Claimed by the Pack

We were losing her again. I decided on a different approach.

“Are you hot right now?”

Serena blinked. She stared back at me like I had three heads.

“I said, are you hot right now?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “Of course I’m hot. It’s a million fucking degrees in here.”

“No it’s not,” I replied. “Check the thermostat if you want to. You’re hot for a very specific reason. And you’re tingly too. All over your skin.”

I could tell by her reaction that I’d hit a nail on the head. Her eyes flashed dangerously. She took two steps away from us.

“You drugged me?”

Shit. It wasn’t supposed to go this way either.

“No, not at all.”

“You DRUGGED me?”

“Serena STOP!” My voice was louder than I’d intended, but maybe that was a good thing. I must’ve startled her because she actually stopped.

“Look at me for moment,” I said, as calmly as possible. “Do you feel something for me? Anything at all?”

I could tell she wanted to snarl at me again. She didn’t. Something stopped her.

“A connection maybe?” I continued. “A strange… familiarity?”

I could see her wanting to deny it. She couldn’t though. She was experiencing all the same things I was.

“An intimacy that can’t be explained?”

“It’s nothing,” she said. “And… I actually can explain it.”

“It’s not nothing, Serena.”

“No,” she countered. “It is nothing. You just… well, you look like someone I know.” She paused awkwardly before continuing. “Or rather, someone I used to know. Someone I was very close to.”

I sensed my first radiant emotions: Pain. Loss. Mourning. All of them, very deep. All of them at once.

“Serena, I—”

“You look like Alex,” she said, more to herself than to either of us. “You look like Alex, that’s all it is.”

“But I’m not Alex,” I said gently. “And yet you have these feelings anyway. And if you look at me now — look right into my eyes — you’ll be able to understand what I mean.”

She glanced up. Whether it was out of an actual need to do it, or she did it just to humor me, it didn’t matter. We locked eyes, and for one very long moment everything stopped.

“You and I are connected,” I told her, “in the same way I am with Damien. We’re bonded, he and I. We have been for years.”

She squinted back at me with unbelieving eyes. Outwardly she was still rejecting it.

Inwardly however…

“I can feel your pain,” I said. “Your sense of loss. Even your fear. The fear that I might be right. That something might actually be happening here that you can’t explain.”

Her breathing grew rapid. I could sense her heart beating in her chest now, feel the heat of her blood. Everything was faster. More frenzied.