Chapter 19: Chapter Investigating

I make it downstairs and sit on the couch. I turn the Tv on and turn the volume up to drown out the sound of the shower running upstairs. After a while of watching Tv Brett makes his way down the stairs in the sweatpants and t-shirt.

“Thank you for letting me take a shower.”

“Of course,” neither of us talk for a minute when I decide to ask about the feeling I had earlier. “Brett earlier I had this feeling and it felt like someone was talking in my head or trying to at least.”

“You want to know what that is right?”

“Yes I do, it felt like it was trying to make me do something.”

“That is your inner wolf.”

“My inner wolf?”

“Yeah, every werewolf has an inner wolf. Most werewolves learn to let it talk without trouble and learn to shut it out at times. There are times when your wolf comes out as if you’re in danger.”

“What if you are not in danger is there other things it can be?”

“A few yeah. Because wolves are instinctual if there are some things that humans don’t always think about that wolves do.”

“Like what?”

“Wolves don’t do things the way humans do obviously and sometimes they run on lust especially when their mate is involved. Do you know what your wolf was trying to say.”

“No, I just know it was trying to get me to go somewhere.”

“When was this, was it at Connor’s house?” he questions. I don’t know if I should tell him the truth, I don’t know what that means for me for us so I lied.

“Yeah it was at Connor’s it slipped my mind earlier but now I remember that it happened, so I thought I should ask you about it.”

“Well if you want I can teach you how to let your wolf talk and how to block it out when you want.”

“That would be nice.” Brett takes my hand and leads me out to the backyard. He sits down at the edge of the woods and motions for me to do the same. I sit down cross-legged in front of him.

“It is easier to let your wolf talk for the first time outside as wolves live in the woods.”

“Alright, so what do I do?”

“Humans are strong-willed creatures but so are wolves so your wolf tries to fight your human to speak out so you have to be willing to let it come through.”

“Okay sounds simple but how do you do that?”

“Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth.” I follow what Brett tells me to do. Breathe in and out, in and out. I feel relaxed and calm hearing the wind blow the trees. I hear a snap in the woods right behind me, followed by a voice from my head, my wolf’s voice ‘shift, get ready to fight’. I leap up from where I was sitting and shift as quickly as I can. I turn to face the woods and a low growl escapes my mouth. That is when I see Brett’s wolf standing just into the woods, wearing a wolfish smirk, I growl louder. He comes over to me and nudges me with his muzzle and my wolf calms down. ‘Lick him, he is yours, you want him, we both know that’. My wolf speaks and I start to try and ignore it but I am not sure how to. Brett nudges me again and we both shift.

“What was that for?” I ask my wolf still talking in my head making it hard to think.

“When your wolf senses you are in danger that is one of the times it will talk so I made it seem like you were in danger.”

“What if I would have attacked you?”

“I knew you wouldn’t wolves investigate before attacking to assess the situation.”

“Okay but now that it can talk how do I get it to stop, it is hard to think.”

“You are in control right now so you can tell it to stop talking.” I take a second to do as Brett says and though my wolf grumbles a little she stops talking.

“It worked.”

" See it was easy wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, and now my wolf can talk whenever.”

“It may take a little while of consciously letting it talk but it should.”

“Thank you for your help, Brett.”

“Of course, anytime.”

“How about we go inside and watch a movie.”

“Do you have any ideas about what movie you want to watch?” Brett questions as we head towards the house.

“We can figure that out when we get inside.” We decide on some random movie but we don’t fully pay attention as we are both pretty tired. We sit on the couch in front of the tv Brett with his feet up on the coffee table and an arm around me. I curled up into his side, my feet behind me, my head resting on his chest. I close my eyes and the beating of Brett’s heart lulls me to sleep. The next thing I know it is morning. I woke up laying in my bed with a blanket over me. I sit up, the blanket falling off me. I look over to see a note on my nightstand.

I smile as I put the note down and climb out of bed. When I get to school Brett is at the main doors waiting for me.

