Clarity

by Claire Farrell

  I let out a sound that was more animal than human, stripped off my clothes without even checking to see if anyone was around, and phased. Then I ran, following the female werewolf’s scent. I heard a bark; Cú followed me. I kept running, trying to find a strong trail. She’d backtracked a few times, and that confused me. I was useless at tracking anything smarter than a deer, and that made me even angrier.

  I sprinted through the streets, startling quite a few people and not giving a crap about being seen. I made my way toward the hospital, but something stopped me. It was less of a barrier, and more to do with my body completely shutting down at an attempt to disobey the alpha.

  Useless and unable to do a thing, I ran home with my tail literally between my legs.

  ***

  At home, hours later, I still hadn’t calmed down. I wanted to hurt someone, just to feel as though I was doing something.

  “You need to settle down. You’re even provoking my wolf,” Byron said after knocking on my bedroom door.

  I grunted in answer, unable to stop my heart from racing. The wolf wanted out; the wolf wanted action. I didn’t even want to stop him anymore. My natural instincts didn’t include sitting at home waiting for instructions.

  “We’ll get through this. I promise you.”

  I glared at him. “And what about Perdita? Her dad?”

  He lowered his voice. “I’m going to take care of it, Nathan. I’ll keep an eye on them as much as I can. We’ll talk some sense into Dad eventually. Did you catch anything out there?”

  I shook my head, ashamed. “Kept catching her scent, but she was covering her trail. I couldn’t figure it out. I’m a crap werewolf, Byron.”

  “You haven’t been taught. That’s all. Jeremy’s been running with wolves. He can help. But try not to antagonise your grandfather anymore. He’s not thinking straight right now. We don’t need him making any more orders, okay?”

  I knew he was right, but keeping quiet in the face of pure insanity was going to be hard. “I tried going to her. I couldn’t move until I decided to turn back. It felt like crap. I need to talk to her. I need to see her.”

  “I know. I’ll talk to him. I’ll try to fix this. We spoke more about his plans while you were gone. He’s trying to lure this alpha out of his lair. I don’t know if it’ll work, but maybe Perdita will be safer away from us.”

  “And what about Amelia? What if there’s too many of them to fight? What if someone else dies, Byron?”

  “Trust me, Nathan. We’re on the same page here. I know you’re worried about her, but for now, try to act normal. Have dinner with us, then go to school tomorrow and see if you can pass a message to her. There are ways around every order. Remember that.”

  “How does he even know what their alpha will do? Why won’t he give us any details?”

  He looked as though the world was bearing down on his shoulders. “I’m still trying to get through to him. That’s all I can tell you.”

  He left me to mope. How was I supposed to do anything when the adults kept messing everything up? I was seventeen; I should have been able to make my own decisions. I should have been able to go to my girlfriend when she needed me. I hadn’t even known the will of the alpha could override the power of the curse.

  It drove me mad, not knowing how Perdita’s dad was. He was strict and squeezed a little too tight when we shook hands, but I liked him. I knew she would feel responsible in some way. I wanted to be there with her.

  I tried to come up with ways to get in touch with Perdita until Amelia knocked on my door, looking mournful and pathetic.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as soon as I opened the door.

  “For what?”

  “Every single time something happens, I freeze. I fall apart. I want to be like you. You always know what to do. But I just… can’t.”

  My laugh held no humour. “I have no idea what to do. I can’t even get near my own girlfriend.” I stared at her. “But you can.”

  She hesitated. “Well… I mean, Opa might be against that, too.” I opened my mouth to argue, but she carried on in a hurry. “I really hope her dad’s okay. I tried calling her house, but nobody’s answering, so they must all still be at the hospital.”

  “I still can’t believe Opa could have stopped this, and he didn’t even try.”

  “He’s not like that. This is all a mistake.” She pulled a lock of hair around her fingers, tension making her hand shake.

  “He admitted it! You heard him.”

