Logan rolled his eyes and looked away. “Are you going to get all ‘afterschool special’ on me and say that I have to tell her how I really feel?”
“Nope,” Dustin answered blandly.
“Then what?”
“You should stop acting like the sight of her disgusts you because that’s not going to win her over.”
Logan cocked an eyebrow at him. “Would she think that I hate her?”
Dustin laughed. “Logan, you’ve run away from her twice now and she’s crying downstairs at this very moment and you know it. I know you’re upset right now, but she doesn’t get it. If you don’t show a girl you love her, she won’t know it. You can whisper sweet nothings until your voice fails you, but at the end of the day, if you haven’t shown her love, she won’t feel it. They’re complicated that way. You show her you love her, she’ll show love back.”
“Wonderful way to show it when I just tried to kill her.”
“Minor bump in the road,” Dustin replied with a shrug and flip of his hand.
“I’d call that a major one.”
“Hey, I’m trying to give you some advice here. Take it or leave it... Either way, you need to get your act together and show her that you’re strong enough to take care of her now. I can’t count how many loups-garous I know that changed someone and just left them for dead. No training, no help, zip. Those new loups-garous don’t last long without guidance. Take me for example, and Darren. We needed someone older who has been around longer to tell us how to deal with this. If it wasn’t for that, then we could have ended up like a rougarou. Do you get what I’m driving at?”
Logan went quiet, retreating into his mind to think. “I’m upset because I’ve done nothing but ruin every good chance I had with Katey. My first mistake was even talking to her in the cemetery. I should have left her alone and she would have been just fine without me. Then, I got too close and convinced you guys to let her in on our pack. It just escalated from there and then she got in the accident. If I hadn’t been there, Mary wouldn’t have exploded and Katey would still have her foster mother. Then, I went and almost killed her by trying to change her. I’ve made one poor decision after another and I can’t seem to stop myself. I feel like I’m destroying her life and she doesn’t even understand what I’m doing to her. Now, you say that I’m responsible for her and I know I’m not qualified to take care of anything.”
Dustin absorbed all that Logan said, nodding after each point and weighing it against his own judgement.
Finally, he replied. “You have made Katey’s life better.”
“I don’t see how.”
“I do,” he said. “After she met you, I noticed the change in her. You wouldn’t have because you didn’t know her before that night. Every day, she came in with a smile and polite word, but underneath, I could tell she was dying. We all could and we told you about it, but our words can’t do her misery justice. I never had the chance to ask, but we all tried to make her life a little easier in some way. But when she met you, it was like a switch got flipped in her. She was alive again.”
Logan cleared his throat, somehow wishing it wasn’t true, but he knew that it was. “Katey told me she’d been battling depression. I saw her scars at the hospital.”
He remembered when he first saw the healed over wounds on her leg. His entire being wanted it to be an illusion, but it was too real to deny. If he had a way to make the past right, he would have done everything in his power to stop her from harming herself. All he could do now was ensure that she would never make the same choice again.
“Yep. And she won that battle, thanks to you. As much as I don’t like the idea of killing a human, Mary probably wasn’t the best guardian for her. I don’t blame you for the accident, but Katey isn’t in that abusive home anymore. If she hadn’t known us, she wouldn’t be here under our care. As far as almost killing her, maybe this will turn out for the better.”
“I can’t see how,” Logan snapped.
Dustin exhaled. “I need you to see. We all need you to try. Don’t brush her off. Make her feel welcome. She made that decision because of you, not us. And you made that choice to be with her. Carry it through. Got it?”
Logan nodded, whether he believed him or not.
Dustin smiled and held out his fist to Logan. “So, we’re cool?”
Logan gave him a crooked half smile and bumped Dustin’s fist with his own. “Yeah, we’re cool.”
Dustin pushed himself up off the bed with a grunt and began to make his way toward the door. “Good... Now, go to sleep. It’s past midnight. You still have school in the morning and there’s no way any of us are going to let you skip. Katey is going to school with you tomorrow too, so you need to be refreshed and on your toes. You’ll need to make sure she takes care of herself tomorrow. She didn’t eat anything tonight.”
Dustin closed the door behind him, leaving Logan in the silence to ponder his last words. If Katey didn’t eat, that would certainly spell trouble for them in the morning. Her emotions would be out of control and the wolf, however dormant it may be, would be on the hunt for food whether she liked it or not.
He brewed over all Dustin had said, and although, the pangs of guilt were far from finished having their sharp talons in his heart, Logan understood that Katey needed him, now more than ever.
Darren cautiously walked into the dining room. Katey was still sniffling out the last of her tears, but he couldn’t wait any longer as his heart bled for her sadness. He knew what it was like to be in a torn relationship, though it had been many centuries since he felt the bitter pains of regret and rejection. His love affair had turned out for the better, but he knew that such an ending was inconceivable in the midst of such exquisite pain.
“Katey?” he said softly.
Katey quickly wiped at her cheeks with the edge of her sleeve before looking up at him. Her eyes were blood shot and her cheeks rosy from crying.
