Cursed

by Brent Miller

  Garrick hadn’t exactly made it easy for her to be there for him, but a part of him was thinking the same thing. Out of the entire pack, he hadn’t expected that Chase would be the only one who would have chosen to stand with him.

  “None of this would have happened if I had been a good girlfriend. If I’d stood up for you and tried to help you.”

  She walked forward and grabbed his hands. He didn’t know what had changed, except that maybe she’d just heard a sincerity in his voice that wasn’t there the last time. He had apologized, and he had meant it, but this time, he truly regretted everything that he’d done. Last time, he would have given anything to change it. This time, he would have settled for doing anything to stop Hayden from hurting. Somehow, that had gotten through to her, and she looked into his eyes with more love than he’d seen in weeks. Still, though, love wasn’t all that was in her eyes. It was wrapped under layers of both pain and guilt.

  She wrapped him in an embrace. He could sense from how weakly she was holding him that some of what she’d said was just talk. She wanted to forgive him, he knew that, but it wasn’t easy. Nonetheless, he felt right being in her arms again.

  He didn’t want to push her away, but he knew that he’d have to tell them what he knew. It could end up saving one of them, and he couldn’t let his desire for that contact with Hayden to get in the way of the little that he could actually do for the pack. After all the pain he’d caused, Garrick owed it to them to make up for it to the best of his ability. Just when he was going to gently push her off, however, she let go and stepped back.

  “Tell us what you have to say,” she commanded. The others still didn’t look particularly happy with him, but they hesitantly nodded.

  “Alright. Well I didn’t know what was happening either time,” he began. “I wish I could explain everything that happens, but I don’t think I can. I can remember my throat closing up. It felt like I couldn’t breathe. Suddenly, all of my senses started to get stronger, and that’s how I knew the wolf was fighting its way to the surface. Somehow, you can just feel it. Honestly, the only advice I can give any of you is that if you start feeling like you can’t breathe, you get far away.”

  “I can’t stay here for this,” Cailean angrily blurted out. “I can’t stand here and listen to you, acting like this is okay. Like I’m supposed to learn from you. I can’t act like you didn’t just tell us that. I don’t know how the others can, but I just can’t. You’ve had us convinced that the hunters did this. You lied to us, Garrick. And you killed Chase.”

  “Cailean,” Garrick responded. He didn’t have a follow-up, but Cailean didn’t give him time for one anyway.

  “No! You didn’t do what was right. I wanted to think you did, but this? There had to be hope! You gave up on him! You’re toxic, Garrick! I told him that this would happen, but he left anyway! He thought he saw something in you, but all you did was fail him!”

  Cailean took a few steps closer to Garrick, but he collapsed on the floor before he made it. As Cailean coughed violently, Garrick felt his own throat start to feel tighter. He wondered if something was wrong with him, but he saw the others darting their eyes back and forth in panic. Hayden’s blue eyes started to glow brighter, and Brooke’s started to glow a bright green. Cailean was still looking down toward the ground, coughing, but Garrick could see claws starting to push their way from his fingertips.

  Garrick turned around and looked up the stairs, wondering how the hunters had gotten into Aldric’s house. Had one of them followed someone? Did this mean they had already gotten through Aldric? And how had they gotten to the others?

  He growled, feeling his canines grow in his mouth. He felt his nails grow into claws. By the time he turned back around, he saw all three of his friends on the floor. He heard their bones breaking as they started to change shape.

  He felt the wolf pushing itself forward, but he couldn’t give in yet. He didn’t know where the hunters were. He had to make sure he was there to protect his friends when they were vulnerable. Just like Chase had been there for him.

  He looked up the stairs, but the door was closed. Garrick closed his eyes, focusing on listening to what was happening upstairs. He couldn’t get past the pained moans of his friends. He was trying to use the transformation to his advantage, but it was too painful.

