Jaylin dreamt once more of his wonderland atop a snowy mountain in the embrace of frozen fern trees. He laid in the ice, watching the stars cluster the sky and meeting the gaze of the moon as it laid judgment on the bitter cold and all it had done to the nature beneath it.
And then Jaylin woke to the same steely chill and found his window had been opened in the night, his bed empty but the sheets still warm from where Tisper laid. Rain poured down on the shingles of the roof below his window, some drops bouncing off again, frozen to hail. The first ice of the season.
He left his room, rushed first by the piercing artificial light of the garish chandelier, overhead the grand foyer where half a dozen bodies mingled on the floor below. He searched each face until he found Izzy’s, then Jaylin pulled himself down the banister, his legs somehow weaker than the night before.
“Hey, Jay!” Izzy chirped when she saw him, fluffing up the collar of her leather jacket and lifting her hair from beneath. She ran her fingers through the ginger threads, plating the strands into one thick braid. “How ya feelin’?”
“Fine.” He ran a hand through his fluffy bed hair and relaxed the words in his throat, still raw and hoarse with sleep. “Are you guys leaving?”
“Yeah,” Izzy said, working up the buttons of her jacket. The others behind her were collecting their belongings and filling up on the scraps left from breakfast. “Quentin wants us posted along the Montana border while he’s gone.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Jaylin began, “how are you so sure they won’t just fly in? I mean, you guys can get on a plane, right?”
“We can. But no one’s stupid enough to try. Maybe before you’d entered your chrysalis, but now that the entire coast is essentially on guard, you’d be lucky to step foot out of the airport. The scouts will keep coming, but they’ll come in entire packs—not groups of two or three like before.”
Jaylin felt along the edge of the dining table and inserted himself into the first chair he found. His feet were beginning to numb so much, he could hardly feel the wood beneath them.
“How long do you think it’ll be? Until they come for me?”
“A few days, maybe,” Izzy said. “Don’t worry though, we’ll have plenty of sentinels left on the West side. Plus you have Felix.”
Jaylin took a gander across the room and into the next, where the dirty, scruffy, probably-drunk Scottish man was splayed out in front of the television with a pillow over his face and a bottle of beer somehow still hanging between two curled fingers. Jaylin couldn’t tell if he was asleep, or just too smashed to move, but little comfort resonated in the sight of him.
Izzy laughed at his expression. “Don’t worry, Jay. Felix can handle himself.”
“Mmn.. But Felix isn’t a dark and enticing Italian man with tragic past and a drinking problem, now is he?” Imani was floating down the steps, one long bare leg at a time—still dressed in the T-shirt Jaylin had started to despise her for wearing.
“Aye,” Felix grunted in sudden resurrection, peeling the pillow from his face. “Not true. I do too have a drinking problem.”
“It’s to be expected when you dress like a haggard old street tramp, Felix.”
“Surprising words for someone who puts her ass on display like a fat hog at a pig show.” Felix sucked down a swig of his beer, and pushed himself onto his feet with a surly grunt to escape the room so long as Imani existed in it.
Jaylin understood. He had the same urge to escape. There was something intrusive about Imani that left him chafed. Maybe the way she seemed to know everything without being there, without witnessing it for herself. The way she looked into Jaylin’s head without permit and spilled out all his thoughts out on the table for the world to indulge in. And yet, there was something about her he envied.
“When are you going back to Arizona?” Jaylin asked flatly. He was done hiding his distaste for her, fast-trigger or not. Whatever that meant to begin with.
“So the mongrel’s got a bite to him,” Imani mused. “Sorry to rain on your parade, but I’ll be here until the situation is…neutralized.”
Jaylin felt his jaw grit and a sudden pulse echoed through his blackened arm. Like maybe it wanted to reach out and strangle her. Maybe he wanted to let it.
“Alright, let’s head out,” one of the sentinels announced, and the front doors inclined to the infinite pelt of heavy rain and a breeze that made Jaylin hug in his own heat.
He could feel how his cursed arm had thickened in the night. How it had hardened, how much more immobile it was. It hurt to bend his elbows and his fingers—like his flesh was choked in the wrappings of a second pelt. He felt up the length to his shoulder and jumped when he passed over the sore, extruded scales on the side of his neck. The ones just like Anna had.
