Chapter Fifteen

Dylan

Dre stares at me in shock and then burst into a fit of laughter.

“What the hell Andrea?” I complain, “You’re supposed to give me advice or something! Not laugh! This isn’t funny! He’s a fucking psycho!”

She calms down and breathes through her remaining laughter, “I’m sorry D-Rose but you’ve got to admit it is a pretty hilarious scenario.”

I look at her with my eyebrow raised. “The humility is astounding,” I reply sarcastically.

“Fine, fine,” she groans and sits up on the bed, “Give me your hands and close your eyes.”

I look at her strangely but do as she says.

“Good,” she says, “Now I want you to relax and think about this rationally.”

I start to yell at her about the nonexistence of rationality in this situation but before I can I feel a calm sensation wash over me. It’s light like morning dew but heavy enough to suppress the anxiety I felt about everything.

“Now, do you believe him?” she asks and I start to tell her no but she interrupts, “Even on the smallest level?”

I stop to reassess. Sure I believed him before, but he hadn’t bitten my god damned neck then! I want to trust that the small part of me that believed doesn’t exist anymore but to my surprise it hasn’t disappeared at all, instead it’s gotten bigger.

“Y-yes,” I answer uncertainly.

“Why?” she asks.

I think about my answer before I respond. Why do I believe him? Maybe it’s because he seemed so sincere in what he said. Maybe it’s because even when he bit me, I felt pleasure, joy, elation even, like everything is finally as it should be. Under the umbrella of knowledge I have of the human body I know that him biting enough to break the skin shouldn’t have caused me a jolt of euphoria. Even if I was turned on by intense biting I would have felt some inkling of pain. The second his teeth connected with my neck everything he said to me made sense. I threw him out simply because for the first time I couldn’t make sense of the thoughts in my own mind. I wasn’t afraid of him, I was afraid of myself.

“And you have no reason to be,” Dre says answering my thought.

Wait a second. My eyes spring open and she looks at me with a knowing smile. There’s no way. Did she just read my mind?

“Yeah I did.”

I squeal and drop her hands, scooting back to the head of the bed. “What the fuck? Am I surrounded by freaks?”

She rolls her eyes, “Rude. Especially considering you are one.”

I open my mouth to say something but nothing comes out. My brain is going a mile a minute with questions and I can’t figure out which to ask first. Has she always been able to read my mind? Can she hear me right now? Does she hear me all of the time? What is she? Do I even know her at all?

“Yes, yes, no, a witch, and yes, of course you know me. We’ve been best friends for years Dylan and this is literally one of the only things I’ve ever kept from you,” she answers calmly.

I sigh, thankful, for right now at least, that she can read my thoughts so I don’t have to try and form them into sentences.

“Wait, what do you mean by I’m a freak too?” I ask, finally finding my voice.

She smiles, “Karter wasn’t lying or crazy. You really are his mate and the both of you really are werewolves.”

“If that’s true then…wouldn’t my parents have to be?” I ask thinking back to the few werewolf stories I’ve read through on Wattpad, “Or did he turn me when he bit me?” My hand immediately flies up to the wound on my neck.

“It doesn’t work that way exactly,” she answers, frowning, “As far as I know, yall are born relatively human until you get your wolf from a ceremony performed when you turn sixteen or when you find your mate and they put le chomp on your neck, whichever happens first.”

“Damn.”

“Pretty intense stuff, I know, but on the bright side you’re going to turn into a huge wolf on the next full moon…or maybe that’s not that bright. I hear that shit HURTS,” she says shaking her head.

“So…I was born,” I gesture to myself, “this way? My mother is a w-wolf? My father?”

She nods and lets me adjust to this newfound truth. “When we turned sixteen, I fully developed my powers and your mother and I had a huge fallout over her telling you about who you are.”

I can feel the tears finally welling up and I find some sick relief in crying. It’s like I’m letting out the final remnants of the woman I used to be, I’m definitely not her anymore.

“She threatened to call child protective services and report me for living alone after my parents died. She said that she’d do everything in her power to keep us apart if I told you about yourself. I was convinced that you’d never believe me and that you’d think I was insane. She said that it’s for the best if you never become a wolf, that you never know that life.”

I raise my hand and stop her, I can’t hear anymore. This is all too much. I cry to the point of wailing and hiccups and Dre holds me like she used to when I’d cry on important days that made me miss my father.

My father…the werewolf.

*

A day and a half. That’s how long I was able to keep away from Andrea. I wanted to stay away longer to process but the silence in my apartment killed me. I kept replaying the conversation in my head, the conversation that changed my life forever. The words werewolf, mate, and turn got louder and louder until I broke down and called. I blame my social awkwardness for my lack of friends which led to the quick liquification of my resolve.

