22
Shawn
I’m fucking losing it.
I can barely think. Even turning my head a few degrees feels like the world is spinning, tilting on a new axis as my bones try to shift, to complete the wreckage of myself. Holding it back is like holding my breath for too long. The pain and discomfort, pressure and itching in my bones is dizzying.
I can feel it in my jaw as palpably as I can feel hunger or exhaustion. The need to close my teeth around her soft, yielding flesh overwhelms me. Some terrible part of my mind is telling me that I could shift and catch up to her in seconds. Just thinking about her makes me salivate, and I hate to imagine why.
I don’t want to chase Elise. I can’t. I won’t.
I rarely draw out the shift for so long, but I have to. I need to hold it off as long as I can, to get myself into the brewery cellars so that Elise will be safe.
I’m finally coming to grips that everything I’ve ever done with Elise was a mistake. It was a mistake to involve her, to put her safety so immediately in the path of danger. Every moment I have ever loved her has been selfish. All it’s done is hurt her.
I rinse her blood off at the outside spigot at the brewery, a tap meant for watering the shrubs that line the perimeter. It’snot enough to get rid of the smell completely, but it helps calm me down some. I feel less like a monster I can’t get away from.
I’ve never voluntarily locked myself in the brewery’s cellar, at least not since becoming an adult. It wasn’t really our choice when we were younger.
I’m starting to feel like it might be the only good idea I’ve had in weeks.
I should have never let her near me. I should have said no when she’d started kissing me, should have pushed her away. I knew it was a bad idea, but I let my desire to hold her, to breathe her in and spend every second I could with her outweigh her safety.
Her knowing what I am didn’t solve problems the way I thought it would. Every problem we ever had comes back to what I am, the nature of my monstrosity. Perhaps things were better when I’d been able to keep it from her, and the worst I’d ever done was break her heart.
But her blood on my hands...I tore up her arm without even realizing. All I wanted was to hold her, and I couldn’t manage that much.
Despite being nine p.m., the brewery hasn’t yet locked up for the weekend, and I spot why as soon as I enter the brick building.
My mother raises an eyebrow at my partial shift. She hasn’t even started to shift yet, a testament to the control she’s mastered in her age. I know she has her flask of aconite tincture in her purse, and I’m sure she’ll have a quieter night than I’m in for.
“Shawn, what are you—” she starts to say, surprised to see me here. Her brows narrow and pinch together as she spots the blood on my shirt, and she doesn’t bother to finish her question. “Are you alright?”
I shake my head a little. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, why this full moon is so much harder to bear than any other has been. I’d been a fool to think I knew what control was, that I had enough, when the shift could be this bad.
I take another step inside, shutting the door beside me.
She frowns. “You smell like Elise.”
I’m not about to tell my mother I just left Elise alone in a field with my cum drying on her neck and gouges in her arm. Running away from her is simultaneously the most dickish and smartest thing I’ve done.
My mother sighs, glancing away from me. “That’s disappointing. Even after she knew you were married.”
The last time she started this conversation on a similar note, I’d been ready to snarl at the slightest provocation. Tonight, I’m just defeated. I don’t have it in me to respond with any ire.
“I’ve been divorced for years, Mom. She knows that.”
Deanna looks at me, her glare suddenly much sharper than before.
I can’t help but scoff, rolling my eyes. I can’t do anything right in her view. First, I marry the wrong sort of girl, then I commit the terrible act of divorce when it doesn’t work out.
“But your ring—”
“Yeah, I have hers too. I carry my regrets around on me.”
It’s been tucked into my wallet long enough that it’s imprinted into the leather.
I can’t even meet her eyes. I glance around the lobby of the brewery entrance, the way the furniture has changed since I was last here, and fall into a seat along the wall, no will for any of it anymore. The need to shift fully still sickens me, like my wolf is trying to lunge its way out of my throat.