As the sentinels vacated through the front door one after another—some stopping to hug Lisa Sigvard goodbye—Jaylin turned from the commotion, cut his way through the kitchen and down the hallway where a handful of corresponding doors housed the maid’s quarters. There were far more doors than there were maids, but Jaylin found most to be locked. Alex had told him once before that they were vacant—used for storage until the demand for extra help rose around the holidays. Part of Jaylin didn’t believe him. A place like this held secrets, he thought. And it was as if the walls wanted to speak to him, let each furtive hush out.
At the end of the hall was a stained-glass doorway, the image of a red and orange hummingbird dyed into the glass and looking sad and melted by the on-pour. Hummingbirds seemed to be a common theme in Lisa Sigvard’s decorative taste. He shoved his way through the hummingbird door and the cold rain drilled into him like a penance, but he was right to go this way.
Standing in the pelting rain with a giant smile on her face was Tisper, her arms filled with a basket of fruit and flowers. Alex was beside her, trying to leap for the fruit of a lemon tree, one Tisper easily reached up and plucked for her own.
“Tisper?” Jaylin shouted over the rain. “What are you doing out here?”
She turned to him, droplets flinging from her lashes as she smiled. She handed Alex the basket and ran barefoot to meet him. Her arms flung around his neck and Tisper pulled him into her own soaking frame, ruffling and wetting his bedhead with her fingers.
“Jay this is amazing! I know we’ve been here before but I’ve never seen the garden and—” As she pulled back, Tisper clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh my god, Jay.” Her fingers ventured over the black scales on his neck and Jaylin flinched away from even the lightest touch. “Is it getting worse?”
Jaylin cupped the lepidoted flesh in his palm. “It’s not going to get better, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Tisper’s smile was gone, and she looked only concerned now—guilty, even. Her hands folded at her waist and she fiddled with her fingers. “I just—um, I asked Alex if I could pick from the garden before he took me home. I signed it. The NDA.”
“So you remember everything?” Jaylin asked.
“Quentin explained it this morning.”
“He came back? When?”
“About ten AM,” Alex imposed. “Leo was waiting for him in Seattle, he didn’t have to go far.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“I’m sure he’s sleeping,” Alex said, plucking a twig of mint to add to Tisper’s basket. “He pulled an all-nighter. If you hadn’t noticed, they sleep a lot. Quentin’s always depriving himself.”
Jaylin watched him set the basket down and press his fingers to his temple like he was numbing a headache.
“Then, when he wakes up—”
“What would you say, Jaylin?” Alex asked, a strange kind of smile tightly masking his face. There was something else in his voice, an edge that made Jaylin wonder if he’d done something wrong.
What would you say?
Jaylin didn’t know—he had no idea what words would come out when he finally saw Quentin again. He didn’t know if there’d be any at all, but he felt as if he needed something from Quentin. An explanation. Closure. A reason to forget it ever happened and moved on, because that was the only logical course of action. After hours of gazing at the vast and endless white sky of his bedroom ceiling, he’d found his resolve. Good couldn’t come from a kiss like that. It still burned on Jaylin’s lips, discomposed his steady heartbeat. It was dangerous, that kiss. And if, perchance love was real, then all the more reason to bury the memory.
Nothing good could come from loving a man who loved a dead woman.
–
By evening, Jaylin couldn’t walk anymore.
Alex had fetched an old wheelchair out from storage, and he sat on the uncomfortable leather seat while Lisa wheeled him around the garden.
Anna’s garden was a kind of medicine to Jaylin. The roses and herbs, the chatter of the birds, bounding around the apple trees. This was the only place that could take his mind off of the curse. Off of Quentin.
The black was moving faster—eating up both legs now, taking their strength and their purpose, siphoning his energy. He wore cotton as a pelt, thick jackets and sweats that reached his ankles, shelling him in heat like a woolly exoskeleton. The chilly fall conditions had retreated at the least convenient time, mid day peaking to nearly eighty degrees. He was sweating beneath all the cloaks he wore, but the garden looked beautiful in the sunlight, he didn’t want to leave it quite yet.
They picked from a list Lillabeth had written of all the ingredients needed for dinner and Alex came back with a bundle of herbs and a full head of lettuce in his arms and once the list was completed, Lisa rolled Jaylin inside by the handles of his chair to laze on the couch until dinner was done.