I could’ve called Reed but what would I say? “So I found out my best friend is a powerful witch, my mother is a werewolf and so is my soul mate, oh and did I mention he bit me so on the next full moon I’m going to turn into one too? We didn’t have any plans for Tuesday right? Great. What’s been up with you?” Please. There’s no way he’d believe me and the last thing I need is him telling everyone about something I hardly understand myself.

The past week and a half has been a blur. I haven’t talked to Dean even though he’s been calling nonstop and I for damn sure haven’t talked to my mother. Dre has told me everything she possibly can about what I am but there are only some things that can be answered by my mom or Dean and I’m just not ready to talk to them yet.

I can’t be too angry with Dean however. Dre says it has something to do with the mate bond. I can tell that’s going to get very old if he and I are to be together according to ‘fate’.  However I can’t blame him for being dishonest, we’ve only known each other a few months and then when he did tell me look at how I reacted! I still only fully believed what was happening when I went to the restroom to change the bandage on his bite - or mark as Dre says they’re called - and it was already healed. All that was left in it’s place was a bruise that looks like a hickey. Every day I look at it and it’s changed a bit, today it looks less like a hickey and more like it’s trying to form letters, I’ll have to ask Dre about that.

“Hey baby-cakes,” Reed slides his arm around my shoulders on the way out of the hospital breaking my train of thought.

A wave of nausea crosses over me and I have to take deeper breaths through my nose to stop it. It seems to happen every time he touches me now, yet another lovely perk of this damned mating bond.

“Hey Reed,” I try to sound chipper and slyly slip out of his hold to open my car door.

“Is it me or have you been avoiding me all day?”

It’s not you. I’ve been avoiding you and up-chucking all over the floor.

“Must be you! I’ve just been working, you know, business as usual, getting ‘er done, and all that jazz,” I ramble, throwing my bags into my backseat.

“Oh! Okay, well I’ll try harder to catch you,” he reaches out and grabs me around my waist, “tomorrow.”

I laugh awkwardly and before I can try and get away from him he spins me around and leans in for a kiss. I quickly give him my cheek and bite my lip to avoid the overwhelming nausea.

He pulls back and looks at me strangely but I quickly interject, “I had onions on my salad for lunch.”

He nods and takes a playful step back and I smile before getting into my car and waving goodbye. Fuck. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. Eventually he’s going to key in on something being wrong. Reed is a lot of things but dumb is definitely not one of them.

My phone starts to ring, startling me as it plays through the speakers of my car. Freaking Bluetooth.

“Hello,” I answer trying to sound chipper.

“D you have to get over her now!” Andrea demands into the phone.

She sounds panicked and it immediately scares me, “What the hell is going on Dre?”

“You have to come now! Hurry!” she says before the phone shuts off.

I instantly do a u-turn in the middle of the street cutting off an old man who blows his horn and flips me the bird.

“Fuck you too! You geriatric douche!” I yell out the window and keep driving. I have no time to wait or stop, my best friend is in trouble.

I barely throw my car into park before I hop out. Dre’s apartment complex looks nice and calm as it always does. They’re made from old converted Victorian row houses and normally I’d take a moment to appreciate the beauty but not today. I run to the second house, the electric blue one, and take the stairs two at a time. It dawns on me as I get to the open door that I have no clue what I’m going to do when I get in here. I left my phone in the car, I have no weapon, and this werewolf shit hasn’t kicked in to the point where I’m a Jedi Master yet. To sum it up, if there’s an intruder in here, I’m fucked.

I open the door as quietly as possible and the old thing squeaks anyway. I grit my teeth in anger and grab a candle stick from the front table, calling Andrea’s name out apprehensively.

“In the living room,” she yells out quickly.

She doesn’t sound scared or in pain to me.

When I round the corner I want to hit her with the candle stick my damned self.

Karter

The past week and a half I’ve been calling Rose non-stop. She won’t pick up but she also hasn’t had that damned human over to her place so I can’t complain too much. As much as I want to give her some space I picked possibly the worst time to bite her ever. The full moon is this coming Tuesday and she has no idea what she’s in for. By now she has to have come to her senses and realized I’m telling the truth so what’s stopping her?

I throw the tennis ball at the wall across from me again and catch it when it bounces back. The constant noise is probably driving anyone else home insane but it’s helping me to think. So much has happened this past week.

I finally told my parents and Grey about Dylan. They were all happy for me until I told them everything else that’s going on with us. I had to listen to an hour long lecture from my mom about how no matter what happens I have to raise my children knowing about our heritage and in pack life. She came so close to basically saying I need to buy my mate Being a Lycan for Dummies for Christmas. Aside from the initial shock of it all they all want to meet her as soon as we get our relationship back on track.

