Vanilla Moon: Awakening

by Airiel Hawkins

  "Yeah," I said. "Are you still nauseous?"

  She gave me a slight nod as she swallowed. "A bit," she said.

  I wiped her face with the washcloth and hoped it would help. "Look at me, please," I requested, needing to get a look at her pupils to know for sure if she had a concussion.

  Her eyes fluttered as she opened them. I saw her eyes widen as they met mine and she gasped before she started moving away from me as fast as she could. She fell off the other side of the bed and I winced at the thought of how much that must have hurt her. She cried out in pain and held her head. I could smell the pain and panic flood her.

  I walked up to her, cautious because I didn't want to hurt her again. "Ceres?" I almost whispered.

  "Stay away from me," she said, her voice muffled by her knees.

  I sighed. "I didn't want to tell you," I whispered. "You demanded answers and the last thing that I want is to hurt you or lose you. When I asked you to marry me, I wasn't just asking you for shits and giggles. You backed me into a corner, and I understand why. If I'd tried to lie to you again, you would have seen through it. You were trying to leave me. I had to keep you from doing that. Dammit, Ceres, I love you."

  She looked up at me with those fantastic chocolate eyes and I longed to see them turn amber for the first time. "You what?" she whispered.

  We hadn't said those words. We'd skirted around them many times. We implied them. We had used the word love here and there but hadn't strung those three words together yet. I took a step closer to her. She didn't move so I took a second step before I knelt in front of her. "I love you," I said. "I loved you the second you walked into the diner. You are the single most important person in my life, Ceres," I said. "I will die without you because of what we are and who you are to me.

  "We know the instant our mate comes into our lives," I said. "At the diner, when I went to get your soda, I almost lost complete control. I was growling at everyone who came up to me, including my best friend. I knew exactly what you are to me. I knew that there was no way I could let you walk away from me without me needing to follow you, which is why I'm praying that you stay here. Yes, I'm different and I know that you are terrified right now, but I will not hurt you."

  Ceres stared at me. I could see the thoughts passing through her eyes. There was disbelief that melted into understanding. Understanding became belief. Somehow, despite what everything she knew to be real told her, she believed me. She trusted me. I knew that the only reason she believed me was that she was my mate. Anything less and her reason would have overridden her instinct. "This is why your eyes change," she whispered.

  I nodded. "The genetic trait, yes," I replied.

  She exhaled and held up her hands. "I'm going to take a shower," she said. "Don't go anywhere, just give me a bit to think and process what's going on here. When I get out, we're going to talk a lot more. If you hear me fall, come in and wake me up because I don't want to be unconscious in the water. Okay?" she asked. I nodded and helped her to her feet. She scrounged up some fresh clothes and walked into the bathroom. When she shut the door, I sat down on the bed and sighed. Then, I waited.

  Chapter 8 ~Wolfgang~

  I called Riley to bring us some food and carted the vomit-filled garbage can away while she was in the shower. Before she was out, Riley dropped off the food and I set everything out on the table, hoping she would be hungry when she was ready. I didn't have him bring much because I knew her appetite would be light. I sipped my coffee as I thought about what I would say and how I would explain things. I realized that the best idea was to let her set the pace of the conversation. She was bound to have questions. Odds were likely that she'd know where she wanted to begin.

  When she surfaced, I couldn't help but stare. Her hair was wet and hanging down the middle of her back, darker than its usual platinum. She wore a low-cut red tank top and a pair of black pajama bottoms with spider webs and stars patterned across them. She was a vision, and it captivated me.

  She sat across from me and looked at the food. "I thought you might be hungry," I said. She reached for the coffee and took a small sip before reaching for the toast. I watched her pull a small corner off the bread. She was silent as she chewed it for a moment, and I knew she was probably grateful for having real food in here instead of something from the cans.

  She swallowed. "Start from the beginning," she said. "How did this happen? Were you bitten or something?"

  I shook my head. "No," I said. "There isn't a way to go from being human to werewolf; you have to be born one." I sighed before I continued. We taught our history through stories passed down from mother to child for centuries. Every Lycan knew them by heart by the time they were five. They explained both our Lycan and war's origins. I told them to Ceres now, hoping that some of the truth would reach her.

  The first story was about our creation. The story says that all Nomads once had wolf companions. Those wolves taught humanity how to function in a society instead of lone hunter-gatherers. They taught humanity loyalty, love, and fellowship. They taught the Nomads how to stay in one place for any length of time and create a home. After decades of this, one wolf and her human companion were out searching for food. She turned on him and bit him. The man's wife, for lack of a better word, demanded that he kill the wolf for turning on them, but it was a crime to harm the wolves. He took her away and tried to kill her, but somehow, he heard her in his head. He stopped and she promised that it would be worth sparing her life. That was how the first Lycan came to be. Vampires came from one of his human sons who was jealous that he wouldn't be Lycan. Witches came from other human descendants who wanted to kill everyone who wasn't human. The struggle for superiority and survival is what created our war, which went into another story.

  I cleared my throat and took a drink of my coffee. Ceres finished off her toast. "So, if your family and Alan's have always been at war here in Adamsville, what are you and he?" she asked. "I know you said that he's a Witch, but it can't be just that he's a Witch and you're Lycan."

