Kelley Armstrong - Bitten

When I heard LeBlanc's breathing, I stopped. I tilted my head and listened. He was crouching behind a thicket, breathing hard as he worked at his Change. I inched forward until I was outside the edge of his thicket and peeked through a fringe of fern. As I'd guessed by the height of his breathing sounds, he was crouching. But I'd been wrong about one thing. He wasn't Changing. He hadn't even undressed. A tremor of excitement raced through me. He was afraid, but instead of giving into the fear, he was fighting the Change. I pushed my muzzle through the fern and drank in the mead of his fear. It warmed me, fanning the spark of excitement into near-lust. LeBlanc might have scared me in the airport parking lot, but this was my arena.

LeBlanc shifted his weight and leaned forward to peer from the thicket. Use your nose, I thought. One sniff and you'd know the truth. But he didn't. He eased one leg back. His knee cracked and he froze, breath coming in shallow spurts. His head moved from side to side, listening and looking. Lifting the switchblade, he snapped it open, then waited for the sound to bring me to him. Something padded through the undergrowth beyond, a cat or a fox or something equally small and silent. LeBlanc tensed, raising the knife. Fool, fool, fool. I was growing tired of this. I wanted to run. I wanted to chase. I crept backward a dozen feet. Then I lifted my muzzle to the trees and howled. LeBlanc broke from the thicket and ran. I pursued.

LeBlanc had a head start. I let him keep it. We wove through the bushes and trees, jumping logs, trampling wildflowers, and sending two pheasants into the sky. He kept going deeper and deeper into the forest. Finally, he stopped running. As I realized I couldn't hear him any longer, I was bursting through into a clearing. Something slashed across my hind leg. I tumbled forward into the long grass. As I fell, I twisted around to see LeBlanc standing behind me, legs apart, switchblade raised, poised like a fighter waiting for the next round. He sneered and said something. I didn't need to hear the words to know what he said. Come and get me. A shudder of pleasure ran through me. He really was a fool.

I crouched and leapt at him. I didn't bother trying to figure out how to avoid the switchblade. It didn't matter. I felt the blade nick the side of my neck and slide across my shoulder. Blood welled up, hot against my skin. But there was no gushing, no pain worse than an irritating tingle. My fur was too thick. The knife had only scratched me. LeBlanc's arm went back to stab again, but it was too late. I was already on him. He flew backward, the blade arcing from his hand and vanishing in the trees. As my face came down to his, his eyes widened. Shock. Disbelief. Fear. I allowed myself one long moment to drink in his defeat. Then I ripped out his throat.

Jeremy, Antonio, and Nick did eventually show up at the cabin. They came through the door as I was using Clay's bindings to tie up Marsten. Naturally, Jeremy was incredibly impressed by how well I'd handled things on my own and vowed never to shut me out of anything ever again. Yeah, right. His first words were nonrepeatable. Then he said that if I ever, ever did anything so stupid again, he'd-well, that part was unrepeatable, too, though Clay, Antonio, and Nick were quick to repeat it, each adding their own threats. So, the brave soul who saved the day was forced to slink from her victory site and ride home in the backseat of her own car. It could have been worse. They could have put me in the trunk. Actually, Nick suggested that, but he was kidding… I think.

Jeremy gave Marsten his territory. Wyoming, to be exact. When Marsten complained, Jeremy offered to switch it to Utah. Marsten left muttering something about ten-gallon hats and rhinestone pants. Of course, he wouldn't settle for retiring on a dude ranch. He'd be back in search of territory more amenable to his lifestyle, but for now he knew when to shut his mouth and take what was offered.

Clay took a while to heal. A long while, actually. He had a broken leg, four broken ribs, and a dislocated shoulder. He was so bruised and battered that he was in pain lying down, sitting, standing-basically every moment he was awake. He was exhausted, starved, dehydrated, and pumped full of enough drugs to fell a rhino for days. I spent a week living in a chair by his bed before I was convinced he was going to make it. Even then, I only left his room to make meals and only because I decided Jeremy's cooking was doing Clay more harm than good.

I had to go back to Toronto. I'd known it since that day in the cabin, but I postponed it, telling myself Clay was too sick, Jeremy needed my help around the house, the Camaro was low on gas, pretty much any excuse I could come up with. But I had to go back. Philip was waiting. I had to confront him with what he'd seen, find out how he planned to handle it. Once that was done, I'd come back to Stonehaven. There was no longer any question of which home I'd choose. Maybe there never had been.

I belonged at Stonehaven. The idea still rankled. Maybe I'd never be entirely at peace with this life because I hadn't chosen it and I was too stubborn to ever completely accept something that had been forced on me. But Clay was right. I was happy here. There would always be a human part of me that would see fault with this way of living, a human morality appalled by the violence of it, vestiges of Puritanism that rebelled at such total immersion in satisfying primal needs. Yet even when Stonehaven didn't make me happy, when I was raging at Jeremy or at Clay or at myself, I was in a perverse way still happy, content at least, content and fulfilled.

Everything I'd chased in the human world was here. I wanted stability? I had it in a place and people who would always welcome me, no matter what I did. I wanted family? I had it in my Pack, loyalty and love beyond the simple labels of mother, father, sister, brother. So, realizing that everything I ever wanted was here, was I prepared to cast aside my human aspirations and bury myself in Stonehaven forever? Of course not. I'd always have the need to fit into the larger world. No amount of therapy or self-analysis would change that. I'd still hold down a job in the human world, maybe escape there for vacations when the insulated life of the Pack overwhelmed me. But Stonehaven was my home. I wouldn't run from it anymore.

Nor could I keep running from myself. I don't mean the werewolf part of me. I think I accepted that years ago, maybe even embraced it because it gave me an excuse for so many things in my life. If I was aggressive and snappish, it was the wolf blood. If I lashed out at others, wolf blood again. Ditto for any violent tendencies. Moody? Angry? Hot-tempered? Hell, I had a reason to be that way, didn't I? I was a monster. Not exactly a condition to invoke peace and inner harmony in the best of people. Yet I had to admit the truth. Being a werewolf didn't make me that way. Look at Jeremy, Antonio, Nick, Logan, Peter. Each one might have shared some of my less attractive characteristics, but so would almost any stranger pulled off the street. Being a werewolf made me more capable of acting on my anger, and living with the Pack made such behavior more acceptable, but everything that I was, I'd been before Clay bit me. Of course, knowing that and accepting it were two different things. I'd have to work on the accepting part.

It took almost a month from that day in Toronto for me to realize what Clay had meant when he'd said he knew why I picked Philip and why it couldn't work. The first two weeks after we recovered Clay were hell, some days not knowing if he'd make it to the next. At least, it seemed that way to me. I'd watch him lying unconscious in bed and be sure his chest had stopped rising. I'd call for Jeremy. No, strike that. I'd scream for Jeremy and he'd come running. Of course, Clay was breathing fine, but Jeremy never made me feel I'd overreacted. He'd murmur something about a temporary shortness of breath, maybe minor sleep apnea, and he'd examine Clay thoroughly before settling into the bedside chair to watch for a "relapse." By the third week, Clay was regaining consciousness for longer periods and even I had to admit the danger finally seemed past. That wasn't to say I stopped camping out at his bedside. I didn't. I couldn't. And as long as I insisted on being there, Jeremy insisted taking over bedside watch while I slept or went for a run, even though we both knew such constant vigilance was necessary only for my peace of mind.