The Shepard's Agony (13 page)

Shepard didn’t want an interruption, so he and ran into the men’s
room
. When Gwen was passing, he surprised her by dragging her inside and locking the door.

“What are you doing!” she screeched when he released her, checking the stalls to be absolutely sure they were alone.

“You couldn’t smell me waiting in here? I could smell you a mile away.”

She flushed. “I was … thinking.”

“
Great,” Shepard slammed
the
last stall door shut, convinced they would now have their privacy. “You have a bad habit of keeping things from me.”

Gwen tensed and was suddenly aware of the tightness in his shoulders. “Like what?”

“
Don’t play dumb.”
He approached her and she backed into a cold wall. Shepard knew he was radiating an angry aura, was probably scaring her, if she was capable of being scared, but he didn’t care.
Instead
, he put one hand on either side of her head.

“We were in the car, sitting right beside each other and you couldn’t even mention there was a chance I might not survive the … change.”

It wasn’t a question, it was an
accusation.

He could see the light bulb go off in her head. “Ah, so now you know what I’m saying.”

“David it’s not like that,” she said.

“
Then what is it like? It
seems
simple enough to me, all you had to do was tell me instead of letting me stay in the dark,” he growled. “
Now
, I’m friggin’ dying.”

“How did you find out?”

“You’re upset I found out?”

“
No! Just, just s
top being like this and tell me,” she demanded, pushing his hands away and stepping away from him. “And stop trying to scare me!”

“
I had to find out by listening to you talking about it to every
one in your pack. It’s nice that they can all make plans around my death but I can’t even know about it, thanks a lot!”

“Well, if it weren’t for you this never would’ve happened to begin with!” she shot back.

“
Oh yes, excuse me, I forgot that it’s my fault your boyfriend decided to scratch me. It’s entirely my fault because I had to save your life despite everything you never told me.
Well
, don’t worry about it because the next time I won’t bother.”

He could see her breathing hard now, her chest rising and falling in pent up fury. The wheels turning in her head.

Shepard could bet any money she regretted telling her father that she loved him. “You have no right to try and turn this around on me. You want to know everything there is to know about me? Fine, I’ll tell you right now.
My mother left my father when she found out what he was and I can’t even remember what she looks like because she never bothered to visit, call, or even drop me a post card because she was afraid of me.
That’s
why I never told you about myself. I graduated high school
with
a B average and went to college to be a
vet
.
But
, guess what? Animals don’t like being around werewolves, so the only animals I can get near are the one’s I’m hunting, which is why I work in a diner.

“
I stole thirty dollars out of my dad’s wallet when I was fourteen and lost my virginity when I was eighteen. There, the big mystery is solved. Happy now?” But she wasn’t done, she was still fuming. “
And
, what exactly do I know about you, Mr.
High and
Mighty? I didn’t tell you about myself because I was afraid you’d leave, and you know what? I was right, because that’s exactly what you did. You lied to my face about everything, and you … you attacked my pack and stole our address book!”

So that was it. The revelation made Shepard feel a little easier knowing she kept herself from him, not because she was planning on biting him while he slept at night, but because of a fear she held that he confirmed when he left.
But
, he still had his own reasons for lying. “No,
I
attacked my own brother when he had his gun pointed at your head.”

“What are you talking about?”

He looked her hard in the eyes. “You were a wolf, standing completely still, open for any kind of attack in front of the bounty hunter who gave you this.” He stepped
closer,
sliding a finger over the bandage on her face.

She shivered, partly due to the touch and the adrenaline from screaming her head off, but also because he was right.

She’d forgotten all about it. When that man was hacking his own arm
off
, she stood stock still. Anyone could’ve come up to her and blown her head off and she wouldn’t have known it was coming until it was too late.

“You …”

“I didn’t just grab you and take you away, Gwen. I watched your back until I could get you out of there. There wasn’t anything I could’ve done for anyone else.”

His hand slid lower to cup her cheek, his face dangerously close to
hers
. Her heart was still pounding, but not because she was angry anymore.

“And
, the address book?”

To his
credit
, he managed to look ashamed. “I didn’t know they would find
it
, so I didn’t worry about it. I only know it’s gone because you just told me.”

She stared him in the eyes, trying to find some truth.

“I don’t want to see you get hurt,” he hesitated and smiled. “No matter how mad you are at me.”

“I can take care of myself,” she said.

He smirked. “So you’ve said.”

And they kissed each other. Gwen felt that same tingling feeling that spread through her body when he touched her in the motel
room
.
Only
, this
time
she wasn’t tied
up
. She freely wrapped her arms around his neck when Shepard pushed her back into the wall. His weight was crushing
her
, but she didn’t mind. She liked it, wanted more of it.

Despite how roughly he treated her with his
body
, he massaged her lips softly with his own, his beard scratching and tickling her mouth and chin until she pressed back hard and bit into his bottom lip.

He groaned.

Slow kissing was romantic and all, but Gwen liked it rougher. She especially liked getting him in the mood to give it to her like that.

Shepard complied and grabbed her breast roughly through her shirt, making her cried out.

“
I think I’d like to see
that birth mark of yours again,” he said when he pulled away, a wicked grin on his face.

Gwen sure as hell knew it would be a bad idea
,
but
, at that
moment
, she didn’t care. She didn’t care that he was a hunter or that she was still angry with questions that needed answering. She would have let him do whatever he wanted with
her
, good or
bad
, without caring one whiff, but a pounding on the door broke them apart.

