Chapter 5 The Shadow Mark
The Shadow Mark
Living with a wounded wolf for a pet felt surprisingly, domestically normal.
Over the last three days, the wolf and I had developed a routine.
We woke up in the morning, I made myself coffee and brought him a bowl of water, then I checked on his wound, the sigil, which refused to disappear and would probably scar.
But at least the wound was gradually healing, and he was no longer bleeding whenever he moved around.
That meant that while I was working on my laptop, the wolf was roaming about the apartment.
It felt like such a small space for a huge, magnificent being like him, but the wolf didn’t seem to be bothered by the disproportion.
He sniffed every nook and cranny, and he seemed especially fond of my bedroom, where he sometimes lay down on top of the bed, even when I wasn’t there, or on piles of both washed and unwashed laundry.
As for the wolf’s needs . . . Well, he seemed to visit the bathroom when I wasn’t looking, and so far, I didn’t need to take him out for walks or anything like that.
So my theory that he wasn’t exactly only a wolf was strengthened.
But since I didn’t want to break our somewhat temporary blissful life, I didn’t mention it and pretended he didn’t have needs to begin with.
We also went to sleep together every night on my bed. I slept much better while snuggled up to him, and the wolf seemed to simply enjoy my presence, which made me feel ten feet tall every time I thought about it.
Thank God my landlord wasn’t the type to make surprise visits, or I would’ve been in trouble.
If it had been up to me, I would’ve stayed holed up in my apartment for a few more days, but unfortunately, my refrigerator was starting to look depressingly empty, and I needed to restock.
Since ordering groceries online was much more expensive than physically going to the store, I was forced to choose the latter.
So on the fourth day after I found him bleeding outside my building’s back door, I told the wolf, “I’m going out for a bit. Be good, okay?”
The wolf headbutted my hand as if to say Of course, and the fondness I felt for him was so overwhelming, I found myself reaching for him and hugging him tightly.
“I don’t want to leave,” I murmured into his fur. “I want to stay here and cuddle with you all day.”
And not just because he was important to me. I was hoping that if we got closer, he would finally show his true colors and tell me who, or what, he was.
He leaned his body against me as if to agree, but then he butted his snout against my side, forcing me to lean back.
He gave a small lick to the palms of my hands that made me almost smile before he turned his back to me and padded to my bedroom, as if telling me to get the whole going out thing over with.
And he wanted me to believe he was merely a wolf. Right.
Grabbing my keys and wallet, I reluctantly left the apartment, locking the door behind me before departing.
Since it was morning, Johnny, the homeless man who liked sleeping on the front stairs, was nowhere to be found. Caveat, however, was loitering near the entrance gate as he usually did, and the smell of fresh pot hit my nose at full power.
When he saw me, Caveat smiled toothily and waved. “Yo, Drew! Where ya been?”
I waved back. “I’ve been busy,” I replied as I came to a stop before him. “Are you good, Cavi?”
He nodded, jittery, obviously from whatever type of pot he was inhaling. “Been seeing a pack o’ some dogs ’round here,” he told me. “Thought ye might like it.”
I frowned. Stray dogs weren’t uncommon in this neighborhood, but a pack of them? “It does sound interesting,” I said, feeling my investigative tendencies rising to the surface, especially since I had an alleged “dog” back home. “What do they look like? Are all of them the same breed?”
Caveat shrugged. “No ’dea,” he said, wriggling his brows. “But I did good, didn’ I? Ye can write ’bout some gang of shape-shifters or somethin’ else as crazy as you like.”
His words made me remember the conversation with my parents a few days ago, and I began walking away, turning my back to him. “I’m not crazy,” I said, annoyed that Caveat, of all people, dared to call me crazy. “One day, you will all learn the truth, and I’ll be the one who says, Told you so.”
“Ha!” Caveat barked from behind me. “That’s what all crazy people say!”
I ignored him, like I ignored everyone else. Because I knew I was right. I knew.
Even if everyone else, homeless men included, begged to differ.
With three plastic bags full of groceries, I climbed the road leading back home. Thankfully, I didn’t see anyone I knew on the way; I was in no mood to interact with people.
All I wanted was to be back in my apartment and nuzzle my face in the wolf’s fur. Which reminded me, I needed to give him a name. I couldn’t keep calling him “the wolf” all the time.
But I had a feeling that the wolf already had a name, and I simply had yet to learn it. I mean, even supernatural creatures had names, didn’t they?
When I reached my apartment building, Caveat and Johnny were both loitering by the gate. I had no intention of talking to them, since I was still sullen from my earlier chat with Caveat, so I rounded the building, heading to the back door.
Once at the back, however, I realized I hadn’t returned here since the night I found the wolf. The door had been cleaned, so no blood remained there, or on the asphalt. There was a little puddle of water near the bottom of the building’s downspout.
I was about to completely dismiss it when the sun suddenly rose brightly over the alley, peeping from beyond the neighboring building.
As if they had a life of their own, my eyes were drawn to the little water puddle, and when I realized the sun wasn’t reflected in it—that nothing, in fact, was reflected in it—I froze.