The four of them ate while Felix slept, only waking long enough to steal the entire platter of leftover chicken breasts and plod his way upstairs. Jaylin wasn’t sure where to—it didn’t seem like Felix really had a room. He slept on the couch, on the floor, but never a room. Maybe he had no reason for one. Maybe he had nothing to keep in it.
“You know, Jaylin,” Lisa said and her eyes laid their weight on his own. “You have exquisite mannerisms. It’s no wonder Quentin’s taken such an interest, it’s been a pleasure having you.”
Jaylin felt uncomfortable by the comment, but more so by the eyes boring into him. Those eyes had never been anything but kind to him, now it felt like Alex was forcing a point through his stare. One Jaylin couldn’t quite get a grasp on.
“My mom was really keen on please and thank you’s,” Jaylin said, poking at the food on his plate. “I wish she could be here. She’d love this place.”
Lisa took a small sip from her wine and smiled fondly to the glass chandelier above. “Do you think so?”
“You’re a lot alike,” Jaylin said. “The candles—she’d love them. The garden,” he laughed, imagining his mother, gawking over every tiny sapling. “She’d go crazy over that garden.”
“I do hope she visits sometime,” Lisa said. “I’m sorry to hear about…well, you know.”
Jaylin blinked. He hadn’t told anyone about the cancer. How did Lisa know?
“After this is over, Jaylin,”—she gave her wineglass a stir—”You’re welcome to stay as long as you need. We’ve all taken to you. Anything you need,” she said. “Truly.”
But despite the warm hospitality emanating from her side of the table, Jaylin didn’t feel such a welcoming vibe from the seat beside her. Alex was watching him still, from beneath his brow. Fingers pressed to his temples on either side.
“I think I’m gonna head up for a shower,” Jaylin said, wheeling himself out from his spot at the table. It’d been a few days since his last, but namely, it was the heat of Alexander’s stare that had him scraping for escape. He wasn’t sure just what he’d done, but something had gone amiss between them.
He was helped up the stairs by a maid while another brought his chair up the steps. Lillabeth fetched him a change of clothes and he rolled himself into the bathroom. In the brightness of the bathroom lights, he looked to his hand where the long, mutated nails had broken through the cloth of the glove meant to conceal them, his bony fingers bent in places they weren’t meant to—knuckles forming in all the wrong places. He ripped the torn cloth from his hands and shoved his beastly fingers into his pocket to withdraw his last cigarette.
They did make him feel sick—terribly sick. But sometimes he needed a moment. A few puffs of nicotine to forget he was slowly losing himself to a beast that hadn’t even existed a few months ago. One that was making a home in him now. Using him like a parasite uses a host.
He lifted himself from his chair and into the empty tub, letting the cold porcelain chill his skin as he laid back and watched his cherry burn between his eyes. He wished he had a phone. He wished he could call Matt, listen to him talk about the petty drama in his life. About the pretty girls and his shitty dad, and work around his family farm. He’d distract him then and he wouldn’t have to think about how good it would feel…
If he’d just walk in.
If Quentin would take the cigarette from his lips and the smoke from his mouth, and then all of the breath from his lungs, just like before. Because as good as the nicotine felt, it wasn’t the same as breathing him in. And he knew that even the blunt tucked away under the dresser in his room wouldn’t give him nearly the same high.
There was a special kind of intoxication laced in Quentin’s lips. One that made his face burn just to think about it. He wanted that feeling again, that fuzzy, tipsy way his mouth made the world spin. He wanted to feel the rough bite on his lips, taste the liquor of his kiss. He wanted to drink him in, drink until he was irrefutably inebriated. Absolutely shit-faced on Quentin Bronx.
“Didn’t he tell you not to smoke that?”
Jaylin pulled himself up to look to the sink, where Alex leaned back against the counter with his hands in his pockets.
“Jesus, Alex. I could have been naked.”
“But you weren’t.”
“And how’d you know that?”
“Just did.” Alex didn’t move. He just leaned back with his gaze to the ground, chewing on his inner cheek. “I need to talk to you.”
“I kind of got that vibe.”
“Quentin’s not in a place right now. Not for what you want.”
Jaylin’s cheeks flared and he tilted his head back against the rim of the tub. “I don’t want anything.”
