by Lisa Daniels
Chapter Four – Kallen
Kallen was determined to make sure the girl lost any illusions about the real world. He saw it as his duty. As the leading man in doing the wrong things to people, he realized he was in an excellent position to tell women what not to do, if they wanted to attract the right men. The idea intrigued him more than training other men.
He went over to her house the next day with another plan in place: to expose her to the pick-up lines and dick pics of dating sites, to help grow her an additional iron skin to handle the relentless overtures of men, and to pick and choose the better types for quick flings. He made sure to look as impeccable and polished as always, and it was a mark of his own enthusiasm that he didn’t feel any particular need to blow off steam, to track down another woman for warming his bed at night.
She answered the door looking like a beautiful mess. Blonde hair frazzled, blue eyes squinting at him, nothing adorning her face except a wary expression and sleep grit. A part of him felt a tiny sliver of regret that he hadn’t pushed her harder and taken her to bed. He would have loved to have cracked this woman open. The enforced abstinence in her presence also proved a bit of a challenge, because the visual essence of her appealed to his physical body, to the alpha wolf within.
He noted how she kept a neat, orderly place. Maybe too neat and orderly, which meant either she wasn’t home much, or she had a slight obsession with arranging things.
“Today I’m going to introduce to you the joys of dating apps,” he said with a bright smile, and she rolled her eyes and groaned.
“Do I have to?” she said, though she knew perfectly well she had to. He had stated quite explicitly that she was to obey him in these matters. They sat down together and he helped her engineer a generic profile on Tinder, and let her surf through the distant, loveless world of swiping left or right. He got her to swipe right on a big chunk of men, while informing her that a lot of them would most likely have multiple chats up like this one, and that they’d try to hook her with a one-liner.
He grabbed himself some tea while he waited for results, amused at the sight of her curled up on her blue sofa, gnawing nervously on her lip as she examined her phone and the flood of people she’d accepted. Boy, was she in for another rude shock. He continued to discreetly examine the place. No portraits anywhere. Most of the utensils and mugs were utilitarian, with a few fancy ones to indicate they were probably birthday or Christmas presents. The woman’s house almost had no soul, or, well, a neat and Spartan one. Would it kill her to add a little more color to the white walls? Get a carpet to cover the wooden floorboards? Have a few personalized effects like figurines or books lying around to indicate other habits? You could pick up a lot of things about a person from the way they organized their lives and clothes. For him, Claire remained a mystery.
A boring mystery, or an intriguing one? He couldn’t decide. He grinned, however, when she let out a disgusted groan.
“Oh man, someone sent me a dick picture… I didn’t even ask...”
“Yep. That happens. Those people probably have been rejected so much they just cut straight to the chase. Not realizing that it’s shit like this that makes them get rejected.” He walked over to her with two cups of tea, and she accepted gratefully.
“Can’t they just wait until I ask?”
Kallen shrugged, though inside, he was finding it interesting to see the reactions from the female point of view. The target that guys tried to bed definitely wasn’t just something for them to screw. There was a mind, a personality, a life to what they attempted to conquer.
Claire now started reading out one-liners. “Did you grow up on a farm? Because you really know how to raise a cock. Jesus, what the hell?” Her eyes went wide. “How about you sit on my lap and we’ll talk about the first thing that pops up. Is it all literally about dicks with these people?”
“Having fun?”
“It’s getting near Christmas, so how about you bury my nuts and we’ll collect them in the spring. Oh, this guy just said hi.”
“Say hi back.”
She concentrated, and a moment later, said, “Nope. He’s weird like the rest.”
“There are women who don’t mind the aggressive approach. And as long as those women exist, these guys will keep trying,” Kallen said. “Again, it just depends on what you expect out of people. A one-night stand, generally it can be good to see the goods first, so to speak.”
“I’d much rather pay for someone like you,” she replied, and then hesitated, blushing. “Not that it worked out the way I expected.”
He quirked up an eyebrow. “Who’s to say it won’t turn out like that anyway? I still have to fulfill the original thousand,” he said, giving her a salacious smile. Her cheeks flamed, and a jolt of pleasure went through him. Yes… she could be like putty in the palm of his hand. Even though there was that inherent shyness, he also saw the faintest glimmer of interest, of passion. She yearned for something different. She yearned, in a way, for someone like him to take charge.
She continued to look at the Tinder matches for a couple more hours, before declaring herself done. She knew enough now to understand what to expect.
“You know mostly how a guy’s mind works now. They’re visual creatures, Claire. They see something and their body reacts to it. They see something and feel a need to pursue it.” He sipped at his tea. “Women can go for months without sex. It doesn’t dominate them the same way. Guys, though—it’s a hunger in them. It’s more of a competition, too. Guys want to sell themselves. Women—they have to select. They need a good reason to be with the man, because there’s far more of a social stigma for a woman in what she does than for a man. His social stigma comes from not having sex. Yours comes from having too much. They fundamentally clash.”
“It’s stupid,” Claire said. She’d been listening to him raptly, leaning toward him, feet pointed his way. Every inch the eager student taking in her tutor’s instructions.
