Memoirs of a Girl Wolf (32 page)

              “Don’t you have friends?” he asked.

              “Nope,” I replied. “Just you.”

              “We’re not friends,” he said.

              “We’re something,” I said.

              “What about your boyfriend?” Phoenix asked.

              I shrugged and lowered my head.

              “I didn’t like him anyway,” Phoenix added.

              I didn’t respond. Instead I curled up in the arm chair and started doing homework while Phoenix rummaged through my bag to check out the food I brought with me. We spent the next hour in silence as he ate Oreo’s and I read.

              Once it was dark, I was ready to go outside and gain consciousness, but Phoenix had recently been having me do a lot of endurance stuff. He believed a strong human Mickey made a strong wolf Mickey, and currently human Mickey was made to run five miles a night through the snow.

              But his inquiry about Reign affected me, and I slumped into a mood wrought with concern and sadness. For the past weeks, I had done my best to distract myself from feeling heart broken. Phoenix had trained me well. I tried to keep clam and serene in the face of my relationship blowing up right in front of my eyes, but now I couldn’t distract myself any longer. I couldn’t shove my feelings down and ignore them. They weighed heavy inside me.

              Phoenix must have sensed my mood because once outside, and before I had a chance to start stretching for my run, he threw a snow ball at me which hit me right in the center of my face.

              “Let’s have fun tonight,” he said.

              “Fun?” I asked.

              “Let’s play.” He morphed into his wolf state and pounced on me.

              I was on the ground crushed under his weight. I stared up into his glowing yellow eyes and then he licked me. I laughed, pushed him off, and stood.

              He pranced back and forth a few feet in front of me; swishing his tail back and forth. He howled and jumped at me and then jumped back.

              “Really? I haven’t been asked to play since fourth grade,” I said. He pranced around me, leaping in high jumps then chasing his tail until he came up to me and nudged me. Then jumped back snapping his teeth at me, playfully. Before he had a chance to pounce on me again, I lunged toward him and morphed mid jump.

              We chased one another, and jumped and snapped our teeth and rolled in the snow running through the woods. It was the most fun I had had in months, possibly all year. I felt carefree and liberated. All the worry and anxiety left me and I could just play.

              We had run so far that when we broke through the edge of the woods we saw sandy shore of Lake Michigan. Phoenix trotted up to the body of water, wading a little into the cool lake, and lapped the waves with his tongue. I followed him and did the same.

              The full, bright moon reflected off the water and provided enough light for me to see my own reflection. It was the first time I had seen myself as a wolf.

              It was startling at first. It took me a second to understand that the animal I was looking at was me, but I was beautiful.

              I wasn’t big like Phoenix, nor was my fur course or shaggy like his. My fur was ginger red, like my hair, but brighter. It looked more like a glistening blood orange, though it was difficult to tell in the dark. I had a small body, but long legs. A flat head and a long, white nose, and broad and pointy ears lined with thick hair. This was the wild, dangerous beast everyone was afraid of? How could that be so when I felt so free?

              I jumped around the water. My long legs provided me with great height. I jumped over the rolling waves and delighted myself in my reflection until Phoenix bulldozed me over into the water and I went under. When I bobbed back up to the surface I say him taking off down the shore and I quickly rolled over onto all fours and followed him, kicking sand and snow behind me.

              I caught up to him and tackled him. We rolled over one another and then we heard running from behind us. We both looked toward the sound of male voices calling to one another. We couldn’t see them, but hearing them was enough. Phoenix charge forward back toward the woods and I followed. We ran as fast as we could all the way back to his cabin. Once inside, he bolted the door shut and blew out the candles. We sat in the dark.

              “Hunters,” he said.

              “Do you think they followed us,” I asked, trembling.

              “I don’t know. I’ll stay awake.”

              I walked quietly over to the cot and sat down. Unsure of what this meant. How had they tracked us?

              Phoenix ate all my food I had brought for the weekend and I knew he did it on purpose so that I would go home Saturday and stay home until night. I grumbled and scolded him as I packed my bag and left his cabin. I guess our night didn’t change how he felt about spending time with me outside of training and because of our close encounter with Hunters he decided we could no longer have fun or stray far from his cabin.

              I hated having to go home to the empty house, but my stomach was aching with hunger, but I soon forgot about my hunger and Phoenix’s rude hospitality when I drove into the winding lane to my house. I sensed Reign. He was home. I could smell his wood smoke smell and hear, faintly, his southern drawl drifting from his house to my ears.

              I flew from the car and started running toward his house, but I came to an abrupt stop.
What am I doing?
I thought. I didn’t know if he wanted to see me. He was gone for two weeks. I was mad at him, but I wasn’t. I needed to talk to him, see him, explain, confess, and tell him everything. If his absence taught me anything, it was that I didn’t want to lose him and if it meant being honest with him in order to maintain a relationship, then I’d do it even though I knew Phoenix wouldn’t like it. Didn’t I get to have control over my life?

              Mom married Viktor, so clearly at some point he had to tell her he was a wolf and that point had come and passed for Reign and I, so I sucked in a gulp of air and walked forward through the woods and toward him.

              But he wasn’t at his house. I knew because of his scent which I followed to the middle of the stretch woods between our houses. I came up behind him and stopped a few feet away. He was kneeling on the slushy grey ground. His back was to me. I couldn’t see what he was attending to. As quiet as I was, I knew he sensed me because his body tensed up and he froze just like I did.

