Becoming the Enigma (The Loup-Garou Series Book 2)

by Sheritta Bitikofer

  She shrieked in fury, raised her fist, and smashed the mirror with as much force as she could muster. Broken pieces clattered into the sink and fell to the floor. Her breath quickened, each exhale coming out gruff and growl-like as she sneered down at the shattered glass.

  Downstairs, everyone heard the crashing sound and felt the tsunami of overwhelming emotion, burning red hot in their chests. It was then that they knew Logan was not the source of the discourse in the pack bond that morning.

  They exchanged brief glances before bolting from their chairs and rushing upstairs.

  Katey’s snarl lowered into a painful whine as she glowered into one long sliver of mirror lying face-up on the counter that reflected only the left side of her face. Just like that reflection, she was incomplete. She felt that she had lost her innocence, her humanity.

  She gripped the piece of glass in her hand, backed up until her back hit the wall, and slid down to the floor. Numb and in little control of her own actions, she pulled down her left sleeve and tried to breathe slowly, preparing herself. She saw the pulsing blue vein under her delicate skin and then something from within came crashing through her manic thoughts.

  Was she just nervous for what lay beyond the threshold of death or was it something else? Her heart pounded heavily beneath her skin and she could see her palms begin to glisten with sweat. She, herself, didn’t feel nervous. She was firm in her decision, but it was as if something else was bringing the panic to the surface. Was it her inner wolf spirit trying to stop her? Was it not willing to die and suffer with her?

  Whatever it was, it told her to stop and reconsider.

  The stampede of heavy footfalls met her ears as the guys halted at the bathroom door.

  “Katey, what’s going on?” Dustin called in, giving a harsh rap on the door.

  Katey didn’t reply. Her vocal cords wouldn’t work. At least her human ones wouldn’t. All she could give were whines and whimpers in a way that made it sound like she was crying.

  “Katey?” Ben said, his voice reflecting his concern.

  Still, she gave no reply and stared at the unblemished skin on her wrist, watching the vein throb with each heartbeat that pounded in her ears.

  “Katey, open the door,” Darren demanded as he pounded his fits on the door.

  She didn’t obey, though she could feel his dominance pass through the walls like a ghost, warning her to turn back.

  Katey was frozen in that position, the sharp glass just inches from her skin. Her hand shook beyond her control.

  The last time she had come this close to suicide, she hesitated, too. Standing on the stool in her closet, she couldn’t bring herself to step off. Once she did, the mercy of unstable clothes rods saved her from death. It broke and the noose didn’t tighten around her neck as she came tumbling to the floor. She knew if she could just get past the fear of the pain that death would bring, she’d be free of the life she could no longer cope with.

  “To hell with your privacy rule, Darren.” Logan’s voice sent a shock into the inner, deepest part of her soul and the defenses were shattered.

  Katey pressed the mirror’s edge hard on her wrist and sliced in deep. Katey gasped and watched the blood spill over her skin. The acrid stench of blood assaulted her nostrils, overpowering her senses.

  “Katey!” Logan shouted.

  She heard a scuffle just beyond the door.

  Katey cut again, making a bloody X on her wrist. She whimpered as the pain chased away the numbness. Adrenaline spread through her core and she remembered why cutting her thigh had been so relieving. It was a release of all the tension she had bottled up over the many years. The hatred she felt toward Mary, the bitterness for the death of parents she never knew, the loneliness on the long nights alone, the depression that stole her joy and livelihood all gushed out in streams of crimson over her lap and the bathroom floor. She let it all out, yearning for a freedom away from everything outside of the bathroom walls.

  A lump formed in her throat and she could barely whine anymore. Katey cut again, cutting straight down her severed vein, peeling it open to release more blood. Katey gasped and her body convulsed. Her eyes felt strange, like cold soothing water poured into them from somewhere deep inside her.

  Katey looked down at the piece of mirror in her trembling hands and saw her eyes glowed a wicked gold. In that moment, she realized that she wasn’t looking for an escape from the world. She wanted to escape from herself and even in death, that would be impossible. Suicide was useless.

