Her Wolf

“I’ll be waiting in the shadows to pounce on Alan when he takes the bait, but Catherine, the most important thing is that you get the hell out of there,” Ryan urged. “My control is better now than what it used to be, but not that much better. I don’t know what kind of control I’m going to have with my primal instincts heightened from the fight. If I see you, I may not be able to control what I do and I don’t want to hurt you, or worse.”

“I understand,” Catherine said quietly, standing up from her seat. “I’ll do this. We’ll do this and then it will all be over. We’ll have the park.”

Ryan smiled through clenched teeth and before Catherine had the chance to utter another word, he was gone. Deep down inside, Catherine knew it didn’t have anything to do with whether or not he wanted to be there, it was obvious that he did. She knew he couldn’t stay. The struggle on his face and the turmoil turning around in his eyes made it clear as day. As Ryan was standing there warning Catherine and telling her how to make sure she didn’t get hurt, his insides were twisting and he had been in pain.

Catherine had watched all of the movies and read all of the books. She understood about as much as she dared to.

*****

The headlights on Ryan’s Range Rover cast a sharp shadow over the trees as Catherine pulled in along an unpaved path like Ryan had suggested. Spending as much time in the woods as Ryan had proved to be beneficial when it came to keeping out of sight.

“Okay, Catherine, you can do this,” she said mentally, giving herself the pep talk she needed to get out of the SUV. “Ryan isn’t going to let anything happen to you. Even if he isn’t exactly himself right now, he’s still Ryan. He will still know you and still protect you.”

The walk from the SUV, down the hill and to the specific clearing Ryan had circled out on the map seemed to take longer than it actually did. The sounds of the owls, crickets and other things that went bump in the night had Catherine’s skin crawling and her heart beating a mile a minute.

“Fear,” she thought as she carefully stepped one foot in front of the other until she was as deep as she was prepared to go. “They say it can be smelled.”

The commotion of the woods had begun to settle and Catherine folded her arms across her chest nervously as she glanced around. Through the corner of her eye, she had convinced herself she saw a pair of glowing yellow eyes. Eyes of a predator. Of something that wanted to kill her and she veered on her heels as if to head back to the SUV.

“No, you can do this,” she cheered herself on once again.

After inhaling a pacifying breath of air, Catherine shook her arms at her sides and set forth with determination. She pulled a thick, white marker from her pocket and began tracing lines on the trees that surrounded her. It was her job to make it seem as normal as possible. She knew Alan would make an appearance; she felt it in her bones. If Alan sensed any suspicion, their only chance would be ruined.

As a form of distraction, Catherine began humming her favorite song. She continued marking lines on trees and when the sounds of branches cracking behind her resonated, she stiffened, but didn’t turn.

“Pretend like you hear nothing, Catherine,” she thought. “If you seem worried, it might cause paranoia.”

Snap.

Crack.

The presence of something sneaking up behind Catherine was becoming too much for her to ignore. She dropped her marker to the ground and began slowly turning on her heels, preparing herself to scream the loudest she had in her life.

Nothing came out.

The sight before her was more than Catherine could have ever imagined. Up until that moment, she hadn’t truly believed anything that Ryan was telling her. She cared for him, she wanted to believe him and she wanted him to believe in her. But at the end of the day, it was something out of a movie to Catherine and that was hard to drag into reality.

This was no puppy.

Leaves crunched beneath the weight of the massive wolf creeping slowly towards Catherine as she stood in shock, shaking and uncertain of what to do. His eyes were bright yellow, evil and had a sinister glint that said ‘I’m going to enjoy ripping you to shreds’. The fur around his jaw was matted with blood and caused the foul stench radiating from its mouth to become so rancid, it almost made Catherine gag.

“You can’t be Ryan,” she thought as she stared her very own nightmare in the eye. “You can’t be.”

The beast’s snout curled up aggressively before it let free an animalistic growl that reminded Catherine of a scene from the movie Cujo, only ten times worse.

She was frozen in her spot.

Bit by bit, the werewolf crept towards her until he was less than ten feet away and with a lunge set to kill, it leapt into the air and stretched its body to the full of its ability.

“This is where I die,” Catherine thought as she closed her eyes. “Ryan, I—“

The sound of a painful yelp bounced off of the trees and moved through the ground and Catherine could practically feel the vibrations beneath her feet. With her eyes clamped shut, her ears focused on the sound of scuffling, fighting and what sounded like two dogs battling for dominance—very large dogs. The smell that came from the animals became too much for Catherine to bear and she covered her nose with one hand before she peeked open her eyes.

“Ryan,” she thought.

Catherine’s heart ached desperately for the man she had grown to care so much about as she watched a side of him that he clearly hated battle with an enemy. The sounds of loud howls in the distance were growing closer and Catherine tried to move her feet.

She was still frozen in her spot. Her legs were as heavy as tree trunks.

Another yelp caught Catherine’s attention and she snapped her gaze back to the fighting wolves and noticed the matted and bloodied fur that belonged to Alan, had its jaw parted and tearing into Ryan’s flesh. Panic washed over Catherine in a tidal wave and blind recklessness took over her common sense. In one flash moment of spontaneity, Catherine grabbed hold of the biggest rock she could find and whipped it at the head of the dominant wolf, causing his attention to waver.

“You idiot!” She screamed at herself as she stood terrified as Alan’s wolf form dropped his hold on Ryan and started stalking towards her. “Why did you do that?!”