Ravenwood(72)

“Does everyone at Ravenwood know of your… nature?”

“Yes. Almost everyone has either been here with my family or came with Hayter. The Thistlewaites, Mrs. Davenport, some of the footmen and groomsmen that have been here the longest. It’s not something we advertise, but if someone lives here long enough, they eventually find out. We offer protection and a home. To belong at Ravenwood is to forever have a place to be. Should any of our pack need anything, they have but to ask.”

“To call the wolf is to call the pack,” Elinore said.

Caleb looked proud at the words. “It is our motto. Our vow.”

So many questions swirled through her mind, but they moved so fast it felt as though she were grasping at wisps of smoke - unable to catch any of them, save one.

“My… feelings for you,” Elinore began, afraid of knowing the answer to the question but needing to ask, “are they only a result of the bite?”

Caleb’s hand came up and cupped the back of her skull, his fingers pressing into her flesh firmly. “I don’t know. I hope not. We are social animals and to be alone is to risk turning feral like the omega. Our wolves, the animals within us, desire a pack. We naturally order ourselves into one much like our animal kin do, with an Alpha or Alpha pair leading.”

Elinore’s mind, always sharp, immediately focused on Caleb’s words, a foreboding feeling creeping up her spine. “You and Hayter are considered a pack,” she stated and Caleb nodded. “Who is the Alpha?” Though she already knew the answer to her question, she needed it confirmed.

“Hayter,” Caleb said easily. “After my father died, I was… I couldn’t…” he swallowed. “It was a difficult time. My father and then my mother so close after him. I could have been the Alpha. Perhaps I should have been. But Hayter arrived and he was… It was so easy to let him be the Alpha. He was the only family I had.”

Elinore could hardly fault him. She knew how it was to lose both parents - one loss so close after another. But the thought of Hayter stirred something inside her. Elinore ground her teeth and curled her fingers tightly into fists. She flinched at the sudden pain in her palms. Caleb picked her hand up carefully and drew her fingers back, both of them staring at three of her fingernails that had grown longer and sharper. They’d pierced the fleshy part of her palm where blood now swelled, red and bright.

“You already feel the pull of the moon,” Caleb said lowly, running his own finger along the sharp edge of her nails.

“Does this mean I’ll turn? Is this an indication?”

“We won’t know for certain until the full moon.”

“What will happen?”

“For bitten wolves, the first shift is the hardest, the most painful. It takes a strong emotion to set it off. Fear, anger.” He glanced down for a moment. “Love.”

Her heart pounded wildly in her chest; a fierce beast attempting to escape the cage of her ribs.

Caleb continued. “The first night is spent wholly as a wolf, unable to shift back into human form until the pull of the moon abates at sunrise. After that, should you turn, you will be able to shift on command to your wolf form, and back again, no matter the phase of the moon.” He carefully lifted her hand to his mouth, his eyes meeting hers. He moved slowly, giving her ample time to pull her hand away if she wanted.

She did not pull away.

The stubble of his chin bristled against the skin of her hand and she remained still as his eyes left hers and focused on the small cuts she’d made in her own palm. His tongue darted out and licked at the wounds quickly. It was, she thought absurdly, more like a kitten than a wolf.

Her mind stuttered on the word and could not move from it. Should she be horrified? Should she pull her hand back from Caleb and scream in terror? Was he a man or an animal? Or perhaps neither and both at the same time. As strange and unnatural as this was, she did not fear Caleb, nor was she repulsed by him. Her wounds stopped bleeding under his ministrations and she thought of her dream, with the white and black wolves, sitting next to each other. She realized the white wolf was her own self. As soon as she thought it, she felt something lock in place inside her. Of course she was the white wolf. Of course.

Perhaps she’d been silent too long or perhaps there was something on her face while she thought. Caleb paused, pulling back from her hand.

“Are you afraid of me now?”

“No,” she answered easily.

“You are so sure,” he said and Elinore didn’t know if it was a question or a statement.

“Whatever you are, you are the same today that you were yesterday and the day before and the day before that. You’ve been kind to me. Thoughtful. Conscientious.” She paused looking over her hand while she thought. There was no pain from the small wounds in her palm and she marveled at how the slits on her skin seemed to repair themselves. “And I know myself,” she continued. “I may be turning into something else, a creature or a …”

“Werewolf,” Caleb supplied. “We are called werewolves.”

“A werewolf,” Elinore repeated, trying the word out. “I may be turning into a werewolf, but I am still myself. It is still my thoughts in my mind. Although, I do feel as though they are colored by something else, something more. But they are not foreign or unknown to me.” Her brow furrowed. “Indeed, I wonder if I have always had such feelings and thoughts, but they were never allowed to the surface, never allowed to gain such traction.” She flexed her fingers, looking at her once again blunt, human length nails. “I have wondered since coming to Ravenwood, since being bitten, what had come over me, but perhaps, it’s more what has been released. Something finally set free after a lifetime of entrapment.” She glanced up at Caleb and found his pale irises watching her intently. “You must think it ridiculous or foolish. It’s hard to explain to you, to a man, how you can feel things your whole life and learn to hide them under soft expressions and kind words. Press them down deep, like barbed wires to be hidden in your flesh and scarred over. And each time you do, you get better at it yet at the same time, you hate it a little more. But now…” Elinore thought of her dreams, where the white wolf, where she was growling and snarling, and she felt a rush of power. “But now, I feel as though I may no longer be in contradiction to myself.”