“Yes you do,” Alex pressed. “And I don’t judge you for it. But you need to know something, Jaylin. Quentin and Anna were…they were soul mates.”
Jaylin felt ridiculous, snapping back from the belly of a bathtub, but he couldn’t bring himself to stand. He gripped the sides and leaned over. “Are you serious, Alex? Even if this had nothing to do with me, you’d really feel that way about Quentin moving on? You don’t want him to be happy?”
“He’s not moving on!” Alex shouted back. He shut his wet eyes and his voice fell tremendously. “Anna was everything to him. Everything. Please don’t take that from her.”
“She’s—” Jaylin started, but Alex had already walked out, slammed the door shut behind him. Jaylin breathed out the words in his absence and sunk back into the tub to soak in the rotten sound of them. “She’s not coming back.”
–
Alex drove Tisper home not long after that, and Jaylin stood in his room, arms out wide while Quentin—fresh out of bed and hair still ruffled with sleep—examined the black flesh on his shirtless body. Neither of them had spoken of the kiss, but it was there. In the breath and the moments that passed between them.Â
In the way Quentin felt along the rough skin, down the black of his chest.
It was there when the alpha took a seat at the edge of his bed to examine Jaylin’s stomach where the black shell had started to snake up his waist.
Eventually, he cleared his throat and stood. “You can put your shirt back on.”
Jaylin did, though it hurt terribly to raise his arms. “What do you think?”
“It’s moving faster than Anna’s did.” Quentin said, doing everything in his power not to look Jaylin in the eye. “I’m sure you’ll turn by the Bad Moon.”
Jaylin flexed his daunting hand. “Will you still be around after I turn?”
“Of course,” Quentin said. “We share a telepathic bond. From now on, I’ll be in your head. You’ll hear me from distances you can’t imagine. You’ll see things I see.” And Jaylin had thought he was serious until Quentin started to laugh as he said, “I’ll be in your dreams.”
“Stop,” Jaylin groaned. “I’m serious. Will things go back to the way they were?”
Quentin sighed and reached out for Jaylin’s empty wheelchair. The seat hit the back of his legs and he fell down into it. He was rolled forward, where Quentin gripped the arms of his chair and crouched to look him in the face. Finally, Jaylin had his eyes.
“Things won’t ever go back to the way they were.” Jaylin’s heart beat rapidly against his sternum as he took in that intense gaze for all it was worth. “Wolves will exist. The East will still try to steal you away. You’ll be a lichund, always. But if we can get you through the Bad Moon, we can learn more about you. We can figure out a way to help you so that you can go back to your normal life.”
Something painful panged in Jaylin’s chest. He found himself searching between those rich, amber eyes again. He wanted to see his mother—he wanted to be with her while she still had time. But he didn’t want to go back to that life.
He was becoming a monster. This place, he realized, was his chrysalis. Day by day, it was turning him into a flesh-hungry demon, like the one Olivia had become. And he was happy here.
Just then, something twinged in Quentin’s brow. He snapped his head to the door and rose to his feet. As if controlled by his mind, it swung open with a resounding thud, and Imani stood there, wrapped in a blood-soaked towel.
“They’re coming from the North. They’ve collapsed Leo’s territory lines.”
“Son of a bitch,” Quentin whispered. “I knew it.” In a moment, he had his phone to his ear and he was tailing Imani’s dripping shape, out of the room.
Jaylin couldn’t follow fast enough in his chair. He stumbled to his feet—numb and inoperable—and staggered out into the hall.
“Quentin—” he called. His ankle rolled and he fell to his knees. Alex’s footsteps quickened somewhere behind him, until he was crouched and helping him up by the arm. “Quentin, where are you going?”
Quentin stopped at the end of the hall, his phone sliding down from his ear. The dark, earnest gaze he wore drove a cold fear into Jaylin’s bones. “Don’t step one foot out of this house,” he said. Then he brought his phone back to place and descended the staircase.
Alex helped Jaylin to his feet and they walked together toward the balusters. Just over the railing of the stairs, Jaylin watched the maids cart those large doors inward. Imani glimmered as the moon washed over her blood-wet skin—Quentin’s silhouette following soon after.
The doors shut behind their backs and a sick, unsettling feeling welled in Jaylin’s throat. “Alex…What’s he going to do?”
Alex cast his worried gaze down from the railing beside him. “Something stupid, probably.”
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