  “Don’t give up, Garrick,” he heard. He couldn’t place the voice, and it wasn’t anyone in the basement. Maybe it was just in his head. His inner voice giving him the confidence he needed to focus and to fight off the transformation long enough to find out what was happening.

  He caught himself promising the wolf that it could take over soon; he just needed a few minutes. He needed to make sure that they would all be safe first.

  He heard footsteps. Two heartbeats. Aldric and his wife. That was it.

  Garrick screamed, his eyes shooting open. He breathed heavily, examining the area around him. His hands had gone back to normal. The others were lying in their human forms, their clothes torn but not completely destroyed. So they hadn’t transformed fully. It was less of an exposure, like his second time had been.

  Breathing heavily, Garrick raced toward the stairs. He had to check on Cailean’s parents. If the hunters had managed to poison the vents somehow, they could still be in danger. The door opened, though, and Aldric stood at the top, completely uninjured. Thoughts flooded through Garrick’s mind as he wondered how Aldric had managed to fight everyone off on his own, but his head hurt too much to think about it. Instead, he set his jacket over Hayden, then collapsed into the chair and closed his eyes.

  “What happened back there?” Garrick asked Aldric.

  “I wanted everyone to experience it. It isn’t something that can be described; you just have to know what it feels like to go through it.”

  “So you did that? This was your plan the whole time? Some warning would have been nice.”

  “You wouldn’t have been able to keep the secret.”

  Garrick couldn’t argue with that. No matter how hard he tried, he wouldn’t have been able to hide that plan from them. He would have acted differently. Still, he would have liked to know that he was going to have to go through that.

  “So what? You wanted to see how we’d respond without warning?”

  “In a sense.”

  Garrick felt like he’d been played. He had believed that he was going to do something important for the pack – finally be able to do something helpful rather than harmful. Really, though, he’d just been a tool Aldric used to gauge the pack’s reactions and their transformation times when surprised with wolfsbane.

  “This was all just a test,” Garrick laughed bitterly. “You told me you needed my help, but you lied. Again. You were just testing us.”

  Maybe he didn’t deserve Aldric’s trust. He hadn’t earned a place in this pack. He’d already abandoned them once, and that had gotten someone killed. He felt like he was over-reacting. As much as he hated being distrusted, it was a fair reaction. He knew that the pack’s confidence, and especially Aldric’s, was not going to be easy to earn back.

  “No, I wasn’t,” Aldric replied calmly.

  “No? Then what were you doing?” Garrick yelled, getting annoyed and no longer trying to hide it from his alpha.

  “I was testing you, Elliott. To see how much you could fight.”

  “I… I didn’t change,” Garrick realized after a minute. He took a breath and tried to relax, trying to see things from Aldric’s perspective. If that really was his intention, then of course he wouldn’t be able to inform Garrick. Still, why test Garrick, though?

  “No one did. It wasn’t enough.”

  “They got claws. Their bones broke. I didn’t. I just felt my eyes and teeth start to change. I didn’t get as far as them.”

  “Of course not, Elliott. You have always fought it more than everyone else. That’s why the transformation hurts you the most. You refuse to just let it happen. It only buys you a few extra minutes, but that is sometimes enoug
h to outlast a dose of wolfsbane. That’s what this was. I wanted to see how much time you could buy.”

  So there was something Garrick could contribute. Maybe his ability to fend off the effects of wolfsbane could actually help the pack. Maybe he could teach them how to stop – or at least slow – its effects. Or maybe he was just getting ahead of himself again.

  “Well, at least it’s good for something,” Garrick muttered. He paused for a moment before adding, “How do you know all of this?”

  “You think you’re the first person to try to fight the wolf?”

  Chapter 14

  Fourteen Months Ago

  Garrick sat in his room, sincerely trying not to overthink his relationship. He and Hayden had been together for seven months to the day. That was supposed to mean something, but to her, it didn’t seem important. Instead of spending the day with him, she chose to go on a camping trip with her friends on which he was very intentionally excluded.

