“It’s real easy for you to sweep this under the rug. Had I slipped and transitioned last night, in that small bedroom with just the two of us, you would be dead and I would spend the rest of my life living with that guilt. You think I want that? My mind can’t even comprehend you dying, but to know that I was the one who did it…”
His eyes were foggy and red, his mouth a straight line, his jaw clenched and his hands dragging through his hair. Maybe my eyes were betraying me, but he almost looked to be shaking. This was affecting him more than I had realized.
I walked to him and placed both his hands into mine, hoping that the touch of another would calm down his body’s quakes. “You were able to stop yourself, Max. That’s what’s important.”
Max looked almost revolted as he threw my hands down and walked away, turning his back to me. “You sound like an abused girlfriend, Cora. It doesn’t matter if I stopped myself. I almost fucking killed you.”
“You want me to be mad at you? Is that it? You want me to call you a bastard and tell you to stay away from me? Max, it’s not like you got pissed off and hit me because I did something wrong. I can’t blame you for something you have no actual control over.”
“Exactly,” he responded as he whipped back around. “No control over. Meaning it could happen again. Meaning it will happen again. I can’t even touch you like a normal man.”
“But isn’t that why you’re here, to get that under control?”
“If I get it under control, and that’s a big if.”
“But you stopped yourself last night. Isn’t that the first step?”
“I didn’t have the moon to be fighting with, just myself. In three days, I’m going to be battling it out with the moon again and I will be overpowered, because nothing is stronger than that fucking rock in the sky.”
“You act like you have no options. You’re here getting help, and there’s actual proof that this is manageable. So we stay away from each other one night out of the month—that’s doable, Max.”
Very grimly he said, “What are you getting out of this, Cora?”
I was surprised by the question and stammered. “What do you mean?”
“What are you getting out of this?” he asked again.
I lowered my gaze. “You know what I’m getting.”
“Cora, I’m no prize. I’m an asshole, and a dangerous one at that. You could leave here tomorrow and find someone who isn’t half as messed up as I am.”
“Shouldn’t you know by now that I don’t put people into my life based on society standards? Half my friends think I’m a running joke. Any other person would have ditched them a long time ago.”
“So, you’re just a glutton for punishment.”
“No. I surround myself with the kind of people I find interesting and worth being around, not the one with the most benefits. I’ve never been a part of the popular crowd because I never cared about hanging out with the right people. Melanie is willing to go out with Travis because he asked, not because she likes him or because he’s a great catch, but because it’s simple, it’s not complicated. That line of thinking is never going to be appealing to me, and it shouldn’t be, because look at her, she’s not happy. I’d rather struggle my entire life to be with someone extraordinary than settle for something pedestrian because it’s easier.”
Max’s blue eyes danced along my face like he was taking in everything I said, and then very loudly he groaned and threw his head back. “Why do you gotta say shit like that?” He shook his head very slowly, and I saw a glimmer of a smirk taking over his lips.
“I know you’re worried about me, Max, and I’m not dumb enough to think you’re in the wrong for thinking that way. I just don’t like you making all the decisions in our relationship. You can’t keep running off every time something bad happens.”
“Running is all I’ve ever been good at,” he admitted.
“Maybe it’s time you found a new hobby.”
“Like what?”
“Me, for instance.”
Very softly he shook his head. “No. You are way better than any hobby.”
“Could you maybe help Travis out with this whole hobby thing? He was trying to come up with one to impress Melanie.”
“He’s trying to date your cousin?” He was on the verge of laughter.
“And succeeding, apparently. Max, that man could end up related to me.”
“From what I’ve heard about your weird family, he’d fit right in.”
“That’s not nice,” I said with a pouty face.
“Am I wrong?”
“No, but it’s still not nice.” I wrapped my arms around his waist and pulled myself into his chest. I listened to the steady beat of his heart and closed my eyes. I hadn’t realized how much I missed that sound until it was out of my reach.
“Are we okay now?” I whispered to him. Immediately I felt his chest tighten from a very deep breath.
“I’m never going to be okay with what happened last night, Cora.”
“But can you be okay with us?”
He was silent, but I felt his lips kiss the top of my head. “I’m trying,” he said softly. I knew he was still afraid of what he was capable of, but he was at least willing to give us a chance.
“That’s all I ask,” I told him and then closed my eyes as we swayed back and forth in each other’s arms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Melanie and I got up early that morning to do our daily chores. We emptied around twenty hampers worth of clothes and washed and dried them, and then had to remember to put them back in the correct hampers. They each had a nametag on them, but it really was a nightmare trying to remember if this black t-shirt or that black t-shirt went to Daggett or Travis or Lincoln…
Men really needed to use some colors every once in a while. It would make arranging laundry that much easier.
As we folded and sorted the clothing at the center table, it gave me a chance to pry a little and ask how things were going between Melanie and Travis.
“So, how’d things go last night?” I asked with a forced smile. She continued folding clothes, but her eye peeked out at me. “Where’d he take you?”
