She hated feeling so helpless, so vulnerable against the wolf hunger that burned in her gut. Squeezing back a tear, she crawled into bed and prayed that blessed sleep would take her and ease both the hunger and the numbness that threatened to pull her into total darkness again.
Downstairs, the three men leaned on the breakfast bar and sighed in unison.
“You know what just occurred to me?” Darren mused.
“What?” Ben asked.
“We now have two teenage loups-garous to look after.”
“And it looks like Katey’s going to be just as stubborn as you say Logan was,” Dustin added.
Darren wiped his brow with the heel of his palm and groaned. It had taken many hard lessons for Logan to understand and grapple with his new self, but every loup-garou on the earth had been there before and most have lived through their first trials. He had trained many young loups-garous before and Katey would be no different – he hoped.
As the midnight oil burned, the senior members of the pack were still awake, restless and troubled by the day that seemed hardly over yet. In the back billiard room, a solitary lamp was lit, casting a glow on the teachers as they played the tenth game of pool since the two younger loups-garous had gone upstairs in a fury.
The room was covered in a low-pile green carpet and the walls were made of wooden panels, resembling the inside of a bar, which was just what they had intended when they designed the home. In the middle of the room sat the billiard table, the colored balls scattered across its felt surface. Dustin was lining up for a shot while the others leaned on their pool sticks, their intense gazes fixed on the game.
Billiards had been their pastime of choice for decades. Only now, they were one player short. Precision aim and careful gaging of shots helped to hone their control. In the early days, balls would go flying about the pool hall, knocking holes into the drywall or shattering windows. By now, their accuracy had improved and they could carry on dozens of rounds without damaging the house any further.
“So, how are we going to do this?” Dustin asked as he slid the stick back and forth between his fingers, aiming at the que ball. He was the first to bring up the topic in the last two hours since they first entered the billiard room, but everyone had been stewing on their predicament for just as long. Primarily, they were still trying to wrap their thoughts around the fact that a female loup-garou existed. Logan had done what no other loup-garou on the planet could hope to do and none of them could explain why. Was it Katey’s uniqueness that allowed the change? Or was it something in Logan that helped her accept the venom? Or was it both of them?
“Do what?” Ben asked.
“Deal with Katey and Logan. Do we have a game plan? Are we going to let her go to school or keep her home?”
Dustin skillfully knocked the white ball into two solids and nailed them into a corner pocket. He stood up and backed away to allow Ben to take his shot.
“I was going to leave that up to her,” Darren answered, his calm brown eyes fixed on the orange solid Ben was aiming for. “If she shows signs of instability, though, there’s no way she’s going to school.”
“What about Logan?” Dustin asked with the bitter taste of resentment in his tone.
“I know my opinion doesn’t matter, but I don’t think they should be anywhere near each other right now.” Ben popped at the white ball, but missed his mark by a fraction of an inch.
“Why?” Darren looked up with curious eyes.
Ben sighed and shook his head. “They’re just goin’ to cause more problems. It’s not worth it.”
Darren moved forward to take his shot at a striped ball.
“They live together, genius,” Dustin commented. “How are we going to keep them separated?”
“We can’t,” was Darren’s answer as he shot the striped ball into a middle pocket.
Dustin stepped up to evaluate the field.
“Can’t we just dump Logan off with another family in town while we’re tryin’ to train Katey?” Ben suggested, leaning against the wall.
The alpha looked to the omega and shook his head. “It wouldn’t work even if we did.”
Dustin straightened up from his bent position over the table and paused in taking his shot. “Why not? Sounds reasonable to me. I’m getting sick of his attitude. Having a break from him would be refreshing.”
Darren gave Dustin an amused grin. “Whether we like it or not, Katey and Logan are connected now.”
“They aren’t mated,” Ben stated for the record.
“You both know what I mean,” Darren said, giving them furtive glances. “Dustin changed you and I recall many times that the two of you behaved more like brothers than just pack members. We all know there is some kind of physiological connection formed during the imprinting before a bite. Did you see how Katey’s hair is different? She has blonde highlights just like Logan. They’re sharing more than just friendship now. And I’m not talking about the pack bond exclusively.”
Dustin took a deep breath and inclined down to resume his shot. “They’ll get over it.”
Ben rolled his eyes at Dustin as he struck the ball, but managed to miss the hole entirely. Dustin kicked the leg of the billiard table in frustration and turned away to pace the floor.
“No, they won’t,” Darren retorted. “And besides, what kind of lesson would that teach them? That if they don’t like someone it’s okay to just leave? You saw how successful that was. They’re both in this pack and have to cooperate. Whatever disagreements they have must be dealt with, not ignored or pushed aside to resolve another day.”
Ben groaned and covered his eyes with his hand. “There’s goin’ to be so much angst though!” he exclaimed. “I don’t know if I can handle how much goes on between the four of us, let alone bringin’ in a female.”
Dustin gripped his pool stick tightly between his fingers and twisted at the wood, making it creak beneath his powerful hands. “I know. I’m just about ready to rip Logan a new one if he rolls his eyes at me just one more time.”
