by D. N. Hoxa
For once, I was glad to see Finn when I arrived at the research center. For once, I was glad to have something to talk about other than what had happened the night before. But when I saw his face, his eyes wide and full of anger, it occurred to me that he knew what had happened. He knew where I’d been and what I’d done.
“He did it again,” he said when I sat in front of him on that cold metal chair.
I held back a sigh. “Haworth?”
He raised a brow. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“I told you he needs ten enchanted items, and he’s not someone who likes to waste time.” It was only half a truth, but a truth nonetheless. “Does the ECU have something? Any leads? What did he take?” I’d been too busy hiding to see what Haworth’s people had taken from that Gallery in Staten Island.
“A very powerful item. The ECU didn’t tell me much, but they have nothing. They’re running around like headless chickens at this point,” Finn said, squeezing his eyes shut. I wanted to come clean to him. He was telling me the truth when he didn’t need to. But I couldn’t.
“What about my sister?”
As if he was hoping I wouldn’t ask him that, Finn shook his head. “She was spotted with him last night, but we lost her again. I think he knows we’re after her and is protecting her.”
I nodded. “Makes sense.”
For a second, Finn watched me, his left eye twitching. “Is there something wrong, kid?”
My heart skipped a beat. I hated lying, just not enough to tell the truth about this. “Yes, there is,” I said with half a voice. “My wolf. I can’t control her.”
A bit relieved, Finn leaned back in his seat. “You heard Aidan. We don’t know what your wolf is. To find out, we’d have to…see him.”
“Her,” I corrected. “And, yes, I heard him. I’m going to try to shift so you can do your tests, but I’m warning you, Finn—she’s wild. She’s very powerful. If you don’t contain her properly, she’s going to kill everyone here and leave.”
Finn laughed. “There isn’t much I haven’t already seen, kid, and I think we can handle a wolf here. I’m glad you changed your mind.”
It was obvious that he didn’t understand. “I mean it. She’s not going to take any of this lightly.”
As if finally realizing that I was talking about her, my wolf raised her head. I felt her presence like a physical thing inside my chest.
“And we’ll be prepared,” Finn said with a nod. “Moore is waiting for you upstairs. Why don’t you meet him first, so we can set everything up down here?” His good mood had returned all the way. Maybe this had meant to him more than I’d first realized.
I nodded. “Once you know what she is and where she comes from, what can you do?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, can you find me a spell or a potion or even an enchanted item to keep her in check, to prevent her from taking over whenever she wants to?”
My wolf whined—insulted by my words. But I was insulted by her, too. When she killed three men while I was still just a kid. Every time she had no regard about what I wanted. Last night when she kept me from going after Haworth and Izzy.
Finn didn’t expect my question. “Why would you want to do that?”
I didn’t expect him to understand this, either. Nobody could, unless they were in my shoes. “I just do.”
The man shrugged, at a loss for words for a second. “We’ll have to see. I can’t make any promises.”
It was better than a no.
It wasn’t working. After three hours with Moore and after a tasteless tuna sandwich Finn made me eat, they put me in a room I hadn’t seen before. Whatever had been in there, they’d cleared everything out and other than the tiles, the cameras in the corners and the thick steel door that Finn closed from the outside, there was nothing in there with me. Aidan reassured me that the cameras and the lasers and the patches he’d placed on my chest and head were all he needed to get a reading on my wolf, to see what she was and where she came from. So I was in there all alone, trying to get her to come out, but my wolf was no fool. She knew exactly what this was, and she wanted out of here almost as much as she’d wanted to get away from Haworth the night before. I tried to make her come out with sheer will, but it just wasn’t working. She didn’t want to hear it, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I should have gotten used to this by now. After all, the wolf was part of me my entire life, but every time she reminded me how much control she had, it broke me a little more. With my head down, I went to the door and slammed my fists against it a couple times. A few seconds later, Aidan came to let me out.
“What’s wrong?” he asked when we sat down in the lab. All their eyes were turned to me.
“Nothing. She doesn’t want to come out,” I said reluctantly, taking off the patches they’d put on my temples and chest. They were making me itchy.
“What if we make her?” asked Aidan, excitement sparkling in his eyes.
“No. I’ve already gone through that once, and I’m never doing it again.” No magic. No rituals. I was going to teach myself how to make her come out, the same way she made me step aside and give her my body to use. I was in no hurry now.
“Can we try again? If you just focus real hard and call her out, she’ll have no choice but to obey, right?” Terra asked, but she was looking at Finn.
The man nodded. “That’s what it should be.” He was a werewolf. He had an animal inside him, too, one he could call out at any given time. But I was different.
“No amount of focus is going to change her mind. She knows what’s happening, and she doesn’t want to be seen.” It was the sad truth. I was naked in front of these people whether they realized it or not.
“Fascinating,” Aidan whispered. “The way you speak about the wolf, it’s like she’s a separate mind from yours. A completely different being.”
“Yep.” That was exactly what she was.
“I’m tired. Let’s go to my office, kid. I need to talk to you about a job,” Finn said, and with a sigh, he began to walk to the door. The wooden leg he’d put on only made him walk slower than when he hopped on one leg. He seemed to change his mind about that often.
