Chapter 4
1186 Words
“At least let me take you home.” Henry gestured behind him where a shiny black SUV was waiting, parked in the street. “Please, for old times sake.”
“I don’t want to risk you.” I find myself saying before I can stop myself. “Not when you’ve already made it.”
“Risk me?” He lets out a laugh. “Risk me from what?”
Not what.
But who.
Silas.
When I didn’t share his laugh, Henry suddenly frowned. “Lily, is everything alright?”
I wanted to say no.
Nothing has been alright for two years.
But I didn’t want my bad luck, Silas in particular, to come for him too.
“Are you in trouble?” He pressed, finally eliminating the space between us by holding me by the shoulder. “If you are, I can help you. I know I don’t look like it, and you probably still see me as the chubby little kid chasing after you, but I’ve got money now.”
Involving him in my mess, risking his dreams, was the last thing I wanted to do, so I forced a smile. “No. Everything is fine.”
“Then let me take you home.” He urged, pouting slightly, reminding me so much of his old self it was hard to look away. “My mom will never let me hear the end of it if I don’t.”
I wanted to walk away.
I really did.
Especially when I could almost feel the eyes watching us edging closer, but the past won over the future and I nodded. “Okay.”
He opens the door to his shiny black car and I climb in, not remembering if I’ve ever been this close to this kind of luxury before. There’s a big screen in the middle and lights glowing like stars overhead.
Thankfully, I’m not given time to dwell on this as he closes the door and makes his way to the driver's seat. We’re driving away the next second, the city blurring past us.
“Where do your parents think you are?” He finally asked, his eyes only on the road ahead.
“Teaching a late night ballet class.” I whispered quietly, my mouth drying from the topic. “Why do you think I’m here?”
Henry didn’t even hesitate. “For your parents.”
I find myself laughing while blinking away tears. “Ironic, isn’t it? I’m doing something that would disappoint them, when I’m only trying to…”
His hands tightened around the stirring wheel. “You don’t have to, you know.”
“I’m not ready to talk about it. At least not tonight.” I waved a weak hand at him, trying to banish the conversation in fear that I would break down in front of him.
I'm already at the lowest of low.
I didn’t need to dig myself deeper.
Henry thankfully didn’t push me, but the sudden silence was mind numbing.
“Can we listen to the radio?” I asked, my voice coming out raspy.
“Sure.” He reaches towards the glowing screen in front of us and presses a button, the radio coming to life.
“Werewolves, everyone wants one but not everyone can have one.” A promotion started playing almost instantly, and it is, of course, about werewolves yet again. Recently, there's been a surge of campaigns to make werewolves seem like a luxury commodity. “At our Werewolf Binding Prep School, you can be one of the worthy. In just eight years, you can have a werewolf of your own. Power. Protection. Pleasure. Whatever you want.”
“Can you believe that?” Henry scoffs and rolls his eyes in disgust. “They’re talking about werewolves as if they’re not monsters. Remember one of our neighbors before?”
I remember him well. We actively avoided that man. “The one that looked like a raccoon with his eye bags.”
“We swear he did some illegal stuff because he always had his werewolf guarding him. And I just know that werewolf wanted to eat us at one point.” His grip on the stirring wheel only tightens even more to the point that I fear it might break off. “Weren’t there animal attacks and killings in our neighborhood around that time? It was him. It had to be.”
How could I forget?
His mother was attacked… nearly killed.
She had claw marks on her face and all over her body that wouldn’t heal.
All because she looked at a werewolf the wrong way when she was walking home from the grocery store.
“I still can’t believe he actually managed to get a werewolf.” I pointed to the radio where the promotion continued to play. “Don’t you have to train your whole life to get one? To be physically fit to hike up their mountain? To be mentally stable enough when encountering them? And to have whatever it is werewolves seek in a master?”
Henry nods, gritting his teeth. “They say werewolves see what you want from them and what they can get from you.”
“Money? Connections?” I suggested, thinking about Silas and his own werewolf.
Big.
Scary.
And happily serving the worst kind of man.
“Everything. They want everything when choosing a human because they’re essentially binding themselves to one. It has to be the perfect human. It has to be someone who has prepared their whole lives to take on a monster.” Henry touches the side of his face— the exact same spot where his mother was forever branded. “They say there are so many intricacies in a werewolf. Binding together is just the beginning.”
“But if you’re worthy, you get protection and power.” I held my breath at that, the realization of what I had just said dawning on me.
“That’s a big if.” He tells me quickly with a dismissive shake of his head. “Even if you prepare all your life, there’s only a fifteen percent success rate. Less even. The other seventy five percent never came back from that mountain. They’re killed for being unworthy or doing something that pissed off the werewolves. That’s why I don’t understand why people risk it.”
Some people have no other choice. Some people are just desperate.
People like me.
Oh.
A werewolf that can protect me and my family.
A werewolf that can defend us.
Even Silas will hesitate against a werewolf.
“And most people only use their werewolves for s*x,” Henry adds, but I wasn’t listening anymore.
My mind was already elsewhere.
A surge of something goes through me, burning through my veins and up my spine.
Hope.
The dread. The fear. It was replaced by hope.
Werewolves are monsters, but Silas is an even bigger one.
And to win, I had to fight fire with fire.
I have to get my own werewolf. Even if it kills me.
- Writer
