I was running after them in the woods before it really even set in. Branches and thorns snag on my clothes and skin; I whip past as if they are nothing.
Shawn. Still. Loves. Me.
And he’s in pain. And I don’t care about whatever feral means or if he is more dangerous under the full moon than he had been any night before.
All my reservations, my hesitations, are gone, along with one of my shoes. Adrenaline pumping through my veins and my heart beating wildly, I’m not even sure where they are anymore. All I know is that I need to be there for him.
This whole time, we were both just hurting over the thought that the other might pull back first, would be the first to give into that fear. This whole time, I had ached for what it meant to be loved by him, to trust him, and let him hold my heart in his hands, and he had been in that same place, needing it from me.
This whole time, I’d been so scared of being hurt by him, I’d never really let him in. And he had never really given me the chance to love all of him. Now that the part he’s been afraid to show me is rampaging through the woods, I’m not about to prove his doubt right.
I pant when I get to the top of a hill. Ok, I have not really been building enough stamina for sprinting like this with myrambling hikes. When my other shoe falls off and rolls down to the bottom again, I know I don’t have it in me to go back and get it. Hiking up my torn skirt, I force myself on, the pine needles and fallen leaves crunching underfoot.
Now that I am starting to feel out of breath, I’m starting to doubt—not my convictions, but that my physical form can keep up with a werewolf’s ability to run cross country.
I start to slow down when I find a half-ripped pair of pants on the ground. I blink at it, wondering if one of them slowed down enough to take his pants off before ruining them.
...Weird. Ok. Not going to linger on this, I decide, and keep moving.
I don’t recognize this part of the woods; it is deeper than I have ever been in them before. Normally it is easy to glimpse out of the canopy to other hills dotted with houses and know I’m not far from the rest of Mystic Falls. But now all I can see, whenever I reach a patch where the branches clear enough to see the sky, is the bright moon overhead.
Then I hear them, snapping and snarling at one another. I hurry on, following the noise and finding a path of debris, broken branches and tree trunks with large scratches gouged into them.
A loud, vicious growl reverberates through the woods, raising the hair on the back of my neck, followed by a hurt whimper.
“SHAWN!” I yell in response, not knowing which sound had been him.
I skid to a stop, catching myself against a tree when I see them.
They are not truly wolves, but I can see why it would be easy to mistake them as such. They stand as if human, hunched over by their beastly transformations, taller and broader, sharper.
Beastly in every sense of the word.
And yet, with how completely different they look from themselves, I still recognize Shawn from the two of them. I can see him now, even with the tail, ears, and fur.
There are glimpses of his features, his frame, in the beast form.
I know the shape of his hands, the knuckle and bone that protrude in the same way, even with the long claws extended. The shape of his jaw is not so different in a muzzle, even with the fangs.
Shawn turns around and looks at me first, the moonlight reflecting off his eyes as they narrow.
The other wolf, Logan. He turned before he attacked Shawn back in the Hayes’ backyard.
The moment Logan notices me, a growl that sounds more annoyed than anything else emanates from him. He moves toward me, slow and menacing, but cuts short as Shawn lunges at us and knocks him onto his back. I dive aside the best I can, but it’s obvious that tackle hadn’t been meant for me in the slightest.
Shawn stands over Logan, snarling with claws extended. His little brother gets a foot under himself, pushing back across the ground and out from under Shawn’s reach.
With a shrug that seems all too familiar, the way brothers are, he runs off, tail between his legs.
And then, Shawn turns his eyes on me.
I thought I knew what fear felt like. But it doesn’t feel the way I knew it at all, the involuntary trembling, a dizzy confusion, the hot flush across my skin, the electric wave through me from head to toe. The ache between my legs.
Fear feels oddly exquisite, when I trust him. It’s almost like excitement.
He approaches me slowly, smoothly on all four, somehow deft and agile at his greater, lumbering size.
He stops about ten feet back, bringing a knee up to stand. His gaze takes hold of mine as he draws himself up to full height, until he is absolutely towering over me.
