Arielle and the Three Wolves (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (6 page)

It was Saturday night. Tomorrow was Sunday, and she would be off from the clinic. The new movie of the week was on HBO, one that had just been in the theaters last year, but of course Arielle never went to the theater. Instead she paid for movie channels at home and waited for their arrival on that venue.

She was alone with the wolf as she always was now. She made popcorn. The wolf ate with her. More cereal bowls came in handy for this. Half of the popcorn she shared with the wolf in the bowl because he would never eat from her hand. Anyway, she didn’t really want him to eat from her hand. He was too proud for that.

She curled up on the sofa and watched the movie in her living room. The wolf got up on the couch with her. This was another thing that he always got his own way about. The floor was not where he liked to be. He was either in bed or up on the furniture. Normally when she was in bed he was in it with her. She had stopped any attempt to break him of the bad habit and had come to accept it.

They each ate out of their respective popcorn bowls. She turned off the lamp in the living room, and they watched the movie in the dark. She petted him idly as the movie played upon the thirty-six inches of the screen, tucked her legs beneath her, and curled up against the arm of the couch.

The wolf seemed to be agitated. She thought his leg might be sore. Before the movie went off, he left her on the couch and went over to the small bookshelf. He used the wall next to it to jump up and lean against. He reached over with his snout and knocked a dictionary and a set of encyclopedias off the shelf. They went crashing to the floor.

“What are you doing?” she asked him. He had never once disrupted her house before. The movie was almost over, so she decided to let him have fun. As the last scene played, she watched him out of the corner of her eye. It looked as if he flipped pages with his nose and almost as if he read the print.

When the credits of the movie started to scroll, she reached for the remote on the coffee table and turned off the television. She was tired. Though it had been Saturday, she had spent a twelve-hour day at the clinic. She was ready to crawl under the covers in her bedroom and go to sleep.

She got up off the couch to see what the wolf had done and try and set its mess in order. She dropped to her knees on the carpet with it and gave it a playful rub behind the ears. “What in the world got into you tonight, wolf?”

The wolf didn’t pay her any attention. She started to put the toppled encyclopedias back up on the shelves. Then she reached for the dictionary.

The wolf put his paw on it and wouldn’t let her have it. She looked at him. He looked at her. She thought something was wrong. He gave her a low growl and forced her to look down. His paw was held over a word, but of course it was just random.

“I don’t understand what you’re doing, wolf.”

Then it lowered its nose and seemed to point at the same word. Arielle cleared her throat and looked down.

Tonight
.

She looked at the single word at the top of the left page for a couple of seconds. “Tonight.” She spoke it aloud. Then she looked back up into the eyes of the wolf. “What’s going to happen tonight, wolf?” Sometimes she almost expected him to answer her. “Look, wolf, nothing is going to happen tonight other than I’m exhausted and I’m going to bed. You’re welcome to join me if you want to, unless you want to stay out here and read the dictionary all night.”

She gave it a last pat on the head and got up off the floor. A low growl from the wolf followed her as she walked down the hallway. “Maybe you’re feeling a little pain from that leg now. Tomorrow I’ll give you a full examination and see about changing the splint. We can make that more comfortable for you. But tonight I’m too tired. I performed eye surgery on a cat today. I’m beat. Don’t bother me until the morning.”

The wolf came after her and was inside the bedroom door before she was. She shut the door behind them and headed to the bed. After she had the covers turned back and had gone beneath them, she turned around and expected the wolf to leap after her. It remained on the floor. Apparently it wouldn’t join her tonight. This was a first.

She yawned and turned out the bedside light. “I think that’s a good idea,” she told the wolf. “The bed is too small for both of us. Good night. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She rolled over onto her side, hiked up her knees and closed her eyes. She was asleep in ten minutes.

* * * *

When she awoke before sunrise the next morning she turned around and was in a man’s arms.

He opened his eyes and looked at her in the dark.

Arielle screamed. She struggled against him. His naked chest was hard and would not yield to her. Engulfed in his arms, she tried to squirm out of his grasp, but he held her like iron. Her fists balled, and she pummeled him. Every effort she made was like a twig snapped against the side of a mountain. She couldn’t get away from him.

Finally he must have seen the terror written on her face, and he let her go. Immediately she flew back out the side of the bed and fell to the floor. She was naked. In her panic she could find nothing to reach for to cover her body.

Tears flooded her eyes, and she scooted away from the bed across the carpet. He just peered over the side of the bed at her as if annoyed by her behavior. The discarded T-shirt lay a foot away from her. When she saw it, she made a grab for it and held it over her front. Now with a paltry cover she felt like she could get to her feet. Her knees were shaky as she rose off the floor.

“Who are you?” she asked the man in her bed.

“You know me, Arielle.”

“I’ve never seen you before in my life.” Frantically she looked around the room for the wolf. He might be able to come to her rescue in this situation. He might be able to save her, but she didn’t see him anywhere in the room.

“Don’t be afraid of me, Arielle.” His voice was calm when he spoke, deep and with command.

“What are you doing in here?” She knew her voice was hysterical when she spoke. She couldn’t help it. Her worst fears had come true.

“Now calm down, Arielle. I think it’s time we talked.”

He made no attempt to go to her or restrain her. He just calmly watched her from under the covers of her own bed. Her fear mixed with anger. She nudged her way over to the dresser. She reached behind her, but never took her eyes off the man. She felt blindly into the top drawer until she felt the cold metal touch her fingers. Then she grasped it in her palm and brought it out before her.

