It turns out I don’t actually remember where any of the plates should go. And I’m not sure which of the pretty wood panels in the lower-shelf units conceals the dishwasher, so I opt for handwashing the plates and propping them up to dry on a dish towel.
I used to really hate doing the dishes, but right now it seems like the only thing I can do that doesn’t start more shit. I keep thinking things can’t get any worse, but that bar keeps being pushed, all too often by my own family.
Of course, my mom is quick to find me after dinner, showing up in the kitchen doorway when I’m halfway through my task.
I gnash my teeth together. I’d like to just ignore her for the rest of tonight, maybe tomorrow too. Instead, I glance at her, working against the muscles in my jaw to find what I can even say to her.
“You had no right to tell Elise about my ring.”
“So, you hadn’t told her,” my mom observes, like she has everything figured out, and I resist the mighty urge to roll my eyes. No, I didn’t tell my ex-wife I kept both our wedding bands out of sentimentality. I wonder if she’d have done that if she knew who Elise really was.
I feel my hackles rise in response, when I catch sight of the waxing moon in the window, pale blue in the early evening,inching its way to full. Its influence on our blood is the last thing we need right now.
There’s something so repellent about this conversation, something almost physically nauseating. We’ve had this fight before, with and without my dad present, a hundred times. Ever since I met Elise and was naive enough to tell my mom about the girl I’d been smitten with.
“I just don’t think it’s smart to spend so much time with her. She’s busy prepping for the wedding, and you...” she trails off, but I feel like I know the next words by heart. They’ve been carved into my chest.
“You shouldn’t get involved with her, Shawn.”
“That’s—” I bite down on the words before I can say them. She’s not my wife anymore.
My claws puncture the soapy sponge clenched in my first. Anger burns up through my veins, I can feel my transformation threatening to unravel my rationality with feverish, raw, unmitigated fury.
I step back, shutting the water off in the sink and putting the unfinished dishes aside. I take a long, deep breath through my nose.
It’s not nearly as calming as I would like it to be.
“I can’t deal with this right now,” I tell my mom, expecting resistance. “I’m tabling this for tomorrow, ok?”
“Shawn, we need to talk—”
“I am notfuckingable to have a rational conversation right now,” I snarl, unable to contain myself, my every nerve a live wire.
It breaks my heart to see the genuine surprise on her face. For all our fights, there are so few times I’ve actually yelled at my own mother.
“I need a breather. Tomorrow, ok?”
She glances at the window, and slowly nods. With that, I leave the room, the house, the property.
It’s too early in the evening to shift, but I feel the need to go running in the woods and burn off the anxious, angry energy thrumming through my veins. If I’m dead tired, at least I won’t start more shit. I hope.
There’s a wolf going feral in Mystic Falls, and I’m terrified it might be me.
I don’t know for sure what was left of that deer behind the bar was my wolf’s doing, but I can’t rule myself out. Every night closer to the full moon, I lose a little more of myself to it. I don’t always remember why I have to pick little clumps of fur out of my teeth.
There was one time in my memory that our dad killed a coyote just before a full moon. He’d been pretty unpleasant to be around during the day in that period, there had been some issues with the brewery that he’d been stressing over.
As glad as I am that he’s gone, some part of me wishes he was here so I could ask him questions about it. The wiser part of me knows I’d never really been able to ask him anything.
This last week, it’s been getting harder to control my wolf than it usually is near the full moon. The aconite ale hasn’t been doing enough to keep my wolf at bay since I got here. Just going for runs until I was too exhausted to do anything except collapse in my bed wasn’t helping the way it usually did either.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been avoiding finding my mate. There’s only a couple of things that will drive a wolf feral: losing one’s pack, and being kept from one’s mate. Well, I’ve lived without a pack for a while, it can’t be that.
I don’t know how to begin looking for my mate. I could try to follow a scent, but I’d need to pick it up first. While my knot may be the main evidence I have that she exists in Mystic Falls right now, it’s not exactly something I can search dick-first with.
Besides, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to look for my mate. When I thought of my parents’ union, any bond resembling that didn’t feel like something worth wanting.
What would be a mate outside the ideas I was raised with? Hell, what was even a healthy marriage?
