Blackmailing A Werewolf

Chapter 9

She's on the edge of it. The valley of Layman's Way beneath her, doll houses snaking around the road, farms on the perimeter dotted like stars, the woods meeting the school is an army of fuzzy toothpicks from here. It looks more like a replication of an English village with everything just so perfect: from the church steeple, to the brook, to the sheep dotting the rising hill on the other side.

The house closest is a stone cottage, time warped from a century long gone. It puffs out long wisps of smoke and roses try to climb into the shoe box windows. A stream trickles through the garden turning the mill wheel lazily, a sign flaps in the wind - Mrs Clare's Cafe - Tessa knows what it says without being able to read it from here. Everyone knows Mrs Clare's Cafe in Layman's Way. She wonders if Mrs Clare knows her nephew is a werewolf.

Peering over the edge, toes curling, she looked at the rocks below and bit her lip. She would never do it, her stomach flip flopped at the thought, but a werewolf could definitely scale that if they wanted to.

In fact, the heather is drenched in his scent, claw marks drag along the rocks by the lip of the drop and Tessa guesses Rye must have scaled the cliff a lot in his short time here. It's understandable. Everything can be seen from, but no one can see you.

She takes a deep breath trying to pull out Rye's particular pine scent in a wood full of pine trees. It's strongest to the left. He's been here recently. Her childhood self-reminds her of the cave not far to the left, where Rye's scent is strongest. It would make an excellent den. Taking a deep breath, she meanders through the trees for it. Eyes peeled for the camera as much as the shock of cinnamon hair.

The cave is how she remembers it. A crack in the earth as the hill slopes upwards viciously, the entrance mostly concealed by ivy and heather. Partially overlooking the woods and partially watching over the village.

Walter and she would come here with sandwiches and a packet of Party Rings staking it as their corner of the territory. They'd scale the trees in front of it, practise walking through the twig covered floor silently, wrestle each other in the mud. A werewolf's paradise. A perfect place to hide.

"I know you are there." A smile flickers over her face, but she's not sure why. She shouldn't be so confident, lone wolves are prone to violent outbursts. It's how werewolves got their reputation, deformed monsters of the full moon blood thirsty, soulless, born of the blood of the demons. She knows lone wolves are the monsters which go bump in the night and knows she should be calling Walter to help her.

But her mum always taught her to believe in second chances. And this is definitely not what she meant by giving a lone wolf trespassing on their territory a second chance, but she thinks back to her conversation with Rye in the classroom. She can pinpoint the excitement in his voice at finding someone else like him. The hope of not being alone anymore.

The idea of not having her pack to go through all the changes within her is wretched. Clawing at the dining table, the yellow veins crawling over her on the way to school, bone cracking fear during her first transformation. She couldn't have survived it without her pack.

Besides, he might be dangerous, but so is she.

Yellow eyes blink open in the darkness.

"Don't worry I'm leaving." His voice echoes in the cave and is tight with emotion, which one she is not sure - anger, blood thirst, hurt. "I'll be gone by the morning."

The rocks she sits on is damp and water seeps into her tights and through her skirt and will probably leave an incriminating mark, but she doesn't care. Running her fingers over the moss-covered surface she bit her lip. This time she mulls over her words.

"I was wrong." The words leave a bitter taste in her mouth, they always do. "You don't have a pack. Otto told me about why you are here, that you're Mrs Clare's nephew. That you're alone."

"Thanks for rubbing it in." Said Rye, ""Why do you care if I am alone?" The word is spat out like it was salt water. "You threatened to kill me an hour ago, how do I know you're not trying to lull me into a false sense of security."

"Because..." She plucks a piece of heather, splitting the branch between her nails and pulling it to pieces knowing she doesn't have a good answer to his question other than a gut feeling. A feeling that she is still on the edge of the cliff, and she is about to fly or tumble to the rocks below. She prays to the moon goddess that she is making the right decision. "Lone wolves are dangerous and violent, and you are not. This morning when I confronted you, you should have ripped my throat out, but you didn't. There's something different about you and your wolf. I want to find out what it is."

She wants that control. Energy simmers around him, but somehow, he can control it all. Like every blink, every breath has been pre-calculated. Even on a full moon. She wants that. Needs that to survive in the human world and lead her pack one day.

"I'm not some science experiment." The word is punctuated with a rumbling growl. She's tempted to return his growl, show him she is not afraid, but if she starts, she's not sure if she could stop. That's why she needs him. "And I'm still trespassing on your territory; the rest of your pack is still going to try to kill me."

"Has anyone ever taught you the rules of territory?" She asks. There's a shuffling sound from in the cave. "You can't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. We can't blame you for not knowing."

"But I did know."

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