“Who
’s in there? I need to use the washroom!” Not John or anyone else in the pack, just a human, an older one from the sound of it. Probably a patient.

“Go somewhere else!” David yelled back.

Gwen could feel him through his jeans and sensed the frustration that soaked him. She wasn’t in much better shape, but the interruption was enough to get her thinking.

“You ain’t the janitor, there’s not a sign on the door.”

Gwen didn’t know whether to be
mortified
, burst out laughing, or both. She settled for mortified and quickly straightened her clothes.

David looked at her as if she’d just taken away his favorite toy.

“
This wasn’t going to happen anyway so don’t look at me like that.”
She ran her fingers through her hair,
honestly
not sure if it would or wouldn’t have happened at all.

I’ve got to stop this, I need to have more control
. I need to stop talking to myself
. She made to walk off, but he grabbed her arm.

“We’re not done yet.”

She looked back at him and decided to show some pity. “When this is over—”
If it ever ends,
she thought. “—I’ll show you my birthmark again.”

The pounding continued against the door. “What are you doing in there? You got a woman in there? It’s the men’s room!”

Gwen unlocked the door and slammed it open, giving the man on the other side a half a second to jump back before his face was hit with the door.

“
Thank
you
.” She smiled at him and went to sit on a bench, David trailing behind her, not knowing if the thank you she gave was genuine or sarcastic.

***

“
How can you trust a doctor who takes bribes? What kind of doctor is he anyway?” David asked,
needing
something else to think about. The clock on the wall said four a.m. and all he could think about was kissing Gwen in the men’s room and where it would have led if that elderly patient hadn’t interfered.

“
A good one,” Gwen said. “Doc takes bribes because he has to so he can see us under the table
,” she defended. It wasn’t like he could put in his paperwork, “arm bitten off by werewolf,” or have any of their blood
tested
. If there was a case where the patient didn’t have the money on them right away, Doc saw them anyway. “He’ll need to take a look at
you
, too.”

“
I know,” h
e said, grumbling. Not that it would do any
good
since they all thought he was a goner.

Shepard stopped scratching at the cut and turned away from her, the very thought making him angry all over again.

“
I’m
sorry
,” Gwen whispered. She could tell he was angry about being scratched and his upcoming change; with good reason due to the risks.

“
For what? You didn’t do this to
me
,” he muttered, a fresh hatred for John in mind.

For a moment she didn’t answer him. It was true, she hadn’t done it to him, but if she hadn’t thrown him out of the truck, John wouldn’t have taken the opportunity to scratch him. She was still waiting for him to get out of the room with Doc so she could scream at him. She wanted to punch and kick and scream until she couldn’t scream any more
. All because of John’s foolishness, David was possibly facing the last hours of his life.

The thought made her eyes
burn
; she had to blink it away before the burn could turn into tears. She wanted to be strong for him and promised herself she could cry later when she was alone.

“
Would it really be so bad? Being
a werewolf?” she asked after a time. Part of her just wanted to know how he would feel about it should he somehow survive.

Shepard briefly wondered why she would ask him such a thing when she knew perfectly well it wouldn’t get to that. “My father kills
werewolves, so do my brothers, even me at one
time
. You know that. They’ll want to kill me
now
, too.”

She reached a hand out to touch his arm,
but pulled back at the last
second
, grabbing and holding
on to
his hand instead.

He turned to look at her, eyes wide at the gesture, and squeezed her hand as he melted.

“Maybe your dad will accept you?” she asked.

He let go of her hand and stepped away. “My father hates werewolves.”

Of course he
does
,
Gwen thought with a sigh. In a perfect world, his father wouldn’t hate werewolves, and in that world she and David would have met each other, fallen in
love
, and been happy without that void between them.

“But
, you’re his son,” she pressed. “He can’t hate werewolves that much.”

Shepard opened his mouth, hesitated, and then spoke. “I never told you that I was named after my older brother, did I?”

Gwen blinked, she knew he had three brothers from the questions she’d asked him in the car, which was surprising because most Shepard stories spoke of a family of at least ten, but there was another he didn’t tell her about? “Another older brother?”

“
Yeah, his name was
David
,
too
. He died before I was born.”

“What happened to him?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but if it would provide her with the answers she needed then it had to be done.

“A werewolf bit him. Got onto our farm and tore his arm nearly right off before my father could kill it.” She watched him clench his fist around his cut. “He didn’t know werewolves existed before that.”

Gwen’s stomach clenched. Of course there were werewolf horror stories like that, just as there were stories of serial killers who hunted homeless
teenagers. But
, whenever a werewolf was the killer, the story became that much more gruesome, and werewolves everywhere suffered for it.

“
I’m sorry.” It seemed as if she was apologi
zing a lot lately.

Shepard shrugged. “Don’t be. I didn’t even know about him until Jimmy told me the story.”

Gwen didn’t need to be told how the boy died. With a wound so
severe
, he wouldn’t even make it to the first change.

So
, that was where the Shepards got their connection to werewolves. It was a personal vendetta. A man out to avenge a dead son.

Despite all the hatred the Underworld held for the
Shepards, a hatred that she too held at one time, she couldn’t help but find it incredibly sad. If she were to lose her father, who was standing guard over Bill’s bed at that very moment, she didn’t know what she would do. In a strange sort of way, she almost didn’t blame David’s father, but felt pity. She would have to remember to replace that pity with the instinct to
survive
if she ever came face to face with him, otherwise he would kill her.