Chapter 7
Cain
His name is a number.
I cut the apple into slices, arranged it carefully on the plate, then studied my work.
That looked like a flower, right? Did he know what a flower was?
I scoffed. Of course he knew what a flower was. Except…actually, maybe he didn’t. He didn’t know a lot of things, and every time I discovered something else he didn’t know or understand, I felt this urge to teach him about everything.
But I couldn’t get past the fact that his name was a number. It was a constant drumming in the back of my mind, an unsteady beat that echoed against itself.
He’d never been a person to anyone, just…a fucking number.
I didn’t recognize these ugly emotions that were crawling out of dark places in my soul; they were hateful and violent, a wrathful entity that wanted to destroy the ones who gave him a number for a name.
I didn’t even know who they were or how to find them, but I wanted to.
He’d been here for a month and in spite of his guarded nature, he’d never tried to hurt me unprovoked. If I got too close, he lashed out in defense—but he was never the aggressor.
His true nature was gradually revealing itself, and he seemed completely unaware of the slow change that was happening.
He was curious. Very curious. There were questions in his eyes that never made it to his lips, and I wanted him to let them all spill out.
More than that, he was kind to Luna, if a little wary of her—which was understandable since the first thing she’d done was tackle him.
He even seemed to enjoy her company. His gaze often strayed to her sleeping form, like he was reassuring himself that she was still there, rather than out of any caution or fear.
There was this tentative hope pumping into my heart—a hope that maybe he’d stay. That he’d eventually become comfortable with me, with this place, maybe even come to like it.
Like me.
What would his laugh sound like? If he let me take the muzzle off, how wide would his smile be? Did he have any dimples, like me?
I’d have to keep a stash of apples for him. Would he like them dried, too? I always did that for the winter months in between harvests.
With a sigh, I picked up the plate and headed out of the tiny kitchen toward his room. As soon as I turned down the hall, there was an odd sound, like a growl—but Luna never growled.
And then I saw Three lying on the ground and panic sparked across every nerve ending. The plate fell from my fingers and I shot toward him.
“Shit, what happened? Are you—”
I reached for him but he swiped at me with a vicious snarl, and I yanked my hand back. He was on his stomach, and his face…
He was absolutely drenched in sweat, his face was bright red, pupils dilated. It was really noticeable in the blue eye because the color was just a tiny ring around all that black. He was trembling and—
And grinding his hips into the ground. Little moans were interspersed with choked pants and gut-wrenching sobs.
What the hell? Had his fever returned?
“Hey, what’s—”
His eyes rolled back in his head and the loudest, longest whine poured out of him. His hips stuttered, slowed, then stopped altogether. My face was flaming right now.
Was he…did he just…
“Um…”
Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, what should I do? Should I walk away? Leave him alone? Or should I try to help him back to the room? What the hell was the protocol here? I mean, yeah, I’d touched myself before…but I’d never been around anyone else doing it.
Not that he’d touched himself, he’d just been…been grinding into the floor.
I swallowed past the dryness in my throat and took a step toward him. He was still making little noises, sounding like a wounded animal now, and I needed to help him. It didn’t matter what had just happened, he was obviously suffering.
Whether he wanted me to or not, I was taking him back to the bed. I stepped over him for a better angle to pick him up, and he shifted, keeping his wild eyes trained on me.
“I’m just gonna take you back to the room, okay? I’m not gonna hurt you.”
He was trying his hardest to glare at me, but tears were streaming down his face and he kept trembling. He seemed like he was in so much agony that I couldn’t stand it anymore.
When he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, I took that opportunity to bend down and quickly—and carefully—turn him over, making sure not to touch his wound. I slid one arm under his knees and one behind his back, just below the wound.
He immediately started thrashing in my hold, scraping his fingers down my face. He clocked me right under the chin with a fisted hand, knocking my teeth violently together with a loud clack.
Fuck, that hurt.
I shifted him to one arm and grabbed for his hands, but he was so damn strong right now that he ripped them from my grip and kept scratching and punching me.
How the hell was he so strong? Like, unnaturally strong. Had he always been this strong?
“Stop—”
And then he launched himself up and out of my hold and was wrapping his arms around my neck, locking his legs around my waist. His chain smacked into my arm, the metal cold against my skin.