“You’ll come back, right?” Aidan asked, suddenly panicked.
“I will,” I reassured him. No more refusing to accept what was real. I was going to figure out my wolf and find a way to stop her before I allowed myself to do anything else.
“I miss my office,” Finn mumbled when he sat down behind his desk. “I hate this building.”
“So why don’t you go back to the headquarters?”
He raised a brow. “And leave you here alone to run off?”
I smiled. “I’m not going anywhere, old man.”
He laughed. “We’re nowhere close to finding your sister.”
Shivers ran down my back, my forearms covered in goose bumps. “That’s okay.”
Suddenly, he slammed his hands on the desk. “What the hell is the matter with you today?” he demanded.
Part of me prepared the words I’d use to tell him the truth, but I couldn’t make myself say it.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said instead. “You said you had a job for me? Is it about the nineteen-year-old guy?”
Surprised, Finn analyzed my face for a second, but thankfully decided to let it go.
I was a very stubborn girl when I wanted to be. Never before had I really meant to control my wolf. I just didn’t see the point. She’d leave me alone and I’d do the same. But now, things had changed. Now, she interfered with my decisions. If it wasn’t for her, I’d have gone after Haworth, and I’d have saved Izzy. Things had gotten way out of hand.
So now I focused my entire being on her, even though I knew it was useless. I had to start somewhere, didn’t I? Waiting for Finn to come back, I sat in his office with my eyes closed and searched my body for a feeling of my wolf. She hid well, left no trace behind, but I knew she was there. She had to b
e. I’d spent two hours in the other room, but it was different there because people had been watching me. Here, nobody did. I was completely alone.
Like I said, I knew it was useless, so when I felt something, almost like her breath against the back of my neck, I didn’t allow myself to be happy. I didn’t allow myself to break focus. I just tried harder and harder to reach her, to make her come out of her hiding place and obey me. She slipped from my fingers more times than I could count.
After a while, I’d lost all sense of time and place. I was simply locked inside my mind, inside my body, and I wasn’t about to give up until Aidan or Finn called me.
The inside of my mind was vivid, painted with dark reds and warm greens for whatever reason. I felt like a stranger in my own body, like even my mind didn’t belong to me. My wolf breathed slowly, steadily, and watched—waited for the second I’d wrap my fingers around her, figuratively, and make her come out. We both waited, but she was nothing but a ghost.
When somebody called my name, at first I thought it was Finn. Had he come back from the headquarters with the details of the case I was going to work on? Had Aidan prepared everything for another trial?
Then, I realized—someone was calling, but it wasn’t my name.
“Rowie!”
Definitely not me. I tried to pry my eyes open, but instead a whine left my lips.
“Rowan! Rowie, come here, girl.”
There it was again. Rowan. Maybe someone from Finn’s team was called Rowan?
Lazily, my eyes opened, and I wondered, when on Earth had Finn brought a garden into his office? Because that’s what I saw. A full garden with beautiful flowers and a garden pond. I could smell the fish inside. I didn’t particularly like that smell, though. It made me think of food.
But wait…it didn’t make me think of food.
That was my wolf.
“Rowan! Come here, girl. Your food is ready!”
Thank God. My stomach was growling. The smell of raw cow meat made my mouth water. I licked my lips and was surprised I didn’t cut myself on my sharp teeth. I rose and shook the sleep off me, and…
Realization hit me like a brick on my head. My heartbeat tripled as I watched myself—my wolf—take slow steps toward the pond, sniffing the air and the ground every few feet, looking for a new scent that she knew wasn’t there. Nobody ever came to the house to visit.
Which house?
After the pond full of fish, the garden ended and upon a low hill sat a house with a dark wooden exterior and a large porch in the front. There were people sitting on it, laughing and eating all kinds of food, but nothing on their table was more delicious than the raw meat that waited for my wolf in her metal bowl right next to the two stairs that led to the porch. Right next to the white wolf already there, eating his dinner.
Calm down, I said to myself as I looked wherever my wolf looked and took in her surroundings. The land around us was full of low hills, and the nearest house was almost ten miles away. There were no trees so we could see them all, but none presented danger. Everyone in this area was human, except her family.
And her family was laughing. The sound of it calmed my wolf. It was her job to protect them, but she’d made it her responsibility to keep them happy whenever they were sad, too. Unlike her brother, who did not care what happened inside the house, as long as no strangers came close and no magic was being used around the village. He felt accomplished with so little, my wolf thought. But to her, she was restless whenever the family wasn’t happy.
Slowly, she walked over to her bowl and eyed the juicy meat. It was fresh, just like she liked it.
“There you are, Rowie,” a woman said, her blonde hair shining under the sun. “Good girl.”
The smile on the woman’s face made my wolf feel proud. Her brother, the snow-white wolf was already done and licking his bowl, but she liked to take her time with her food. She bit a good chunk, and I could feel the taste of it on my tongue as if I were eating. At first, I was revolted to feel the foreign blood sliding down my throat, but then my wolf’s pleasure spread onto me, and I couldn’t decide whether I was in love with raw meat or wanted to throw my guts out at the thought of it.