Darren sat down next to her on the piano bench and pulled out his handkerchief from his shirt pocket for her. She graciously took it and blew her nose in it before wrinkling it between her hands. Then she stared down into her lap, doing her best to keep her composure, even though it was futile to hide the struggle she was in.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, making sure to keep his tone gentle and soothing for her. There had been enough hostility in the house for one evening and Darren wasn’t blind to its effects on Katey.
She felt like telling him about the little spat going on between Logan and herself, but she didn’t want to burden him with her drama just yet. For all she knew, he was aware of every excruciating moment between them since they became conscious again. “What exactly happened?” she asked.
“I wasn’t there so I don’t know,” he replied with a subtle shrug.
Katey shook her head. “No, I mean, what happened to make me how I am right now... Like, the biology or chemistry of it. As soon as Logan bit me, I felt it happen. So, do you know exactly what went on inside me and why I can do all these things?” Katey was always curious about this subject from the very beginning and no amount of reading or research could explain that to her.
Darren couldn’t shrug off her questions with a passive answer anymore. It was too late and she was far too involved for brushoffs and ambiguous replies to her more probing questions.
Darren went silent, deep in thought. He then took a deep breath and began. “From what I understand, the loup-garou venom is a chemical compound of radioactive elements that either hasn’t been discovered yet or the compound is unique and hasn’t been researched at all by human scientists. They still don’t think we exist, after all.
“The venom is in the saliva, but it’s voluntarily injected. It’s not like I can spit in a student’s eye and they’d change. It has to be administered through the bloodstream. Kind of like a shot or vaccine.
“The chemicals in the venom have unstable molecules and each one is biologically designed to go straight to some part of the body and sen
d out beta radiation. When the compound finds its destination, it splits and gives off radiation to cause a mutation.
“And the mutations bring about all of our abilities, everything from cell regeneration and enlarging some organs to our eye color. It also gives us a predator feature in our appearance. We’re attractive, as inconvenient as that can be at times. It sounds morbid, but being attractive lures in potential prey. That’s the reader’s digest version of it anyway. A friend of mine is a scientist who has been researching this for years.
“Before he shared his findings, we believed it was more of a spiritual transformation, a blending of two souls within one body. The spirit of the wolf would come upon the human and a symbiotic relationship formed between the two. I still know a lot of people that reject the scientific explanation and doggedly cling to the old myths. You can pick which you would prefer to believe.”
Katey glumly stared at the floor and nodded half-heartedly to at least acknowledge that he had been heard. She didn’t know which she wanted to accept. The scientific approach seemed much more rational and comforting in the sense that she knew exactly why and how her body worked now.
However, the wolf spirit approach sounded more romantic and whimsical. It explained the new presence she felt deep within her that hadn’t been there before, but it was also disturbing to think she was sharing her body with something else that she couldn’t see or explain. She could only feel it and sense its yearnings.
“What do you believe?” she asked.
Darren thought for a moment, then replied, “The science explains the physical manifestation of the condition in our bodies, but the spiritual explains many other things. Surely you feel the bond that we all share and that presence inside that is entirely independent from yourself?”
Katey paused before answering. “I do feel it.” Her voice dwindled to little more than a whisper as she reached within herself to face the wolf spirit Darren had mentioned. It was quiet for now, exhausted as she was from a long evening. The dreariness in her soul and her body hung heavily upon her.
Darren maneuvered himself to face her on the stool and gently pulled down the collar of her hoodie. The white bandages were still taped to her skin. Gently, Darren peeled off the blood soaked gauze. Katey peeked at her skin and saw it to be flawless, as if Logan had never bitten her at all.
With a shaking hand, she touched the patch of skin that should have been torn to bits and marveled.
“You should probably change clothes before going to bed. We’ll wash the blood off in the morning,” Darren said as he wadded up the used bandages. “Are you going to wash up?”
Katey felt the dried blood that was still caked on her skin. The stench had become part of the background sensory details that Katey was learning to tune out. “Maybe… Do I still have to go to school tomorrow?” she asked, glancing up.
“Only if you feel up to it. I would suggest that you don’t just because you’re going to need time to get used to this, but we will have to be careful until then. We don’t want you pulling doors off hinges,” Darren said with the ghost of a smile on his lips.
Katey cracked the tiniest of smirks at the thought of it and Darren found his encouragement in that.
“I think I’ll be okay for school. If I don’t feel well, can I come straight home?”
“Absolutely,” he answered with an enthusiastic nod. “We can have Logan drive you home.”
Darren saw her grimace and sighed. “If you’re not comfortable being with Logan just yet, then one of us can take off and drive you home.”
“I wouldn’t want to be a burden.”
“It’s not a burden. It’s taking care of you and that’s what we’re here for. You’re not alone in this, Katey. You’re in the pack now and that will never change.”
Katey’s lips twitched into another smile and she nodded her understanding. Darren exhaled deeply and wrapped his arms around her in a warm hug. Unaccustomed to such a show of affection, Katey was at a loss for how to respond. She simply let it happen and enjoyed the feel of the fatherly embrace, but it did little to ignite the dying embers in her heart. Even if the rest of the guys supported her, Katey was lost with Logan.
