It made her question everything he'd ever said to her, especially what he’d been so prone to saying before she’d taken off – “I love you.”
Yeah, right!
Katherine threw the loofa across the shower, and it hit the white, tiled wall with a satisfying, wet smack.
Traitorous tears gathered in her eyes. He hadn't even come to see her since she'd run away from Haven Falls. Hell, the only reason she knew that he'd even come after her at all was because of the second visitor she'd received nearly two weeks after Brad had shown up at her house. If her ex-classmate had not been entirely unwelcome, this visitor had been completely so. And while Brad had entered through the front door, he had climbed in through her bedroom window.
Markus.
Katherine just barely managed to reel in a startled scream when she exited her bathroom after a quick shower to see a large, muscular man standing near her bed, examining the framed photograph of her family she kept on her nightstand.
Luckily, she’d recognize Markus's wide shoulders and scruffy beard anywhere. The jerk had the nerve to leer at her.
She clutched the small towel she had wrapped around her torso – at least she'd covered herself with something before leaving the bathroom – tighter in one hand and placed the other over her fluttering heart, willing the initial fear she'd felt at spotting the man to fade and turn into something more productive. Like anger.
It worked.
"What do you want?” she hissed, attempting to keep quiet and avoid alerting her parents of the fact that there was a man in her room, while simultaneously making it clear just how pissed off she was.
She was supremely annoyed at the small part of herself that was maybe just a tiny bit happy to see Markus – the part that actually had the gall to miss Bastian, Markus, and the rest of her pack.
Markus's eyes narrowed. "Well," he said far too casually, "what I want to do is drag your skinny ass out through the window I just climbed in and hand you back over to my alpha – your alpha – to do with as he pleases." He must have seen the spark of fear in her expression that his words had caused because he rolled her eyes. "But don't worry, princess, I think I can manage to restrain myself."
Katherine, still holding onto the towel, crossed her arms in front of her chest. "See that you do," she bit back at him.
Markus crossed his arms himself. "What the hell were you thinking?" he demanded after a moment of tense silence. "The last time I saw you, I thought I’d told you to stay put."
Katherine scoffed. “What makes you think that I would listen to a liar?"
"Hey, I never lied to you." Markus pointed out, seemingly genuinely offended.
"Maybe not directly, but certainly by omission!"
Markus threw his hands up in the air. "You didn't even give us – give Bastian – a chance to explain!"
"He didn't deserve a chance to explain! He still doesn't!" Katherine didn't even realize they’d escalated from talking to yelling until there was a loud knock on her door.
"Katherine, are you okay in there?"
Katherine paled, quickly hopping over a hamper of dirty laundry to turn over the lock on the door. “I'm fine. Everything's fine!" she said through the crack. "I just... um, I stubbed my toe."
She winced at the lame excuse, but her father seemed to buy it. "Okay, if you're sure."
She waited until the sound of his footsteps disappeared before turning around to face Markus – a smug grin suddenly pulling at the corners of his mouth. "Who's the liar now?"
She was tempted to slap it from his face. "Turn around," she demanded, "I'm not having this conversation with you while I’m half naked."
"Why ever not?" he asked faux innocently, but did as she instructed. With his eyes fixed firmly on the opposite wall, Katherine felt safe enough to quickly slip out of her towel and into a thin tank top and pair of plaid pajama bottoms.
"Alright, I'm decent," she said, giving him permission to turn back around.
He did so, giving her choice of pajamas a critical glance over before his eyes met hers again. He looked into them for a while, and Katherine shifted uncomfortably, wondering exactly what it was he was searching for. With a sigh, he finally released her from his rather rude stare. "I wasn't always a nice guy, you know," he said, plopping himself down uninvited onto her bed.
Unimpressed, Katherine raise an eyebrow. "Oh, really? I can't imagine," she deadpanned.
The obvious sarcasm had the corners of his lips pulling back up into a grin again. "Yeah, I know. It's hard to believe, but I was a real asshole before I joined the Prince pack."
Katherine snorted, hesitantly taking a seat to his right on her bed. "And what, pray tell, do you consider yourself now?"
"An upstanding citizen of Haven Falls," he answered immediately, grin still glued to his face. "Badass beta to the scariest alpha on the entire goddamn continent. And, of course, the reluctant keeper of his disobedient mate."
Katherine rolled her eyes, not exactly pleased with the way he made her out to sound like some misbehaving toddler, but didn't interrupt him to argue.
"I really was an ass, though," he reminded her – as if she needed reminding. "I was one of Rogue's best friends in school. A hard core believer in his rather distinct philosophy. I actually thought Bastian and his parents were a bunch of pansies."
Ignoring the way her temper automatically spiked in defense of Bastian, Katherine swallowed her surprise. "Rogue's philosophy?" she questioned.
"Rogue thought – still thinks, no doubt – that asserting one's dominance over others is the most crucial aspect to upholding the werewolf hierarchy. And I suppose it is in a way. But not in the manner he thinks. He's convinced that physically stronger werewolves, the alphas and betas of our world, are better than their weaker counterparts. In school he let them know constantly that they were beneath us. That they were born to serve us."