“To the lake.”
I was surprised. An evening stroll by the lake didn’t strike me as something Travis would do. Maybe I had in fact misjudged him. “That sounds like a nice romantic setting for a date.”
“I couldn’t exactly take in the setting with his tongue down my throat.”
Her wording killed my romantic fuzzies. “You guys were just…making out?” Why was I so grossed out by this?
Melanie rolled her eyes at me. “So scandalous, I know, Cora,” she mocked in a lisp voice. “I suppose my mouth is a holy place that another man shouldn’t touch until we’re married.”
“Believe me, there’s nothing pure about your mouth,” I barked. “I was just surprised you guys were making out already. So, does that mean you like him?”
“I’m not sure yet. He’s a really sloppy kisser,” she told me with her top lip curled. “Half the time, he kept missing my mouth and getting his tongue all over my face. I had slobber all over my cheeks.”
“You know—” I said very quickly, putting an end to her magnificent story. “It sounds like it was a personal encounter last night, so you don’t have to go into detail.”
She shrugged and we continued folding laundry.
Melanie may have found me to be a pain in the ass, but I did want the best for her, and hearing stories about a pothead drooling all over her because she didn’t have anything else to do that night made me less than ecstatic. She deserved better than that.
“Hey, ladies,” Daggett said, approaching us with a basket full of clothes. The stack was way past the rim and when he dropped it in front of us the clothes spilled out onto the floor. “More dirty laundry for you.”
“Oh, goody,” Melanie moaned and then threw a folded shirt onto the table.
“Whose clothes are those?” I asked. “Your hamper
was already gone through.”
“These are mine, too.”
“You have an impressive amount of clothes here, Daggett. How often do you go shopping?” Before he could answer, I continued, “Since you’re here, you might as well take your clean clothes back.” I scooped up a handful of clothes that I could barely contain in my arms and handed them to him. “There’s another pile over there if you want to grab them and I can help you to your room.” I peeked over at Melanie and said, “We’ll be back.”
“Oh, of course, leave me here with the folding,” she pouted.
“You want to go up and down the stairs carrying the laundry?”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
Daggett collected the rest of his clothes and the two of us walked like oompa loompas up the stairs and down the hallway where his bedroom was located. Our hands were so full that when we got to his door, he had to hold his pile of clothing up against the wall for extra support while he struggled to turn the doorknob.
“I’ll get it open, eventually,” he said, strained.
“Ooh, Daggett, I’m coming in your room and it’s not even after the first date.”
He rolled his eyes with a growing smile on his face. “Is this the kind of stuff that got Max to start dating you?”
“Nope. When I giggle my nose crinkles like a pug. I think he digs it.”
He didn’t quite know how to respond, so he just said, “You can throw my clothes on the bed or whatever when we get in.”
“You don’t hang your clothes?”
“They’re coming off the hanger, anyway, so what’s the point?”
“You’re so attractive when you’re ambitious,” I teased.
Daggett twisted the doorknob to his door, but something seemed to be blocking the entrance, and after one hard push he managed to get it open.
His bedroom looked like it belonged to a science geek in high school—I say this because I hung out with plenty. Dirty clothes hung over the blue shade of his lamp, a pile sprawled on the floor, a pile on the end of the bed, and an empty pizza box on his desk next to his fish tank decorated the room. There were 80’s horror movie posters taped all over his walls, minus the one of Albert Einstein smoking a pipe while in a thoughtful pose.
“Nice room,” I lied.
“I know, it looks like it exploded. I’ve heard it my whole life.”
“Guess there’s no point in telling you what you already know.”
“I don’t plan on staying here, so letting it stay trashed is my incentive.”
“That makes sense… I think.”
Near the left of his door was a long table with jars, rubber gloves, tubes, and a turned off burner on it. “Is this Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory?” I joked.
Daggett chuckled under his breath. “Someone who knows the monster’s name isn’t Frankenstein for a change.”
“Do people still confuse them? I learned the difference because my grandma had this big Frankenstein’s monster doll that she’d keep on the couch at all times growing up, and it had a nametag on the front of its shirt. It was a creepy little doll. One summer my dog tore it to bits, and the stuffing was hanging out of its gut and his one eyeball hung from a thread, and the thing gave me the chills. It looked possessed.”
“In fairness to the doll, that is what it’s supposed to look like.”
“I begged my grandma to get rid of it, but she wouldn’t, so one weekend we visited, I buried it out in the backyard.”
“Did it give you solace?”
I put my hands on my hips and nodded. “I felt a little comforted, I won’t lie.”
I noticed a jar on his table with a purple flower inside of it.
“What’s this?”
“Don’t touch that!” Daggett urgently ordered, slamming his hand down on the jar to keep the lid closed tight. “That’s wolfsbane. I don’t need the smell getting out.”
My brow lifted. “You mean that isn’t a myth?”
“That it brings werewolves endless torture and agony? Unfortunately not.”
“If it’s so bad, what the heck is it doing in your room?”