“It is,” Kallen agreed. “It shouldn’t matter. People should be free.” He was leaning forward too, luring her in with his voice, his feeling. Though a place at the back of his mind thought about the cost of his own freedom. Losing everything he’d ever loved and known. A family who put the phone down the moment they knew he was the caller. He was packless. A lone wolf prowling among the human populace for instant gratification, because of the way humans were drawn so easily to him.
“The freedom sounds scary,” Claire admitted. “It sounds like giving everything up.”
He shivered inwardly at her words. She had no idea how close to the truth she was there. “In a way, it is,” he said. “Because you do have to give a lot of things up. You need to let go of the expectations you were taught. Of worrying about what other people think. Of the limits you place on yourself.”
“Expectations?”
“I’m not too sure of yours, but I know what it is for men.” He leaned closer, as if to whisper, but kept his voice steady. Another zap of pleasure coursed through his body. “They think when they grow up, a woman’s just going to land in their lap. Like the woman is simply a reward for them. Or they believe that no doesn’t really mean no, because the woman’s just playing hard-to-get. How many movies have you seen where the man pushes, and the woman caves in? You’re a reward,” he said, and her face went tight in anger.
“Is that how you see me as well?”
He looked at her for a long moment, eyes unwavering from hers. “When I was younger, yes. Why would I know any different?”
“And now?” she whispered.
“Now? I seek mutual reward.”
She gulped, but nodded. Her fingers flexed around her cup, which she had not yet drunk from.
He’d lied a little. The inner alpha definitely saw her as a reward. But it was more than that. If the alpha personality allowed itself to bleed out too often, it would try to settle. It would fixate on a woman, and drag her into the possibility of being a mate. A permanent one.
He knew what t
hat did to a werewolf. Those with a settled inner alpha suffered immensely if the woman left them, or didn’t feel the same way. The alpha could recover. It was just a painful, soul-wrenching process.
“Are you okay?” she said. “You seem like you’re thinking of something.”
“I’m always thinking of something. It’s of no importance. Let’s continue your teaching.”
He did so, putting her through all the tricks and devilry of the men he knew, over the next couple of weeks. More dating app conversations, until she no longer blushed like a neon sign upon someone thrusting unwanted words and pictures upon her. She needed to know. He took her to a few more bars, and even got her to approach a few men, which mostly turned out to be a disaster. She felt humiliated, but he told her she needed to learn to deal with rejection.
“I don’t even want them in the first place! So I’m not even being rejected,” she’d replied, while clearly upset all the same. Kallen still didn’t know how to reach the end for her training, but he did figure it was good for her to learn the dark side of life. Away from the movies and all the bottled romance in shows. They didn’t capture the sizzling, desperate need of human flesh. Of selfishness where people only wanted one thing, and would do almost anything to get it.
Abstaining himself was getting harder, though. Sure, he masturbated, same as any other guy, but the craving hunger for a warm body became stronger. More offers accumulated on his Date Monsters profile, and quite a few of them tasty treats. It wasn’t like he and Claire were exclusive. That was never the arrangement. It just felt… wrong, somehow. Like abandoning his student while he went off for a good screw, leaving them floundering when they couldn’t swim yet.
Yes. That was it. He nodded in satisfaction to himself.
The money certainly helped, too. The girl had clearly saved up a lot through her life, and he felt obliged to at least give her what she paid for.
Now he sat with Claire in one of the local, nearly abandoned bars in this deadbeat town, listening to the rabbiting gossip between Claire and her two brainless friends: the slutty, dark-haired woman, and the other blonde who was as thin as a rake and clearly had confidence issues, judging by the amount of makeup slathered on her face. A few pimples threatened to break through all that caked foundation.
“He’s right, you know,” Rita said when Claire had finished describing what Kallen put her through, and had instead slipped into complaint mode. “You do have to know what guys are like. I, fortunately, went through all of that years ago.” Rita grimaced. “Though I made a lot of the mistakes he’s warning you about. Got myself into some bad relationships, too.”
“That’s not hard,” Shannon noted. “Since every relationship you’ve been in has been bad. You’re not good at picking men for a relationship.”
“Good at picking men, though,” Rita sniped back. Kallen sighed inwardly, examining the room around them. Women talked a lot about these things. Sure, he was being talkative with Claire, but he couldn’t teach her any lessons without a few words added to them. He checked out a new thing on Claire he hadn’t really noticed before—frills on the end of her sleeves. He only paid attention when she waved her hand around.
“I don’t know. The more I hear, the less I want to be wild as you keep asking me to be. Too many things to pay attention to.”
“It’s not about finding a perfect relationship. It’s about finding the best people for flings. Some men out there really know how to please a woman. It’s heavenly when you find one. Or a beautiful sin, depends on your leaning, I suppose. You don’t want the pump and dump ones.”
“Ew,” Shannon said. “You did not just say that.”
Kallen rolled his eyes. Were these women in their thirties, or juveniles? They should really be over this attitude by now. Women tended to know themselves better when they got older. They enjoyed sex more…
His phone rang. He excused himself and looked at the unknown number. Usually, he preferred not to answer an unknown number, but this time, that impulse failed him. He placed it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Hello? Is this Kallen?” It was a woman’s voice. Kallen frowned, glancing at the three women laughing about something now.
