Chapter 10 - Hyacinth
I’m trapped!
Dark, sticky shadows surround me, like I’ve been caught in the web of an enormous spider. I can’t see anything, only more darkness, and it just makes me struggle even more.
Panicked, I throw myself in every direction as hard as I can, and wake up with a horrible jump. It takes me a few moments to realize I’m curled up on the uncomfortable camp bed, not trapped in an impossible situation.
Actually, I am, and it’s no wonder I’m having nightmares about it.
I sit up slowly, realizing I must have fallen asleep after I ran to my room. I don’t know how long I’ve been out, but I’m hoping it isn’t too late.
I want to talk to Shane. I don’t even know what I’ll say, but something has to change. We can’t live like this.
I get up slowly and go through my suitcase to find something fresh to wear. A quick look around the house tells me he’s nowhere to be found, so I head to the bathroom and indulge in a long shower.
The idea of being wet and naked while he’s in the house makes me uncomfortable. But why, exactly? I don’t think he’d do anything weird.
For just the briefest moment, the idea of Shane watching me in the shower lingers in my mind. As my body begins to awaken with a low throb of desire, I quickly reach out and turn on the cold water, shocking myself with an icy flow.
I’m not going to think about that!
By the time I get out of the shower, my body has calmed down, but my thoughts are churning worse than before. Wherever Shane went, he’ll be back soon, and I still don’t know how to talk to him, even though I know I have to.
This situation is way too bizarre. It feels way too much like—
I snap my mind away from that chain of thought, hurrying out of the bathroom and heading for my room. I’m almost there when I hear a footstep in the kitchen.
It has to be Shane, right?
My heart flutters in my chest. I don’t know if I’m more scared of Shane or a random burglar.
Creeping down the hallway, I stretch my neck out to peek around the corner and see Shane at the kitchen counter. I breathe a sigh of relief—just a small one—then continue towards my room.
“Hey, Hyacinth,” he calls. “Wait up.”
I turn around slowly, feeling shockingly exposed in my thin nightgown.
I was going to put a robe on… I didn’t expect him to be back yet.
Shane comes into the hallway, and all the available space seems to disappear. It’s just me and him, jammed between close walls. To make things worse, he walks right up to me, leaving only a few inches between us.
If I try to back up, it’ll look weird… and I’d probably fall right on my ass.
“Yes?” I answer, wondering how I can gracefully extricate myself from the situation.
“Are you okay? After the way you left the table before, I—”
“I’m fine,” I cut him off. “I just want to get to my room.”
“You can’t just avoid me forever,” he says, echoing the exact subject I wanted to talk about. “We should talk.”
“I agree, but right now—”
“I think you’re just deflecting. I can understand your position—”
“The hell you do!” I snap, losing my cool.
I take a step towards him and rise up onto my tiptoes.
“You can’t even begin to imagine how I feel!
Stop presuming things about me—and cutting me off when I’m talking!
I just don’t want to stand here in the hallway and have a deep and difficult talk in my fucking nightgown, okay? ”
Shane’s intense blue eyes suddenly flicker downwards, and I’m close enough to see his pupils dilate. His lips part slightly, and his tongue creeps to the edge of his mouth.
Oh, shit. He didn’t even notice what I was wearing until I announced it to him!
My first instinct is to scurry backward, but a faint feeling of magnetism keeps me in place. I’m looking so deeply into Shane’s eyes, it’s as if I’m falling into a bright blue sky, stars dancing at the edges as night begins to fall.
He takes a breath, and I feel it on my lips. We’re so close together, I can feel the heat from his body. I’m still up on my tiptoes, slightly off balance.
The logical course of action would be to put my hands on his shoulders…
The thought runs through my mind, and I can almost feel his warm, hard muscles under my hands. I see myself leaning forward, a thrill preemptively running through me as I imagine our bodies coming together.
Stop!
I try to tear my gaze away from Shane’s eyes, but I’m still caught by the pale blue prisms that only seem to get deeper the longer I look. I try to take a breath, but it gets caught somewhere in my throat, and all I can do is gasp.
Shane looks down, his eyes turning from mine as he focuses on what’s hiding behind the thin fabric of the night gown. I feel the faintest movement from him, and I realize he’s about to touch me.
For a split second, I do nothing. Then panic surges into my throat, and I scurry backwards, the spell broken now that I’m not looking directly into his eyes.
The clean yet deeply male scent of him still lingers in the back of my throat.
My body prickles with waves of heat, but I’m no longer being held prisoner.
But I am, I remind myself. I am a fucking prisoner.
Shane jumps a little as I scurry backwards and blinks several times as if he’s coming out of a daze. He focuses on me and shakes his head a little.
“What… what were we talking about?” he asks, his voice soft and full of confusion.
“I’m going to put on a robe,” I say. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”
Shane turns away, and I practically flee back to my room, my heart racing and my breath burning my throat.
What the fuck just happened?
Tears fill my eyes, and I brush them away angrily. As I find a robe to put on, I ignore the throbbing in my body and the singing heat searing along my thighs, down from my nipples and meeting at a hot point between my legs.
Okay, he’s hot. So what? I’m not going to fucking jump him just because he’s cute. It’s the worst idea in the entire history of bad ideas.
The swirling, endless blue of his eyes plays through my mind, and peace falls over me. I close my eyes to savor the memory in full detail, letting the delicate blue color and sense of movement soothe me.
Like waves slowly lapping the shore… a perfect blue sky dappled with the Milky Way…
“Stop!” I whisper, grabbing my temples. “This is fucking insane.”
Don’t think about his eyes—got it.
