06 Back to work

Becca

“Smoke is coming from the stage,” a frightened voice bellows in my earpiece, and I immediately reach for the end of the console to turn it off.

“Shut down everything,” I reply, jumping from my small stage to run towards the stage. “Get everyone off the stage. The main distributor is next to entrance B2,” I instruct my team and look towards that on the way. Two of my assistants rush to the door to find the main fuse and switch off the electricity in the whole arena. 

Someone shrieks as the arena darkens. The exit signs are the only lights, and we all turn on the flashlight on our phones to navigate in the dark. I can already smell the scent of overheated equipment and mutter a curse, hoping it won’t burst into flames.

“Everyone, find an exit and leave,” I yell, my voice echoing through the empty walls.

If an amplifier or a speaker catches on fire, it can start a chain of reaction, and the sound system can be damaged or burned down in a matter of minutes. I pick up my speed. No one will see my werewolf speed in the dark.

“I have a fire extinguisher,” Nicky says through the comms.

“Where are you?” I ask as I reach the stage. My heartbeat quickens, fearing she is standing next to the equipment that smokes.

A bang echoes through the building, and I squat down in instinct. It came from the same direction as the smoke, and flames flew up at the left back of the stage. “Nicky?” I yell in panic and flash my phone around frantically to catch any sight of her.

“Here,” she comes up behind me, unharmed.

Relief floods my system as I quickly take the fire extinguisher and urge her to get to the exit.

I jump up on the stage and rush towards the fire, unhooking the safety pin and blowing the powder from it on the amplifier that is on fire. It is the middle, lowest one of the 3x3 wall of amplifiers.

Three more bangs indicate that the other ones on top of the first are catching on fire, too, and I circle it to diffuse the fire from the other side.

My left calf burns, and I look down, seeing embers eradicating my jeans. There aren’t any flames on me, so I keep my focus on the wall of amplifiers. My vision blurs for a moment as the burning pain numbs my leg. I shift my weight to my right and will my healing power to work its magic on my skin.

Smoke fills my lungs, and I cough, which only worsens the burning inside. I crouch down to find some air and scootch to the side to cover all the amplifiers with powder. The fire is extinguished, and I think it is over if no other equipment catches on.

“Becca,” Nicky yells from far too close for my liking.

“I’m fine. Call 911 just in case,” I reply, crawling away on all fours from the smoke.

“Already on their way,” comes her reply as she approaches and blows more powder from another fire extinguisher. “Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yes, just the smoke,” I lie and cough as I crawl toward her. “Let’s get out of here.”

I limp through the arena, coughing, with Nicky by my side, holding me upright. The hall is lit with spotlights on the ceiling, so I can’t pretend I’m not hurt anymore. Building security rushes towards us, and they keep going when Nicky explains what’s happened.

The parking lot is buzzing with nervous energy as we exit the door. Tour buses form a protective wall, keeping the crew from the photographers.

Everyone rushes to get me seated, and we wait for the fire department to clear the building. A medic checks my burned leg, foaming it while I hit myself up with an oxygen mask.

This is the fifth stop since we left Austin. Falling back into my everyday routine turned out to be more challenging than I expected. Even though Jason isn’t my mate, the only thing I can think about is running with him through the forest.

My team caught me smiling to myself more times than I can count. They whispered to each other a few times that I must be in love, and that guy who brought back my cardigan was the last one I met, so it must be him.

I could tell them that they were wrong, and we are only friends, and I only think about him like that, but to be fair, some of those times when I disappear in my head, I do think about Jason in a way that I shouldn’t. I do daydream about him being my mate.

I’ve already created multiple scenarios about our next meeting next run, and even though I try not to put anything romantic into it, it just happens to pop up naturally.

With my brain preoccupied, I work on instinct and focus on getting through this tour. So, these following weeks dragged on slowly. I didn’t have any more success with leaving my scent in diners. It indeed seems possible that there isn’t anyone else, but at the same time, finding Jason fueled my hope for finding others even more.

We text with Jason daily and video chat occasionally, but it’s mostly about his work and where I am.

My parents wanted a full report on my run with Jason, but it is always tricky to video chat. As we carefully dance around things, we don’t want to say aloud or things we say with different words than what they mean.

We agreed on a coding system before I left. Obviously, we would never say shift or werewolf, but I had a hard time explaining to them that I ran and hunted with Jason. Those words wouldn’t sound suspicious on their own, but if I had added that we did it in the middle of the night and never mentioned any weapons, that might ring some crazies.

Security is installed on our phones and laptops, but we still want to be careful. It was the same with Jason. We mostly talked about our work and childhood, never mentioning anything werewolf related because we are both very much aware that hunters might be able to catch phrases throughout the system.

After all, the way they were able to eradicate every pack, they must’ve had knowledge of territories, access to night vision drones, or heat vision footage of dense forests and mountains. As far as we know, the hunters got help from the government and used their technology to find us. They slaughtered any community that lived in forests- didn’t care about the few non-werewolf communes or the groups of homeless people. They bombed every group living in the woods.

So, we better be safe with anything we say. We didn’t even agree on it. We just both knew we had to be careful with what we said.

The burned amplifiers quickly got replaced, and even though I sat out that concert, I was back working for the next one. We only have three more stops, and I didn’t want to quit before the end.  

My leg heals in no time, but I cover the area with a bandage every day so no one questions it.

After an emotional and sad day, I call Mum in the morning. I can’t tell what made me so emotional and sad yesterday, but I just cried my eyes out that Jason isn’t my mate.

“Do you think finding my mate is impossible?” I ask her, putting on an eye mask under my eye to reduce the swelling.

She and Dad sigh in unison, looking at each other warily as Mom replies. “It’s not impossible. I think the Moon Goddess paired you with someone who will come into your life. I’m not sure if that person will be a human or a werewolf, though. There might not be any more of us,” she says, and we sit there sadly for a while.

It wouldn’t be the end of the world if my mate were a human, but definitely problematic. Would I tell him? But how could I not tell him? Especially if we stay together and plan on having kids.

Bliss has more courage, and her desire to shift has intensified ever since she met Makya. I try to find a suitable place and time to shift at least once a week. She is getting stronger, and in the last few weeks, her 15-minute runs increased to 30 minutes. However, in the larger cities we travel to, I can’t find the dense forest I need for a shift, so I make time to travel to a nearby village to see if I can catch a scent and leave mine in the forest, as well, hoping a werewolf might catch it and tracks me down.

It is incredible to be able to tell Jason about her growth. Even though I had to steal pictures from online and post them on my feed, pretending I have a dog now. Just to have the opportunity to talk about her running capabilities without raising any alerts.

I’m focusing really hard on not thinking about Jason romantically. On most days, it’s working. Most days, I’m fine checking out others, flirting, and hooking up with someone from the local band that opens for us.  

But on other days, I’m devastated to see Jason again. Those are the days when keeping Bliss from running back to Makya is a struggle.

And the worst part about it? I know he doesn’t feel the same.