Slowly, I lowered the grocery bags to the ground and took a couple of steps to stand above the puddle. It was small, in the shape of a normal water puddle, but its color was dull. Dark.
It wasn’t a little puddle after all.
It was a shadow mark.
Right where the wolf had been lying a few days ago, bleeding.
Heart racing against my rib cage so loudly, I wondered if Caveat and Johnny could hear it from all the way over at the main entrance, I crouched down, studying the puddle.
Back on Sunset Boulevard, there had been too many people around for me to do anything other than take a picture of the shadow mark.
But here I was alone, with full access to one. The second one that had appeared in a matter of weeks.
That could not be a coincidence. I didn’t believe in coincidences anyway. Not with the supernatural roaming free.
Adrenaline boiling under my skin, I pulled a water bottle out of the grocery bag and emptied it on the asphalt behind me, away from the mark. Then I dipped the bottle opening into the shadow mark, letting the odd, murky liquid flow inside.
I scooped up as much of the shadow mark as I could, until all that was left were a mere few drops I couldn’t quite capture. Then I capped the bottle, carefully put it in the grocery bag, and rushed inside the building, heading to my apartment.
Throwing the door open, I didn’t see the wolf anywhere and assumed he was in my bedroom, napping, but I didn’t care at the moment.
I had actually managed to bottle a shadow mark.
Finally, finally, I had tangible proof of the existence of the things. And now I could try and research the liquid and find out more about it . . .
After I quickly put all the groceries away in their rightful places, I took out the bottle.
The shadow mark liquid inside it had the color of a dull grayish brown.
The curious part of my brain wondered what would happen if I touched it.
Something told me, however, it wouldn’t be wise to do that.
I didn’t know what the shadow mark actually inflicted, or if it inflicted anything at all.
I only knew it appeared at murder crime scenes, which was ominous enough as it was.
But still, it was tempting. Perhaps just a little drop?
I pulled my dark-brown hair into a ponytail, pushed back the sleeve of my right arm, and uncapped the bottle on top of the kitchen counter. Then, slowly, and very cautiously, I pushed my index finger into the bottle, reaching for the liquid—
“Stop!”
The sudden growl from behind made me jump. Unfortunately, my finger was still in the bottle, and before I could stop, it caused the bottle to topple off the counter.
I watched as it fell, almost in slow motion, and was about to instinctively reach out to catch it . . . until a pair of muscular arms wrapped around me from behind, caging me and my arms and pulling me back as the bottle hit the floor and the liquid splashed out of it everywhere.
My heart was like a drumbeat in my chest. Cold sweat dripped down my face. My body was shaking, as if I was cold, despite the heat blasting against my back, where I pressed against a hard something I later realized was an extremely muscular—and bare—chest.
Once the shock dissipated, I struggled against the arms, and they immediately fell back, letting me go. Once I was free, I whirled around to see who had just dared not only to trespass into my home, but also to both lay hands on me and get rid of crucial evidence.
What I saw made my jaw hit the floor alongside the shadow mark and the bottle.
Because in front of me stood an actual honest-to-God Greek god. An Adonis with a halo of auburn curls and a square-jawed face with a red, faint five-o’clock shadow that made his outrageously light-blue eyes even more prominent on his absurdly gorgeous face.
But then my eyes roamed down to the bare chest sporting pecs that made my mouth dry, along with the toned, corded arms I had just felt around me. My gaze dipped even lower, though, to the trail of dusty hair leading down to a symmetrically cut V, then to his . . .
My eyes locked on the atrociously attractive man’s bare member before I forced them away, down to his muscular thighs, attached to his long, lick-worthy legs.
Feeling like an absolute pervert, I blinked, stepped back, felt the counter digging into my spine, and held on to it for support because I suddenly felt weak in the knees.
I raised my eyes back to the man’s face.
He seemed full of worry and anger, which made me think he must be a combination of Adonis and Ares, the god of war.
Instead of kicking the nudist Greek god out of my home, all I could do was blurt, “What the hell?”
The man’s brilliant arctic-blue eyes caught mine and held. “Where did you find this portal?” he asked in a voice as rich as dark chocolate, with a faint accent.
I opened and closed my mouth like a fish. My brain was seriously malfunctioning. I didn’t know what to say, or how to act, or . . .
He strode closer to me, and I tensed for a moment, thinking he might be attacking me because I was standing there, stupidly frozen, but then his large, warm, golden palms cupped my face as he searched my eyes. “Hey,” he said quietly. “Please answer me. Where did you find a portal?”
Instead of answering that, I mumbled, “Who the fuck are you?”
He stared at me for a few long moments, before he let his hands fall from my face. “Lucien,” he said, voice low. “I’m . . . Lucien.”
My brain seemed to catch something my consciousness still didn’t, because I found myself spluttering, “You’re the wolf.”
Why are you so surprised, Drew? I reprimanded myself as I stared at the man, shocked. You already knew the wolf was of supernatural origin!
Yet thinking something and witnessing it firsthand were two very different things.
And seemingly reading my mind, the man, Lucien, gave me half a smile that turned him from an already drop-dead-gorgeous man to an absolutely, devastatingly panty-dropping one, and said, “Yes. I’m your wolf.”