Calmly, my wolf ate and she looked at the family in the porch. There were two broad-shouldered men sitting opposite each other and four women to the sides. The one with the raven-black hair was pregnant. The others, all three blondes, were a bit older than she. Two of them were werewolves, and the third, sitting by one of the men, was a witch. And the pregnant woman? I wasn’t sure. Her scent was mixed.
When my wolf looked down at her bowl again, I found myself wanting to look at the people one more time. They looked so happy, all of them laughing and chatting. I wanted to hear what they were saying, but my wolf wasn’t interested. The meat was too important, and conversation wasn’t something she ever focused on.
Wait, wait, wait! I shouted when the last of her meat was gone and she slowly followed her brother to the side of the house, away from the people. I wanted to hear what they were saying so badly, but it was impossible to pick up even a single word. Her brother, the white wolf, was already at the wooden water trough, which was always filled because the wolves liked water at their disposal at all times. It was warm in this weather, warmer than my wolf liked, but she still loved the taste of it.
And when she walked close to the trough and looked down, for the first time in my life, I saw my wolf’s face in the reflection.
She was nothing like I’d imagined her. She was absolutely stunning, more beautiful than any pack wolf I’d ever seen, but similar. Unlike her brother, her wolf’s fur was more red than brown. Her eyes were green, a dark green that would have looked black if the sun wasn’t still shining, and her snout was long and elegant. She looked painted rather than real, the combination of the colors on her head breathtaking. For the longest time, I’d pictured her as a beast, a monster with huge teeth you couldn’t look away from, but now, as I watched her gracefully drink water next to her brother, I was reminded of peacefulness, of serenity. Not blood and pain.
I couldn’t get enough of her. I could have spent hours just looking at her reflection, analyzing every detail on her face, but then someone at the front of the house screamed.
My wolf and her brother jumped at the same time, and in that second, the whole world changed.
8
As if spit out from a huge mouth with sharp teeth, I fell out of the chair onto the floor, feeling every bit as chewed up as that piece of raw cow meat. I was having trouble breathing, and my heartbeat was soaring. The tiles under my hands were cold, much colder than the ground under my wolf’s paws had been. It was hard to come to terms with the lack of sunlight and the heavy smell of plastic and concrete in Finn’s office.
Calling for help was not an option, so I lay there on the floor and focused on breathing.
Who were those people? Where was my wolf’s brother? Who had screamed, and why? What had happened next?
Rowan. My wolf’s name was Rowan. That’s what that woman had called her.
“Rowan,” I whispered before I could help it, and something stirred deep inside me.
My wolf heard me. She heard her name, and it had been so long! She’d missed it so much. Raising her head to the sky, she howled the most painful sound I’d ever heard. I felt her pain rippling through me, cutting us both open. I felt her tears slip from her eyes, and mine ran down my cheeks. I felt the emptiness, the void she had deep inside her that I could never fill. Her need to protect, her love for her people, the pain that she couldn’t see them again, that her name had been forgotten. Rowan—red. And her brother Ban—white. She’d been all alone all this time, with nothing but the memory of her family to keep her going. It was impossible to imagine that a wolf could feel the way she felt. The loss of her family, of her people and of her brother, cut deep inside her, leaving scars that could never be erased.
And I’d never seen. I’d never bothered to look. I’d just assumed that she was a stubbo
rn wolf who hated me and wanted to control me. I never thought she’d had a life before me, a family who loved her, a brother who ate and drank and guarded with her.
Now, she was alone and stuck with me.
What a terrible, terrible fate.
As we cried together on the floor, she mourned for her family and I mourned for her. For the first time in my life, I acknowledged my wolf. I acknowledged that she was her own person, with her own life and family and thoughts.
And I promised her that her name was never again going to be forgotten.
It took some time for the both of us to calm down. She retreated to wherever she went when she wasn’t present, and I made it back up on the chair. My head ached, but I felt a thousand times lighter. I’d been wrong all this time, and now that I saw, it felt like I’d discovered the secret of the universe. My wolf wasn’t me. She had never been me, and now I understood what that meant. She had her own mind, her own face. I’d seen it with my own eyes. Finally. I couldn’t control her with brute force. I was going to have to learn to speak to her, to convince her, and I was never going to do that by trying to expose her when she didn’t want to be exposed.
The image of her family, of her brother—such a big, beautiful wolf—was still fresh in my mind when someone opened the door behind me. Jumping to my feet, I hoped my face wasn’t still red from crying.
“Finn wants to see you,” Aidan said with a nod.
“He’s here?” I’d been waiting for him for the past hour. Maybe it had been more.
“Just got here. He’s in the room,” Aidan said. “Come on.”
Good thing, too. I needed to tell him that I’d changed my mind. He didn’t need to see my wolf. Nobody did—except me. It was going to take time, but I’d find a way to speak to her, to get her to obey, and this wasn’t the right way.
Aidan took me to the room they’d prepared for me to shift. Finn probably wanted me to try again. That’s why he’d gone there instead of the office—to prepare me.