“Experimentation.”
“Like… sexually?” I teased.
He cocked his head at me sideways. “Believe me, I don’t want any of this near my junk. I tampered with it to see if I could make some form of a tranquilizer from it. Before I found Aga’s compound, it used to keep me up at night, wondering if I had been out killing or hurting anyone, so I’d grind up the plant, melt it into a liquid, pop it into a syringe and give myself a dosage every full moon.”
“Didn’t it hurt?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s like acid pumping through your veins, but it’s the only thing that weakened me enough to stop me from hurting people. I’d wake up in my backyard or maybe down the street, so I figured it was working.”
I nodded my head and backed away from his table of elements. “So, if the wolfsbane theory is true, what about silver?”
“Yes and no. If I’m how I am right now, silver has no effect on me, but when I’m in my werewolf form, it is highly irritable. I think it goes without saying that a silver bullet will take us down.”
“Why does it go without saying?”
“Because any bullet will take us down. It’s a bullet.”
“I still don’t know what are your strengths and weaknesses half the time.”
“You and Max never talked about this?”
“When we met, neither of us even knew these kinds of things existed. I read a book up on it, but wasn’t sure what was true and what wasn’t.”
“I wouldn’t worry yourself about it. It’s not like you’re going to be like us. Sorry for the jinx.”
“I’m not worried about being one of you, I’m worried about being powerless against one of you.”
He nodded in agreement. “Considering your history, I guess that’s fair.”
“Do you still take the shots?”
“Not in a while. Corbin actually took some of my spares.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. He wanted to try it out.”
I scoffed. “You mean he actually speaks?”
“When he wants something, yeah.”
“Do you guys get along?” I was trying to be delicate. I didn’t want to voice my uneasiness around Corbin if they were really good buddies.
Daggett shrugged very slowly. “We’ve never fought or anything like that. He sticks by Paul’s side for the most part, so I never got to know him.”
“They some kind of crew—Paul, Corbin, Travis and Kat?”
“They were close before I ever got here. I think they take Paul’s alpha status pretty seriously.”
“And you don’t?”
“I’m more of a loner. Besides, I’d like to get out of here someday.”
I nodded. “So, you like them all?”
His eyes shrunk, and I knew he was aware of what I was doing. “What is it that you’re wanting me to say, Cora?”
I rung my hand on the back of my neck and groaned. “They just make me feel really uneasy and I’m feeling like I’m the paranoid chick in the house.”
Daggett said nothing and walked right past me, promptly shutting his bedroom door and whipping his body back toward me with a very earnest expression on his face. “Whatever I tell you stays in this room, okay?”
Suddenly, I was afraid. I gulped and responded with a, “Sure.”
“Have you heard the stories about how Corbin turned into a werewolf?”
“Yeah, it was an attack, right?”
“That’s what I thought, too, until I heard him and Paul talking from the next room. They must not have known anyone was around because I could hear them almost plain as day through the walls.” Daggett lowered his voice. “Paul was teasing him about how Corbin owed him and wouldn’t be what he was today if it weren’t for him, and all this weird stuff about Paul molding him.”
I scrunched my face up like a dog. “What does tha
t mean?”
“That supposed werewolf attack that turned Corbin wasn’t really an attack at all. Paul did it.”
I gasped. “Like he lost control and attacked him?”
“No, like Corbin asked him to intentionally do it.”
Okay, now I was thoroughly confused. “What?”
“Corbin chose to be a werewolf, and from the sound of it, it seemed to be Paul’s idea.”
“Why would he ever suggest something like that? And why would Corbin actually humor the idea?”
“Beats me. The way they were talking, made it sound like Corbin just stood there and let Paul bite him.”
“What kind of crazy person would choose to be a werewolf?”
“I don’t know. We’re all here trying to escape what we are and Corbin is volunteering like he’s doing us a service. I always knew their relationship was off, but this surprised even me.”
“That’d explain why Corbin follows him around like some silent servant. He probably thinks of Paul as his master.”
Daggett sighed. “Just don’t say anything, all right? I’m not sure why I even told you. I guess I didn’t want you to think your weird feelings were totally unfounded.”
“Do they know you know?”
His eyes got big and I swear his glasses fogged up. “Are you kidding? I walk on eggshells enough when they’re all in a room together. I don’t need them thinking I eavesdrop on their conversations. I know when to keep my mouth shut and not ruffle any feathers. They’ve been here longer than I have, so I have to remember my place.”
“And turning people into werewolves isn’t some pack ritual?” I was looking for any possible way that this was a normal situation.
“No,” he answered. “If anything, these kinds of rituals belong more in a cult.”
I gulped. Oh, goody, just what I wanted to hear.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“Cora, come on!” Brinly shouted from the half opened main door. It was so hot outside, I could feel the wind pushing the heat past Brinly’s bikini clad body and into the house. She had on an oversized floppy hat, red rimmed sunglasses, white flip flops and a towel draped over her arm.
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