| |
It was shortly before dawn when I slowly walked back toward the castle. I was dirty, covered in mud and my long hair was matted with leaves and twigs.
Before I left the shadows under the trees on the side of the castle, I sniffed the air like an animal. When I smelled nothing threatening, I crept stealthily closer to the castle.
It was still early, and I did not encounter anyone else as I quietly walked up the stairs and down the dim-lighted corridor to my room. In my dark room, I walked straight to the mirror in my bathroom. My reflection shocked me. I had fangs jutting out over my lower lip, my nostrils were wide and flaring, patches of dark hair sprouted on my cheeks, and my ears were big and pointed.
“What do I do?” I asked my reflection.
In the mirror, I saw an iridescent cocoon of aqua coloured light shimmer around my body, and then I was morphed into me again.
After I had a shower and washed away all the mud and dirt from my body, I still had a deep-seated fear, which I could feel on the pit of my stomach. Wrapping a towel around me, I walked back into my room and my hand reached for the light switch. I was tired and it felt as if I could sleep for days.
My room brightened and I took a few steps back until I bumped against the wall behind me. Bradley was sitting in a chair in the corner of my room.
Immediately, I had a mouthful of fearsome fangs. “Get out,” I tried to say.
He stood up from the chair and started to walk toward me. “Amber,” he said softly as his hand lifted to reach for me. He was walking toward me cautiously, as if he did not want to startle me, as if I was an angry dog who could attack him at any moment.
“Amber is dead!” I said, even though my tongue felt too lop-sided to form proper words.
He said nothing. He just walked closer to me, his arm stretched out between us, his palm facing me.
“Dead, dead, dead.”
“She’s not dead.”
“Can you save me, Bradley?” I whispered.
“I'll do what I have to.”
I growled at him; the sound came from deep down my throat.
Bradley did not cower in terror, instead he stepped even closer to me.
I was already with my back against the wall and there was nowhere to hide.
In one quick move, Bradley trapped me by placing his hands on either side of my head against the wall behind me.
His eyes darkened as he looked me in the eyes, and I could feel my teeth receding back to normal as he moved his body closer to mine.
I mumbled, “I’m a monster.”
He said, “No. You are beautiful.” He thrust his hands into my hair and crushed his lips to mine.
I felt a beat in my blood, and I could not think. All I did was want. All I wanted to do was take, to have everything I had ever wanted.
He started to pull away from me, but I fisted my hands in his hair and kept his mouth on mine. My tongue met his and my hands became demanding, tucking his shirt free from his pants so that I could run my hands up his back. I did not feel submission, I felt aggression.
His hands gripped my hips and pulled me closer to him, and I could feel his body pressed up tightly against mine. He tore his mouth away from mine to kiss me on my throat, on the sensitive place below my ear.
I took a deep breath and it was as if the fog in my mind cleared a little. I shouldn’t do this. “Wait,” I said.
“Amber...”
The sound of his ragged breathing almost unhinged me completely. My body had never before felt this alive and I could feel the blood racing through my veins.
“We shouldn’t,” I said softly. “What about Chloé?”
At the mention of her name, he stepped away from me. He smiled a little. “Didn’t think you were more inclined to become a wolf.”
I stepped away from the wall. “Do I look more like a meek rabbit?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Can we talk about this later?” I wanted him to leave. He could have told me he did not care about Chloé, that he and Chloé was over, that he would rather want to be with me, but he did not. The one moment he acted as if he cared about me, and then the next, he acted as if the kiss, both kisses we now shared, had meant nothing to him at all.
Would it be better for me just to choose to be something other than a normal girl, with all this hurt and being cut wide open every time he kissed me. How could he not know how I feel about him, when every time we were together, I was standing in front of him, my feelings clearly written on my face.
He left my bedroom without saying a word.
I slipped into a pair of comfortable pyjamas and went to stand by the window, looking out at the grey dawn.
A rabbit sat timidly on the grass not far from where the clump of trees began. Its ears were twitching and then its large eyes blinked frightened. A fox stalked from between the trunks of the trees. It glanced up at me, framed in my bedroom window, and it was as if it was smirking when our eyes met. The fox moved with great stealth, moving closer to the rabbit and then all at once, in a sudden, wild movement, the fox leapt and pounced on the unsuspecting rabbit, killing it in an instant. Its eyes gleamed ferociously, and blood smeared its whiskered mouth as it eagerly devoured the rabbit.
If I did not know better, I would have thought the fox overheard me asking Bradley if he thought of me as only a meek rabbit. The fox wanted me to see how quickly and easily it could kill a rabbit.
With its tail curled high, the fox looked up at me once more, before it ran away and disappeared between the trees.
