My recollections of my parents were limited to my mom slipping away in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again; and a simple pine box carrying the body of my war-casualty father, whom I’d never really known. It was my grandparents who had raised me. They were the ones who had helped me with my homework, taught me how to hook a fish, bake a cake, and drive a car. It was them that I missed desperately every day, their loss that was a gaping hole in my middle.
I felt like an intruder standing in Holbrook’s office, looking at the pieces of his life that I could never touch, pieces that didn’t include damaged women with psychotic werewolf ex-boyfriends. Frustration bloomed as I stared at the picture of the carefree and happily smiling youngster. I’d been like that once, young and blissfully ignorant, feeling chafed by the simple life I led. And then Samson had come along and torn my life to shreds. I mourned the na?ve girl I had been, and cursed the fact that fate had taken that life from me. I had resented it at the time, but as I stood there, the weight of Samson and Johnson’s hatred weighing down on me like a ton of bricks, I would have traded anything to have that life back.
Swallowing hard against the sense of loss swelling in the back of my throat, I refused to let it overrun me again. I was not this weak and pathetic woman I had become in the last few days. I would not allow myself to become the victim again.
Closing my eyes, I sucked in a deep breath, making myself hold it until my lungs began to burn with the need to exhale, before letting it slip out between pursed lips. I breathed in and out several times until I had regained some semblance of control.
I didn’t realize I had clenched my hands into frustrated fists until the wetness of blood oozed between my fingers. Slowly uncurling my fingers, I gazed down at my hands and the four small crescents my nails had cut into each of my palms. I watched as the flow of blood slowed and then stopped, the tiny wounds fading to fine white scars before disappearing entirely. Even after eight years I was still struck by the miracle of lycanthrope healing, something as benign as a paper cut erased without a trace in a matter of seconds.
Calmer now, I still felt like an interloper, as though I was peering into some private part of Holbrook’s life that I shouldn’t see. Wiping the traces of blood from my palms on the legs of my jeans, I turned away from the picture of him and the older man. My gaze drifted over the rest of the room, passing over my shadowy reflection in the dark screen of his monitor. The woman that looked back at me from the dark glass was hollow-eyed and pale. I almost didn’t recognize myself from the young girl who had spent summers fishing with her grandfather. Had the last few days so transformed me? Or was it the years since Samson’s attack that had changed me so irrevocably? Would I end up as a deranged monster like him? After all, it was his power that had changed me. Did that mean that I carried a part of him with me?
The room suddenly felt hot and small, as though the walls were closing in, threatening to crush me. In the blink of an eye sweat covered me from head to toe and my hands trembled at my sides.
I had to get out. I had to get away.
Stepping out into the hallway I paused, retaining just enough control to keep from bolting. Forcing my eyes closed I leaned against the wall, pressing my forehead against the cool surface and waited for my ragged breaths and the pounding in my temples to subside. I couldn’t remember the last time I had come so close to having a full-blown panic attack. They’d been common enough during the trial and in the following months, every unexpected noise or foreign smell tearing at my fragile self-control. It had taken months of therapy to get a handle on my new situation and make it through the day without freaking out.
Coffee. I need coffee, I decided, sure that the caffeine would help to steady my nerves. I strode down the hallway in search of the break room, and, more importantly, coffee. Coffee fixed everything.
I heard jovial banter as I approached the break room. Three women sat around a table eating lunch, two of them looking younger than I was and the other old enough to be my mother. They looked polished in a way I rarely did, dressed in dark slacks and crisp white shirts that had probably never seen anything worse than an errant coffee stain. The sight of their manicured nails and pressed shirts made me feel like a slob.
Their conversation came to a lurching halt as I entered the room, the soles of my boots squeaking on the linoleum. I cringed at the sound, feeling more out of place than ever. It was at times like this that I wished I was really as invisible as I usually felt, that I could just slip by unnoticed.