Now all three of them—Rory, Marlowe, and Kaleb—straighten up in their seats.
“And it wasn’t the only one.”
Lydia glances my way and hesitates a moment before she pulls up the photo of a slaughtered herd. Deer lay, dead and bloodied, across the entire clearing out in front of the now-abandoned barn where I once first met the boys.
My stomach lurches, but I try not to let any of my revulsion show on my face.
“Your father and I have been trying to figure out who is responsible for all the carnage on the local herd, but as of yet, none of them have been able to track down the shifters responsible. Because, of course, that’s the only possible explanation.”
Rory’s hands flinch at his sides.
“Here, on our land? So close to the house?”
His breath catches. “How did we not sense them? We should have smelled them, seen their tracks sooner … something.”
Romulus’ face is white, but he keeps his face still. “I’m confident it won’t happen again. Whoever it is … they wouldn’t dare try again.”
“But you think I’ve tagged enough deer that we should be able to keep track of what’s happening to them? Or, at least, see if something like this might be about to happen again?” I ask.
Lydia’s eyes sparkle. “Exactly.”
“That’s pretty damn impressive actually,” Kaleb says, nudging me in congratulations. He tries to keep the look he gives me optimistic, but there’s a darkness hovering behind his smile.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” I say as I try to shift the conversation away from myself. “Lydia is the one who made something out of it. You should tell them how it all works.” I give Lydia a look and she picks up on my feelings and launches into an explanation about the program to keep the guys’ attention away from me. I just want a quiet night tonight so that I can focus on the other things rolling through my mind.
The boys look at me as though I’m acting oddly quiet and they want to know why, but I just keep eating my pasta and looking at Lydia as she explains something convoluted about software systems until my eyes glaze over along with everyone else’s.
Several minutes later, suddenly Marlowe gets up from the table quickly and storms off toward his room with Kaleb right on his heels.
What was that about?
It takes me a second to shake myself back to my senses. I’ve zoned out, completely unaware of what’s been going on the last couple minutes. I look to Rory, who is eyeing me carefully from across the table, before he gets up and excuses himself as well.
It’s not like the boys for their roles to be reversed like this.
Rory should have been the one to storm off first, his temper once again getting the better of him.
I start to wonder what’s going on with them. It’s not like I was that upset in the woods today, not enough for them to have hurt feelings at least. I stubbornly refuse to follow the boys, instead staying downstairs to finish dinner and help Lydia clean up.
When we’re all done, I head toward one of the several libraries they have inside the house—to the nooks and crannies that have become my constant companion since the promise to turn me. If I’m going to be one of them, then I need to understand them.
If I’m going to do this, at long last, then I’m going to do it right.
I supposed I should have gone up to check on the boys, but they acted like they wanted some space, so I sit for some time in one of my favorite places in the house.
It’s been three months since Kaleb’s pack cerem
ony, and during that time I’d been delving into all the wolf-shifter culture I can get my hands on. I’ve stolen away here to my favorite oversized armchair inside my favorite corner of the library, right next to a smaller hearth than the one in the living room every chance I can get. I’ve been studying the books that detail how turning a human actually works and the books I could find that go into more description about the bond.
When that gets too heavy, too dense and complex, I dive into werewolf lore. Their mythology is far more intricate than the version humans have touched on. I find myself lost in it, spun into the stories that have shaped the shifter culture for centuries.
Basically, over the course of the long winter, I’ve been devouring any information that I can that pertains to this life that I’m about to embark on. I want to know all about it. I want to know everything. No matter how much I read, how much I learn, I just can’t get enough.
Aside from wanting practical knowledge about what’s going to happen to me, I also just find all of it completely fascinating. The lore surrounding the turning of a human into a werewolf is perhaps the most interesting. There are stories that tell about humans being turned by eating the meat of a wolf that had been mixed with that of a human, and others that mention being conceived under the light of the new moon, and even others that are as innocuous as eating certain herbs or drinking water that a wolf had stepped its paw into or touched its muzzle to.
If I had a choice in the matter, I would choose to drink the befouled water, or maybe crunch on some earthy roots and savory herbs while some magical moonlight ceremony is performed … but those are only myths with about as much truth to them as their human fairytale counterparts.
The actual turning ceremony is quite simple. Romulus has sat me down on several occasions to explain it, but that hasn’t stopped me from disappearing into the stories surrounding the truth. In all truth, however, it’s become increasingly difficult to discern between what is real and what is myth when so much I once thought to be make believe is now very much alive.