“What does all that have to do with me?” I questioned, my voice booming out of my chest. “I really didn’t follow that whole story exactly, but werewolf, mating, sorceress, what could all that possibly have to do with me?”
He looked both ways down the alley, and seemed to sniff at the air before he continued, “You are part of that bloodline, through your father. I was created, well, made into a werewolf through some elaborate spell, to protect you, to ensure you a long life, as your blood, and thus your life, is considered sacred.”
“Me? I have some sacred sorceress, werewolf blood in me? I have no tendencies to turn. I have no magic. The only wolfy or witchy thing I have is my connection to you. And what about my father? If he was to be protected, why did he die so young?”
“The bloodline comes from your father,” he continued in a quiet voice as if he were sharing a secret with me in a crowded room. He even leaned in, a smidge too close for comfort. “I’m sorry that you lost him. He had his own wolf, but that wolf couldn’t protect him from wanting to die. He loved you, but without your mother, he lost the will to live. His wolf couldn’t take the bottle from his hand or make him care enough to come back to life. Again, I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying that!” I grunted.
My jaw clenched as my teeth began to ache from my gritting them together. The pads of my fingers pressed into the wall until the burn went numb. Anger boiled up within me. The loss of both of my parents still a punch in the gut. To hear that someone couldn’t save him brought the loss all back to the forefront of my mind, gripped my heart like a vice. I saw him shiver then.
“You must be freezing out here,” I said, grateful for the distraction.
“I run warmer than most. Don’t worry about me. Where is your mind at? That’s most important right now.”
“I don’t know. I’m still at our connection. You came to me the other night when I called to you, as a wolf. Why not as a man? Why in the hell did you run out on me that night, after we’d shared so much? I get protecting me and all that, but why that minute, that intimate moment? I’d never, ever, given myself to a man the way I did to you. Of course, now I guess I have an explanation as to why you felt so familiar that I bared my damned soul to you,” I spat, looking at his chest only to avoid the pain I’d seen darken his eyes as my body flooded with my loss. “I bared my body, too, lost my inhibitions, everything. In every way, I was different with you. Our time meant something to me. Why did you allow it and then take it away?”
“I knew better than to get that close to you. I did. It is forbidden for me to interact with you as a man. But when I saw you watching me sing in that bar that night, it felt like a sign or something. I couldn’t help but to come talk to you, man to woman. I lost my head in your beauty, then once we talked, I lost my head in just knowing you. I’ve watched you for so long, but never really gotten to know you outside of observed habits and feelings. While a lot, it became not enough. So, that night, you in the bar I played in, after one taste of being near you, I just lost all ability to think rationally. One second turned into one minute. Then I needed one minute more, then a multitude of minutes,” he said, his head shaking.
I could feel his own self-loathing wash through my bitter pain. The burn inside my heart squeezed, choked out until the wave of compassion, a soothing balm, started its miracle work.
“So, you all the sudden came to your senses and bailed on me? Then you watched me, and you had to feel me want to so desperately see you again? I mean, you didn’t come around the first few days after, not as a wolf or a man, but then you did as a wolf. I had to hunt your ass down as a man. How could you do that to me if you can feel my emotions?” I accused.
“My wolf, your wolf, was there, even if I kept my distance so that you couldn’t feel me. I’m always there. It’s my job. Trust me, I wanted so desperately to see you again as a man. But, I knew the mistake I had made, no matter how wonderful our time together had been. It was made perfectly clear to me, an irrefutable sign, when you spoke of the savage wolf who had saved you from that mugger. When you put that together finally, that your wolf spirit and what you saw as a monster that night you were attacked were one and the same, I saw in vivid color the mistake I’d made in getting so close to you as a man.