But I see it. The wolf.
My head feels heavy, my hands too tight around the knife as I watch the creature I’ve seen in my dreams emerge from the woods. Heat creeps up my neck, my breath stalls on my chest, my hands grow clammy.
In the same heartbeat that I’m afraid to encounter it again, curiosity—morbid and aroused—holds me in place. I can’t believe I’m seeing it again so close to the house. Something about how I had only seen it in the woods before made it feel less than real, made it easy to convince myself it was a dream.
The barest shreds of dusk peak though the woods, capturing and turning the unmistakable silhouette of it, and filling it in with detail as it saunters towards me.
It slows its tired pace, coming to a stop maybe a hundred yards from the house.
I put my hand up against the kitchen window to hide the light’s reflection and make it easier to see into the weak morning light.
The wolfish creature hunches down in the grass, each moment looking not quite the same as it had the second before.
My nose nearly touches the glass.
The beast rolls its shoulders, and stretches its arms overhead, suddenly far too human, far too familiar. My heart stops.
Shawn.
My heart is thudding in my chest. I can’t think. I don’t know how to process what I just saw. It couldn’t have been Shawn all along. I know what I saw. I know the wolf was right there. But how can Shawn be both himself and that beast?
I stagger away from the window. I catch myself against the kitchen island, holding on for support as my knees feel less than sturdy.
I don’t know what to think. Reality and those dream-like encounters in the woods are crashing together.
I look up at a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye, and Shawn steps through the kitchen doorway, appearing tired, carrying an air about him that is far too serious, a little scary even.
His dark eyebrows draw together when he sees me. “What are you doing here?”
I gasp, startling back a step. I don’t know what to think. I just saw him—he was out there. He wasn’t human, he was something else, some kind of creature, something out of my nightmares.
The ringing sound of metal against concrete pierces the air, the cold sharp edge catching my heel as it rebounds.
I don’t have time to think or react—somehow, I’m up on one of the tables before the knife hits the ground again, Shawn’s hands digging into my thighs as he sets me down.
“Shit, Elise,” he mutters. The storm door slams behind him, rain flecked across the screen so heavily it blurs together the autumn-colored mountains behind him. “What happened to kitchen safety?”
I don’t understand how he can joke like that right now.
“You startled me,” I say, and despite being the one bleeding, I feel like there’s bigger, more important things to worry about.
He raises his eyebrows at me and takes my ankle in his hand, lifting it up enough to press the edge of his T-shirt against my cut, where the knife glanced off my foot. A little spot of red wells up through the white fibers.
I don’t know that I even felt it happen with how preoccupied my mind is. My hands are clutching his arms, when did that happen?
It’s just Shawn,myShawn. The way he’s always been...but he’s not.
Shawn is a...werewolf? I just saw that with my own eyes. I’m trying to process what this means. Are the things I think I know about werewolves true, or is he something else entirely?
He doesn’t seem quite himself, the man I know in the daytime. Or maybe, I’ve just never really seen him, knowing all that he is.
He breathes heavily, the flush of red up his cheeks. There’s rainwater dripping off his face, his hair and clothes are soaked, the scent of the woods on him.
My eyes rake over the way his T-shirt stretches across his shoulders, down to where he’s pulled the edge up, revealing the thick trail of hair disappearing into his unbuttoned jeans.
“What are you doing up so early?” he asks again, his eyes searching mine carefully.
He wants to know if I saw him.
