because I knew he was probably trying to make this painless for me. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
“How am I supposed to feel?”
He shrugged. “Most humans would be more hysterical, I would think?”
I answered his shrug with a shrug of my own. How was I supposed to feel? Grateful that I had lived? Fearful that I could die? A limbo between the two? Should we add a conga line with a bad DJ as well?
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“How did you come to this part of the woods, sleeping in your car, all on your own?” he asked.
“I guess you could say another monster was chasing me.”
He nodded but said nothing in return, and I was grateful. I wasn’t ready to talk about my life, especially with two people I knew nothing about. “Are you hungry? You were out for a few days—”
“A few days?!”
He nodded with a long sigh. “Your body is trying to adjust to the bite. It’s natural for bitten wolves.” He put tape over the bandages. “I think you need some coffee and some breakfast.”
“As long as I’m not on the menu.” A playful suggestion to hide my inner fear.
He laughed. “You’re not my type. You’re already starting to smell like your beast, and for me, that smell will never be appealing.”
“I smell like a dog?”
He let out a heartier laugh. “Don’t refer to them as dogs.
They hate that. But yes, you’re starting to change already.”
I smelled my own hair. It was grungy but I certainly did not think that I smelled like a dog. Derek just rolled his dark eyes and stood up. He pulled some of the bedspread back for me. “You want to try walking?”
“Is that okay?”
“It’d be good for you to move. You don’t have to go far.
Just around the cabin.”
I blew out a breath. “Why not?”
Carefully, he helped me out of bed. I felt like a monkey falling out of the barrel all the way down the hall and into the cozy kitchen. The entire lodge felt sturdy and warm.
I only made it as far as the counter before Derek opted for carrying me to the table. I sat down with a groan while he zipped to the kitchen. It was decorated with forest green cabinets over cedar countertops, with a few appliances: an old Mr. Coffee that had seen better days, a toaster that looked like it probably burned toast more than it toasted it, and a small blender with the letters worn off its buttons.
Derek walked over to the stained coffeepot. He picked up the empty kettle and groaned. “Dammit, Levi.”
Levi was nowhere to be found, but the sound of his name made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I had no desire to see his mangy wolf ass or his shotgun again.
The coffee maker gurgled to life, giving the kitchen a much-needed human touch that suspended the fantasy for just a moment.
“I went back for your things,” Derek called over his shoulder.
I hadn’t realized I was wearing my own shirt and soft cotton shorts.
“You dressed me?” My throat went dry at the thought, all the scars and bruises on me screaming to life.
“Believe me when I say that there is nothing about that”—he waved a spatula around in a small circle at me—“that interests me. No offense. And your clothes were no good, completely soiled. I couldn’t let you lie around in those. How do you like your eggs?”
Nate loved them sunny-side up. We always had our eggs sunny-side up.
“Scrambled,” I said. “Or in a basket.”
“How does in a basket with some bacon on the side sound?”
“Why are you doing all of this?”
“Well.” He cracked two eggs into a bowl. “The law says that if you take in a bitten human, you are responsible for that human, so we are responsible for you. That, and, well, I’ve been around many years and seen my share of humans shift. It would be a shame to let you die. It’s not right. I know we don’t know each other, but I can’t sit back and let someone innocent die.”
“Many years?”
“It’s rude to ask someone their age, you know,” he teased as the smell of coffee wrapped around me, making my mouth water. “Cream or sugar?”
“Both.”
Nate always had to have his coffee black. No tenderness, just black.
Derek blurred around the kitchen like he was the Flash before he appeared in front of me with my coffee. I didn’t realize I was holding on to my seat for dear life until he set the mug on the table. “Sorry. Vampire speed. I forget.”
I stared at him.
“Drink up,” he said happily. “If you weren’t having a bit of a fit, I would be much more worried.”
I picked the mug up by the handle with trembling hands.
“I have a lot of questions and I would like the answers . . . lease.” I needed to get some details worked out. He was right—I had no idea who they were, and while they were playing nice now, that did not mean they would later.
