by Mia Rose
“You know Noelle, for the short time that I’ve known you, I never thought that you’d ever tell me that you had ‘sexy dreams,’” Declan teased. “But if it makes you feel any better, I’ve had those dreams about you, too.” Noelle laughed and slapped his arm playfully.
They stayed like that for a while, just talking about different things, straying from the topics that made both of them feel uncomfortable. Before they knew it, the sun was starting to set and Noelle’s mother popped her head into the room.
“Declan, would you like to stay for dinner?”
“Oh, thanks so much for the offer, but I’ve actually got to get going.”
After the many protests from Abigail, Declan finally maneuvered his way out of the house. Both Garret and Abigail watched and waved until Declan could no longer see them in his rear-view mirror.
In another life, we could have all been happy together, Declan thought to himself as he climbed onto the main road and headed back toward the apartments.
Abigail and Garret walked back into the house, talking amongst themselves and Noelle’s nana creeped inside of Noelle’s room quietly.
“Noelle, are you asleep?” her nana asked.
“No,” Noelle groaned from beneath the blankets. She uncovered her face and watched her nana sit down shakily in the chair.
“Noelle, before this accident, I told you a story about your ancestor —Noelise. Do you remember it?” Noelle shook her head, meaning no, and her nana said, “Okay, I will tell you again another time, but the important thing from that story was that it affected you deeply because you are also in love and you will have to make a choice as well.”
“Nana, what in the world are you talking about?”
“Noelle, you love that man that just left this house. But there are things that you need to remember about him. You need to read these letters and find out as much as you can.” Noelle’s nana gripped Noelle’s hand tightly, then she stood up from the chair and walked out of the room leaving Noelle alone once again.
Declan maneuvered his way back to the apartments and walked up to his office. He opened the door and found Aria sitting there talking with Gabriel.
“Okay, correct me if I am wrong, but I am pretty sure the name on this door says, ‘Declan.’ So, why are either of you in here when I’m not here?”
“We’re concerned about you, Declan,” Aria said. “I was just telling Gabriel how you invited me to hunt last night and then left me stranded in the woods after we’d killed one deer. Oh, and well, let’s be honest, after you’d had your fill, there wasn’t much to bring back here. It’s been two nights now that you’ve not given the other wolves food.” Aria looked genuinely concerned, but Declan knew better.
“What are you saying?” Declan asked.
“Declan, I think Aria’s just worried that you have too much on your mind right now, man. You have been making some weird calls lately —like not wanting to hunt down those humans that killed Cassidy? What is that? We think maybe you need to just take a break for a little while, you know? To get your head straight.”
“Is that what you think too, Gabriel? You actually agree with her? Weren’t you just telling me to be careful with this one because she is a crazy little bitch?”
“Declan, calm down. I’m just trying to…”
“No,” Declan said, “you want me to take a step back for a while, fine. I’ll make myself scarce for the next few days. But you don’t need me to remind you what the process is for replacing the alpha in the pack. Do you really want to challenge me so soon, Gabe?”
“I have no desire to be Alpha, Declan. I only want to see you get a little bit better at it.” Gabriel stood up from his chair and walked out of the office slamming the door behind him.
“Declan, you really should be a little more careful about how you speak to your friends. Before you know it, we might get fed up and leave you to fend for yourself,” Aria said, matter-of-factly.
“I’d rather be alone than ever be surrounded by members like you,” Declan growled. “Get out!”
Aria smiled and walked from behind the desk. She pushed Declan down into the chair where Gabriel had just been sitting. She climbed on top of him, straddling him.
“Aria, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“Please, stop pretending that you don’t feel this thing between us. It would just make our lives so much easier —so much better if you’d just give in already, instead of making a stand against me every, single time.”
“I’m not making a stand against you, I’m…” Aria cut him off by pressing her lips to his.
She prodded open his mouth with her tongue and her fingers slid under his shirt, feeling his tight abs. She let her nails scratch gently against his skin and she could feel him starting to loosen up and give into her.
She moved her mouth over to his ear lobe and she took it gently between her teeth, nibbling softly and then sucking on it. Beneath her, she could feel him starting to rise in response.
“Aria, we shouldn’t…”
She placed a finger to his lips and said, “No more talking.”
She reached down to the bottom of his shirt and pulled it up over his head. Declan reached his arms around Aria’s waist, pressing her body closer to his. He bit the bottom of her shirt and pulled it up over her head with his teeth, then he used his hands to unclasp her lacy black bra.
He ran his fingers down her back and relished in the way her body arched toward him in response. Declan stood up, keeping Aria’s legs wrapped around his waist. He slowly unbuttoned her jeans and peeled them away from her body. She sat there on his desk in nothing but her small, red thong.
Declan smiled at her as she watched his every move with lusty eyes. He reached down to her waist with both of his hands and tore her panties in half. Aria let out a small gasp of pleasure as she watched him kneel before her.