  I nodded. "You're right," I replied. "Our two families lead the pack and coven in this town. My father is the alpha, and his title is Enkidu. Alan is the leader of the coven here in Adamsville. He's the most powerful witch in town."

  "How does this mean that he and my mother could not have had children?" she asked.

  "We can't breed between the races," I replied. "It's as if we've been at war for so long that we're at war on a cellular level now, not just out in the open. There's something in our DNA that won't let us merge. I tried, with Abigail, to bring peace between our races here in town. With the structure of the packs and covens, she and I have the same rank. She's next in line to rule the coven; I'm next for my pack. I thought that I would be able to be with her and settle the waters here, but we only made things worse...."

  "What happened?"

  I pulled my shirt off. I was notorious for always wearing long sleeves, rain, sleet, or shine, because of the scars on my body. No one ever saw me in shorts for the same reason. I knew that Ceres had seen the scars. She'd traced them with her fingers more than once. That didn't mean that she noticed the patterns or designs.

  "Remember how I told you about the ATV?" I asked. The scars marred my flesh and shined in any light. "For people who see them, and don't know what happened, that's the story I tell them." She nodded, remembering the story. I closed my eyes as the memories of that night came back to me. I let out the breath I was holding. The truth was much more horrifying than the lie.

  "There was no accident," she whispered.

  I shook my bowed head. "No," I replied with a hoarse voice.

  I heard her chair move as she stood. She wrapped her arms around my head, and I clung to her hips. Even after thirteen years, the horror of that night had not left me. Thirteen years later and I was still as traumatized as I had been that night. "Tell me," she whispered.

  I fought the tears and pulled away from her. It felt wrong to cling to her as I told her this. She didn't seem to
want to let me go. I stood and paced for a moment before I looked at her. "Abigail seduced me," I said. "I was fifteen and obsessed with boobs as all teenage boys are, but the thought of having real sex with a girl was still not quite there. Abigail had called me over with the promise that her parents were out of town for the weekend and I rushed to her. She said it was going to be a study session, which for us meant that we'd spend about twenty minutes studying before we started making out.

  "I told her no when she started trying to take my clothes off," I continued. I cleared my throat. "After a few minutes of fending her off, I was crossing the line between being able to stop and it hurting so much that I had to do something. It wasn't as awkward as it should have been because Abigail had already been around the block with the coven. They have a rule about having sex to come of age and it's a whole big to do and yeah..." I let my voice trail off because these weren't the important details.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. "Alan and Addie weren't out of town. They were downstairs in the basement waiting for me to be vulnerable. They came upstairs, found Abigail laying down over me, and they jumped, just the way they planned it. Abigail put the shackles around my wrists. She conjured them up and set them in place. I was half-asleep so I didn't quite notice until my skin was searing with the burn. Before I could fight back, Addie took care of my ankles. Alan dragged me into another room, strung me up, and promised me that if I survived, I would never be the same.

  "Abigail took the most joy out of my torture," I whispered. "To beat me into submission, she whipped me more than just a few times with silver chains, which is why I have so many scars. She was indiscriminate with where she hit me, except in one area. In addition to the first time, she raped me four more, just because she wanted to make me ashamed of myself. Believe me, it worked like a charm." There were tears in Ceres's eyes now.

  I forced myself to keep going. "My parents didn't realize something was wrong until I was five hours late coming home. They called Addie's house a few times, looking for me, and no one answered. Realizing that something was wrong, my parents called in the cavalry and came out to my rescue. As Alan and Addie were setting me up for the ritual to 'separate' my human and wolf halves, my rescuers came bursting through the door. They attacked, but their priority was to get me safe. Dad shoved the silver star off me and carried me out with the shackles still on my limbs because they couldn't risk the time to remove them. They took me to the clinic where Dr. Cyrus took care of me. My father sent me to Moab to live with my aunt and uncle for six months so that things out here could calm down and I could heal. When everything was back to normal, I came home, but I wasn't the same."

  She stared at me without knowing what to say. I could smell all her emotions. She was in pain for me. She was sad for me. She was heartbroken. She walked up to me and wrapped her arms around my neck. I held her tight. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. Her voice was thick with tears.

  "You're not the one who needs to apologize," I whispered in reply.

  She kissed me before she met my eyes again. "How do you know it won't happen again?" she asked. "Won't Alan be itching for another shot at you, especially if you're with me?"

  That was exactly the concern my father had voiced. I cleared my throat and decided to focus on a different part of her question. "Am I with you?" I asked. "You were telling me to leave.... This doesn't make you want to run for the hills?"

  She shook her head, much to my surprise. "No," she whispered. I could smell that she wasn't lying, though a part of me didn't understand. Anyone else would have thought I was insane. How was she so different? She sighed. "The logical part of my brain says that I should think that you need to go to the funny farm, but it's like tuning a piano. When you strike the first key, it's off, whiney, and painful. After you fix the string, you strike the key again and it's true, pure, and soothing. All my life, there has been one key out of tune. One key that makes me cringe because it is so off. These last few days with you, that key sounds right. Does that make sense?" she asked.

