But it just felt like home was the last place on earth he wanted to be.
I heard the front door click quietly shut. Asleep I wouldn’t have noticed. He was trying to be discreet. He was sneaking around. Why was he sneaking around? God, if he’d just talk to me I would probably accept whatever the hell he was up to. It was the secrecy, the distance, that was killing me. I got up and walked to the door. He walked into the passage just as I walked out of the bedroom. When he saw me he froze in his tracks and a look of guilt crossed his face like he was a child that had been caught.
And the sight of him made my breath catch in my throat. He was naked, standing there in all his glory not trying to cover up. I knew that werewolves didn’t mind their nakedness, it was just another state of existence, but the way he embraced himself… I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I took two steps closer, and the darkness on his face suddenly fell into place.
He had dried blood caked on his face, some in his wheat-colored hair and on his hands like he’d been digging in it. My body went cold, and his green eyes, glowing lights in the dim passage, looked at me with traces of a man I didn’t know.
“Where have you been?” I finally managed to ask. My voice was thin and breathy, my heart was beating in my throat and I realized I’d extended a hand to brace myself on the wall. I hadn’t felt myself doing it.
He looked down at his hands, moving his fingers like he was testing them, and then looked up at me.
“Hunting,” he answered like he’d decided he couldn’t really lie to me.
I nodded slowly. “The whole night?”
He dropped his hands by his side and they hung loosely. No drumming fingers, no clenching fists. NO nothing. He wasn’t going to be sorry about it. I sighed, tried to pull myself together again. The silence stretched thin between us, and finally he nodded as if answering a question he’d asked himself.
“Well, I better get cleaned up,” he said, and walked toward me. He took a step past me, taking care not to touch me. If he’s touched me at all, anything, it might have been better. His absence was making it worse. It was like he’d physically removed himself from me, and forgotten to closet he wound. I stood, feeling him walk away from me, taking the warmth and the forest and the wilderness with him, leaving me bleeding.
I’d like to say the next few days were better, but they weren’t. They weren’t exactly worse, either. They were just very much the same. Distant, painfully polite, empty. I went through my days doing what I always did. I sold my products and went to meetings. I stopped by at Charlene’s place one afternoon after doing my deliveries. She looked as haunted as I felt when she opened the door.
“I’ve lost him,” I said, stepping in through the door. “He hasn’t come home. His body is there, but he’s not home.”
She nodded. “John’s like that too. I don’t know what they’ve seen, what they had to do, but it’s killing them.”
“If it were that straightforward I could do something about it,” I said. “If he were struggling with anything, maybe I could try and help him. But he’s just so switched off. The only person it seems to be killing is me.”
Charlene hugged me. I left not feeling much better. When I got home Reid wasn’t home. He was out again, but I’d expected that. He was home so seldom it felt like the only thing that had changed with his homecoming was that I cooked more – a lot more – than usual. I was still alone. I still lived my own life removed from his.
At least he was sleeping next to me now. It had only been that first night that he hadn’t come home. It was as if he was trying to make up for it, apologize somehow even though he’d never said it, by sleeping faithfully next to me every night. I didn’t know what was going on. If he was doing anything wrong I could have pinned his absence to an affair, a drinking problem, something. But he was just switched off. Perfectly right in all he did, just… absent.
I woke up from strange growling sounds one night. The red numbers of the digital clock on my nightstand swam into focus and it was just after three. I turned to Reid. His eyes were closed but he’d kicked all the covers off him, and his skin was covered in a film of sweat. He was jerking in his sleep, making very low, growling sounds at the back of his throat – sounds lower than any human should have been able to make.
His skin rippled in a smooth wave from his neck down his arms and over his bare chest. I could feel his presence next to me the way I haven’t felt him in years. It was thick, almost liquid, pressing against me. He arched his back, tipping his head up and back, and his hands curled around the sheets, pulling it up. He was very, very close to his change.
I touched his shoulder.
“Reid,” I said softly. “Reid, wake up. It’s a nightmare baby.”
He didn’t hear me. He was lost in some kind of war zone. Goose bumps crawled over his skin and I knew fur would follow soon if I didn’t get him up now. I gripped his shoulder harder and tried to rock his body.
His eyes suddenly shot open and he roared, a sound so loud the windows trembled. I screamed. He flung around so fast I couldn’t even think about what to do, and he had his arm against my throat. Power rocked through me, slamming me into the mattress and his muscles bulged underneath his skin. I realized how much he’d been hiding from me, how much of himself he’d been holding back.
I tried to breathe I made a wheezing sound. I clawed at the arm against my throat, but it was like clawing metal. I couldn’t breathe, and he wasn’t there. A monster was in his place, strangling me.
His eyes were a translucent blue, the color of a flame at the wick where it burned at its hottest and his face was contorted in a snarl, lips pulled away from his teeth. I kicked with my legs, trying to get free, but I started feeling dizzy from lack of air and white spots flashed in my vision.
And then suddenly it was like he saw me, saw what he was doing. The green flooded his eyes and he was himself again.