  “I think… I think it came out wrong. You know him. You know he wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  “Yeah, but that was before. He’s not the same now. He doesn’t care about anyone anymore.”

  “That’s not true.” Her chin trembled, and she fled before a tear could fall. I didn’t want to upset her, but it aggravated me that she didn’t want to believe what had happened in front of us.

  We ate leftovers that evening with not a word spoken between us. I left the table first. I couldn’t bear being in the same room as my grandfather. He didn’t even care.

  “Hey,” Jeremy called before I could make it up the stairs. “Wanna walk the dogs with me?”

  I shrugged.

  “Come on. It’ll do us both good to get out of here. Let them deal with the clean-up, eh?”

  I didn’t have anything else to lose, so I went with him.

  “Don’t take it so hard,” he said once we were outside.

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “That bad?”

  “Trust me. It’s that bad.”

  He looked at me with interest. “What’s it like meeting your mate?”

  “Hard to describe. It’s like nothing else really.”

  “What’s she like then?”

  “Perfect,” I said without thinking.

  He laughed hard. “Sappy or what?”

  “You don’t get it. It’s as if she was made for me. Think of everything you would want in a girl, and it’s all there in your mate. I want to be around her every second of the day. This is killing me, man. Killing. Me. I should be with her. It’s our family who screwed up her life.”

  “The old man’s lost it, hasn’t he?” But he smiled as though it was amusing rather than terrifying.

  “That’s putting it mildly.” I shuffled along beside him, feeling a little awkward. We were family, but we didn’t exactly know each other. In fact, all we had to talk about was werewolf stuff. So that’s what I stuck to. “Byron said you’ve been running with other werewolves. What’s that like?”

  He hesitated. “Different. It’s good in a way, but I’m not part of their pack, so it doesn’t work in other ways.”

  “Are there many of them?”

  Another pause. “I don’t know exactly. The packs are tiny. But there are more scattered around the place, hiding, or so I’ve been told. I’ve gotten into a few scraps along the way, but I figured it would be worth it.”

  “How so?”

  His smile was easy. “I thought it might help me find her, but nothing yet.”

  “Dreaming?”

  “Kind of. Haven’t seen her clearly, anyway. I’m curious to see her. That’s all. You lucked out, finding her already. No chasing.”

  “That’s not how it works, though. You don’t chase. She shows up in your path. Then you’re screwed.” I grinned. “I can’t wait to see how hard you fall.”

  “Well, let’s hope she doesn’t appear until after Opa’s done losing his mind. I didn’t recognise him at first. He showed up while I was hunting. All aggressive and snarling. Demanded I go home. After he pinned me down, that is. That was embarrassing.”

  “He left us in the middle of the night, and we didn’t hear from him while he was gone. I know he took losing Mémère hard, but still. This is going overboard.”

  “You know, while I was with him, we took the long way home. He kept asking people questions about some wolf.” Jeremy held his breath, and I could tell he wasn’t sure whether to speak to me about it or not.
He glanced at me and nodded. “I think the wolf in charge of all this mess is the one people are hiding from. Some kind of fanatical alpha.”

  “Yeah, well, it would have to be, considering he’s trying to murder teenage girls or whatever.”

  “Thing is, Nathan, there was this one werewolf, an old one, not a fighter, a weak wolf. He said the alpha had no use for him. He recognised Opa, talked to him. Of course, I listened in, and it sounded as though Opa already knows this wolf he’s after. It seems like there’s a lot more to this than he’s telling us. I don’t know what to make of it.”

  “It’s like he doesn’t trust us,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t blame him since he’s going around forcing you to keep away from your mate.” Jeremy sounded horrified. “That’s madness. What if you get sick? I don’t get it.”

  Sniffing the air, I couldn’t help but remember Perdita’s face as she had gotten into the ambulance with her dad.

  “She’s never going to forgive us for this,” I said.

  “She hasn’t much choice. She’s your mate.”

