by Noelle Marie
When she did finally manage to peel her heavy eye lids open, she immediately noticed that she was lying on a large bed – in an unfamiliar room. She probably should have been more concerned, but was getting awfully used to waking up in strange places with only hazy memories to remind her how she'd gotten there. She was numb to the experience.
In this particular instance, she remembered very little. She knew she had tricked Caleb – stolen the keys to the SUV and taken off in the gigantic, green vehicle. She also recalled arriving at her sister’s house in Minnesota – how she’d banged desperately on Samantha's front door and broken one of her flower pots.
Her last memory was of Bastian showing up. His wet shirt clinging tightly to his sculpted chest as he stared at her with his too blue eyes was one of the few things she could remember vividly.
Katherine supposed that he was the one who had brought her here.
But when? And how?
She licked her dry lips and worked a hand through her hair – the dark curls were as wayward as ever – as she attempted to recall exactly how it was she'd ended up here – wherever here was.
Try as she might, however, she just couldn’t remember. She had been sick, she thought? There had been a horrible pressure in her chest – a tightness that threatened to squeeze the very oxygen from her lungs. She'd had a headache too – could still feel faint traces of pain in her temples, in fact.
Perhaps she really had been as weak as she had been in her dream.
But sick enough to sleep the day away and not remember how she’d gotten here?
She could think of no other explanation.
But that still didn’t answer the question of where she was.
Even the room she was in was veiled in darkness. The lights were off and the blinds on the windows were seal shut with no rays of daylight peeking through the gaps. There was no clock in the room so she could only assume it was night.
Though she felt far from tired.
And now that she was up and aware that she was in an unfamiliar room – in an unfamiliar bed – she couldn’t very well just go back to sleep.
She was just itching to explore.
Katherine was hesitant to do so, however, as she very much doubted that she'd truly been left to her own devices. She knew that Bastian must have been nearby. He wouldn't leave someone else to watch her. Not after the last time he'd left and put the others in charge of babysitting her.
Ugh. Babysit. She despised the word.
Suddenly paranoid that she was being watched from the shadows of the room, Katherine reached over and flicked on the lamp she spotted on the nightstand.
The lamp's light cast an eerie glow on the rest of the room, but quickly revealed that no one was spying on her from the darkness. She would’ve given a sigh of relief if her breath wouldn’t have caught in her throat as she got her first real look at the room she was in.
It was beautiful.
The room was decorated in rich shades of brown with little accents of green – like the curtains on the tall windows or the silken sheets of the bed. It was sparsely decorated – the bed, nightstand, and mahogany dresser were the room’s only furniture – but that only served to draw attention to the gleaming hardwood floors.
But it wasn't the shiny floor or five drawer dresser that caused Katherine to lose her breath.
It was the splendid fireplace the took up half the wall opposite the bed. It was magnificent – gloriously rustic with an abstract design of some sort looping around its gold frame. The pile of logs in its pit weren't currently burning, but she knew it'd make an even more awesome sight when they were.
Not able to resist the temptation to examine the fireplace more closely, she disentangled herself from the comfortable sheets of the bed and knelt on the fur rug – if she had to guess, she'd say it used to be bear – that was laid directly in front of the fireplace.
Up close, she could see that the frame wasn't painted gold as she'd first thought, but truly seemed to be made of the expensive material. She could also see that the looping design wasn't made up of vague shapes as it had looked like from her place on the bed, but detailed figures.
Detailed figures of wolves.
Katherine felt her stomach clench when she noticed, but she couldn't find it in herself to think the design any less beautiful for it. She idly traced the indented gold with her fingers before the desire she felt to explore the rest of the room could no longer be ignored. Hands on her knees, she pushed herself off the floor.
She'd noticed earlier – when she'd turned on the lamp – that the room had three doors. Briefly glancing at the other two, she hesitantly headed towards the one closest to the fireplace.
She opened it to reveal an immaculate bathroom.
Its decor matched that of the bedroom's. The walls were painted a pale green color and the tiled floor was a checkered brown and white. Serving as the room's center piece was an enormous whirl pool bathtub. The large rectangular mirror above the sink was very impressive as well.
Unfortunately, she caught a glance of herself in its reflective surface.
She looked like a heathen.
Sweat coated her forehead and the greasy mop of hair on her head was managing to both stick to the slick skin as well as defy gravity and stand on end.
She was sorely tempted to make use of the tub behind her – If only to wash her demented hair. Despite how the white porcelain beckoned her, however, she didn't feel comfortable using it. She didn't even know where she was for God's sake – or who the tub belonged to for that matter.
Determined to rectify this, Katherine swiftly exited the bathroom and quietly closed the door behind her. She made her way towards the next closest door – the one a few feet from the mahogany dresser.
She opened the shuttered door and immediately recognized the adjoining room as a closet – a huge, spacious closet.
Or it would have been a spacious closet if it wasn't half full of clothes.
Men's clothes.
Pants, tees, and a few dressier collared shirts filled the shelves and hangers. Katherine gnawed at her bottom lip.
