Logan's Lycanism

Ertonport, One Year Before

She should never have brought him home, Meguitte thought as she opened a bottle of wine in her kitchen and filled two wine glasses. It was a mistake to bring a stranger to where she lived. She could not recall ever having done so before. The only person who ever came into one of her homes was Thaelen.

Logan leaned against the handrail of her balcony looking out over the ocean. “Amazing view,” he commented as she brought the wine glasses out to join him.

“I like the ocean,” she said. “I was… hurt once,” she paused, surprised to find herself talking about it. “And saved by someone. My father, in a way, but more of a friend or brother. He took me on a ship to a safe place with a beautiful bay and I lived there, happily, for many years…” She had said too much, betrayed too much, and took a mouthful of the wine to silence her betraying tongue.

“You are a vampire,” he filled the silence, stating it as calmly as if he were naming her star sign, rather than a supernatural race. “And a witch.”

She swallowed the wine that soured her mouth. “What are you?” She asked him. “You are human, but not just a human,” she narrowed her eyes as she considered him. “There is magic to you.”

“I am…” He grimaced. “Something complex. Something that requires a story to explain.”

She nodded and turned to look out over the water. “That’s okay, you do not need to tell me. We do not know each other. And we will probably not see each other again.”

“I would not like that,” he replied softly. “And I intend to tell you my story, Meg. I just… need to find the words. It is not an easy story to tell.”

She turned her head to look at him. In the moonlight, his profile was strong and defined, and his hair glimmered like a raven’s wing. She found the harshness of him starkly beautiful, she thought, dangerous and predatory, and yet somehow pure and clean at the same time. He was different, somehow, elusively, different.

“Not long before my seventeenth birthday,” he kept his eyes on the water. “My sister fell in love with a werewolf. He believed that his pack would keep them apart unless he turned her, and, knowing that the vast majority of attempted turnings end in the death of the human being turned, and despite knowing very little about the magic involved, they decided to take the risk, somehow believing that they would be different…

“I guess,” he said wryly. “They weren’t wrong. They were different. We don’t know what happened precisely. My sister didn’t die, but nor did she turn into a werewolf. She somehow got stuck in between. In that form, a form we’re calling a Lycan, there is very little of person left, the Lycan is all instinct and animal nature. Somehow, the animal still knew its way home, and she surprised my parents at their morning routine…”

He fell silent and she watched his pain pinch his face. As he struggled, she reached out and put her hand over his. He looked at her and smiled, a small, fragile smile. “Thank you. It is still incredibly painful to speak about. She killed my parents, and when I came out, having heard the noise, she attacked me,” he scraped his hair back from his forehead, revealing what the heavy fall had hidden, the claw marks that began on his forehead and ran through his hair, leaving bald lines where they had scraped through his scalp. As he released his hair, they were hidden again.

“She did not kill you?” Meguitte was intrigued.

“No. I fled to her bedroom, and when she brought me down, she recognized her own scent, and it brought her back to the moment for long enough to save my life,” he explained. “But the damage was done, somehow what had happened to her was transferred to me, and the following full moon, I too shifted.”

“I’m sorry,” she barely breathed the word.

He inhaled deeply before releasing his breath. “Every full moon since, I spend in a cage to protect others from what I become. I am more fortunate than my sister in that my case of Lycanthropy is milder and more stable. She can turn at any time, the moment that she loses her temper, or becomes afraid. She…” He shook his head. “I have been searching for a cure, Meg. It is why I trade in arcane objects. I am always searching for that which might undo what has been done to me, or at least might make it easier to bear.”

“Is that why you followed me?” She nodded slowly. “To see if I knew any secret that might aid you?”

“Yes,” he met her eyes as he straightened and looked down at her. “A vampire witch must collect a lot of knowledge over her centuries of life. I had hoped that you might know of something that might help, in whatever way that you can…”

She looked up at him and swallowed hard. Her mate. She had spent centuries amongst vampires, and had seen it happen frequently to others, but had believed that her past would prevent it from it happening to her. She knew that it was what kept Thaelen grounded, his desire to find this connection, for Thaelen spoke of it often, of his longing and need of a mate.

It was not as terrifying as she had thought it would be. But then, they had done nothing physical. She did not even know if he felt it too, except… Except there was a certain light in his eyes as he looked down at her, a softening of his jaw and a slight parting of his lips as his pupils dilated…

He was going to kiss her, and she didn’t know what to do about it – whether to let it happen or move away.

“I would need to…” She stepped back and through the door into her apartment, setting her barely touched wine down onto the table. She heard him follow, the clink of his glass as he placed it down. “I would need to understand what happens to you when you change, to see it for myself, to feel the magic, and I don’t know the recipe of the werewolf magic potion that they used to turn you… I will have to find someone who does.”

“It is the full moon in two days,” he said from close behind her and she turned to face him. He stood so close that she could feel the warmth of his body in the air. He stood so close that it had to be deliberate. “I have a place, a safe place, nearby. It has the cage. You can watch me and be safe.”

“Alright,” she agreed. “That gives me two days to look into the potion and research the process that werewolves follow to turn a human. Hopefully that will help me to understand…”

“Meg,” he reached out and cupped her cheek. “Do you feel it?”

Her breath caught in her lungs, and she nodded nervously.

His eyes searched her face and he smiled slightly. “You belong with me. To me,” his other hand closed on her hip and drew her body flush to his. “When I saw you dancing tonight with another man’s hands on you, it just about killed me,” he breathed into her ear. “Say what we both know to be true. That you belong to me.”

She closed her eyes under the surge of heat that flooded through her. Her skin seemed to tingle as if the cells within reached out for him. He felt the answer in her body and began to kiss and suck his way down her neck. She swayed into the sensation, feeling the warm tingle spread through her.

“Now this contraption,” his voice held his smile as he stroked down the curve of her waist over the corset. “Whilst very sexy has me baffled. How do I find the woman beneath it?”

She was breathing in pants, her lip caught beneath her teeth, as she leaned back, shaking her head. “I can’t,” she stammered out. “I just…”

“Too quick,” he said with a smile, his eyes smouldering. “That is okay, Meg. We can take our time. You have, after all,” he chuckled. “Plenty of it. I will go,” he picked up his jacket from the back of the couch and shrugged it on. “Because I have frightened you, and I don’t want you to fear me. I’ll come back tomorrow. Sunset?”

She was torn between her longing for him to resume where he had left off and her terror of what would come next if she let him do so. She should say no, she told herself. She should say no and pack up the moment that he left. She should flee this unwanted and unwelcome invasion into her life of a fated mate. Except… except she didn’t want to.

She dragged her bottom lip through her teeth. “Sunset.”

“Thank you, Meg,” he paused and stroked his hand through her hair and she found herself reaching out for him, gripping the leather of his jacket in her hands and pulling him to her. He groaned, burying his face into her hair and breathing in. “I don’t want to go.”

“Don’t go,” she whispered. “Stay.”