  She cried out and threw the mirror shard, making it stick into the wall. Frightened tears fell down her cheeks as the blood drenched through her pajamas, warming the cold skin of her belly and legs.

  Dustin’s foot slammed against the door and it came crashing down to the floor. Katey curled herself up into a ball, whimpering, shaking, and crying, holding her wrist to her chest as the others looked between her and the shattered mirror.

  Darren rushed to her side and pulled her arms away from her. He cursed under his breath and reached for one of the towels hanging on the rack. He wrapped up her arm and gripped tightly around the wound to slow the bleeding. Katey didn’t fight him.

  Katey glanced over to the hall. Dustin was leaning against the doorframe watching the scene with a look of horrified wonder. In the hall, Ben was desperately trying to hold an angry and distressed Logan at bay. By the sweat that dotted their foreheads, she knew the scuffle that she heard had been from their wrestling after she shed her first drop of blood.

  “I want to see her!” Logan kept shouting. “Let me through!”

  “Take him downstairs!” Darren roared.

  “No! Let me see her!” Logan pleaded, his eyes glowing gold.

  “No, she’s bleeding and you’re just going to make it worse,” Ben said, struggling to get a good hold of Logan as he squirmed and battled against the omega.

  Dustin seemed to snap out of his daze and charged toward Logan. With uncanny force, Dustin rammed his grandson into the wall and threw him down the hall toward the stairs. Katey could hear their battle all the way to the living room. Harsh words flew like unforgiving bullets as Dustin tried to get Logan to submit.

  Ben wiped his brow with the back of his arm and joined them in the bathroom to survey the destruction.

  Darren applied sufficient pressure as Katey sniffled back her tears and tried to speak, but her throat was too closed up and hoarse from her whining.

  “Hey, it’s okay now. Just relax,” Darren cooed softly to her, tucking her hair behind her ears. His hands were unsteady and shaking just as badly as hers were.

  Why was he shaking? Why should he be afraid? When she looked into his eyes, she saw it. Darren was distraught by what she had done and so were the others. If they hadn’t cared, they would have left her to cut her arm until there was no skin left. How could they care about her so deeply, and yet, barely know who she truly was? Did a pack need to completely understand one another to reach that level of closeness?

  Katey fell into Darren’s strong arms and sobbed against his chest. He held her tight and the overpowering sensation of safeness rattled her body with more sobs. Safe from death, safe from the roiling torment she just passed through. The calm and confidence that she had once admired in her teachers came shining through for her and Katey had no strength to hide her relief.

  Without being told, Ben began picking up the pieces of shattered glass from the floor and sink.

  Darren lifted Katey off the ground and cradled her in his arms to take her into her bedroom so Ben had the chance to clean up without stepping over them. Katey felt like a helpless child in his massive embrace, but she didn’t protest against her alpha.

  Once inside, he sat them both down on the bed and she sputtered the last of her tears back. She could feel that her eyes were no longer cold, so she knew her regular green irises had returned somehow in the wake of the aftermath.

  “Now, let’s see...” Darren slowly peeled off the bloody towel and all three cuts
had disappeared, leaving only the streaked bloodstains on her skin. “See, you’re all right.” Darren’s voice was so consoling that Katey did begin to feel better, despite her alarm that her efforts to die were for nothing. “All healed now.”

  Katey’s depression melted away as she marveled at her completely healed wrist. A moment ago, she was thinking she would need dozens of stitches. Now, it looked like what she had done was no more than a dream or a hallucination. But what Katey felt hadn’t been fake. It was all too real and it drove her to temporary madness.

  “Now, what made you do this?” Darren asked sternly, his gaze steady upon her misty eyes. She turned away and tensed her jaw, unwilling to speak. “Don’t think you can hide how you’re feeling from any of us. We know something’s wrong and you wouldn’t have gone through a stunt like that if it were for nothing. As your alpha, I need you to tell me what’s going on.”