“Good morning Erica,” he says as I come to a stop next to him.

“Good morning Brett.” he gives me a kiss on my forehead.

“Are we going to start our investigation into Connor today?”

“I think we should start tomorrow, so we can get the assignment today then have time to plan the questions to seem less suspicious when we ask him.”

“Good idea so just act normally today?”

“Yes.” and that is what we do. We head inside and go about our normal day. I can tell that it is bothering Brett to pretend that everything is normal but it is what we have to do in order to find out what he is hiding and if he can be trusted. At the end of the day, Brett and I head back to my house and set up at the dining room table.

“So what types of questions do we want to ask him?” I say grabbing my laptop out to type out the questions.

“How about questions like: why did you move here, where did you live before coming here, did he want to move. Things like that as well as some not suspicious questions.”

“So like what things do you like to do for fun, what is your family like, those types of questions.”

“Yeah exactly. And something about how the unpacking is going or something relating to that as we already know he lied on that one.”

“Alright, are there any other investigative questions we should ask?” I ask as I type all the questions down adding a few other noninvestigative questions.

“For now I think those are good. And if we think of any while we are questioning him we can ask those.”

“Yeah, that’s true. Well anyway, I think that this is done for now so we should get to our actual homework.” for the next hour and a half or so we work on our assigned work until Brett brings us back to the topic of the investigation.

“Did we decide when and where we were going to investigate him?”

“I don’t think so. But we could do it here after school.”

“No! absolutely not,” Brett exclaims.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want him anywhere near your house not when we don’t know whether we can trust him or not.” I can feel Him tense up next to me.

“Okay I see where you are coming from he could be dangerous. And if he knows where I live he could possibly hurt me.”

“Exactly.”

“So we won’t do it here. But we could do it at lunch in one of the teachers’ classrooms.”

“That’s a good idea,” Brett says and I can feel the tension leave his body. “Let’s go for a run.” He blurts out, standing up from the table and reaching his hand down for me to take.

“Why?” I question not totally opposed to the idea but more wondering why he wants to go.

“I need to get this off of my mind. I keep worrying that he could hurt you at any time and I may not be there to stop him. I just need to not think about it for a while and just let loose in the woods running around with not a care in the world.”

“Alright let’s go.” we take off out the door. I barely have time to shut it before Brett is in his wolf form urging me to shift. When the door is shut and locked I shift into my wolf form and we both take off in the direction of the woods behind my house. We spend at least an hour running around in the woods, playing, fighting and just having fun. But then we start to feel hungry so we head back to my house and cook something up for dinner. It was a lot of fun cooking with Brett. We messed around almost as much as we actually were cooking. After we finished cooking and eating we cleaned everything up and then sat and watched some tv until Brett headed back to the den for the night.

The next morning I meet Brett at the main entrance like always we head to our lockers to get what we will need for our class and then head that way. Surprisingly we did not see Connor at all until the period right before lunch.

“Hey, Connor!” I call to him from a little ways away as Brett and I try to catch up to him. He turns around and smiles at us.

“Hey guys what’s up?” he questions looking between the two of us.

“Well we have an assignment for one of our classes and we have to interview a person so we were wondering if we could interview you by any chance.”

“Um yeah sure sounds like fun when do you want to do it?”

“Are you free at lunch to do it.”

“Yeah of course.”

“Alright great meet us outside the cafeteria after class and then we will head to a quieter room.”

“Okay see you after class.”

“See ya,” I say letting Connor walk away to his class as Brett and I head to our class.

“Now we will see what he may be hiding,” Brett whispers in my ear.

“If he is. Remember everyone is innocent until proven guilty.”

“But we did catch him in a lie already.”

“But that is only one piece of evidence we need more than that to confront him and solve our problem.”

“I guess you have a point.” Brett sulks as we enter our next period class and take our usual seats right next to each other. One more hour and then we will start unraveling Connor’s secrets I say to myself as the teacher enters the room and begins the lecture.