“Jesus,” he cried out and jerked away from me, tumbling off the bed. I coughed, pushed my own hands to my throat. Air came in drowning waves and I spluttered and coughed until I could breathe again, even though it came in ragged gasps.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he mumbled, his hands up in defense. He didn’t come closer to me to check if I was okay, and somehow that hurt more than when he’d been strangling me.
“I just thought… I’m sorry.”
I pushed myself up on my elbow. My throat was raw. When I looked up at him he sat against the far wall, cradling the offending arm. I could still feel him, even at this distance. He was like a live wire in the room, humming with power and something I couldn’t place.
“What the hell is going on, Reid?” I asked, but some of the force was lost because my voice sounded raspy.
“I’ll fix it,” he said like a child who’d broken something he’d been messing with. “I’m so sorry.”
“Just talk to me,” I said, struggling to sit upright. “Just tell me what’s going on. How the hell am I supposed to deal with this if I don’t know what’s going on?”
He closed his eyes, visiting a different world, drawing away from me. I hoped he was trying to find the words to explain, to describe what he was seeing and feeling. Instead he opened his eyes again, the deepest green now, and shook his head.
“Dammit, Reid,” I said in almost a whisper.
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” he finally said.
“You nearly killed me. And you think it’s a good idea no to talk about it?”
He shook his head and I didn’t know if he meant it’s not a good idea, or that he wasn’t going to do it anyway. I finally decided he’d meant the latter when he just didn’t answer me.
“Why won’t you talk to me?” I asked, and my voice sounded pleading. “What must I do for you to realize I’m here for you?”
He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but after a moment he closed it again without saying anything.
“Please, Reid. We’re falling apart. Give me something. Any
thing. I just need…”I took a deep breath. “I just need to know you still want this. I need you.”
He looked down at his hands, pumping them open and closed again. He didn’t make eye contact, he didn’t say anything. Finally he pushed up.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, and again I didn’t know what he was saying it for. He walked out of the room. I sat in the darkness, trying to relearn how to breathe, and in the dark of night I heard the door click shut. He was gone again, but I’d lost him long before he’d walked out.
Chapter 4
Reid
The Ranger code is absolute. It’s not just something we know, it’s something we live, something we feel. I know who I am and what it is that I do. I know what it means to be a ranger. In a way, it makes it easier. I don’t get scared when I’m in the idle of hell, because hell is what I signed up for. I’m an elite soldier. My country expects more of me than of any other soldier, but the real reason why we push so hard, why we run so far and wide, is because as a Ranger I expect more of me.
I never fail my team, my pack. And they will never fail me. I do everything in my power to keep alert and strong, so that when they need me I am there. The world knows that I am specially selected and well trained. I am neat and upright, polite and respectful, an example. I meet the enemies of my country with energy and valour, and I will fight to the death for what is right, for freedom and peace and prosperity.
I am an army Ranger.
Then why did the look on Allegra’s face make me feel so guilty about who I was? When I was away from home I could shake it all off. I could be who I was without feeling like I was compromising myself, without feeling like by being the best version of myself for my country, I was becoming the worst version of myself for Allegra.
She didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve the months alone, and the husband I was when I was home, torn between the love of my life and the pack that courses through my blood. And god, I’d strangled her. I couldn’t get the look on her face out of my head. I was haunted day and night by death and violence, destruction and pain followed me everywhere. But the look on her face was what nearly knocked me down.
She loved me, and I still couldn’t understand why. I loved her so much it hurt, and still I couldn’t be what she needed me to be. It would have been easier for her to be with someone else, someone that was home all the time, someone that would be there for her, talk to her, share who they were with her. Someone that wasn’t a monster.
I sat in the woods against a tree, hugging myself. I’d shed my clothes and changed just as soon as I’d gotten over that wall, the fire inside me so hot it had threatened to consume me. I’d run until the flame had burned down to a glowing ember, under being human wasn’t dangerous anymore. Now I was shivering in the cold, naked and vulnerable.
I hadn’t felt that kind of rage in a very long time. I hadn’t ever lost control like that. If I lost it at home where it was safe, what did that say about my abilities in the battle field?
But I knew the answer to that. On the battle field I was allowed to be who I was. I was chosen as a ranger because of the wolf inside of me, because I was able to do the country good by being what I was.
At home I had to keep it in. I had to control it, be stronger, be better. Be human. At home the pressure was on, worse than in any line of fire. At home I was a monster.
I needed to talk to her. I knew that. I knew I needed to tell her at least something of what I was struggling with, even if I couldn’t tell her what I was in the army. She deserved that, and I knew she would be able to help me, be there for me, if she knew what I was. If she knew just a little bit about what it was like to look someone in the eye and shoot them. If she knew what it was to take lives for the sake of peace. It didn’t matter in the end who was on whose side they were, they were people. Living, breathing, thinking, loving people.
But I was scared. As a wolf I was already a monster. I was fighting so hard to be more human with the wolf inside of me I was losing it already. How was I going to explain to her that a lot of my job had to do with cold-blooded killing? That I couldn’t just choose to be compassionate, because if they didn’t die someone else would? How was she going to forgive me for who I was if I couldn’t even forgive myself?