  It was then that Katey realized she was still leaning heavily on Darren’s strong frame. She edged away, feeling her muscles ache and shiver. The only living soul she had ever truly confided in was Logan. He knew about her depression and her former struggles. She’d never told anyone else. It might have been a shock to the others that she would do something like this so committedly.

  But the imploring look in Darren’s chocolate brown eyes made her forget her reticence.

  “I don’t want to be a loup-garou if I can’t be with Logan. I let him change me because I wanted to be with him and I thought he wanted me too, but I was wrong.”

  Darren sighed and rubbed at his beard. “Why do you kids think that just because you were different, you couldn’t be together?”

  Katey scrunched up her shoulder and fretfully pulled at the hem of her shirt. “I don’t know. I just knew that there would always be that hesitance there, that bit of danger, and I thought being loup-garou with him would take care of it.”

  “There will always be danger when it comes to us. We’re bombs waiting to go off at the slightest disturbance. You’ll come to realize that. You would have been at greater risk around Logan as a human, but not much more than as a loup-garou.”

  Katey shook her head and held up her perfectly healed wrist as evidence. “But even this couldn’t kill me. How could Logan possibly hurt me?”

  “There are many more ways to die, Katey. We can be just as much a threat to one of our own kind as to a human.”

  She closed her eyes and turned her face away, knowing exactly what he meant. She remembered the extraordinary rage she felt in the bathroom just before she smashed the mirror. If someone else had been there, then the mirror might have still been intact and something else shattered beyond repair.

  “But it doesn’t matter now,” she muttered. “Logan doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. He shut me out last night when I tried to tell him how much I cared and wanted to be with him.”

  Darren reached out and clasped Katey’s face between his hands, affectionately rubbing his thumbs just under her magnificent green eyes to wipe away the remaining tears.

  “You are a miracle, Katey. You really are. Logan should be proud that he was able to change you. It’s not the way that we wanted, but you’re alive. The bite is the hardest part and you were strong enough and brave enough to survive that. Don’t throw this away just because you’re upset about something that will pass in time,”

  As a service to the teachers and Logan, she had to cling to life and make this work. Even the wolf within her that balked against her foolish attempts to kill herself, needed her to stay alive, though Katey couldn’t understand why. Katey gave him a weak smile and nodded.

  “That’s my girl,” Darren said with a grin. He took the bloody towel from her lap and began walking toward the door. “Now, when you’re done changing clothes, you need to get some food in your stomach. That’ll make you feel better. And bring down your dirty clothes too and we’ll give them a wash.”

  Darren closed the door behind him to give her some privacy. Katey had no intentions of eating. For one thing, she wasn’t hungry and for another, she wasn’t about to eat Logan’s idea of a breakfast.

  While Katey changed clothes, she thought about all that Darren had said. She thought of how the pack had rallied to the bathroom door at the first sign of trouble. She thought of how Logan fought to get in the bathroom with such passion that it took the power of a beta to drag him downstairs. But most of all, she went within herself to feel the wolf.

  It was alive now and fully active. If she could have placed it, she swore the wolf must have been pacing around her soul, waiting and a bit anxious, but why?

  Logan heard Darren descend the stairs and he rushed toward his alpha.

  “Is she okay?” he asked frantically.

  “Don’t get excited. She’s fine. She healed right up.” Darren waved him off and dragged his tired feet back to the dinette where his eggs were waiting. “Please, let me finish my breakfast.”

  Dustin laughed from the sofa where he lounged. “You’re acting like she just gave birth to your child, Logan. Settle down.”

  Darren let himself drop into his chair by the bay window and sipped the glass of water near his plate. “Just be gentle with her, Logan.”

  Without a doubt, Logan heard everything Katey had said and perhaps such unintentional soul-spilling would close the fissure that had formed between them. If he had known Katey’s heart, then perhaps he wouldn’t have treated her so coldly the night before and they wouldn’t have to buy a new mirror and sliding glass door.