“Yes. Who’s calling?”
All he heard on the other side were soft, rapid breaths. “It’s me, Kallen. Suzie.”
Kallen’s heart dropped like a stone. The voice was lower than he remembered, somehow. “If you are Suzie, do you remember what you said to me five years ago, when we walked along Blackmore Pier, and watched the sunset that one time?”
A pause. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long time. I don’t remember everything,” she said, which punched Kallen in the stomach. Blackmore Pier was the best evening they’d had together. She had said so. And she’d forgotten? “I do remember when you asked me to marry you, though.”
A twisting, maddening desire to cast the phone as far away as possible, or to stamp on it and break it, filled Kallen. All the emotions from before snapped and snarled at each other, and his inner alpha gave a low, pitiful whine. Instead, he said, in a soft and dangerous voice, “I remember that, too, Suzie. When you said no.”
“Yes. I had to. You know how poor we were. My family insisted I take the deal and avoid angering your own family. It would have been stupid not to accept.”
“You were my life,” Kallen whispered, somehow able to keep a tight fist on his anger and grief, from listening to her tumbling excuses. “And you left me. After everything I gave to you. Why the hell are you calling now?”
“I was… wondering. If we could meet up again. Oh Kal, we left so much unresolved. I wish we hadn’t ended things as we did.”
“You ended it. I never did,” he said. She didn’t seem to have heard this, however.
“You’re still with your family, right?”
“Exiled,” he snapped.
“Oh!” she said, though she didn’t sound that surprised. “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry. We could still meet up, right? Just… clear up matters.”
“I don’t know,” he replied. Finally, too sick to listen to her anymore, he ended the call, and sagged a little against the crumbling wall of the bar. His hands quivered.
She was almost certainly calling him out of some past guilt, since she didn’t know anything of his recent developments. She’d forgotten some of their best memories together, when he never had. He growled softly, before a voice shook him out of his spiral.
“Hey, Kallen! Come back here a sec!”
He responded to Claire’s melodic voice and slouched back, calm and collected once more, though the echo of that call dug into his mind. “Yes?”
“Shannon wanted to ask you if it was worth staying with her partner,” Claire said, while Shannon shook her head violently in a way that contradicted Claire’s statement.
“That’s right,” Rita said. “Go on, Shannon. Tell the hot guy here about your boyfriend troubles.”
Hot guy? Kallen quirked an eyebrow at Rita, and she smirked impishly at him in response. She seemed interested in him. Fair enough. Not that he planned to act on it.
Shannon huffed out a fine, before talking about her boring sap of a boyfriend. There were a few danger signs in what she said, but he also knew he’d need to hear the boyfriend’s side of things before coming to a final conclusion. Only hearing one side of the argument was always bad. People always exaggerated to make themselves look better.
“To be honest,” Kallen said, once Shannon had finished her boyfriend flagellation, “he sounds like he’s not a forceful personality. You’re running over him. Probably makes him feel inadequate as a man, if you’re doing everything.”
“Makes him feel inadequate? He’s saying all these mean, suggestive things about me.”
“Have you talked to him about this?” Kallen asked. Shannon spluttered a little in response, which confirmed his thought. She was bitching about her boyfriend, and not telling him directly what he was doing wrong. Of course the idiot sap would get things wrong, then. Not
like men were mind readers. It annoyed him women expected that.
Which was also why he kept iterating to Claire to be upfront about her intentions. It’d save a lot of people trouble. It might have saved him trouble, back then.
“Maybe you should try communicating to your partner more,” Kallen said, not quite able to keep all the exasperation out of his voice.
“But he never talks to me.”
Kallen just gave her a long, hard stare, until she wilted under it. They continued to babble about their incessant nonsense, and Kallen brooded.
Why had Suzie called now, after so many years? He’d only just recovered from losing her and his clan. Forging a sustainable life for himself, away from the big bucks of his family, no longer tied to them in any form. If they expected him to come crawling back, begging for a second chance, they were sorely mistaken.
Suzie was mistaken. His heart crusted over when he observed the three humans, so carefree in their interactions. No obligations like a wolf had. No inner alpha to wrestle. No wonder their kind had become so prolific. His kind harried itself to their own destruction.
Plastering on a fake smile, he paid a little more attention to their conversation, wondering how much longer he could keep the act up until the cracks began to show.
Chapter Five – Claire
Claire faced her dinner date, aware of Kallen hovering in the wings, pretending to date Rita in the same restaurant.
It bothered Claire that they were together, even in a fake capacity. She knew only too well how Rita wanted to get her little claws on Kallen’s booty and drag him all the way to bed.
“You didn’t choose the expensive options on the menu,” her date, Tomas Lowe, observed. He was a tall man with a yellowish tint to his eyes, suggesting he came from shifter stock, though a little diluted. Kallen had explained to her briefly that shifters who mixed with humans tended to create weakened offspring, though still powerful compared to a human. “Thanks for that.”