Everything in me froze for a long moment, and then I fell back into the wall behind me with a deep grunt.
Jesus, he was—
He buried his face in my neck and started wailing, struggling to breathe as he choked on his sobs, and my heart broke for him even though I had no idea what was going on.
I grabbed ahold of his waist, slid my other hand down his back and started walking toward his room.
He was squeezing the ever-loving fuck out of me, holding on like something would sweep him away if he loosened his grip even the tiniest bit.
“Hey. It’s okay. I don’t know what’s happening right now, but it’s okay.
I won’t let anything happen to you. You’re safe down here. ”
I wasn’t sure if he was listening, or if he could even hear me over the noise of his own sobs, but I kept talking as I turned into his room, shutting the door behind us.
When I got to the bed and tried to let him down, he clung to me even harder.
His muzzle was digging into my throat, pinching me a little when he pressed his face into my skin even more, like he could disappear inside me.
“Come lie down on the bed and I’ll bring you some water.” Maybe talking to him normally would bring him back? He was in some kind of frenzy, and I wondered what had activated it. What had set him off.
“Keep…”
He choked out the whispered word in between sobs, and the fact that he was even trying to talk to me meant he was still in there somewhere. That he was asking for help maybe. He never asked for anything, so I tilted my head, trying to hear him better.
“What? Keep what?”
He jolted against me, moaning into my shoulder, and I could feel the wetness in his pants against my stomach. It was warm, and—fuck me, he’d just come again.
“Keep…talking. Please…please talk to me.”
Talk to him?
“Okay,” I said softly, rubbing my hand up and down in his back in what I hoped were soothing strokes. His breaths were so hot against my skin. All of him was hot, abnormally hot, like he was in the midst of a very high fever.
This wasn’t good.
A deep, low sound started to rumble through his chest, like he was making it in the back of his throat.
It was unnerving, raising all the fine hairs on my body, and I tried to pull away so I could see his face, look into his eyes, inspect him and figure out what was happening because that didn’t sound good.
He snarled and grabbed my head in both hands, trying to drag it back. I was able to get ahold of his wrists and stop him, trapping his hands behind his back and securing them there as he started screaming and thrashing in my hold.
He was moving so violently that all I could think about was how he would agitate his wound. “Hey, stop! Calm down! Whatever it is, we can—”
He released the hold he had on me with his legs and began falling backwards. I was barely able to catch him before he smashed his head into the concrete floor.
“Fuck, stop moving! You’re gonna—”
He slithered out of my hold, scrambled over to the bed, and reached beneath his pillow for something.
I only knew what it was after he slashed at my arm. Blood pooled quickly, flowing down to my fingers.
I was so shocked that I just stared at my arm while he backed away in a crouched stance, holding the shard of glass like a knife and growling at me like a wild animal.
Where the hell had he gotten that?
And then I noticed the blood on his shirt, right where he’d been shot, and panic scraped through me. That wasn’t my blood. “You’re bleeding. Damn it, you opened your wound!”
He didn’t seem to hear me or care at all. He made an animalistic sound deep in his chest, then ran from the room.
Fuck.
I chased after him.
He was fucking quick; I only caught a glimpse of his foot as he disappeared into the storage room. Where the hell was he going?
“Three!”
A loud scraping sound rang out, echoing down the hall, and when I wrenched open the door to the storage room, my heart missed a beat.
What was he—
“Oh, fuck—no! Hey, don’t—”
Too late.
With a loud cry, he ripped the electrical wire from the wall as he clawed at the grated panel of the crawlspace beneath it.
The lights blinked, then went out, and the emergency power kicked on. Red illuminated his face as he gripped the panel and grunted, trying to rip it from the wall.
That thing was bolted in, there was no way—
The metal panel groaned, then came free with a jarring shriek. He fell back, then quickly recovered, flinging the panel aside and crawling into the small space he’d opened up.
He’d destroyed the fucking wire, and that was—that—
But no, that didn’t matter right now, I could fix that later, he was…
“Three?”
It was eerily quiet, and that was even worse than hearing the awful sounds he’d been making before.
How the hell had he known about the crawlspace? Had he looked through here at some point?