But I needed her, and the more I pulled away from her the more I was losing her. So I got up dusted the bits of bark that stuck to my bare legs off, and started walking toward the place where I’d hidden the boxer shorts I’d run out of the house with. I wandered into the base with just my underwear, and I got a funny look for some of the guards on patrol, but when I saluted them they saluted back. Everything was fine as long as we followed protocol.
Allegra was in the kitchen. She wore a silk night gown and a matching robe. I couldn’t remember if she’d had it before I’d left, or if this was new. I leaned against the doorpost and watched her cook. She was making pancakes, and everything she did was like a dance. Elegant and precise. Graceful. When she looked up and noticed me in the door of the kitchen her body jerked lightly, an expression of surprise flickering over her face before it fell blank again and her eyes were guarded.
“You’re home,” she said softly, her voice a lot gentler than her face looked.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I unfolded my arms and walked to her, wrapping my arms around her waist from behind and pushed my face into her hair dark hair. She stiffened in my arms but she didn’t pull away.
“It’s hard for me to be home,” I tried. Opening up was hard. Even just that one sentence was difficult, but she softened in my arms and turned around.
“It’s still home though, right? I’m still here,” she said and there was hurt on her face. I felt like crap for hurting her. For making her feel like she wasn’t important.
“It will always be home,” I said, and tried to push the thought of my pack out of my mind. “I’ll always come home to you.” That last bit was true, and it was easier for me to say. “We’ve had a rough run. It doesn’t matter how well they train us, or how well we’re briefed before we have to go on a mission, it’s never really enough to help us cope with death and with the violence and horror.”
Her arms finally wrapped around my body, and her skin was warm against my cold body. She put her head against my chest. I’d forgotten how small and delicate she was, how her cheek nestled perfectly between my pecks and her soft body with it’s curves complimented my hard lines.
“I wish they would let you have a different job. Surely they know that werewolves wouldn’t hurt anyone if they had desk jobs?”
I leaned my chin on the top of her head and sighed. They would never allow something like that, but even if they did, I didn’t know that I would take it. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to fit into the real world, the modern world. To have to hide my wolf at home and at work. Being in the army was as far from reality and the new era as I could get. There I could still pretend that it was before the invention of electricity and internet.
“They’re scared of us,” I finally said. “We won’t into society.”
And I wouldn’t make it without the pack, I thought silently to myself.
She pulled her head away so she could look at me, and her dark chocolate eyes were liquid and deep.
“What were your nightmares about?” she asked. Such an innocent question. I’d strangled her, frightened her to death and run away. I owed her that.
I closed my eyes for a moment. I saw John, bleeding in a ditch with his arm bent at awkward angles. His eyes were closed and the open wounds weren’t re-healing and closing themselves the way it worked with werewolves. I’d had to re-break his arm in three places when it had started healing so he could use it again. I’d thought I’d lost Charlie, we’d found him much later with silver shrapnel all the way up his leg, his hip, his chest. If it had hit his heart he would have been dead. The enemy had gotten smarter. They’d started working silver into the ammunition. Werewolves and silver just didn’t go together.
I heard th
e screams. I heard Abdul’s foreign-language pleading with the man that held the gun against Carlos’s head. I had crept up behind the guy and slit his throat. His blood had been on my hands for days, I could smell him, smell his death, even now just thinking about it.
A shudder traveled through my body.
“Just a lot of shooting and running for our lives,” I finally said. I didn’t know if she could cope with a retelling. I didn’t know if I could cope with it. So to distract her and distract me from the gore and the pain and the death, I dipped my head and kissed her.
Her lips were soft and warm against mine, and her eyes widened in surprise before she closed them and I realized with a pang of guilt that this was the first time since I’d been home to kiss her, to be the one to make the move.
Her body softened even more against mine, like she was melting against me. I folded her against me and tried to draw the warmth out of her, the peace and the calm that followed her. It had been like that since I’d met her. She was the opposite of everything in my life. Where my life was wild and merciless and volatile she was calm and stable and compassionate. When I could only smell blood and nothing else, when everything I saw was tinged with fire, she was the cool breeze that reminded me I was human, too. Not just wolf.
Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. Maybe I was going to make it through if I told her who I was. After all, she’d accepted me as a werewolf, a killing thing, an animal.
Why wouldn’t she believe in me when I told her that even as a human the killing didn’t go away anymore? It was a moment of pure calm, bliss, where I realized that the only way I was going to move forward was to let her in so she could move with me.
Chapter 5
Allegra
His body was hard and warm against mine, and for the first time in a long time he was letting me in. He stripped me of my clothes and carried me to the bedroom where he paid special attention to me. It was like he was trying to fix everything that had gone wrong. He traced my neck with one finger and I shuddered, remember his flaming eyes and his otherworldly strength. But then he kissed the skin that hurt, like he was kissing it better. He traced his tongue across my neck and my body opened up for him instead of curling away. His and followed the shape of my body, tracing my outline, and he covered me with his body.
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