Sue stood on the porch of Knight’s grandparents’ house and watched Sarah and Jared play a giant game of Chutes and Ladders with Jared’s daughter out on the lawn. There were around forty people there for the pack barbeque. Some of them were swimming in the pool and others were standing around talking. It was warm out and the smell of barbequed food wafted around her. She felt calm, peaceful even. Knight had been hovering since they got there the night before. It had been late by the time they reached the house, having given their statements to the police and gotten checked out at the hospital.It was Sue who had insisted they stick to the plan to go and stay with Knight’s grandparents for the weekend. It felt good to be away from it all and with all the werewolves around her, surprisingly she felt safe. They had spent an hour talking with Knight’s family, filling them in on what had happened before finally going to bed.Sue had fallen asleep quickly and hadn’t woken until morning. K
The low, setting sun cast strange shadows on the bedroom wall. Knight West lived on the top floor of his building, so there were no trees outside. Still, the dark and shadowy figures twisted like tree branches, dancing, clashing in a sinister way.“It looks like two wolves fighting,” Sue said to him in a whisper. He hadn’t heard Sue come in, which was unusual. He didn’t know why, but something didn’t feel quite right.He turned and looked at his girlfriend and gasped when he saw the human. There was a huge gash across her throat and blood was gushing out of it, pumping and spraying onto the shadowy figures on the wall.“Sue,” he shouted, his hands clutching at Sue’s throat in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding.“It’s no use,” Carlos, the man Knight had believed to be his father, said to him from across the room. “She’s human. She’s weak.”Knight let out a ferocious snarl and lunged at Carlos, shifting into his wolf form as he flew through the air. He launched at the other werewolf
Sue was well aware of her weaknesses, especially when it came to her appearance. Her light brown hair never did as it was told and no matter what glasses she bought, they never seemed to stay up her nose for very long. She had never tried counting the number of times per day she had to push them back up, but she was certain it was a big number. It had made her a little paranoid about the slope of her nose.However, the very worst thing about her, according to her best friend who worked in the fashion department at the magazine, was her fashion sense. She always seemed to nearly get it right but would end up adding something or missing something from her outfit.“Morning,” she greeted her friend Andrew as she sat at her desk in the bullpen.What was different about this day, however, was the fact that Sue knew fully well how ridiculous she looked. It was summer and Seattle was experiencing some very sunny and dry weather, and she had come to work wearing a turtleneck.Andrew swiveled o
Knight hadn’t been able to shake what had happened, what he had done to Sue. Perhaps it wasn’t a bad injury and perhaps Sue really didn’t blame him for it, but Knight certainly blamed himself. A few inches higher and he could have taken an eye. Knight had struggled with control his entire life. He had spent years believing that he took after his father that way, but now he knew he couldn’t blame it on genetics. Carlos, the man who had disappeared when Knight was nine, who had bullied and beaten his mom, had always been the ghost haunting Knight.As a teenager, he had struggled not to fly off the deep end over every little thing. His control was something he had worked hard for, something he took pride in. He had never felt more out of control than he did now.He let himself into his grandparents’ house without knocking, as was the norm. He had called ahead to make sure that he and his grandpa would be alone.“In here, Ev,” his grandpa called to him from the living room.There was a se
Sarah’s makeup had helped a lot to cover up the scratches on Sue’s neck. The moment she got home, she had wanted to wash it off, but she also didn’t want the marks to look too bad when Knight saw them.“If he sees them,” she muttered to herself as she made herself a coffee.Over the last few months the two of them had barely spent a night apart, and when they had, Knight had acted weird and possessive the following day. Sue had received a simple text from Knight after lunch.Out of office for rest of day. Call later xSue had assumed that Knight would be back in time for them to go home together, like usual, but no such luck. When Sue had tried calling him, it went straight to voice mail. She just knew the stupid werewolf was off somewhere obsessing over what had happened.Sue had gotten the bus home for the first time in weeks. Even weirder was the fact that she was in her own kitchen completely alone. It had never bothered her before, being by herself, but she had gotten so used to
Sue didn’t wake up in the best of moods. She missed the snoring werewolf beside her and had woken up several times through the night feeling as though something were missing. It was the monthly release day of the magazine and Sue’s first article for it was going to be in there. Writing for a magazine hadn’t exactly been her dream job, instead wanting to take on more serious journalism, but she found herself feeling proud. On the surface, her article looked like a simple piece on the rise of werewolf-focused hotels, but Sue had delved deeper than that, getting into the history of segregation and how vital it was that they not let themselves, as a society, slip backward.It wasn’t until she had her glasses on and was shuffling out toward the kitchen that she remembered her brother was there.Joey was asleep on the couch, his arm thrown up over his head and his mouth open. Like that, Joey looked younger. All his usual bravado was gone. Creeping a little closer, Sue allowed herself to ta
When Knight had insisted on taking her out for dinner to celebrate her first article with the magazine, Sue hadn’t really been too thrilled with the idea. What with Knight having his freak-out and Joey showing up at her place, Sue kind of just wanted a quiet night in with her boyfriend so she could ask how the therapy session went. She wasn’t stupid. She knew that it was going to take a lot more than one session to help Knight with his issues, but to Sue, it still didn’t seem like such a big deal. Sue wasn’t really sure why Knight was having a harder time with her attempted kidnapping than she was.“I did consider clearing out that Howlers we went to for our first date,” Knight told Sue as they drove to the restaurant, “and having the place to ourselves, but that seemed a little too much.”Howlers was the name of a chain of restaurants owned by Knight’s family. The two of them had gone to one on the spur of the moment, right after they first met.Sue smiled at the thought of it. “Wel
After what was supposed to have been a nice, celebratory dinner, a moment of peace after the chaos, Knight drove them back to his apartment. It had been eerily quiet in the car. Sue usually found it hard not to talk continuously, especially when she thought Knight was tense about something, but tonight Knight had found it hard to get two words out of Sue.“Blair’s a bitch,” Knight finally said to fill the silence as he let them into his apartment. “She’s the stereotypical, superficial model type. That’s why I broke up with her.”Sue just nodded and went straight through to the kitchen to get a drink. Knight hung back in the doorway, watching as Sue pulled a bottle of wine out of the rack and opened it.“Are you mad at me?” Knight had to ask. “Do you think I should have handled that differently?”“No,” Sue finally said before taking a long sip of her wine. “I’m not mad at you. I’m not mad at all. I’m sad.”Knight felt a pang in his chest knowing that someone from his past had caused S