Was – could it be possible that – was she in Bastian’s room?
Had she been admiring his possessions?
Sleeping in his bed?
Katherine probably shouldn’t have been as affected as she was – she’d already slept in a bed with the man after all. But she couldn't stop the swarm of butterflies from materializing in her stomach – their wings flapping frantically against her insides.
The air in the room was suddenly too thick.
She had to leave.
Not leave leave, of course. She'd been there, done that. It didn't work out so well.
But she had to get out of this room – out of this house.
She shut the closet door – perhaps more noisily than she should have – and made a bee line towards the last unexplored door. She tugged on the knob, pulled it open and escaped the room.
The dark hallway she found herself in was as sparsely decorated as the room she'd come from. No picture frames or other hangings were nailed to the walls, but the beige carpet under her feet was plush.
Katherine didn't take the time to observe much else, however, as she was anxious to find an exit. She rushed by a staircase in her search as well as two open entryways leading to other rooms when she spotted a pair of sealed double doors.
The doors' locks made it obvious that it was the way outside.
An irrational thought ran through Katherine's mind. What if the locks were in place more to keep her in than others out?
But realizing that the thought probably wasn't so irrational only made her more desperate for some fresh air. She slid one lock open and jimmied another free.
“Making another escape attempt?”
Katherine froze.
Bastian.
The low timbre undoubtedly belonged to the man, but there was something in his voice – something menacing – that made the hair on the back of her ne
ck stand up. Ignoring the last remaining lock, she slowly turned to face him.
He was sitting in a large dining room – apparently, it was one of the rooms with a gapping entryway that she'd thoughtlessly ignored on her way to the locked double doors. Bastian was bent over in one of the chairs surrounding the table, his stiff shoulders betraying his otherwise casual posture.
He was nursing a mug of some sort – the steam rising out of the cup and the bitter smell permeating the air leading Katherine to suspect the liquid to be coffee.
It was painfully obvious the man was standing guard.
But she wasn’t trying to escape, Katherine thought defensively. She only wanted to breathe in some of the crisp night air – to calm her nerves.
And she wasn’t about to be intimidated into doing otherwise.
But instead of opening her mouth to explain this to the brooding man, when her lips parted, what came racing out was a loud question. “Where are we?”
Bastian eyed her before taking a long swig from his mug. “My home.”
“Your home?” she echoed numbly. Did that mean that the room she woke up in did belong to him? Were they… had they already arrived in-
“Yes, in Haven Falls, Canada – just in case your memory has been impaired along with your common sense. I can think of no other reason for you taking off at the motel in Linburg.”
Katherine could think of plenty – like the fact that the man before her was a complete prick for one.
But she was more concerned that she didn’t have any memories of the trip to Haven Falls – and it was a long journey from Duluth.
“How long was I out?” Katherine questioned.
Bastian stared at her for a tense moment, his mouth set in a stoic frown. And for the first time Katherine noticed how haggard he looked. There were dark shadows under his eyes and he didn’t look like he had shaved the entire time she’d been unconscious. His hair, too, was a mess and could have easily given her own wavy locks a run for their money in terms of chaoticness.
And yet… he was still probably the most handsome man she had ever met.
It wasn’t fair.
Eventually Bastian answered her. “Three days,” he bit out, twirling a finger around the rim of his mug. “This is the first time since I picked you up in Duluth that you’ve been lucid.”
Katherine's eyes widened in surprise. Three days?
“How are you feeling?”
She fought the urge to childishly demand why he cared. It's not like he’d worried himself about her health when he'd kidnapped her. Except that he sort of had, she acknowledge to herself, remembering all the times he'd forced her to eat.
"I feel better," she answered honestly. While it was true that she still had a bit of a headache, the unbearable pressure she could vividly remember squeezing her chest was gone.
Bastian inspected her face intently, searching her eyes with his – most likely trying to determine if she was telling the truth or not. Katherine fought the urge to squirm and instead crossed her arms defensively across her chest, determined to continue bolding meeting the man’s stare until he finished.
After what seemed like an eternity, he tore his eyes from hers. “Good,” he grunted, “then we can talk about punishment.”
“What?” Katherine blurted in surprise, further confused when a vague memory of Bastian saying he wasn’t mad at her reverberated in her head.
Huh?
“For running away. You get punished and you learn not to repeat mistakes,” Bastian reiterated and Katherine pushed the memory – or figment of her imagination, whatever it was – to the back of her mind. She allowed anger to consume her as she understood the meaning of his words.
“Who do you think you are? My mother?” Katherine could feel tears briefly cloud her vision as her own words caught up with her. Of course he wasn’t her mother – she was dead.
But Katherine was quickly distracted from her own angst when Bastian abruptly grabbed the mug he'd been from drinking from off the table and launched it at the wall. It shattered upon impact and shards of glass fell to the floor. Brown liquid splattered the wall.