  Until we broke the curse…

  Chapter Eight

  Perdita

  Sitting in the murky green and grey hallway made me want to scream. I was still high on adrenalin, and I didn’t want to sit still. Of all the things that might have happened, I didn’t expect my dad to be harmed in Nathan’s house. We should have been safe there, and the thought hadn’t occurred to me that any of those werewolves would have a target on Dad’s back. Why would they care about my dad?

  I couldn’t voice my thoughts to Erin, who was pacing the hallway, amping up my own tension. Her face had tightened with worry, and she ignored Gran’s stares. Waiting for news on my dad might have been the worst thing I had ever been through. I was back to the “what ifs,” and all of them led to my dad not being admitted to a hospital.

  A nurse finally approached us, calmly ignoring our rabid questions. She had known my name, but I couldn’t remember ever seeing her before. “He should be okay. He lost a lot of blood, but he’s strong and healthy. Nothing major was harmed. It looked a lot worse than it was, and the shock was the biggest problem. A blood transfusion and a lot of rest will see him fine in a couple of days. He’ll have one hell of a scar, but he’ll be back on his feet in no time.”

  Erin laughed, nudging me happily. Breath-taking relief overwhelmed me, bringing a lump to my throat. I had been so afraid for him, so afraid of what I would do next, and it was all going to be okay. I took a deep breath, allowing Gran to hug me.

  Alarms went off noisily in Dad’s room. I instinctively ran, but Erin caught me in her arms and held me tight, even as I desperately tried to squirm away from her. The nurse’s face paled, and she turned on her heel and ran back into the room.

  Erin forced me into a chair, keeping calm even though I knew she had to be panicking as much as I was.

  “Wh-what’s happening?” My eyes darted from Erin to my grandmother, and I saw their fear. I lost all hope. “It’s a dog bite. That’s all. She said he was fine. She said he’s okay now. She said—”

  “Hush.” Gran sat next to me and wrapped her arms around me. I felt her breath against my cheek, but I couldn’t listen to her words, not while I was concentrating on the commotion coming from Dad’s room.

  Twenty minutes later, a gang of nurses ushered us into a different hallway. Deep down, I feared they didn’t want me to see my dad’s remains being rolled away. A sob burst from my lips, and only Erin’s hand gripping mine kept me from falling apart completely. I wasn’t alone, but I felt it because I was the only one in the hospital who knew what had really happened. What if I could help Dad? What if telling the truth helped them figure out what was wrong with him? What if…?

  I had decided to just tell the truth when the original nurse returned. She was spotless except for a tiny streak of blood above her left eyebrow. “I need to double-check a couple of things,” she said breathlessly. “He seems to have had a bit of a nasty reaction to the transfusion, and we have his type down as AB. But AB can accept any blood, so obviously, something’s wrong somewhere. Do any of you have any idea what his type is?”

  “That’s the right one,” Erin and I said in unison.

  The nurse scratched her cheek. “I… Well, I don’t think that’s right.”

  “We give blood regularly,” I said. “That’s his type. It’s the same as mine. They make jokes at the station about never needing our blood because it’s, like, two percent of the population, and ABers can take any blood type anyway, but Dad makes us donate. Just in case.”

  She frowned. “That’s strange. What about a blood disorder in the past maybe? Is he allergic to dogs?”

  “He’s not allergic to anything. His blood type is AB. He’s never been sick before, and you said he was fine!” The nurse took a step back, while Erin’s hand on my shoulder grounded me a little. Closing my eyes, I swallowed hard, trying to hold in everything I was feeling. “I’m sorry. I’m just worried about my dad.”

  “I know,” the nurse said, but she didn’t sound as kindly. “We’re running tests. We’ll try again, so don’t worry. We’ll figure this out before you know it.”

  Vague recollections of a conversation with Lia ran through my head.

  “My blood!” I called out. The nurse turned, frowning.

  “He needs my blood,” I said, shaking a little. “I’m his daughter. We’re the same blood type. I want to give him my blood.”