“I was human once, and while it was a long time ago, I still remember the shock. Eat, please, and ask me whatever you want.”
“Anything?”
“Nothing is off-limits except for some of the vacation stories.” He paused. “Specifically Vegas,” he added with a shrug. “My husband would probably not love that. He can be a little stiff at times.”
My cheeks reddened. “Where’s he?” I asked as I took a sip of coffee and tried to think of anything else besides the elephant with fangs in the middle of the room, but it was all my mind could register.
“He’s traveling for work. He’s a professor and wildlife researcher. He’ll be back in a few weeks,” he explained, before returning with a plate in hand. He set it in front of me: perfectly scrambled eggs, cheese sleeping inside a thick piece of toast, with crispy, caramelized bacon accenting the side of the plate. Although bacon in and of itself was never an accent piece.
I started to cut into the meal, the eggs soft like butter.
“How did you guys even find me? You said that wolves bit me, but Levi said they were rogue wolves? That it made my odds worse?”
Derek walked back over to the coffeepot. “Right now, we’re on pack land. Meaning that there’s a wolf pack that owns and guards this land—think of it like its own small town. Anyway, we were alerted by someone on patrol about activity the night you were attacked. Levi found you first—”
“But he pointed me to another campground and left?”
Derek topped up his coffee cup. “I don’t know, all I know is when he came back, he was irritated. He wanted to go back and check to see if you were still there. When we got there, well, you know the rest.” He took a long sip of coffee, eyeing me curiously. “How, if you don’t mind me asking, did you even get out here?”
“I was looking for my friend’s cabin. I was going to stay there while—” I paused and looked at my plate. My fingers involuntarily touched my face where my black eye was fading.
“Whoever did that deserves to be put in the ground.”
I licked my lips, not daring to meet his gaze. “I am apparently horrible with a map and I took a wrong turn.
There was this fork in the road and I, well I . . . I was just so tired,” I explained, my voice cracking. My eyes fell as the tears threatened to spill. I hadn’t allowed myself to properly cry for days and it was also catching up with me. Taking a deep breath, I looked back at Derek. “I hadn’t slept for days, I just drove and drove and drove. I seem to have the best luck.”
He gave me a sympathetic smile, not disagreeing, which I found refreshingly disturbing. Even if I did have shit luck, at least they weren’t Nate.
He walked back to the table and took a seat by me. “They can’t find you out here. This place, the pack land, is protected by magic. They can’t hurt you.”
That’s where he was wrong. Maybe Nate couldn’t lay a hand on me, but he could still hurt me.
I didn’t answer because I wasn’t ready to open that door for a stranger.
“The rogue wolves?”
Derek nodded. “Some wolves get sick. Usually it’s when something tragic happens—think of it like someone splitting their soul in two. Their mind goes mad, their body deteriorates along with it. Usually they try to go off and die in peace.”
“The ones that attacked me did not seem crazy.” If anything, they were calculating. Incredibly coherent.
“I know,” he agreed, taking another sip of coffee. I opened my mouth to push, but instead Derek said, “So, your shift.”
I dropped the rogue topic but tucked it away for later.
“How does it work?”
“On the third full moon from your bite, you will shift.
On every full moon between now and then, you will take a step closer, if you will. The moon will draw the beast out, but you have to keep her at bay. You’re not ready, and if she comes out too early, it will kill you.”
“The moon? Like, the full moon?” I asked.
“Wolves are bound to the moon. We all are.”
I shoved more food into my mouth, relishing the buttery taste of the toast combined with the creaminess of the eggs.
“I can make more of that,” he said, eyeing me cautiously.
I wanted to say no. I was used to saying no. Nate had only liked my curves up to a certain point.
I wiped my mouth, cheeks flooded with embarrassment.
“Uh—I don’t want you to—”
“It’s no trouble, Charlotte. If you’re hungry, then you should eat.”
“Okay,” I replied reluctantly. “Thank you.”
He took another sip of coffee and zipped to the kitchen.