  I nodded. "Perfect," I said. She was my mate, after all.

  "So how do you know that I'm Lycan too?" she asked. "What if I'm just human?"

  I smiled at her. "You mean aside from the musical analogy?" I asked. She chuckled as she nodded. I took a moment to think of the best way to tell her. "You're allergic to silver," I began. It was one of our lengthy late-night conversations. It was also one of those holy-shit-how-can-we-have-this-crazy-oddity-in-common things. "All Lycans are allergic to silver, thanks to Alan's people. The moon strengthened us, so we worshiped it with every ounce of energy we had. We made jewelry with it. We used it to announce ourselves to the world, back before our laws mandated secrecy. We even used it to separate us from the humans because they didn't have access to silver in the mass quantities we did.

  "That's why the witches decided to use it against us. They wanted us to suffer for not helping them eradicate the vampires, so they gathered and cast their spell. It was so fast and powerful that the silver burned thousands of people without warning. The more superstitious of us thought that the Goddess who had given us our power was punishing us for doing something wrong. When we continued to shift without issue, though, it became clear that our deities had nothing to do with our sudden allergy.

  "It wasn't until they came out boasting about their success that we understood what had happened. They wanted to take pride in the work they had done. They wanted us to understand."

  "So, is there something that they can't touch?" Ceres asked.

  I nodded. "Everything in this world is a double-edged sword," I explained. "When they took away our ability to work with our cherished metal, they lost theirs. They used iron in everything they did. They made their most important tools out of it. The cost of cursing us and turning silver against us was that they also turned iron against themselves."

  Ceres ran her hands through her drying hair. She shook it out and sighed. "Okay," she said. "What else?"

  "Smell," I replied in a matter-of-fact tone. I reached out for her hand and brought her wrist up to my nose. I closed my eyes, inhaled the intoxicating scent of Ceres, and felt it wash over me like soothing waves. I opened my eyes again, knowing that they were amber. "Under every other smell you carry, there's the musky scent of the wolf. It's almost like when you bury your face in a dog's scruff, except that it's cleaner. Crisper."

  I let go of her wrist and put my hand on her forehead. "Temperature," I said, causing her to look up and meet my eyes. "The average human wanders around at ninety-eight-point-six degrees. The average Vampire is almost freezing at ninety-one-point-three degrees. Witches simmer at ninety-nine-point-nine degrees. Lycans are boiling at one-hundred-point-five degrees. I bet when you go into the doctors, they freak out and try to lower your temperature as fast as possible and you have to tell them that it's normal. Right?" I asked. She nodded and I could see the shock in her eyes.

  She backed away from me and ran her hands through her hair. She rubbed her eyes before she looked back at me. "I've never turned into a wolf," she said. "I wouldn't know how to do what you showed me. How can I be a werewolf if I've never changed shape?"

  "You know how they say, 'knowledge is power'?" I asked as I sat down on the bed. She nodded and followed me. "That's never more true than it is in our case, whether it's Witch, Lycan, or Vampire.

  "Witches can only practice their craft if they know what they're doing. It takes years of study on their part. They can't do anything right unless they know the exact movements and incantations. Many inexperienced Witches try their hand at something too advanced and end up blowing themselves up. The covens initiate all Witches at eighteen, so they usually study everything they can before then. Even then, the study doesn't stop.

  "Vampires also have to rely on their knowledge to succeed and, especially, survive. A new Vampire, without any training from his or her sire, has only a ten-percent chance of surviving its first night. Most of them don't know how to recognize when dawn is coming until i
t's too late for them to find safety in shelter. They also tend to go on a feeding rampage and the local kiss usually kills them before morning. If their sire is around to guide them through the first few months, they're just fine for as long as no one separates head and heart.

  "As for Lycans, we can only shift forms if we know that we can," I continued. "Until today, you thought you were just a lawyer going through a life crisis and didn't know what else to do aside from start over in a new place. Today, you learned that the world has a different side to it. You found out that a war has been going on longer than recorded history. You learned that your place in this war, at least in Adamsville, is on the front line, especially now that Alan knows that you're with me. In fact, it won't surprise me if he gives you a call and asks you to meet him at his place. He'll say that he can tell you all the nifty secrets about being a Witch and get you started on your training. I'll even bet you lunch," I added, trying for a smile. She nodded and gave me the smile I was looking for. "As of right now, you still have a choice. Either I'm a complete lunatic and need to head off to the funny farm, or I'm telling the truth and you can shift with the pack in three weeks."

  Ceres stared at me for a moment. "So, you're telling me that even though you've just told me everything, I still have a choice as to whether or not I turn into a wolf?" she asked.

  I nodded. "For lack of a better way to say it, yes," I said.

  "Why do we have a choice, but the others don't?" she asked.

  "They do," I replied. "Everyone has a choice. No one may sire a Vampire against his will, and those who are usually find a quick death, along with their Maker. Witches can denounce every bit of magic they have access to by choosing not to use it. They can also walk away from their initiation if they don't want to be part of the coven.

  "That's the most important part of who and what we are," I continued, holding her attention. "We have the ability to choose."