In the Loup Boxed Set #3 Page 8

"I cut you that night. I only wanted to get you away from him, but I gripped too hard. I think some of my blood got into the cut, and here we are." He searched her eyes, desperately looking for some sort of redemption or forgiveness. All he saw was confusion and pain. "Stephanie, it was an accident, I swear. I didn't mean to turn you. I only wanted to protect you from him."

  "So you're...you've always been a werewolf? All this time we've known each other?" she asked, her voice still hushed. He nodded and smiled.

  "I'm pretty good at keeping secrets, aren't I?" he replied. There was pride in his voice. He'd been able to keep that great of a secret and live a normal life, and that had been a wondrous feat for him. Stephanie didn't take it that way, though. She was angry.

  "You kept me in the dark all this time? You were around me knowing you could have accidentally turned me into this...into this thing?" she nearly yelled at him. She tore her hands from his own and stood from the bed. Her feet furiously paced the room and she grew angrier the more she thought about it. "Then you scratch me and leave me to what? Find out on my own that I'm some sort of monster? You wanted to see me accidentally kill someone or something?"

  "That's not it at all," he protested, hurt by her words. The most painful part may have been that most of it was true. "I wasn't sure you'd been changed until I started Gregory came around that one day. I thought maybe my feelings were getting in the way and hoping you were a werewolf so we could be together."

  "What about Gregory? What has he got to do with this?" she questioned. She stopped her pacing at the window and glimpsed the lightening sky. "What do you two know each other? How long have you known each other?"

  "I never met him until you did, but I admit I knew from the start he was a werewolf, too," Chuck admitted. Stephanie turned to him with her mouth open.

  "Who the hell isn't a werewolf?" she asked him in complete disbelief. "Gregory, Seville, that one mutated idiot. Who else?"

  "Besides you and me, no one," he informed her. "At least, no one else you know. Their gang is larger than just themselves." Stephanie rubbed her fingers against her forehead.

  "I can't believe this is happening..." she muttered to herself. "This has to be some sort of sick joke. I have to be dreaming. Wait, no, nightmare, this is definitely a nightmare."

  Chuck smiled at her rambling, and he stepped over to her. She jerked back when she noticed him so close, but he gently caught her by the wrist.

  "I didn't mean for any of this to happen, and to tell you the truth I was scared," he whispered to her. His eyes were sad, and she swore she saw tears hiding in the depths. "I was so scared that if I told you the truth, you'd push me aside. You'd go off on your own and get hurt, and then I'd be all my fault."

  "Well, it's all your fault anyway," she protested, but without the accusatory edge she'd intended. He just looked like such a sad puppy, and he meant every word. It was distracting her from the outrage she knew she should be feeling. Accidentally or not, he'd shoved her into this world and kept her in the dark about the whole mess for a long time. "And why the hell did you think I was just going to go off and kill someone? You should know me a hell of a lot better than that. We've worked together for how many years? Three?"

  "Closer to five, Boss," he corrected, and there was a smile on his face. That was the boss he knew, never good with numbers. "And I know now that I should have trusted you with the truth from the beginning. Now we've got a lot bigger mess than even I could imagine."

  "You mean with Gregory and his lackeys?" she guessed, and he nodded. Then a light bulb clicked on inside her mind. "Their you're old gang, aren't they? The ones you ran from?"

  "Exactly, and most of them haven't changed a bit," Chuck grumbled. "But I guess something's happened to the old leader because it looks like Gregory's calling all the shots now. At least, Seville and Simon wouldn't be following his orders if he wasn't the alpha."

  "What does that mean for me, and what the hell was wrong with that Simon guy?" Stephanie asked him. Just thinking of that creature made her nauseous. "Is that something that could happen to me?"

  "If you were as stupid as Simon, I'd say yes," her partner replied, and there was evident disgust in his voice. "Werewolves don't absolutely need the full moon to change, but it's a very difficult transformation. Much as he's always wanted to, Simon's never been able to master that and he always ends up as you saw him, misshapen and pretty much unable to even walk. It can be done right, you saw so yourself when I fought Gregory at your house."

  "You were there to protect me, weren't you?" she asked.

  "Yeah, but I kind of wrecked the place, didn't I?" Chuck sheepishly replied.

  "But it wasn't just you. What did Gregory want? What was he doing there?"

  "He wanted to take you with him and see what you could do. He could smell as well as I could that you were changing and thought maybe you'd be a nice addition to his little group of assassins."

  "Me? An assassin?" Stephanie wondered with not a little surprise. She hated the sight of blood, much less could imagine herself killing somebody with her bare hands as werewolves seemed to do. "What in the world made him think that?"