I shake myself as I stand up, literally stretching out every limb and waving them around to generate blood flow and force me to focus. After a few long, steady breaths, I straighten my robe and head out to the kitchen.
Shane is sitting at the table with two cups of tea and a plate of cookies. I’m afraid to look right into his eyes, but instead of avoiding his gaze, I face the challenge straight on.
As he looks up at me, I pay attention to the details of his face. The long, sharply angled chin, the high cheekbones, and the bow-shaped mouth. With a faint hint of anxiety, I slowly let my gaze rise until I focus on his eyes.
Relief flutters in my chest as I see that they’re blue, but a clear, bright sky-blue, and there doesn’t seem to be anything strange or magical going on within them.
Maybe I can only see it when I’m really close. If I were sitting in his lap…
Stop it! Fuck.
“I made you some tea,” Shane says, gesturing to the cup.
I just nod and sit down, reaching for the tea and wrapping my hands around the mug so the intense heat forces me to focus.
“I wanted to talk,” I say, struggling to remember exactly what I wanted to say. “I don’t understand my role here, what I’m supposed to be doing. How much do you know about the curse?”
“Not much,” he admits. “I tried talking to the others. They weren’t very helpful, but I did find out that we should introduce you to the pack.”
Anxiety makes the hairs rise on the backs of my arms as I think about meeting a bunch of werewolves.
“Isn’t that… kind of permanent?”
He meets my gaze evenly, nodding. “This might be permanent, so I think we should treat it as such.”
My anxiety kicks up a notch, and I take a sip of tea as I try to cover my nerves.
“Okay. When should I meet them, then?”
“Soon,” he replies. “I don’t know if I want to just walk you into the infirmary. It’s pretty bleak in there.”
“I can’t say I’m keen to do that,” I agree, taking another sip of tea.
“We also talked about Darian… where he ended up. There doesn’t seem to be a set conclusion for him. He was a major landowner in the area. Surely his death would have been recorded.”
“You’re right about that,” I reply. “It’s something I noticed myself. He’s presumed dead by a certain date, and there’s no mention of his funeral, just a memorial. There are a couple of different stories about when he was last seen, too.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Shane says, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. “Lynette was locked in the manor—we know that pretty much for sure. She did some mojo to punish Darian and all his wolves for the betrayal. But we have no idea why, or even what happened to them.”
“Was Lynette’s body ever found?” I ask.
Shane shakes his head. “Sadie claims Lynette died in the manor, but no body.”
“Interesting,” I mutter, sipping my tea.
The answer might be right there, in where they have their eternal rest. Maybe proper respect for their remains will break the curse.
“I think we should definitely investigate this further,” I say. “I should talk to Sadie and Trina about it. We’ll also make a plan for me to meet some of the pack. I’m a bit nervous about this. I’m still not used to being in this supernatural world.”
“I understand,” Shane says.
A few moments pass while we sip our tea, and the silence begins to grow awkward. I can feel the tension singing in the air, like the pressure before a lightning strike.
“Did they say anything else?” I ask in a pitiful attempt to break the silence.
Shane looks up at me, and his eyes look deeper than they did a few seconds ago. The memory of being almost pressed up against him crowds into my mind, and my chest tightens with excitement.
“They did… but I’m not sure I should say.”
“Come on,” I reply, trying to force myself to act normally while my body casually catches on fire with a rogue passion. “Tell me. Anything that can help us out of this situation is worth trying.”
Shane focuses his eyes on mine, and I get that strange sensation again, as if they are slowly churning like whirlpools and I’m getting drawn in.
“Sex,” he says.
I know I didn’t hear that right.
I blink, taking three full breaths before I respond. “What?”
Shane sighs and looks down, dragging his palm across his face. “Sex,” he says again.
The word hammers at my brain, and still I can’t accept it. Reality unravels around me, like a video game glitching out into a blue screen.
Is my mind inserting a word I want to hear? Is he asking for sex right now? I just don’t understand.
“Hyacinth,” Shane says, and his voice shocks me out of my frozen state.
How long was I semiconscious for? Feels like ten minutes.
“I spoke to the other alphas, and they told me that Sadie and Trina did not begin to come into their powers until after they had sex.”
The words filter through slowly, and understanding comes even more slowly. “They said… that we have to have sex?” I choke out.
“That’s right,” he says, sounding a bit relieved. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
A great tongue of flickering heat rises inside me, blooming from a place deep between my legs and rushing through my blood. Images flash through my mind, so clear I can taste them, and all I want to do is hurl myself across the table and into Shane’s lap.
No! You felt like this before, remember? With Dan—
“No!” I shout, standing up and slapping the table. “You’re lying!”
“I’m not,” he protests. “I swear that’s what they said.”
“Bullshit,” I cry, my voice tearing my throat. “You’re just playing me. How dare you do this to me! You rip me away from my life, force me into your crazy world—now you’re making shit up just to make me sleep with you?”
“Hyacinth,” he says, a look of regret on his face. “I told you, I didn’t think I should share it yet. That is what they told me.”
“I don’t care,” I mumble, tears pouring down my cheeks. “You can go fuck yourself for all I care!”
Before he can say another word, I turn and flee from the kitchen, hammering down the hall to my room. When I slam the door behind me, the walls rattle, and I kick the door for good measure.
He has to be lying. What a fucking jerk—why would he pull a trick like this, especially now when the health of his pack is at stake?
As I back away from the door and collapse into bed, I know the question contains the answer. I don’t know much about Shane, but I know he wouldn’t risk his people’s lives just to get laid.
That means my greatest fear and my secret fantasy are one and the same.