  But, today was a new day, a first for all of them. It was Katey’s first day as a loup-garou and their first day having a female fully integrated into their pack. Special care and attentiveness would have to be spent to ensure that this transition went as smoothly as possible.

  As Katey walked down the hall, she saw Ben come out of the bathroom with a dustpan full of broken shards of glass. She grimaced and whined at the mess she had made. He turned around and smiled reassuringly. He saw that she was carrying her dirty clothes and took them from her. His nose wrinkled at the sheer volume of bloodstains in the fabric.

  “How are you feelin’?” he asked as they descended the stairs together.

  “I… I don’t know yet,” Katey replied half-heartedly.

  Looking at the old solider, she realized that she and Ben had more in common than ever before. They had both been turned into loups-garous, not born. If anyone could relate to her struggle to find her own feet, it was him.

  “It’ll take some gettin’ used to,” he told her. “Just take it easy for the next few weeks, if you can help it.”

  When they arrived downstairs, Logan was sitting on the couch next to her bag and she froze at the foot of the stairs. His eyes shot over to her, worried and inquisitive. Katey wrapped her arms around her stomach, but it didn’t do any good to protect her from the lingering pains of rejection.

  Ben left her side to disappear into the back hallway that she had yet to explore.

  Dustin saw her, stood up from his accustomed spot on the sofa, and went to the refrigerator to retrieve the bowl of raw meat that was left over from the night before.

  “Open wide, Katey Kat,” he said, setting the bowl down on the breakfast bar to offer it to her.

  Katey eyed the bowl and she could feel everyone’s gaze fall on her, expecting a favorable answer. She quickly shook her head.

  “I don’t want it,” she insisted.

  Ben returned from the hall with an empty dustpan and peered curiously at her. “Katey, you have to eat something. You haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

  “I’m not hungry.” It was like the world had stopped moving at her words. All four of them eyed her irately.

  “That’s a boldfaced lie. Come on and eat,” Dustin demanded.

  Katey turned to run back upstairs like she did the night before, but Logan was behind her in the blink of an eye and blocked her escape like a brick wall. She quivered and took her submissive stance under his severe stare.

  Des
pite her instinctive fear that made her crouch the way she did, her heart fluttered as it had when she was this close to him. Those easy days had seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Logan stood unbearably close, so close that she was almost tempted to reach out and touch his bare, muscular chest. She refrained, however, and kept her hands safely to her side under the assumption that he didn’t want to receive such affection from her.

  Yet, something in his gaze gave her pause. His stare wasn’t completely hateful, but stern, like a parent dealing with a recalcitrant child.

  Darren could tell they were getting nowhere fast with this method. He stood and walked to a small bookcase in the far corner of the living room. “If you won’t eat the meat, then at least take one of these.”

  The alpha pulled out a pill bottle from behind one of the bookends and tossed it to Logan.

  “What are they?” Katey asked as Logan shook out one round blue pill from the bottle.

  “It’s a formula that scientist friend gives out to loups-garous. It’s supposed to curb the hunger for a few hours. It comes in handy when you know you can’t eat for extended periods of time.”

  Logan held out the pill to Katey and she plucked it from his hand to examine.

  “These are the same pills I’ve seen you and Ben take before,” she remarked, looking over her shoulder to her teachers.

  “And we thought we were being sly about it,” Ben remarked facetiously.

  Katey looked back at the pill and popped it in her mouth to swallow as Dustin put the meat away for another meal.

  “Now that my breakfast is cold, I think I’ll go get ready for the day,” she heard Dustin mutter.

  Katey had managed to make them all fall behind schedule with her unwarranted episode. “I’m sorry,” she said as they passed by on their way to the stairs.

  Dustin patted her on the back and gave her a heartening, toothy grin. “Don’t worry about it, lass. We’ve been late before.”

  Soon, Katey and Logan were alone together in the living room while the others had gone upstairs to get ready for the day ahead.