Twenty-three

I think I was in denial and being so close to Harper didn't help at all. I think my mind rejected the idea of the existence of werewolves right on the spot, even though I conversed with Harper about them like I would, maybe, discuss a fantasy novel.

When I got into the safe confines of my own home and the soft sheets of my bed I realized the gravity of the situation. 

My throat was parched and scratchy due to screaming, my body felt heavy and I couldn't even lift my head. My head pounded and my body felt like it was on fire. I was so exhausted that I felt like I had been hit by a freight train.

I didn't know when I fell asleep due to exhaustion but I do know when I woke up, my mom was hovering over me, her eyebrows furrowed in concern.

"You're burning up!" My mom said while gently touching the back of her hand with my forehead. 

"What time is it?" I asked while attempting to look out the window, but the simple action made my headache so much I stopped.

"It's around 4." She gently pushed a brown twirl away from my forehead and smiled at me. "I got a call from the school today, that you never got to school today. I got worried because it's so unlike you and came back from work as early as I could." She kept moving her fingers through my hair at a leisurely pace. A noise of appreciation and pleasure broke out of me and Mom just chuckled.

"Yeah, I wasn't feeling well and a friend dropped me home before the school started." A friend? Harper was a friend now?! I groaned internally. What had I gotten myself into?

"Did you at least eat something?" She asked me.

"I did." I lied. I hadn't eaten anything since last night at our date. The date felt like it had happened ages ago. So much had happened since then and I was finding it hard to cope with everything, and so was my body. But I wasn't in any mood to eat. I just wanted to remain in bed and contemplate how my life had turned to this point. I didn't even have the energy to think about Harper, or my friends or werewolves. 

"Take some rest, ok. I will wake you up when it's time for dinner." She bent forward and planted a soft kiss on my forehead. I smiled at the gesture. 

"And Mom, I don't want to see my friends right now. We had a little fight. And anybody from school too." I nervously said. I had never asked her to do that, to not let my friends come inside my room and meet me. If she found my request unusual, she didn't comment on it, she just smiled and nodded at me.

She got up from the bed and went out of the room, closing the door softly behind her.

I sighed and picked up my phone from the nightstand beside my bed. I had no memory of putting it there but I quickly shook the thought of my head. Any more mysteries and my head would simply burst.

Missed calls. Voicemails. Messages. I had them all, from Natalie, Samantha and Harper. So many of them. I was in no mood to talk to any of them. The betrayal by Sam and Nat felt too heavy for me to handle, on top of Harper telling me he was part of a cult-like group which turned out to be another species altogether.

I ignored all of the notifications, switched off my phone, and put it back on the nightstand.

***

Two days. 

It has been two days since Harper told me about werewolves and I have been bedridden due to high fever. My body burned, my head pounded and I felt tired. So damn tired.

I think a fever was my body's mechanism of taking every information in and coping with it. My mind just couldn't stop thinking about it. I kept picturing our neighbor, a sweet Mrs. Smith, who was a forty-year-old woman, turning into a large brown wolf. Sometimes I pictured the cashier at the nearest Mart turning into a red wolf. The images were imprinted in my head and tormented me in my sleep.

Cory, my fourteen-year-old brother, came into my room a few times to check up on me. It felt good really to see him care for me because it had always been the other way around. My mom even told me that he insisted on bringing my food up to my room. 

He was the one who told me that my friends had come to see me daily and so did a guy from my school named Harper. 

My phone was still switched off and rested on the nightstand beside my bed.

I closed my eyes rested my head on the pillow and sighed in contentment. Although this fever had taken a toll on my body, nothing could beat the satisfaction of eating my food in bed.

I sighed softly and had just closed my eyes when I heard someone tap on the window beside my bed and my eyes flew open to look at the source of the sound. There was someone outside my window. I could see the faint outline of a human body through the glass.

My heartbeat sped up and I started to sweat. I was in no condition to defend myself and I was sure before I could call for help, this person would have killed me, if that was the intent.

"Zara? Open up!" The person's muffled voice came through the closed window and I relaxed a little as I recognized the sound of his voice.

What the hell was he doing here?

I stood up on unsteady legs and made my way towards the window. I lifted it revealing the person balancing himself on the ledge.

"Seriously, Aiden? What the hell?"

Aiden grinned unashamedly at me. "Can I come in?"

I rolled my eyes and stood aside to let him in and closed the window when he jumped inside. I went to sit on the bed, I felt tired after the simple activity of opening and closing the window. I hated being so weak and helpless.

I crossed my arms over my chest, which didn't make me look even a little bit intimidating. "Why are you here? And who goes and taps on people's windows at night?"