Darren couldn’t help but laugh at the two of them. “No one is going to be doing any ripping around here.”
“So, then what are we going to do?” Ben asked, looking to his alpha for answers.
After a moment of quiet thought, Darren shook his head. “We do nothing but what is necessary for now. If the tension persists between them, we’ll have to sit them down and talk it over.”
“I don’t agree with what Logan did,” Dustin interjected, “and I don’t agree with the way he’s dealing with his guilt. He’s taking it too hard.”
Ben cocked his eyebrow at his friend. “Weren’t you just wantin’ to wring his neck earlier and now you care if he feels guilty?”
“He should feel guilty.” Dustin’s eyes stared into space as he spoke. “But he doesn’t have the right to take it out on Katey. It’s not her fault he went wild.”
“But, it’s not Logan’s fault that she agreed to it. She seems to be taking this all very well and it puzzles me.” Darren leaned heavily upon his pool stick.
“And what happened to Katey bein’ your favorite pupil, professor?” Ben jested, waving his hand at his alpha.
Darren chuckled and straightened his posture. “She is, but I think the blame may be split both ways... And like I said, we will do nothing beyond what is necessary to train her.”
A few beats of silence passed before Ben asked, “Have you called John yet?”
Darren sighed at the mention of his former mentor. John, above all others, would have wanted to know about the miracle with Katey. “I’m going to wait until we know for certain that this is going to play out well. I don’t want to get his hopes up.”
“What about Alaska?” Dustin asked with a pinched expression.
Darren had nearly forgotten about the gathering of loups-garous. Their plane tickets were already bought and he hadn’t factored for Katey’s arrival into their lives. “We can’t leave her here alone. We’ll have to take her with us.”
“What about when we go to change?” Ben asked. “Do you think she’d be ready in time?”
Darren rubbed at his cheek. “I don’t know. This is all new territory for us. John will be there, as well as many other alphas who can help. We’ll play it by ear.”
The three paused as they began to hear a soft piano melody drift through the house, coming from the sitting room. They all looked to each other with knowing eyes.
Upstairs, the music roused Katey from her light sleep. The sounds from downstairs and the forest outside had kept her from falling into the deep slumber that she so desperately needed.
She slid out of bed and crept down the darkened hallway. All the teacher’s doors were shut, but Logan’s was cracked open. Although, she couldn’t distinguish one scent from the other, she knew none of them were upstairs with her.
She took the chance and pushed Logan’s door open to slip inside. Logan wasn’t in his bed, but his lamp was still glowing on his desk. She gracefully slinked across the room and peeked over Logan’s newest drawing project.
It was of a man and a woman. The man’s face was shadowed out, but she could see that the woman was the same girl in the other sketches tacked up on the walls. She was lying on the ground in a pool of blood and the way Logan portrayed her, she was even more beautiful in death. The man had her blood on his hands, standing over her, obviously guilty of her murder. The man was staring at his crimson hands as if he didn’t understand his crime.
She sighed and turned away, knowing the exact meaning of the morbid sketch. Her ears perked and she heard the melody again.
Katey swiftly strode out of Logan’s room and downstairs to follow the music into the sitting room. There she saw Logan sitting at the piano, his fingers flowing over the ebony and ivory keys like a master pianist performing his favorite piece. The song was slow and mournful, wrapping Katey in a cold but gentle grip of sorrow that deepened the sorrow that had already caged her heart earlier that night.
She slowly walked in and stood by his stool, not daring to trespass any closer as she watched his fingers dance across the keys.
Katey glanced up to his eyes and saw them glisten in the dim light that came from the foyer. They were no longer that stunning blue she loved, but a dull and lifeless gray like the stormy sky, personifying the turbulent moods in both of them. His gaze was vacant and unfocused, as if the life in him had all but been extinguished.
He concentrated on the music, willing the rest of existence to fade away in the gloomy notes. Sketching did nothing for him that night and although he knew it was risky to venture downstairs and wake the house with the music, it was a better alternative than to escape to the forest like he had that morning. That was where he had failed.
In the forest, everything seemed so clear to him. He wandered aimlessly for hours amongst the pines and along the creek that wound through the trees, until the solution came to him. In his madness, he thought that if he didn’t push – for lack of a better word – the decision to change, how would Katey ever make up her mind?
The beast in him took the matter into his own hands and frothed up an indignant rage against Katey’s indeterminacy. By the time he arrived to the school, he was ready to do whatever was necessary to help her make the right decision for both of them.
But as his human side recovered, he realized his error all too well. Dustin was right. He had forced her into making the choice and the ends could never justify the means. She was alive, but it was a sheer miracle that she was breathing at all. And it was her racing heartbeat that unnerved him now.
He didn’t even want to acknowledge that Katey was in the same room with him. She was far too close, reminding him of his error and selfishness. She could have been killed and her blood would never be cleansed from his hands. His resolve began to crumble once he could see her out of the corner of his eye.
It was heart wrenching to see her like she was now, with the light from the foyer like a glowing halo around her features. She was alive and he should have taken comfort in that, but he couldn’t forget what he’d done to her; what he’d made her into. What hurt him the most was that if he had the choice to go back and try again, he wouldn’t have changed a thing.