But as always in my life with the good comes the bad. We’re still no closer to finding out who tried to kill me. However we did find out how everyone got sick. Gretchen was able to isolate the cause in the vomit of one of the sick wolves. The only thing any of the wolves were puking up was water. She ended up testing a sample and found out that it was contaminated with Iridious, a rare herb that’s absolutely toxic to werewolves and can even make humans sick. To them it’s just a tummy ache, to us it’s like having razor blades dancing around in your stomach. If not treated early it can take on even worse forms and eat the flesh right off of your bones.

The second she told me it was the water it immediately clicked in my head. Rose had a dream that this was going to happen. She told me that an epidemic would spread through my pack and I didn’t do a damned thing about it. Luckily for us all, after the outbreak I had all of the water and air filters on the grounds changed as a precaution so we’re safe for now. Still, I had her test them both for Iridium and I set up armed guards around the water tanks around the clock.

I asked her why it was that only some of us got sick while others didn’t and she told me that it all depended on our exposure, age, and all around health. For me since I’m the strongest of the pack and in great health there was little to no chance that I would be affected however for a younger or older member of the pack, their immune systems aren’t as strong so it affected them more. A few of the other victims had swam in the river behind the house and they were more sick than anyone. I had guards placed at the river and I’m having the city come out and filter it in a couple of days.

I hate to have everything so guarded and overly secure but we can’t take another tragedy like that one.

“Karter, I think I’ve got a lead,” Connor’s voice breaks through my subconscious.

“Fuck that’s great Con, tell me more.”

“There’s rumors going about that a few members from the Dark Wood Tribe have come back into town.”

Jesus. I haven’t thought about the Dark Wood Tribe in forever. I knew there were a few members who stayed behind in their territory the day of the war but after I killed their Alpha what was left of their pack fell apart.

“That’s fantastic work Connor. Fuck man, I’m proud of you. Come on back to the house and I’ll rally the guys so that we can discuss our next move.”

“It’ll just take a little digging and I can find out where they’re holed up at. I can move faster on my own,” he gravely replies.

I can hear the venom in his voice. The last thing I need is the kid doing anything stupid and getting himself caught or killed trying to avenge his lost brother.

“Connor pay attention,” I order, “I know you want these fuckers dead after what they did to Derek but you have to be smart about this. What if they have more numbers with them than you think? You think they don’t know the brother of the Alpha they murdered? The Beta of this pack? Just come home and we’ll take them out together.”

He sighs and I know I have him, “Yes Alpha.”

*

After about three hours of discussion we take a much needed break and decide to pick up strategizing tomorrow. We don’t have enough information yet to really make a plan and we were all too excited that we have a lead to ask Connor who he heard the news from. Just as I’m about to turn around to find him and ask, my cell phone starts to ring.

“Hello?” I answer, unsure of the number.

“White Chocolate! It’s me Andrea.”

I laugh, knowing she’s the only person with enough balls to call me that, “Right, what’s going on? Is Rose okay?”

“She’s fine…sort of. I’m calling because she needs you-”

Before she can get her sentence out I’m in my car and flying down the road in the direction of Rose’s house until my car stops of it’s own volition. I stomp on the gas pedal repeatedly with no success so I decide to get out of the car but the car doors lock and won’t open.

“If you let me finish my thought I’ll start your car back up,” Andrea says sweetly.

How does she do that shit?

“Great! Now as I was saying, Dylan needs you to explain to her the ins and outs of this whole deal. She’s confused and there’s only so much I can tell her. She needs to hear it from and expert and she refuses to speak with her mother.”

I sigh at that, I never meant to cause a rift between her and her mom. “What do you need me to do?”

“Come over to my place, I’ll control the car, you just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

And enjoy I did. I’ve seen some freaky stuff in my day, I turn into a giant wolf for Christ’s sakes, but let me tell you being in your car while it drives itself is the freakiest thing I’ve seen to date. It was full on, on some KITT type shit. All that was missing was it talking to me.

“How damn powerful are you?” I ask as I walk in Andrea’s place.

She smiles but doesn’t answer and I make note to not fuck with her.

“Dylan will be here shortly. I’m doing my part and getting her here so you do yours and don’t fuck it up and make her leave,” she warns, pointing a finger in my face.

I nod and she smiles walking away. I sit back trying to think of what I’m going to say to Rose when she gets here. Should I tell her she looks beautiful? Or that I’ve missed her so badly that every day I don’t hear her voice my heart feels like it’s crumbling and rebuilding itself just to crumble all over again?

Dre comes back into the room with a huge grin on her face and hugs me. I sit there in shock and finally pat her back gently in response.

“That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard!” she says fighting back tears, “But I would advise not saying that until you two are together. She’s very confused right now and some shit like that will send her on the run.”