  He wasn’t sure what to make of it, but it didn’t sit well with him. They’d been in a tough place for a while, but in his mind it was the perfect day to reconcile. With Brooke’s nudge, he had finally built up the resolve to give her a chance to explain. He had told her that he wanted to talk before the camping trip, and tried to explain the problem with her choosing camping over him, but it only led to a bigger fight. He hated the thought, but he couldn’t move on from the idea that there was something going on between Hayden and Cailean. Garrick would have to be blind to miss every sign pointing toward it. Cailean was always hovering around her, and he saw her texting him constantly.

  With everything that was going on, he would have thought she’d show up. He hadn’t officially broken up with her, and that would be a great time for her to come in with some romantic gesture. He truly hoped that the whole camping trip was a ruse, and that she was planning something big. He knew she wasn’t, though. She had someone else. He’d always known she was out of his league, but he couldn’t say it didn’t hurt more that it was Cailean who stole her from him.

  He heard a knock on his door and his heart leapt. Maybe she really did have some semblance of a romantic side, and she was showing up and surprising him. He opened the door and beamed.

  At Tyler.

  “Hello, Garrick Elliott,” Tyler greeted.

  “I was not expecting you to show up,” Garrick muttered, trying not to sound too disappointed. He invited Tyler in, and the two of them sat on the couch. Since Kayla had broken up with Tyler, he and Garrick had hung out practically every day. Tyler knew it would be a particularly difficult day for Garrick, but he also knew Garrick well enough to know the best thing for him was probably to be left alone. Nonetheless, Garrick couldn’t hold it against his friend – he was just trying to do his best.

  Garrick was constantly trying to convince Tyler to stop being friends with Kayla. She was already talking about some cute boy in her class, and Tyler was the friend she talked to about it. Tyler claimed he was just glad to have her in his life. Garrick wondered if he could ever feel that way about Hayden. Could he listen to her talk about Cailean after he confronted her? He didn’t think he had that capacity in him. It was almost admirable to see the loyalty in his friend, but it was mostly just painful.

  “I have come to converse,” Tyler proclaimed.

  “Clearly,” Garrick acknowledged with a feigned smile.

  “Seriously, though, the texting was getting confusing. So, you tried to reconcile things today, but she’s going on a camping trip?”

  “Yeah. With Brooke.”

  “You have to go find her.”

  “I don’t know where they are,” Garrick groaned.

  “I didn’t claim to know how, just that it must be done. If nothing else, just for closure.”

  Tyler pulled at Garrick and practically threw him out the door.

  “Get in my car.”

  “No,” Garrick argued. “You’re right; I need to go talk to her. Maybe this is all a big misunderstanding. I owe it to myself to figure this out – I can’t dwell on it all anymore. But I need to do this alone.”

  Present

  26 days until the full moon

  As hard as he tried, Garrick couldn’t get Cailean’s words out of his mind. Maybe he was right. Chase would definitely have been safe if it weren’t for Garrick; he couldn’t argue with that. Being around Garrick was obviously dangerous for Tyler, too. The hunters would go after him for information, even though he wasn’t a werewolf. It seemed like Garrick was just putting the people around him in peril.

  To make matters worse, the police had officially launched an investigation to try to find Chase. That was unavoidable. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence for teenagers to go missing without being found. Aldric had resolved to use that fact to their advantage, attempting to steer the investigation away from a murder and toward a missing person. At least that was a less noticeable case. Even if the scheme was effective, though, it didn’t help Garrick forgive himself for what had happened.

  Garrick had told his mother he was sick in a successful attempt to stay home from school. Thankfully, she was too involved in work, being the lead on Chase’s case, to ask for any specific information. Anyway, she probably assumed that he was old enough to make his own decisions and stay home if he wanted to. It wasn’t possible for him to get sick like a normal person, but he did feel nauseated – so it wasn’t actually a false statement. He couldn’t think straight. A virus or bacteria would have no effect on him, but his own mind could still do quite a bit of damage on its own.