3
The following morning, breakfast around the dinette table was quiet and the general consensus amongst the pack was exhaustion. Dark circles hung under Dustin and Darren’s eyes in particular. Unsure if Katey would be joining them for breakfast, the three of them made the point of putting on shirts to cover themselves.
There was one thing they knew for certain; something wasn’t quite right. The pack bond allowed them to feel more than just the presence of other pack members. They could sense looming danger within one another, even if they were miles away. It was a separate ability entirely from detecting the feelings of other living creatures around them. On this morning, they all could feel the tension in their bones. The only flaw was that they couldn’t tell who was in more distress; Katey or Logan.
Darren sighed heavily, feeling the weight of the pack member’s burden and sat back in his chair as Logan appeared from the stairwell. He walked into the kitchen without a word, but the alpha could see how weary he was. The verbal thrashing they gave him the night before was little punishment for such blatant disobedience, but under the circumstances, they agreed to let him go unscathed this one time; the kind of mental bashing he gave to himself was enough.
“Good morning, Logan,” he greeted, hoping that if it were Logan who broadcasted so strongly, he would confess it without interrogation.
Logan made his way to the refrigerator to start preparing his usual breakfast of deer meat and tomato juice. “Mornin’,” he mumbled.
“How did you sleep?” Dustin asked, not looking up from his plate of sausage.
“I didn’t.”
“What have we-,” Dustin began to reprimand, but Darren silenced him with a sharp look. The beta stuffed a strip of bacon in his mouth to keep himself from speaking.
“Have you seen Katey this morning?” Ben asked, finally raising his eyes.
Logan sighed. The last thing he wanted was to think or talk about Katey. “She’s in the bathroom.”
Katey vacantly stared at her reflection in the mirror, her mind and heart numb of all emotion or feeling. She turned to the shut bathroom door and reached over to lock it.
For the first time all morning, she felt her thoughts begin to crowd in, tripping and stumbling over each other.
Sleep was a torrid experience for her and afforded her no rest. Visions of loups-garous and other beasts flashed before her eyes in a tangled mess with no cohesive message. The faces of people that she didn’t know or recognize spoke in foreign languages, some whispering and some shouting. In her dream, she traveled to places she had never been. As if taking a whirlwind tour of the world, she saw jungles, deserts, ancient ruins, dense forests, and barren prairies mixed in with the voices and people.
The woman in white was there, but not in the same fashion she had seen her before. The image of her was surrounded in flames as white as her dress, the fire searing her body into black char. But try as she might, Katey couldn’t awaken from her nightmares until early that morning when she first started to hear the pack get out of their beds.
She had laid in her own bed with her knees curled tightly and clutching Captain Jack to her chest so tightly that she worried the stuffing would pop from the seams on her stuffed dog toy. She waited until everyone was downstairs, including Logan. Even though she was one of the pack and Darren’s hug made her feel welcome, Katey needed time before facing any of them again; especially, Logan.
Logan had shut her out, ignored her pleas for reconciliation. He withdrew when she reached out to him, begging him for the love and affection he had shown before. All morning, she’d thought about what he had said in the gazebo. He lashed out at her, blaming himself for what he believed to be a mistake that she allowed him to make. All that talk of ruining her life was a farce. The only way that Katey’s life could have been
ruined was by losing Logan. That was beginning to seem like a greater possibility with the passing of each agonizing hour away from him.
Perhaps, if she had fought back yesterday in the classroom, refused the bite and forced him to calm down, then he wouldn’t have hated the sight of her now. Even Katey hated the change in her, but only because it caused so much strife and friction between herself and Logan. If she were human, perhaps things would have stayed the same. In fact, she knew they would have stayed the same. There was nothing wrong with where they were at and as far as she was concerned, things were going well before he turned her.
The more Katey gazed into her new, bright green eyes, the more she wanted to simply run and hide in a hole for the rest of eternity. She forced herself to stare longer, letting her anger and misery grow, her body trembling from the power of it. A snarl came in her throat, her nose wrinkled, and her brows pinched into a glare as she felt rage and hatred building up within. It was so intense, more intense than she had ever felt before and she finally understood why Logan hated being a loup-garou so much.
Every thought that had been screaming at her for years came roaring back; the thoughts that brought on her depression, the thoughts that kept her in the dark until Logan gave her hope of life, a future, and a love pure and unconditional – or so she thought. But it was no longer that simple and Katey wasn’t the naïve child she once was. She was loup-garou now, a monster just as Logan had said. A monster with no family, no friends, and no future without that love she was hoping for.
This couldn’t have been her destiny. This wasn’t who she was meant to be, because if it was, it wouldn’t have been so hard to drag herself out of bed. She would have had Logan and the warm feeling of rightness in her soul. But all she felt was the wolf and a sense of displacement. Without Logan, what was the point?
Becoming the Enigma (The Loup-Garou Series Book 2) Page 4