Katherine eyed Markus warily. "You don't still think that?"
"Of course not," he assured. "I realize now how wrong he was – how wrong he still is. Alphas and betas are actually the ones made to serve everyone else – to direct and protect them. Especially little girls who aren't particularly good at listening."
Katherine ignored the dig. "So what happened?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"What made you have this epiphany that you were wrong? That Rogue was wrong?" she specified.
Markus seemed reluctant to share that part of the story with her, but did so anyway. "There was this human girl at school – her father had been bitten and turned some years before, I guess – that Rogue was keen on. He fixated on her, really." He glanced at Katherine. "She looked a bit like you actually, but a little taller and with freckles." He continued before she could dwell too long on that tidbit of information. "He picked on her at school, cornered her a few times, but nothing really serious. Not until he bit her anyway."
Katherine startled. "What?"
"He bit her on the day of a full moon. I was there when it happened, laughing at the stupid crap he was spewing at her. Didn't even see it coming until she was screaming her head off. He just kept biting her over and over again once he started. I ended up pulling him off of her, but the poor girl didn't even make it through more than a handful of nights before she died."
Katherine vaguely realized she was trembling.
"Anyway," Markus continued, "Bastian believed me when I said that I tried to stop Rogue. He gave me a second chance when no one else would. Not even my fuck of a father. Before I was a Prince, I was a Briggs, you know."
Katherine cringed at that revelation. “Is Rip your-"
"My brother?" Markus interrupted. "By blood, yes. And Julius Briggs is my father. But I don't claim them as family. Not anymore."
Katherine ran a shaky hand through her damp locks. "I'm sorry."
He shrugged. "You don't need to apologize to me."
She saw red at what she was sure was a hidden implication. "I don't need to apologize to him either!"
She frowned. "Then why did you tell me all this?"
"Because making a mistake doesn't make someone a bad person. At least I hope not or I'm screwed. Bastian knows what he did was wrong and believe me, he's feeling pretty damn sorry right about now. He gave me a second chance. I think you should give him one too."
Katherine crossed her arms, refusing the respond to the shockingly sensible argument.
"Besides, what the hell are you going to do, huh? You're a werewolf. That comes with a bit of a furry problem. What happens when the full moon rises a little over a week from now? You can't stay here forever, princess. "
Katherine glared, any sympathy she felt for the man gone as he reminded her of something she was desperately trying to forget. "Watch me."
Markus glowered in turn. "Fine," he snatched a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. "Here, call this when your common sense returns to you. It's the phone number of the hotel we're staying at in Hayfield."
Katherine licked her lips. "We?"
"We're all here," he confirmed her unasked question.
At her speculative look, he added. "Or, you know, you could just call out Bastian's name. The overbearing prick hasn't let you out of his sight since we managed to track you down. It was a goddamn miracle I was able to convince him to take a break from his protective guard to sleep. But I needed to talk to you, didn't I?"
She didn't process anything past the fact that Bastian was here and had apparently not been far from her at all. She despised the wave of comfort it caused to roll over her. "He's here? He's been watching me?"
"What do you think?"
Katherine squared he shoulders. "Tell him to stop."
Tell him to talk to me, was what she really meant.
Markus snorted. "Tell him yourself."
Katherine turned away from his challenging stare.
She was beside herself when after a beat of silence, Markus added, "I miss you. We all miss you. You don't have to talk to him right now, but come back. Come home."
It was on the tip of her tongue to fire back that she was home, but she knew the words would be dishonest – pure blasphemy, really. So she just shook her head back and forth like a broken marionette instead. "I can't."
Markus didn't bother asking for an excuse. Snorting in unconcealed disappointment, he leapt out of the same window he'd come in and disappeared into the night without another word.
Katherine shut off the shower by turning the ancient faucet with admittedly quite a bit more strength than necessary. As the last of the water trickled down the drain, she roughly dried herself with a towel before using it to wipe away the condensation that had formed on the mirror from the steam that’d escaped her shower.
Sweeping the wet hair that insisted upon clinging to her face behind her ears, Katherine assessed herself frankly. She examined her pink lips that were turned down in an unhappy frown, her cheeks that were still flushed from her shower, and her green, green eyes made even brighter by the dark shadows underneath them. They were practically luminous, peering out at her from her skull – shiny irises nearly as bright as the moon itself.
The moon that Katherine knew was just a sliver away from being full. It was tomorrow night that it would be, in fact. And looking into her reflection, Katherine asked herself the same question that Markus had beseeched her a week before.
What in the hell are you going to do?
CHAPTER NINE
There was only one logical solution to Katherine's dilemma. No matter how juvenile she knew her actions to be as she peeked into her parents' bedroom to make sure they were sound asleep and no matter how ridiculous she felt stuffing her pillows under the bed covers and shaping them into something that looked vaguely humanoid, she was going to go through with it.
She was sneaking out.
Katherine slipped on the darkest hooded sweatshirt she could find hanging in her closet – not for the warmth it offered her slender frame, but rather for the assistance it’d provide in hiding her from any prying eyes she may encounter on her way to her destination – and peered out her window.