Katherine jumped in surprise, but held her ground even as the man slammed his hands on the table and pushed himself up to his full height. The chair he was sitting on clattered to the floor and he towered over her. Blue eyes captured green ones and she couldn’t bring herself to look away from his fierce stare.
“No,” the man snarled. “I’m not your mother. I’m your alpha.” His voice was lethal and Katherine fought the urge to tear her gaze from his, but his blue eyes had mesmerized her – they almost seemed to be glowing with power. “I’m your leader and you have no other duty – no other purpose – than to obey me.”
Katherine’s body hummed with tension – with disagreement. She wanted to open her mouth and yell back at the man – tell him that she was her own person and that her life did have purpose. That it had meaning that went far beyond his own selfish plans. But she found that she couldn’t – she could feel that intense weight on her chest again. It hurt – made it hard to breathe, let alone talk.
But Bastian was oblivious to the effect his words were having on her and continued his tirade uninterrupted. “Don’t you get it, you stupid girl?" The man demanded. “If you don’t stop this foolishness, you’re going to die!”
The man abruptly shut his mouth – clearly as shocked that he’d said what he did as Katherine.
“What are you talking about?” she asked faintly, finally finding her voice.
Katherine could vaguely remember wisps of other conversations, the nagging feeling that he and the others were keeping something from her. Markus exclaiming that she was a goner when she'd first met him – immediately after she’d denied the existence of werewolves – suddenly had new meaning.
Could – could she really die?
Katherine wasn’t sure if it was her stricken expression or her soft spoken question that caused the change in Bastian – perhaps he had just worn himself out – but his face softened and he picking up his fallen chair, he sat back down with a plop. Refusing to meet her eyes, he gestured towards the chair on the opposite side of the table with a flick of his hand.
For perhaps the first time ever, Katherine obeyed him without question and sat. She needed an explanation and probably would have sat on the floor if he'd demanded it.
Katherine considered her stubborn nature.
Or perhaps not.
She forced her wayward thoughts to quiet so she could listen to Bastian's explanation.
“Many people, especially females, don’t survive the first change.” He said it quickly, the words rushing past his lips.
As if saying it faster would cause her less panic, less pain – like pulling off a band-aid.
Katherine forced herself to remain calm. “What does that mean – the first change? The first time someone… that they turn into a…” she hesitated, her tongue and lips nearly refusing to form the word, "a werewolf?”
The man nodded his head, his dark, shaggy hair bobbing with the motion. “Yes. Some die during the change itself and others days, or even weeks, before – usually of illness.”
Katherine’s eyes widened.
Did… did that mean she had almost… died?
“Is that what happened to me?” she asked as his words registered.
Bastian finally looked at her and up close Katherine could see that the dark shadows under his eyes were more pronounced that she had first thought. “I don’t know,” he admitted seriously. “People who fall ill – it usually happens because their minds refuse to accept the changes their bodies are going through. You… you seemed to be having a difficult time believing in the existence of us so we thought that maybe you were fading.”
“I’m not,” Katherine immediately assured the man – then wondered briefly why she was the one comforting him when she was the one who had a chance of dying.
She thought maybe it had something to do with wanting to erase that l
ook in his eyes. She wasn’t sure if it was pity or something else entirely, but she wanted it gone. “I’m not fading. I feel much better.”
Bastian nodded, but his solemn expression remained.
Katherine licked her lips nervously, knowing she’d have to voice her next question or allow it to go unasked and drive her mad. “So what are my odds here?”
Bastian’s eyes locked onto hers. “Your odds?”
“Of surviving,” she clarified, wondering why she didn’t sound or feel more upset. Perhaps the fact that she might die hadn’t sunk in yet. But probably, she acknowledged, it was that she knew she could survive this – knew that the man in front of her, as much as she disliked him, wouldn’t allow her to die.
Bastian hesitated to answer her question, running an agitated hand through his already wild-looking hair. “Only about half survive the change,” he finally said.
Half. So her odds were fifty-fifty. It… it could be worse, she fought to assure herself.
“Most are men,” Bastian continued, catching Katherine off guard. “They’re strong and in peak physical condition. Women – they have less of a chance. Only a few can handle the physical and mental strains of the change.”
Katherine bit the inside of her cheek, clamping the sensitive flesh between her teeth. “So… less than half of women make it?”
Bastian looked away from her. “Less than a fourth.”
The panic Katherine suspected she was supposed to feel earlier began to hit her – forming a hard, uncomfortable knot in her stomach. “Oh.”
Oh? Was that all she had to say? Bastian had just told her she may— probably would – die and the only reaction she could conjure up was oh?
“Your odds of surviving are much higher,” he hastily explained upon seeing her expression. “You’re in good physical shape, barring your recent bout of illness, of course, and have been exposed to the company of werewolves almost since the day you’ve been bitten.”
“If my odds are so much better, then why’d I get sick?” Katherine demanded.
Bastian’s eyes hardened at her question and Katherine knew almost immediately that she’d asked the wrong thing. “You got sick because you were out gallivanting around in the rain and decided to sleep in your wet clothes. You got sick because you disobeyed orders and ran away.”