  He felt like he had to do something, but it was apparent that there was nothing he could do to make everything okay. Still, the complete lack of action just intensified the pain in his stomach. He sat up, looking around his room. Garrick wondered if getting out of the house would be enough to distract him – at least slightly. He didn’t know where he could go, but he felt like he was never going to be able to move on from the past few days, and he knew wallowing wasn’t the best option.

  Maybe he shouldn’t get over it, though. He deserved to be going through the agony that he felt. He shouldn’t have survived that, and he knew it.

  Cailean was handling the grief in his own way. He had refused to talk to Garrick since his outburst the previous day. Brooke was better at hiding her anger at him, if she felt any, but she didn’t seem to want to talk to anyone. Hayden was clearly still having trouble moving on. Chase had been a large part of her life in the past, so Garrick couldn’t blame her for taking it so hard.

  Somehow, it seemed to just be hitting everyone that Chase was actually gone. It seemed like the first few days, on some level, they all expected him to just show up – as if Garrick’s memory had failed him. The pain was finally settling in with everyone, and Garrick didn’t know who to go to, but he needed to talk to someone. He didn’t have a right to expect anyone to try to comfort him – they all had to move on in their own ways. However, his normal coping mechanism of locking himself up and working through his issues alone was not going to suffice that time.

  Garrick stood up and grabbed his keys, shoving them into his pocket. He couldn’t stand lying down in his bed anymore. If nothing else, he needed to go for a walk. A little exercise would get his blood flowing and hopefully help clear his mind a bit.

  Garrick walked out the door and closed it behind him. He wasn’t sure where he was planning to walk, but he hoped the fresh air would help him feel better. Aimlessly, he began wandering around the streets, hoping an answer would find its way to him.

  Garrick had replayed that entire night in his mind hundreds of times over the past few days, but he found himself picturing every aspect of that night once again. There must have been a way that he could have helped Chase. He could have tried to put pressure on the wound, or run him to a hospital. Maybe he would have been able to fight the wolf if he had a purpose – like carrying his friend back into town. Or maybe Chase would have healed given more time.

  Deep down, he was fully aware of th
e lack of logical consistency in his arguments. Each time he thought of a new possibility for what he could have done, the pragmatic part of his brain just shot it down. Still, the idealistic part felt that there had to be something more he could have done.

  Of course, he could have just not led Chase there in the first place. That was a stupid mistake. What made him think that he could handle everything on his own? He could barely handle being a werewolf in a pack. It should have been obvious that he wouldn’t be able to do it without Aldric’s guidance. If Garrick had been so set on making his own mistakes, he realized in retrospect that he shouldn’t have told Chase where he was going.

  Garrick looked around him, examining his surroundings. Paying no attention to where he’d been walking, Garrick found himself in a part of town he barely recognized. He was in a beautiful park, with a few trees planted in the green grass surrounding him. Apparently, his subconscious mind always found a way to lead him to nature. Civilization was still present, but most of the buildings were beyond the park. There was only one small building to Garrick’s left which was within the perimeter of the park. Garrick recognized it, but he wasn’t sure from where. A few feet away, he saw a bench, so he sat and admired the view. A few small fir trees were growing throughout the park, in various stages of life. One beside the bench provided just enough shade for Garrick to rest in.

  Calming chirps filled the air around him as the birds called out, but the rest of the park was quiet. A middle-aged man wandered through the park, but he appeared to be making his way toward Garrick. Silently, he sat next to Garrick on the bench. Reaching into a bag, he retrieved a few seeds and tossed them out for the birds to eat. Everything suddenly felt so calm to the rest of his life – he felt as though he had found himself in a scene of a movie. It was hard for him to comprehend the possibility of people living this life.