Her Wolf

The walls of the conference room they were standing in began to close in around Catherine and she felt her throat going tight. Panic was setting in as she refused to tear her eyes away from the gruesome sight before her. There was a possibility that Ryan’s state was her fault. If she hadn’t asked him to go home with her, he might not have gotten beat up, potentially in her parking garage. If she hadn’t left her car at the restaurant, he might not of returned it and gotten beat up, potentially at her office.

“Let’s go to the hospital, Ryan,” Catherine demanded. “Now.”

“Catherine, I’m a werewolf.”

“We can role play later, Ryan,” she replied. “We need to get you to a doctor first.”

The sound of Ryan’s voice echoed loudly off the walls as he slammed shut the same door Catherine was trying to open. “Catherine! Listen to what I am trying to tell you!” His voice was powerful and Catherine noticed an unfamiliar yellow glint to his eyes as she turned to face him. “I am a werewolf. I turn into a wolf every full moon.”

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

The clock on the wall broke the silence as Catherine stared heavily at Ryan, trying to figure out a way to assess his confession. Her brows pulled together and her nose crinkled every time her mouth opened to speak, but no words came out. This was something straight out of a teen fiction movie, not out of her life.

She laughed.

“That’s one way to respond,” Ryan said bitterly as he hunched down to retrieve his shirt. “I didn’t tell you to be laughed at. I told you because you have a right to know.”

Catherine buried her face in the palm of her hands and began to shake her head as she sat down. The weight of the information Ryan had given her rolled on her shoulders like a ton of bricks and Catherine didn’t know what to believe.

“It’s not possible,” she thought to herself as she peeked up at Ryan through narrow cracks between her fingers. “There’s no such thing as werewolves.”

“Okay listen,” Ryan crouched down on his haunches to meet Catherine’s eye level and he carefully attempted to soothe her nerves by caressing her knee. “The night I disappeared, it was a full moon. You can look on the calendar. I had to get out of there as soon as possible because I knew I was going to shift.”

The moisture in Catherine’s mouth dissipated and it became dry as the desert as she tried to swallow. Ryan’s expression was soft and understanding and he allowed her the time she needed to process everything that was being said. Everything Catherine ever believed was being proven wrong.

“I… I don’t understand,” Catherine whispered, uncertain as to whether she should look Ryan in the eye. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“When I was nine years old I got lost in Snow Drift and I ended up being out all night. The rangers didn’t find me until the next morning,” Ryan said. “When I came to the following day, I was in the hospital and I had been bitten on the leg, though the doctors weren’t able to tell what kind of an animal attack it was. It wasn’t until the first full moon that I realized.”

“You turned into a wolf?” Catherine asked.

“That’s right. My first time turning into a werewolf, the pain was so blinding that I yelled bloody murder. Of course, I didn’t expect any of this to happen and I morphed into a wolf at home. My bones snapped and broke in every direction and sometimes they even pierced through the skin. My jaw snapped and my fingernails pushed through the tops of skin,” Ryan said regretfully. “When my parents came to see why I was screaming, it was too late. I had already become the animal I didn’t want to be. I had no control back then, I was young. I mauled them.”

Catherine’s mouth fell to the floor and she drifted her gaze to the corner, dumbfounded. “You… you…”

“I killed my parents.”

Ryan’s blunt statement caused a chill to ricochet along the length of her spine and her heart began to ache for the man in front of her. Catherine knew just what it felt like to lose parents, but she wasn’t capable of even beginning to fathom the idea of it being her fault. If everything Ryan had been telling her was true, none of it was actually his fault, it was all out of his control. But he would spend the rest of his life blaming himself and Catherine didn’t need to ask to know that was the truth.

“I don’t understand why you’re telling me all of this, I don’t even know if I believe you,” Catherine admitted shamelessly. “How do I just believe something like this? It’s… impossible.”

“I’m not really sure I expect you to believe me,” Ryan admitted, reaching out to tuck a wayward strand of Catherine’s hair behind her ear. “I just needed to tell you because Alan is one too. The reason I’ve encouraged me dealing with him is because I knew if he saw you, he would make his mark just to get back at me.”

The lines beside Catherine’s eyes deepened and she swayed her head to the side. “His mark?”

“He’ll find you unless we find him first,” Ryan said, pushing forward so his mouth was merely inches away from Catherine’s. “He knows the way you smell, the way you look, he knows that you want to destroy his project and he knows the way I feel for you. He could hear my heart beating the moment we walked into the room.”

“It.. it was beating for me?” Catherine asked innocently, finding herself momentarily forgetting the issue at hand and getting lost in Ryan’s eyes. “Mine was beating for you.”

“I know, I could hear it.”

A small smirk played at the corner of Ryan’s mouth as he inched towards the door of the office to lock it. The room had no windows, the table was made of solid oak and Catherine had already requested to not be disturbed and berated Jess for the way she entered her office.

She wanted him.

“Can you still hear it now?” She asked.