Declan pushed aside her legs and he forced her back so that she was now propped up on her elbows. He breathed her in and then, without any warning, he plunged his tongue deep inside of her.
Aria let out deep moan and let herself collapse backward all the way. Declan grabbed her waist and his tongue flicked gently at the raised area between her folds. He kissed the insides of her thighs and bit tenderly. Aria grabbed his hair and guided his face back to the crease between her thighs. She gasped as he took her clitoris into his wanting mouth.
Declan used his two fingers to stroke her softly while his tongue continued to play with her clitoris. He could feel her body start to tense.
Aria whispered, “Don’t stop.”
Declan bit again at the sensitive skin and looked up at her and said, “You do it.”
“What!?” Aria asked, now breathless and slightly bewildered.
“Make yourself finish,” Declan said, “I want to watch.”
Aria leaned back onto the desk and her fingers rubbed expertly at the place Declan was just sucking and licking.
“Talk to me,” she whispered.
“Come on, Aria,” Declan said without missing a beat, “I want to taste you so bad. Finish for me, baby. I want to see your body pulse and I want you to just let it all go. Come for me.”
“More,” she gasped.
“Once you’ve finished, I’m going to fuck you. I’ll start softly at first and I’ll make sure that you feel all of me inside of you. Then I’ll start going harder and harder… I’m going to make you scream out my name so that everybody knows who you belong to.”
Aria pressed down on herself and her entire body arched up as she exploded. She laughed out unsteadily and her legs shook uncontrollably.
“That was…” she laughed out, unable to finish her sentence.
Declan reached down and grabbed his shirt from the floor. He slid it over his head and buttoned his jeans.
“What are you doing?” Aria asked. “We aren’t done here.”
“Yes, Aria. We are done here. As a matter of fact, I think it’s safe to say that during this little ‘break’ I’m taking, we shou
ld probably also take a break from each other.” Declan pulled open the door completely uncaring of the fact that Aria was sitting completely naked on his desk. “I’d say I’ll see you around, but…” He shrugged and walked away, closing the door behind him.
Noelle sat up in her bed with the box of letters next to her. She’d read through a few of them, but they didn’t tell her much —just basic diary entries about what Noelise had been doing and how excited she was getting to see E. It was also true at this moment that Noelle still had no idea who that was, based on her journal entries.
She picked up the next letter and read:
Dear E,
Tonight, is the night! I cannot wait to see you. I am supposed to be in the woods to meet him by midnight. He still believes that I will be exchanging vows with him, but he does not know that I never told the priest to meet us.
It will be the perfect opportunity for us to end this all.
I love you,
Noelise
Noelle sat there, dumbfounded by the letter she had read. She needed more information about Noelise because she had no idea what was going on. Who was E? What had they done that was so horrible? Who was she meeting in the woods at midnight?
Noelle called for her nana and a few minutes later, she appeared by the door.
“Nana, you have to tell me the story of Noelise again. I’m ready to hear it.” Her grandmother sighed and walked inside of the room, sitting down next to Noelle.
“If your parents had any idea of what I am about to tell you, they would kill me. They still haven’t decided whether or not you should find out the whole truth of who you are, but I believe this is your destiny, more than any of us.” Noelle nodded as her nana spoke to her.
Her grandmother recounted the tale of Noelise and her lover who she lost to a werewolf bite —and how she was forced to kill him with a silver knife because she knew he was no longer the man she knew.
Noelle sat still and absorbed every word her grandmother told her, but she still had so many questions.
“So,” Noelle said slowly, “our family… we are hunters? All of us?” Her nana nodded, watching Noelle’s face as the information sank in.
“And Noelise, she was the original hunter? She was the first one to kill a werewolf? It started with her?”
“That is what we have been told, yes.”
“But what if that’s not true?” Noelle asked. None of it made sense to her. The letter read that she would be meeting her lover at midnight, but her lover was E., not the other man. She had tricked the other man; made him believe that she would marry him, but based on her letters, she had no intention of doing that. She loved E.
Noelle could feel the pressure building up in her head again and she thanked her nana for telling her the truth about everything.
“I just need to be alone, I think, to really process everything,” Noelle said. Her nana gave Noelle a big hug and squeezed tight before leaving the room.
Noelle felt the truth in everything. She could feel it in her bones that she was a hunter, exactly how her nana had explained. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off with Noelise’s story.
She began scouring over letters, for any sort of hint of what truly happened that night. She read through at least ten more letters, but then she noticed an envelope at the bottom of the box. She pulled it out and read the letter stuffed inside:
Dear E,
This is my final letter to you and I feel obligated to confess to you how you destroyed my life.
I was happy and I was in love —a simple kind of love that would have lasted my entire life. I could have had children and continued living in the village without ever thinking twice.
But when you came here, everything changed. You seduced me and you made me believe that you loved me. You told me grandeur stories of how I could be a hero for all men if I chose the path of the huntress and helped you continue your mission to kill all the beasts that once were men.
