He wasn’t sure what happened. He wasn’t even sure what he’d seen was real. There were things his mind couldn’t make sense out of. The wolf that terrified him almost becoming a man, the crackle of his bones a sickening refrain in Zach’s ears and a sound he was never going to be able to shake. It was a horrifying secret, a thing out of nightmares and trauma he struggled to accept as reality. Even if he’d doubted for one second the menacing creature changing in front of him, the man’s ominous reaction only added to the truth weighing Zach down.
“I’m not going to kill you. I just dragged you up the damned mountain. If I was going to kill you, it would’ve been done back down there by the lake.” His voice was deep, echoing the thunder coming across the mountains, and his face broke into a handsome smile, rueful with a touch of goof. It softened his features, taking the edge off of his granite hardness. “Besides, with as hard as it’s snowing right now, it would be a bitch to dig a hole to hide your body. How are you feeling?”
It was easy to be terrified. Terror was a default setting easily clicked on in most human brains, and it was an emotional state Zach had learned a lot about over the past couple of years. He’d been through various states of terror, from a realization that his life would never be the same to the frustration and fear he didn’t know if he was strong enough to survive what happened to him. Looking back now, those frightening moments seemed so silly, much like fleeing a wolf straight off a mountainside only to discover the wolf was more man than creature. It was the kind of secret people would kill to keep, but the man who’d come to save his life—not from a large black-furred menace but rather a deadly lake—didn’t appear to be very worried.
The wolf was settling down, but the man kept glancing back at it, worry deepening the grooves on his tanned face. There was an intimacy to those looks, a relationship of some sort, and Zach would’ve dismissed what he’d seen as hysteria or delusion, especially since he was weak and trembling beneath the heavy layer of blankets… except for the persistent cloud of concern hanging over the large man’s demeanor and the handfuls of black fur scattered around the man’s bare feet. His fear eased back, lessening, but Zach was aware of the presence, prickling under his skin.
“Seriously, I’m not going to kill you,” he reassured Zach. “I need to know how you’re doing. We have to decide if we are going to risk going out into that hell storm. They’re warning everybody to stay inside, but if you need more than what I can give you, we need to get going now, and I still can’t guarantee that we’ll make it.”
“I think I’m okay. Maybe a little sore. Definitely cold. And I feel like I’ve bruised every bit of skin I’ve got, then froze it. Which is pretty much what happened. I lost my footing on a hill and went into the lake. He didn’t touch me, just scared the hell out of me.” His body ached in places he’d injured before, and the scars along his limbs were puffy when he skimmed his fingers over them, but Zach did a quick inventory of his pains, figuring he’d survive them. After all, he had survived worse. “He chased me. Through the woods by the Wilson Inn… well, my inn now. I thought he was going to kill me back there.”
“So you ran?” The man shook his head. “That would’ve touched off Ellis’s hunting instinct. If you had just stood still, he would’ve lost interest and wandered off.”
“I’ll try to remember that for the next time,” Zach replied. “I got scared. Hell, I’m scared to death now.”
“There is not going to be a next time.” The glower was back, an intense storm as frightening as the one howling outside of the cabin’s thick walls. “If you bought the old Wilson place to reopen it, then there will be people, and since I can’t even trust one person to stay on their side of the property lines, you’ve made my life… our lives… a hell of a lot more complicated. Because of you, I’ll have to try to figure out someplace else for Ellis. All I need is one person… one idiot with a gun…. I can’t risk that.”
Zach noticed the man did nothing to reassure him he didn’t have to be frightened.
“I meant what I said. I’m not going to tell anyone,” Zach replied softly. The wolf slept, uneasily restless in his slumber. His massive shoulders convulsed and his paws twitched, his back leg kicking a wooden chair set under a round dining room table. “What is he? What happened to him?”
“Nothing happened to him. Well it did… that was before… and it was something horrific enough to make him want to stay like… that.” A sadness lingered in the man’s expression, and his smile revealed a chip on one of his front teeth, an odd imperfection turning monster into human. “You’re not the first one to find out what Ellis is, and you probably won’t be the last. Mistakes get made, and he’s not thinking straight. Hasn’t for a long time. But just so you know, even if you do tell someone, they’re never going to believe you. We pass as whatever we need to be. Blood tests, anything you can throw at us, what we are is undetectable. I’m not afraid of you saying anything. I’m more worried that you won’t be the only one he chases. So that next time you talk about, could be his last.”
The wolf—Ellis—whined, but his eyes remained closed. The sorrow in the man’s face was back in full strength, and the raging storm outside seemed to howl in sympathy at the wolf’s distress. The rest of Zach’s fear whispered away, carried off by either the wind or the wolf’s thin keen. There was pain in that sound, an anguish ripped up from Ellis’s marrow.
“He’s scared,” Zach whispered without thinking. His eyes found the man’s face, startled to discover flecks of amber emerging in his pale gray gaze.
“Ellis has his own monsters that chase him through the forest.” He grimaced, then looked away. “He can’t outrun them, not even in his dreams. This is the safest place for him, and now, you finding us—seeing him—endangers everything.”
“That doesn’t have to change. Look, do you have anything I can put on?” He tried to sit up more, but the pillows beneath him kept sliding and the room seemed to tilt. “Shit, the room is spinning.”
“Lie back down. I think you took a hit to the head, judging by the lump you’ve got growing back there.” The man came closer, consuming the air and space around him. He smelled good, like fresh linens and crisp air. “Let me get you something to drink. I want to make sure you’re warm inside. We’re trapped in here, and I don’t know how long the storm is going to last.”
His thoughts scattered like sparrows before a cat, and a lethargy stole into his bones. His eyelids dragged, too heavy to lift back up when he blinked, and Zach struggled to keep the man in focus. Without the threat of death looming over him, small things began to edge into his consciousness.