My eyebrows knit in confusion, I didn’t say that out loud did I? It dawns on me that she’s reading my mind and I go to protest but she holds up a finger and hushes me.

“I know I know, stay out of your head. Now be quiet, she’s here.”

I sit back and wait and then I hear the front door creak open and Rose’s voice hesitantly call out Andrea’s name. When she rounds the corner I watch as her face goes from apprehensive to complete outrage. Her fingers tighten around the candle stick she’s holding and I realize why she’s having such mood swings. That damned Andrea.

“What is he doing here?” she points at me, saying my name with such disgust my heart breaks.

“He’s here to help your silly ass now sit down,” Dre snaps.

Rose turns to leave and the next thing I know a chair is flying under her knocking her off of her feet and into the chair.

“Do not move Dylan Rose Trevino!” Dre yells pointing a finger at her when she sees she’s attempting to get up. “Just give him a few minutes to explain.”

She gestures to me and I take it as my cue, “Well um…hi. You uh…look…lovely.”

Andrea gives me an “are you kidding me face,” but I continue.

“I just uh…what do you want to know?”

“I want to know why you bit me?” Rose responds and stops but then carries on, “How am I your mate? Why didn’t I know when I first saw you? …what are…we?”

I take a deep breath and launch into a huge spiel about the goddess and how she picks mates for each wolf depending on what it is they need to compliment them. I tell her about how we’re each predestined to have our other half in this world, that some wait to find them while others don’t. I told her how I waited my entire life to find her and I found it ironic that I was near dead when I did.

“You didn’t know I was your mate when we first met because you technically weren’t a wolf then. But that same pull you feel to me now, it’s always been there, just not as strong as it is now.”

She rolls her eyes and shifts uncomfortably in her seat making me smirk, “You can wipe that stupid grin off of your face. I don’t feel any different towards you. Mate or not you lied to me.”

“We’re Lycan, Rose, when we mate we mate for life. So you can be mad at me for now, but we live pretty long lives and are kind of hard to kill so you can’t and won’t get rid of me easily. You can only fight your feelings for so long before your wolf comes out and takes what’s hers, that’s what happened to me when I marked you. I’m terribly sorry about that by the way…I never meant for something so sacred to happen that way.”

She laughs, “You act as if you took my virginity. Sure it shocked me but it’s healed now. Thank you for your apology though.”

I smirk again, so her virginity is still intact, “Marking your mate is a sacred, special bonding experience. It’s something that ties the two of us together forever no matter what. We’re supposed to mark each other and eventually the letters of our initials will form there just dark enough for the trained eye to see but light enough for the humans to miss.”

She bites the corner of her lip and I stare at her until she asks what it is that’s on her mind.

“Will it hurt?” she asks, “Turning, I mean. Will it hurt?”

I smile sadly and nod. She closes her eyes in response and breathes deeply, probably trying to refocus on something other than the pain she’ll have to endure Tuesday.

“You didn’t wait for me,” she says through gritted teeth. Opening her eyes I can see the anger there and I don’t understand how it got there.

“What?” I respond, beyond confused.

“You didn’t wait for me like I waited for you. You’re not a virgin Karter,” she accuses and I drop my head. “How many? How many girls?”

I swallow deeply and sigh. I wish I could say none, hell I wish I could say even one. But Zoe and I were more off than on sometimes and in those off times I made sure to be on someone else.

“That many huh?” she finally replies, “Fucking dog.”

I narrow my eyes at her and she gets up and storms out of the house leaving me to try and figure out what in the fuck just happened.

********************************

Hello my good people!!!

It’s been like a month since the last update so I hope this was worth the wait! It rained quite hard tonight which put me in a writing mood so I was actually able to finish this chapter and another! However, since I’m in school and not able to update as often as I’d like I’m going to save the other chapter and improve/add on to it for the next update day!

On to business….

The amount of support I’ve gotten in the last few weeks has be A-MA-ZING! I can’t even to begin to express how ecstatic it makes me and how much it influences me to write.

534 reads, 51 votes on Awake and COMMENTS! FINALLY THERE ARE COMMENTS *does praise dance* lol You guys have NO idea how much comments help me and motivate me. When yall reach out to say anything at all it makes me want to sit my ass down and write no matter what mood I’m in. It sounds thirsty but honestly I just like knowing that there are people reading past the Prologue!

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Thanks so much for following and I hope I don’t disappoint! I also want to give a special S/O to everydaywriting for showing support and also Hot_pink_addiction who I dedicated this chapter to for being absolutely amazeballs! Her comments make smile so much and feel proud of my writing!

But that’s it for me, I’m off to bed freaking 4a.m. lol THANK YOU ALL!!!

Until Next Time,

WBN