You made me sacrifice my one true love and I know now that he was my one true love, not you. You asked me to meet you in the woods that night so that you might convince him to join as a hunter as well, but that was never the real plan, was it? You needed to know how devoted I was to you. You needed to know that no matter what and no matter who, I would do what I was told.
You tracked the wolf here in the woods that night, you knew that he would attack anyone he found. You caught him just in time to keep the wolf from killing him, but it was too late. The bite was already enough to transform him from the man I loved to the beast he was.
But then, you made me prove myself to you, and to the cause. You gave me the silver knife and you told me if I wanted to be with you, that I would have to kill him. And I did. I killed him for you and for me and for him… because I knew that he would not want to continue life that way.
I left my life to be with you, but I have never once forgotten about that night. What would have happened if I’d let him live? Would I have been able to love him still? Was he truly consumed by the beast within? Or were there parts of him which remained?
I remember the look in his eyes —those familiar eyes, as he breathed his final breath. I’ve seen the look of death too many times to count, now. I’ve lost sight of the cause in all the bloodshed. I no longer know who the enemy is —the wolf, or you.
This is my goodbye, once and for all,
Noelise
The tears fell as Noelle read the letter. She felt everything, deep in her own heart. The emotion flowed into her like it had done to Noelise. What a choice she’d had to make.
“Noelle felt the truth in everything. She could feel it in her bones that she was a hunter.”
Chapter 16
The Cure
“This was all Declan had to go on right now, his only lead.”
Declan sat in his room and he thought about going out for a hunt, but decided against it. If they wanted him to take a step back, that’s exactly what he was going to do. He would see how well they functioned without him.
He had expected Aria to show up, but she didn’t and he was grateful for that. All the ups and downs with her were exhausting and he wanted to be left alone to think about Noelle.
Spending the day with her today was bittersweet for him. He wanted so badly to be normal because he knew that they could be perfect for one another —but there was nothing normal about either of them. He knew that eventually Noelle would remember everything about herself and Declan. He would continue to visit her, but once she started remembering, they would probably end up back in the same position with her ignoring his existence. That was until she couldn’t anymore… and with him going back and forth between loving and hating her.
Declan went to his room and laid down on the bed, pulling his laptop over to him. He started researching silver and werewolves. It was exactly as he expected; mainly folklore stuff. It was so funny to him that so many stories existed about werewolves, yet the majority of the human population wrote it off as fiction.
He always wanted to ask people, “Where do you think the stories came from?”
He continued his search and came across an interesting news piece; “Graduate Student Kicked Out of Medical Program for Claiming to Have Found Cure for Silver.”
Declan clicked open the story and continued reading:
Medical student removed from Graduate Program for defending his thesis on finding a cure for silver. What is the problem with this thesis? Well, the school reports that the studies were not meant for humans, rather for werewolves! It makes you wonder about your own doctor now, doesn’t it?
Declan continued reading the story to see if he could get any more information about the “almost-doctor” who was kicked out of the program; but they never revealed his name. All Declan could find out was that it took place at Boulder Rock College. He looked at the date of when the story was printed and found with dismay that this was from forty-two years ago. The student —whoever it was, was probably in his late sixties o
r seventies, now. But, this was all Declan had to go on; his only lead. He would follow it until the trail went cold.
He Googled the school and found that it was only four hours away. He decided that after he visited Noelle tomorrow, he would head off in that direction to see if he could get any more information about this so-called, “crazy doctor.”
He shut his laptop and his eyes and his mind buzzed with all the possibilities. If he could find the cure for silver, not only would he regain the respect of his pack, but maybe he would be able to call off the manhunt they were so set on.
Declan slept fitfully that night dreaming of Noelle and Cassidy and of having to choose who to save. He woke up in the morning later than usual and was surprised that he hadn’t been interrupted by different people yet —pack members wondering when it would be their turn to eat or train, or renters just wanting to let him know that they would be late with their payments again. He jumped into the shower and quickly cleaned up before putting on his standard jeans and t-shirt.
Declan paused for a moment and considered that since he would be going to see Noelle again, maybe he should try a little harder. So, he traded out his t-shirt for one of his (three), button-down shirts. He ironed it out and then tucked it into his jeans. Looking in the mirror, he was actually somewhat impressed by what he saw; he smiled thinking that this must be what all the ladies see when they look at him. For once, he impressed himself.
He pushed open his apartment door and stopped into his office to pick up a notebook and pen to bring with him when he visited the school. He wanted to be ready, just in case he needed to write down some important information. As he left the office; making sure to lock the door behind him, he saw Aria walking up the stairs.
“Someone looks handsome today,” Aria teased. Declan nodded before blowing right past her and headed down to the parking lot where his car was waiting for him.
As he climbed into the car and started the engine, he had this thought that Aria was going to turn out to be a bigger pain than he had ever imagined possible. He would have to deal with that whole situation once and for all soon… and put her in her place. If she didn’t want to respect him and accept him as the alpha of the pack, then he would have to remove her as a member altogether.