She pointed the pistol straight at him. “Don’t come any closer to me,” she warned him, though he had not made a move off the bed.

“You’re not really going to shoot me, Arielle,” he told her in that deep, calm voice. He pushed off the covers and slowly got out of bed. He was as naked as she was. He was a huge man, and there was a lot of him to see. Arielle tried to keep her eyes above his waist and the aim of the gun true.

“I said don’t come near me!” she screamed at him. She wanted to get her phone. She couldn’t remember where she had left it last night when she had come home from the clinic. She wanted to call the police. When she couldn’t see it in any of the usual spots in the bedroom, she decided she must have left it to charge out in the living room. Somehow she would have to make her way out there and retrieve it. The only problem was he stood between her and the door to the bedroom.

He took a couple of steps toward her, and she backed away from him an equal distance. When he walked she noticed he had a limp and favored his right leg. She brought the gun out farther in front of her body with a single shaking hand. With her other hand she covered her nudity with the discarded T-shirt from last night.

“Arielle, you know me. You aren’t going to shoot me. You love me, don’t you remember? We love each other.”

Her hand shook so bad she thought the gun was about to drop from her hold. Her mind was confused, and she couldn’t concentrate on his words. “Who in the hell are you?”

“I’m the wolf.”

She backed up to the wall. Her naked rear hit it with a thud, but she kept the gun trained on him. “What are you talking about?” She looked down to the floor. When the man had gotten out of bed, the splint the wolf wore had fallen out from under the covers and uselessly down to the carpet. She had it tied very tight along the angle of the wolf’s hind leg. There was no way it could have fallen off on its own.

“I’m the wolf,” he repeated and took another step to her across the bedroom carpet.

“Get away from me,” she shouted at him. Tears still streamed down her cheeks.

“I tried to warn you last night. Don’t you remember the dictionary? The word
tonight
. I tried to tell you I was about to shift back to a man.”

“How did you know?” she asked the man. Had he looked in her window when the wolf took down the dictionary from her shelf? “How long have you been watching me?”

“I’ve been with you for a month now ever since you hit me with your car.”

“I hit a wolf with my car.”

“You hit me with your car. I am the wolf.”

He took another step toward her. He was almost right on top of her. Her finger tightened around the trigger and she took aim. “Please don’t make me shoot you.”

He reached out to her. “Arielle, this gun’s not even loaded,” he said, and removed the pistol from her hand. He set it aside on top of the dresser. Then he ran a finger down her face and wiped at a tear. His finger was rough but gentle. She remembered his touch from the night.

She was completely defenseless now. He had her backed against the wall. She was about to hyperventilate. She gripped the T-shirt in front of her chest as her last line of protection. But she didn’t know what good it would do.

“Calm down,” he told her. “It’s all right. Everything is all right. I’m still here.”

“What did you do to my wolf?”

“I told you already. I am the wolf.”

“How do you expect me to believe that?”

“Because it’s the truth.” He still wiped tears off her face and tucked a loose strand of hair behind an ear.

“Wolves don’t turn into men.”

“I’m a man now, but I’m also the wolf you said you loved.” He was huge and hovered above her. She was forced to look up into his eyes. They were brown and intense. She recognized them. They had been the eyes of the wolf. Even his proud posture was the same.

“It isn’t possible. I don’t believe you’re the wolf.”

He knelt down before her. All the while he held her eyes. She was still too afraid to move. She waited for something to happen. After a few seconds his body contorted. It looked painful but was a quick process. His body became disjointed and indistinct. His eyes never left hers once. Suddenly the wolf was back and at her feet. Everything he told her was true.

“Oh, my God!” She gasped. She felt nauseated and thought she would throw up.

The wolf went through the same distortion the man had gone through. In less than a minute he was back. “Now you believe me, Arielle?”

“How can this be?”

He got up from his knee. There was a grimace of pain on his face. It had hurt him to make the change, but he had done it to convince her of the truth. He limped away from her and back across the room to the bed where he sat down on the edge. He lay back in the pillows, an arm over his head, and rested. There was now some space between them, but she no longer wanted to call the police. She didn’t know what she wanted to do.

Suddenly she became aware of the fact that they were both naked. “Would you turn around, please?” she asked him.

He only looked at her. The wolf had looked at her in the same way. She wanted to cover herself, but couldn’t do it with his eyes on her body. At last he relented and for once let her have her way. He turned his head on the pillow. Quickly she brought up the T-shirt and hunted around for the head and armholes. When she found them she shrugged into it and let it fall to her knees. As soon as her head came up through the shirt, she saw his vision was trained back on her. She smoothed down the shirt modestly.

“What are you?” she asked him.

“Some people would call me a werewolf. I prefer the term
shape-shifter
.”

“You turn into a wolf when the moon is full?”

He smiled at her. His face was very strong and handsome when he smiled. “No. I shift anytime I want.”

“It’s been you this whole time and not a wolf?” Some aspects of the wolf’s strange behavior made sense to her now. Its intelligence was like that of a human, the way it comported itself and its actions were all the same as a person, the way it looked at her, and those eyes. The wolf had just been too smart to be real.

“Yes.”

She still stood in the corner of the room, too afraid to approach him. “Why didn’t you let me know before now? Why did you stay as a wolf all this time? You could have changed back into yourself?”

“My leg was broken. It still hurts like hell when I shift because of this damn leg. I couldn’t have shifted any sooner than now. The pain would have been too bad. Our bones change when we shift. A broken bone doesn’t shift very well.”

“So you’ve been stuck as the wolf this whole time?”

“Yes.”