  The nurse glanced at Erin pleadingly.

  Gran took a step forward. “If she wants to help him, why can’t she?”

  Looking as though she would say anything to shut us all up and get back to work, the nurse nodded. “I’ll see if I can organise it. Sit tight.”

  When she left, Erin warned me they might not be able to do it, that they would have to test my blood first, but I didn’t care. I deserved to be stabbed with needles. My dad had been hurt because of me, and I had a bad feeling about his reaction to the transfusion. I wondered if the bite had done something to his blood, something werewolfy, but I had nobody to ask anymore. Nathan hadn’t come, and I could never trust Jakob again. I was on my own, and I had to figure it out myself.

  ***

  All of the staff knew Dad, or at least knew of him, because he worked in that very hospital. Everyone had heard about the attack, and it had all turned into a huge deal. The spotlight was on, and I did my best to remember the things I shouldn’t be saying.

  After a lot of confusion and complications, Dad had finally gotten my blood. He hadn’t had one seizure since taking it, and apparently, that was a good sign. He was moved to a private room, in case of infection, but Erin told me that was great. It meant they didn’t think anything worse would happen. He had to be stable.

  I was on my own again in the hospital, only leaving briefly to change my clothes and shower. I couldn’t stay away any longer, in case he woke up. I had to be there when he opened his eyes. I couldn’t leave him by himself. I had to protect him, because nobody else even realised he was in danger.

  “You can go in and see him now,” a nurse told me. I knew she was going easy on me. They all were, letting me stick around past visiting hours.

  “Any change?” I tried not to sound too hopeful.

  “No. I’m sorry. Some more test results are due back in the morning. Try not to worry, okay? Is there anyone else I can call? Someone to give you a lift home, maybe?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I said firmly, and brushed past her to get back into Dad’s room. The multiple wires and drips seemed to drown him, but a monitor assured me his heart was still beating. He was so pale, so small, so not like Dad. They hadn’t found an infection, and they weren’t sure why he hadn’t woken up yet, but it seemed to me as if the worst was over. I didn’t think about the reasons they were letting me stay beyond visiting hours. Only certain patients were allowed that, and they weren’t usually the healthy ones.

  Erin and Gran had been in and out trying to convin
ce me to leave. I was technically the only family member, technically the only one with the right to be there. The hospital had been good to Dad though, making sure he was comfortable, letting Erin in to see him. But they were understaffed, so it helped them when family members stuck around to do what needed to be done.

  Except nobody knew what needed to be done about Dad.

  And nobody had found the wild dog.

  That’s because there wasn’t one, I wanted to scream. My fear had passed. Anger had taken over, mostly because nothing was making any sense. Why Dad? Why at the memorial? Why weren’t the wolfhounds around? They had barked; I heard them. So why hadn’t one stupid werewolf realised another one was close by? I wanted to scream and kick things, but on the outside, I stayed calm and mature. I was getting used to wearing masks.

  The worst part was that Nathan hadn’t come. Not once. I didn’t have my phone, but he could have come to the hospital. I kept thinking back to the memorial, how angry he had been, how unlike himself, how cold and uncaring, how… similar to Jakob.

  Then, when I caught a glimpse of the werewolf, Jakob had done nothing. Not one thing. He had let that animal loose on the whole neighbourhood. I didn’t know what to think.

  My dad had lain injured on the ground, and none of the others helped him. None of them took a step forward. I could never forget that. I had to remember that nobody was going to rescue me. Nobody was going to make everything better. But I could protect my family because I knew to be aware of the danger, and I wasn’t going to let my family take the punishment for my involvement in werewolf drama.

  “Perdy?”

  I jumped out of my daze. “Erin, hi. There’s no change.”

  “I know. Can I persuade you to go home and get some rest?” Worry etched deep lines into her forehead, and I could sense her distress. I felt terrible for her. She acted so nervous around Dad, as though she had no right to be there.