I hadn’t realized how vintage it was, how everything in this cabin seemed like a piece of history. All the furniture looked handmade, and showed its age from years of wear. On an end table there were a few framed photos of two men that looked like they had been taken in the early 1900s. The stove that Derek was cooking on was old. Gas. Creamy white, like something out of a ’50s-inspired movie.
I shook my head. I had dozens of questions, but there was one that was burning in my mind.
“So is it true? Do most humans die?”
“They do,” he admitted, more easily than I would’ve liked him to. “Humans are not made for the shift. It’s not easy. A werewolf, well, a born werewolf, has a DNA strand that helps them to be what they are. They are born with a biology able to handle the shift. They may look human from time to time, but their DNA is quite different,” he explained as he put a piece of toast in the skillet.
“How does it happen?”
“It’s long and painful, I’m afraid. Even for natural-born Weres. When Levi first shifted, I think it took him a little over four hours from start to finish. With the few humans I’ve seen, I remember it took much longer and it was much more brutal. It’s not easy,” he added.
“So, the other shifts, then, you shift a little bit?”
“That’s right.” He nodded and mixed cheese into the glass measuring cup of eggs. “Your body basically takes a step, becomes more Were and less human.”
The sounds of Levi’s bones cracking during the shift echoed through my mind.
“But you’ve done this?” I asked.
“Only a few times. Really, I’ve just watched. Levi did—”
“So, you’re saying . . .”
“He is what you will become. He’s done this many times with both natural born and humans alike.”
“He wants to kill me. He held a shotgun up to me. How can you be so sure he won’t?”
He poured the eggs into the middle of the toast. The skillet crackled in delight. “He is arguably mildly homicidal toward everyone, even me. But he won’t kill you. Besides, it’s the law and he knows it.”
“Right. The law. What’s that about?”
Derek nodded while he pushed the toast around. “The law states that if you find a human who is bitten, then you’re responsible for them,” he said, pointing his spatula at me.
“But it’s up to the human to choose what they want.
“You have two choices: the first is you can die. Listen, there’s nothing wrong or dishonorable in that. Plenty of people have chosen that route. We would, besides making it completely painless, take care of any affairs. If you want your family to think a bear ate you, we will make it so.”
“And the other option?” I asked. The topic of my own death was not something I wanted to dwell on.
“We help you. If you choose to live, then we will do everything we can to make sure that you have the best chance at surviving.”
“And you’ll do it? Like, for real? I don’t understand why you would do that when you don’t know me.”
“Levi and I will,” he corrected. “Besides the fact that I would rather not see someone innocent die, the law could make a mess of things. If a human dies in your care in our world, or on your land, it could cause a lot of trouble. An investigation from our council, not to mention potentially more humans sniffing around.” He shook his head. “It’s in the pack’s and Levi’s interest to keep you alive. It’s less of a burden to them.”
I sank back into my chair. The only thing Levi would probably help me with was getting up close and personal with a shotgun. I doubted he cared about this damn law anyhow.
“Levi has done this many times,” Derek said. “He’s going to be your best chance.”
I was toast if he was my only hope. “And the pack?”
“They know you’re here, but I told them to give you space until you decided what you wanted.”
“I don’t want more people,” I found myself saying. I wanted peace and quiet. I wanted to have a proper breakdown. I didn’t want any more questions about my bruises or my scars. I didn’t want any more sympathetic gazes or judgmental eyes. I just wanted to breathe again.
“Lucky for you, Levi hates pretty much everyone as well.”
“I don’t want to be a leech. I don’t even know you. I have some money, I could pay you for the trouble?”
“Per the law, you’re our responsibility. You owe us nothing,” he said with a sigh. “Besides, what kind of people would we be if we made you pay us for something like this?” he asked with a small laugh, although in my mind I could think of plenty who would demand payment. “But winter will be here soon enough. If you make it, then you’ll be bunking with us.
“So once your leg is better, we’ll need you to pull your own weight. There’s a lot to do, and it would be nice to have an extra hand. It will be good for you, help you build your strength.”
“I can do that,” I said. “How long until this first full moon?”
Derek brought over the new plate and set it in front of me. “A week.”