              I wanted to run forward and grab hold of him, but that wasn’t an option, not with how our last encounter ended, so I waited for him to stand and turn around and address me.

              “I’m laying traps for my dad,” he said. He was still on the ground and it took him a moment before standing and facing me.

              When he did, I almost fell over. I was so elated to see him there before me so close. He ran his hands through his golden hair and blinked a few times at me, frowning. He was still hurt. I didn’t need to sense his feelings to know. I could see it in his ember eyes the way he looked at me then looked away staring at a twisted branch of a tree above my head.

              “Where have you been?” I asked.

              He shrugged. “Tracking.”

              “So you’re hunting now?” I asked, disappointed.

              “No, I just didn’t want to be here,” he said.

              I remained calm and blank faced with my hands folded behind my back as I stared at him, and this irritated him that I wasn’t responding to him in any emotional way. He expected me to fall on my knees and beg his forgiveness or to break down sobbing that he had left. He expected me to show any kind of human feeling other than the blinking statue I had become, but Phoenix had trained me so well and at the moment I was doing my best to remain calm.

              “There’s something I need to tell you,” I began.

              “You’re with him now?” he asked, turning slightly away from me

              “No, but it includes Phoenix. It’s difficult for me to say. I’m still coming to terms with it myself. There’s this thing in my family that I inherited from my dad’s side. A Morphic gene and this gene cause me—”

              “You’re a Morphic?” he asked, stepping away from me.

              “Yeah.”

“My dad hunts Morphics.” Reign pointed to the trap behind him. “A Mophic wolf killed my mom.”

              So I was right. His dad was a Hunter and there was my solid proof, but I had always known hadn’t I? Since the first time he looked at me from across the pond and made my blood run cold. I’m sure Viktor had known as well and that’s why he didn’t like Orgon, but I didn’t want to admit it. I still didn’t want to admit it.

              “I’m a wolf,” I said.

              Reign grabbed his head in his hands and spun around as if he were in pain. “Are you responsible for—”

              “No!” I shouted. “No, I haven’t hurt anyone and neither has Phoenix.”

              “Phoenix is one too?” Reign asked.

              I nodded. “And you’re a hunter,” I said, slowly. Realizing with every word that our relationship had in fact met its end.

              “No, I’m not. I don’t want to be. That’s why Pap came back to convince me to start hunting, but I don’t want to,” he said. He walked toward me closing the space between us. He gently grabbed hold of me. “I don’t believe all Morphics are dangerous—Maude taught me that, and now I know it to be true because I’m in love with one?”

              He hugged me and we stood for some time holding one another with our feet in puddles of melting snow. I wanted to stay in his arms for the rest of the day, but more than that I wanted to believe that despite everything we had just learned about one another that we were going to be okay, but I knew if not in this moment, then sometime soon that I was going to have a make decision about him because his dad and Thrice were still very real threats and one day he would maybe become one too, but at least for the moment I could pretend we were okay.

30

I could blind myself to see only what I wanted to see. To see Reign as innocent as he believed himself to be. He truly thought he could deny his genetic makeup, but I knew better. I knew he would be able to as much as I was able to deny mine: not at all. His blood, his senses, were different. They were heightened and they were heightened to hunt me. As he grew older, this instinct would grow stronger and whether or not he could control the instinct was something neither of us were sure of. At first we pretended it didn’t change anything, but it did for me. I kept watching him, waiting for him to—I don’t know, pick up a gun and aim it at me? Then there was me. Would I attack him? I was still training. My emotions were still in charge and I knew him as a threat. Would I try to eliminate the threat in my wolf state? What if…I didn’t even want to think of it, but I knew I needed to protect him and the best way to protect him was to no longer see him at all.

But I waited. We acted as normal as possible. We talked about prom and I ordered a dress from J Crew. He continued picking me up in the mornings and taking me home in the afternoons. We avoided talking about where I went at night. We didn’t talk about his dad and we didn’t talk about Phoenix. It was a silent agreement between both of us. We slipped into a horrible phase that was ordinary and limiting. We were scared to converse about anything related to animals or hunting, and we were embarrassed when one of us slipped one of the taboo topics into conversation.

Then on a morning in the middle of March it became clear to me that I couldn’t put off breaking up with him any longer. He was leaning against his locker waiting for me to pack my bag for the night. School had just let out and the hallway was obnoxiously loud and filled with excited teenagers that it was Friday.

I saw Kristen walking down the hallway with Max’s arm draped around her shoulder. She walking, hugging her books tightly to her chest and looking up at Max with wide, naïve eyes as he mumbled something to her out of the corner of his mouth. The sight made me mad. Slamming my locker shut, and startling Reign who jumped and gave me a confused, but concerned look, I told him to wait for a second and I jogged down the hallway after Kristen.

“Hey,” I said, grabbing her elbow.

Max and Kristen spun around, and when he noticed it was me he hugged Kristen tighter to his body. Kristen winced, but her eyes lit up when she looked at me, and then the flame died into a dead stare as she noticed Sydney at her locker a few feet from us.

“Were busy,” Max said.

I glared up at him and when I did he removed his arm from Kristen and backed up.

“I’m kind of thirsty,” he said, whirling around to find the nearest drinking fountain.

Once he was gone, I pulled Kristen closer and lowered my voice because I knew Sydney was trying her hardest to listen. “You’re going out with him or something?” I asked.

Kristen flipped her hair and stood straighter. “Yeah,” she said, proudly.

“Don’t. He’s a jerk.”

“You had your chance. You’re just jealous,” she snapped.