Page 79 of Her Big Bad Wolf
But this was different.
They had died and she was choosing to walk away.
No, I was choosing to push her away.
I was so terrified of losing her that I severed my chance to be with her before it even began. I’d sabotaged my own chance at happiness.
Spending time with Vanessa had been some of the happiest moments of my life. I had tried not to let her know that, but I could be honest with myself about it.
As I was outside taking care of a few things over my lunch break, I had this uncanny feeling that Vanessa was close. It was like I could feel her presence, though I knew it was all just wishful thinking. She was at work and I suspected her work ethic was as strong as my own. She wouldn’t play hooky in the middle of the day. Plus, her absence had made it perfectly clear that she did not want anything to do with me.
I needed to go for a run and blow off some steam.
Images of Vanessa laying beneath me played out in my head.
“Stop it,” I growled.
How had she managed to consume me and change everything so quickly?
Without bothering to strip out of my clothes first, I shifted. Pieces of cloth flew in all directions. I didn’t care. And then I ran.
Turning off my human emotions, I gave myself over to my wolf who headed for town. I remained just conscious enough to stop that from happening, or I was about to. At the last second, he deviated and ran back into the woods.
I had no idea how long we’d been running, but my wolf stopped abruptly at the edge of the woods. Before me was Kyle’s house. It was one of only a few houses in San Marco that I actually knew.
My wolf sat back and lifted his head to the sky.
Shit!
I couldn’t howl at the Alpha’s house. Clearly my wolf had lost his mind.
Logically I knew my wolf was still me. It was kind of hard to explain and the animal instincts were often at odds with the human ones. It kept things simpler to sometimes imagine the wolf as a second entity. I think it helped to maintain our humanity. For example, I would never purposefully howl at the Alpha’s house, but for some reason, my animal nature was crying out for me to do just that even if I didn’t actually understand why.
It would make a person’s head spin trying to figure it all out, so thinking of myself in fur and skin as separate parts, a we instead of a me, just made things simpler. Besides, this way, I could blame the wolf.
He fought me as I turned us around. Times like this it made it very easy to believe that just maybe the wolf did have a mind of his own. Ultimately, I won, though.
By the time I got back to the house, shifted, showered, and changed, Kyle and the boys were home.
“How was school?” I asked them.
It was pathetic that I was just waiting for them to give me some news of Vanessa. Anything. I was like a dog awaiting a bone, just begging for a treat.
“Vanessa wasn’t there,” Noah said.
“What? Why not? I got the impression she never takes time off.”
I was suddenly terrified that something had happened. This was it. The second I opened my heart to someone, they died.
My chest tightened and the world started spinning out of control.
“Yes, she was,” Cam corrected.
“Well, she was there in the morning before school, but not when the bus dropped us off there this afternoon,” Mason explained.
“Pack Mother picked her up at lunch and she didn’t come back,” Cam said.
I looked towards Kyle. He was sort of staring off into space with a glazed look in his eyes.