It was the same one that Markus had climbed in and abruptly leapt out a week ago. It was at least a twelve foot drop, but Katherine figured that if Markus could safely jump to the ground from such a height then so could she.
It was better than risking sneaking down the creaky stairs and attempting to escape through one of the heavy wooden doors on the first floor at any rate.
Grabbing the small backpack she'd stuffed with nothing more than a change of clothes and a flashlight, she pulled herself up on the window's ledge. Not quite daring enough to straight up throw herself from the window as she'd seen Markus do, she maneuvered her body so that she was sitting on the wide ledge, her legs dangling out of the frame.
After taking a deep breath, she used her hands to firmly push herself off the windowsill.
And promptly plummeted to the ground below.
Katherine had heard once that when falling from a great height, one shouldn’t try to land on their feet – that the force of landing on them could cause skeletal fractures as far up as the spine – so she tried to land in a roll.
Tried being the key word.
She fell down hard on her left hip for her efforts. Cursing under her breath, Katherine forced herself to her feet and pulled down the waistband of her pants to examine the damage. A dark bruise was already blossoming. "Shit," she muttered, swearing again as she touched the discolored mass. It hurt like nobody's business, but was hardly the worse pain she'd even been in. Allowing the waist of her jeans to snap back into place, she quickly dismissed the injury.
Nevertheless, she was irritated by a jolt of pain that encompassed her entire left hip every time she dared to put weight on the same side foot. It made for a long and distinctly unpleasant walk to her destination.
She forgot all about it, however, when she'd finally arrived.
She was there. Miller Road.
Katherine peered speculatively at the house at the end of it. It was where she'd been bitten by Bastian all those months ago and where she was going to seek refuge tonight. This time around, however, she would be the deadly creature hiding in the foliage that surrounded the house.
She remembered how foreboding the house had seemed that fateful night in September, but wondered now if it was truly the house that had caused such trepidation to rise within her or if her body had somehow known before she had that he was there. Bastian.
She wondered if he was there now.
After what Markus had told her – that Bastian had been watching over her since he’d caught up with her in Middletown, probably only a day or two after she'd initially arrived – she didn't doubt that he was around somewhere, keeping an eye on her from the shadows.
The urge to call out to him and confirm her suspicions was a powerful one, but somehow Katherine managed to swallow her tongue. Bastian could watch over her all he wanted. That didn’t mean she had to acknowledge him.
She moved towards the house, gravel crunching under her shoes. The moon, not quite at its peak in the sky, allowed her to see where she was going without having to use the flashlight. Before she knew it, she'd navigated the thick shrubbery around the house and was at its door. Or the half-eroded piece of wood that she suspected used to be its door anyway. Ignoring how unsafe she knew it was to enter a building with a half-collapsed roof, Katherine pushed it open and went in.
The house wasn't quite as decayed on the inside as it was on the outside. It was, however, quite disgusting. A thick layer of dirt clung to every inch of the walls, and the rays of moonlight that managed to shine through the large, gaping holes in the roof revealed an alarming number of dust particles floating in the air. Worst of all, however, were the cobwebs that seemed to cover absolutely everything.
She didn't care if she was a big, bad wolf, spiders were terrifying. And she didn’t think she could be coerced into
touching one unless her life was in imminent danger. Even then, it was only a maybe.
Luckily for Katherine, her life was not in immediate peril, and despite reaching into her backpack, grabbing, and turning on her flashlight, any spiders that may have occupied the house remained out of her sight.
After quickly surveying her options, Katherine decided that the northwest corner of the house was the least objectionable place to sit and wait for the full moon to reach its peak in the sky. Using a booted foot, she cleared the spot on the floor of cobwebs, set down her backpack, and did just that.
She didn't have to wait for long.
She was shining her flashlight through the glassless window she remembered spying through all those months ago, wondering if he was out there just as she’d been, when the power of the full moon took hold of her, and she changed. Katherine inhaled sharply as her bones broke and reformed, her skin stretching over them and growing hair. Her clothes, of course, were completely destroyed in the process.
Dazed after the transformation, it took her a moment to open her eyes. Scenting the air, she wasn't surprised by the faint smell of fresh rain and pine that her nose immediately recognized.
Bastian.
She was, however, taken off guard by the intense – almost feral – urge she felt to run towards the scent instead of away from it.
Her wolf had missed him.
Her human self was too hurt and prideful to ever admit the same, though, so she did the only thing she thought appropriate under the circumstances and ran. Sprinting in the opposite direction of the tantalizing scent, Katherine left the run down house behind her as she dashed through the foliage surrounding it and into the small stretch of dense forestry that lay directly behind the overgrown shrubbery.
Katherine knew that no one – no humans anyway – resided in the three mile stretch of wilderness and allowed her inhibitions to drop, distracting herself from the glimpses of fur she spotted here and there in her peripheral vision by chasing down a large rabbit and feasting on its raw flesh.
Shy (Once Bitten, Twice Shy, #2) Page 12