When his fingers grew too weak to play, they fell still on the piano. Silence filled the room like a thickening fog. Katey, her throat thick with emotion, slid onto the stool with him to intrude upon his sullenness. She reached over and took his warm hand in hers. She held it for a few moments, entwining her fingers in between his, and then spoke.
“Please, don’t be upset. I wanted this. You didn’t push me... I’d already been leaning toward that choice anyway. You just beat me to it.” Her mouth twitched in a smile, but it was too frail to hold it. “You aren’t being selfish.”
Katey looked up to him, but his eyes were still fixed on their joined hands, as if studying every detail of the image. “For God’s sake, please look at me?” Katey squeezed his hand, but he refused to look up.
“Please...” she whispered.
Without a word, Logan jerked his hand from hers and fled the room to return upstairs. It was the second time he had left her, but Katey would never get used to seeing his back turned on her in such loathing.
She turned to the piano and felt her own defenses crumble. Tears silently spilled from her eyes and onto the keys. Her body convulsed with the sobs in her chest, but she was determined to stay silent. The others would hear her. Logan would hear her and she had to be strong. The entity within her begged her not to cry, but it wept with her anyway as it felt the same rejection as Katey did.
In the dining room, Dustin peeked into the sitting room from the kitchen. He turned back to Darren and Ben, who stood behind him, and shook his head. Nothing was fixed yet. Darren pulled Dustin back into the kitchen.
He resolutely pointed at himself, then toward the sitting room, then to Dustin, and up at the ceiling. Dustin nodded in understanding. He was to take on Logan and Darren to Katey. Ben sighed and walked back to the billiard room, realizing that they weren’t going to finish their game tonight.
Upstairs, Logan was busily sketching away at his desk. If he couldn’t be alone downstairs at least he could find some solace in his room. He let the pencil and charcoal flow across the page as he continued to paint his muse, willing the turmoil around him to ease up just for a few hours until he could fall asleep.
He heard his grandfather approach his room and turned his attention to the open door. Dustin was met by an angry glare upon stepping over the threshold.
“I come under a white flag,” Dustin said good-naturedly.
Logan tensed his jaw and turned back to his sketch without a word. Even though Dustin had been right, he was still not willing to forgive him for the verbal beating he had taken earlier.
Dustin softly closed the door behind him and walked over to stand behind Logan. His eyes scanned over the sketches. He’d seen them before and thought them harmless, but once he looked down to what he was currently working on - the image of the brutally murdered woman - he grimaced.
He took a deep breath and turned back up to the other drawings that were more wholesome and less dark. “These would be really good if only that girl was naked, ya know?”
Dustin gave the boy a toothy grin, but Logan didn’t so much as look up. He knew that Logan’s way of escape was art. Whether it was sketching, carving, or even sculpting, it was Logan’s crutch in the difficult days when his loup-garou life was too much to tolerate. But this kind of art couldn’t be conducive to getting over what happened. A part of him wanted Logan to suffer in his guilt, but the fatherly instinct in him needed his grandson to laugh and smile again like he did before.
Dustin sat down on the edge of the bed before continuing on his mission. “When are you going to come back to earth?”
“I am on earth, what are you talking about?” Logan asked, his voice hoarse and deep.
“When are you going to pull yourself out of this and realize that you have someon
e who is going to be depending on you?”
Logan turned in his chair to look at Dustin with a look of utter confusion. “What do you mean? Isn’t that your job? Or Darren’s?”
Dustin shook his head decidedly. “Nope, that’s going to be mostly your job. We’ll teach her what we haven’t been able to teach you, but she’s going to need to be shown the ropes and we don’t have the time. We had plenty of time with you back in the day, but now we’re too committed to our jobs. You should have changed her in the summer.”
Logan let out a guttural growl. “Don’t joke like that.”
“Oh? Too soon?”
Logan shot him a cold frown, but stood up and joined him on the bed. He collapsed on his back and stared at the ceiling as he blew out his cheeks. Dustin was sure that Logan would have loved for him to leave the room and drop their conversation where it was, but that would not satisfy Dustin. There was plenty more for them to discuss.
Dustin mimicked him and they stared at the ceiling together for a few long moments. Contrary to their yelling and arguing, the two were rather close. They had been close ever since they first met in Italy and nothing changed since then. The bond by their pack and their blood ensured that no matter how much they hated each other at the end of the day, they were still family. The ties in a wolf pack transcended quarrels and the same could have been said for loups-garous.
“Are you going to talk about what is really bothering you?” Dustin asked.
“I disobeyed you and could have killed her,” Logan grumbled. “What else is there to be bothered about?”
“I don’t think that’s what’s bothering you though.”
Logan turned his head to look at Dustin. “Well, you tell me what my problem is then.”
“Oh, you have many problems,” Dustin mused. “But I think you’re bothered that things aren’t going the way you want them to with Katey. You wanted to be with her, now there’s nothing stopping you, and you’re still dropping her like a rotten potato and she’s taking it the wrong way.”
Becoming the Enigma (The Loup-Garou Series Book 2) Page 3