Aiden looked huge in my room, it wasn't that my room was small, it was just that he held an authoritative aura around him right now.

He rubbed his hands together as if to create some warmth. "So, Harper showed you, his wolf!"

It wasn't a question; it was a statement. He knew that Harper had shown me his wolf.

I nodded and the realization hit me. "Are you a, um?"

He smiled at me and came to sit on the bed, in front of me, his legs dangling on the side. "A Werewolf?" 

I groaned. "Please don't use that word." I put my face in my hand and shook my head a little as if ridding myself of all the problems.

No wonder he asked me that so casually. 

How the hell am I not freaked about it? That a werewolf is sitting on my bed in the middle of the night?

"Is it safe to assume that you still haven't come to terms with everything?" He chuckled.

I shook my head. "I don't think I ever could."

"I think you have made some progress. You're not freaking out now." He chuckled.

I smiled at him. It was true. I wasn't having a complete mental breakdown while talking to him like I had expected earlier, so sure, it was progress. I guess my mind had somewhat accepted the fact that humans coexisted with werewolves and nothing would change the fact.

"So, why are you here?"

He shrugged casually. "I heard you weren't feeling good and that you were ignoring everyone, so I came to check up on you."

I smiled at him. "Did Harper send you?" 

"He would kill me if he knows I'm here. He wants to give you space right now. He wants to give you some time so you accept everything."

I nodded thoughtfully. I remembered the way I had recoiled from Harper and I think he got the right impression that I desperately needed some time to myself. I did need time to figure everything out and I wasn't sure that talking to Aiden right now was a healthy scenario. I wasn't sure of anything right now.

"That's nice of him." I shrugged while twiddling my thumbs in my lap. "So, you change into a white wolf too?"

He laughed and shook his head. "No, that's Harper's thing. My wolf is brown."

I nodded at him because I had no idea what to say to him.

Aiden looked at me for a moment and then sighed. "Zara, I didn't come here just to see you, I came here to talk to you and explain something to you."

I nodded at him, silently urging him to go on. I don't think anything he would say at this point would surprise me. I have already had the shock of my life.

"Do you believe in soul mates, Zara?" Aiden asked me.

I frowned in confusion at this weird question that came out of nowhere. I had not expected him to ask me that. What did that have to do with everything that's been going on?

"I don't know," I answered honestly. The concept of soul mates always seemed a little too farfetched for me. I believed in love but soul mates seemed unrealistic. They sounded too good to be true and sounded like something that could only exist in fairy tales.

"Well, hear me out. I don't know how humans fall in love and marry." I cringed at the word human. It was hard to believe that the person sitting in front of me wasn't human, at least not completely. 

"We have mates, Zara. They are our other halves. Our wolves and our human sides both feel satisfied when we are with them. We are supposed to spend the rest of our lives with our mates and love them more than anything in the world. Two mates are destined for each other."

He paused and gauged my reaction. The idea of mates seemed so sweet. A person you were supposed to be with and spend the rest of your life with, and love beyond anything else. I wished humans could have that too, someone destined for each one of us. At least, then there will be fewer divorces and failed marriages. 

I smiled at the thought which seemed to encourage Aiden to go on.

"Humans are not supposed to know that werewolves exist. They would completely freak out. They have always been afraid of the unknown and would start to hunt us because they would think we are the result of some dark magic or curse or something." I nodded in understanding because, after all, the first reasonable explanation that came to my mind about Harper's transformation was that he was cursed.

"We let specific humans know about us, that we do exist when that specific human is mated to a werewolf." I nodded in understanding-, wait what?

I looked up to see if Aiden was joking. He was not. What the hell?

I take my words back, there is something Aiden could say, that would be more surprising than the existence of werewolves.

"Does that mean?" That I was told that werewolves exist because I was mated to one, that I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with one?

He nodded; his expression serious.

"Who?" am I mated to? I was in shock and not the good kind. I couldn't believe my ears. How could I have been possibly mated to a werewolf? It must have been some kind of mistake.

"Harper." He said as if it explained everything and it did. Our being mates was the reason that he had started showing interest in me out of the blue.

My mind was struggling to make sense of everything. My mouth opened and closed but I couldn't speak any words.

"That's why I'm here. You need to talk to him." Aiden brought me back to reality. His voice had suddenly become dangerously low as if coming to me had been his last option. 

I looked at him for a long time to check if he was serious. Did he expect me to talk to Harper just like that? Especially after knowing that we were supposedly "mates"?

I think everything had finally got to me because before I knew it, I nodded my head. "Ask him to come here tomorrow, during school hours."