  "Probably because I was the best the group ever had, and they figured with you having my blood you might at least have the same abilities," Chuck explained to her. He wanted to laugh at the thought of his little Stephanie hunting someone through the dark alleys of some city and screaming at every rat she came across, but he held his mirth. The really were serious complications to Gregory's interest in her, and she needed to be told what they were so she could decide on her own what to do. "That's the reason Simon came up to us tonight. He was probably on orders from Gregory to come get you and see what you could do."

  "And since you weren't that intimidated by him, he thought maybe he could what? Beat you up with his epic fail?" Stephanie wondered, and Chuck let out a barking laugh.

  "Yes, well, that wasn't his plan, but I'm sure he meant for Seville to be his backup if things went wrong."

  "And she betrayed him? Didn't she just risk her life by letting us go?" Stephanie asked him. "Gregory isn't going to be happy about us getting away."

  "Protecting the pack comes first, and Simon definitely endangered everyone by changing like that. He's luck that trick didn't kill him immediately," her partner replied."

  "Is it that dangerous to change without the full moon? You and Gregory did it perfectly so you could rampage through my house," she teased.

  "You're hall needed some new paint anyway," he defended with a smile. It felt good to banter with her again. It was a sign of some normalcy between them. "But it's very dangerous.

  "So when my arm was transforming, that's the pain that you feel when you do it?" she guessed.

  "Yeah. The full moon allows us to perfectly transform without any pain, but since you were still going through the, um, growing pains, your body was a little out of control."

  "Great, werewolf puberty..." she muttered.

  "Not just that," he added. He wanted her to know all the ropes to this new life. "The werewolf was testing out your body to see how well you would survive the change. I guess since it stopped making you sick it thought you were a good enough match to survive the full change that takes place tomorrow."

  "You guess?" Stephanie repeated. He sounded so sure for everything else, and no here he was talking about her werewolfism with guesses. "What do you mean you guess?"

  "Just what I mean. Everybody's abilities and strength of their werewolf is different," Chuck explained with a shrug. "I can only make some pretty good guesses about it based on my own experience, but you're the only who can really tell what it's doing."

  "You make it sound like it's some sort of separate thing," she pointed out with suspicion. She wasn't sure she liked a new layer of complication on top of everything else. "Isn't it just like in the legends where you just turn into a beast who thirsts for pretty looking girls and handsome guys?"

  "Some of those things in the movies don't quite work the same
way in reality," her partner informed her. "For one, you won't be a mindless thing intent on eating anything that moves."

  "So no squirrel or Bob sandwich?" she joked, and he shook his head.

  "Only if you meant to do it, but that would be a pretty fitting end to that cheating bastard," Chuck replied. He would always be a little more blood-thirty toward that scum than he would with anyone else. Jealousy was ugly, but so was Stephanie's soon-to-be ex-husband. "But I don't really think you want those memories stuck with you for as long as we live."

  "Wait, what?" Stephanie wondered. Then she quickly held up her hands before he could speak. "Wait a sec, I think you need to give me a recap of all this stuff you told me because I'm getting really confused."

  "Well, I'm the one who accidentally made you into a werewolf in the alley that night, and you went through the most painful part of the change with the werewolf accepting you as a human who could survive the final change," he carefully explained. "Gregory and everyone around him are werewolves, and the old group I used to hang out with. They pretty much want to use you as they did me, like an enforcer for their turf." He took a breath and sighed. "And then tomorrow you finish your transformation, and become a full-fledged werewolf. There wasn't ever any way to turn back once I transferred my blood to you, but after tomorrow there really isn't anything to do but after that you pretty much start your training and see what you can do with your new self."

  "No turning back..." he heard her whisper. Stephanie turned and he saw she had an expression of bewilderment on her face. Then she slowly walked passed Chuck and sat back down on the bed, all without a word. It actually worried him bad enough he sat down next to her and gave her a shake.

  "You all right?" he asked, and he wasn't so sure he wanted to see that strange smile slide onto her face. "Boss?"

  "I can't believe my life has gotten so weird that I actually believe everything you say," she finally spoke up. She turned to him with that strange, twitching grin. "Please tell me I'm just dreaming and my life isn't really this complicated."

  "I wish I could do that for both of us, but we're kind of stuck with what we have," Chuck replied. She didn't look like she was having a panic attack, she was too calm, but she was having some sort of a breakdown. "You sure you don't want me to get you a stiff drink or something? Let me call room service real quick." He got up and telephoned the service, all the while looking at his partner with worry. She just sat on the end of the bed with her eyes staring straight ahead.

  The room service was quick and the drink was to be had only a few minutes later. Stephanie was still stiff and trying ton comprehend how her life had gotten that strange. Chuck sat down at her side and held out the glass of mystery alcohol.

  "Here, this might help put some hair on your chest," he encouraged her. Stephanie took it without question, and to his utter shock she downed the glass in a couple of big gulps. Then came the real kicker. "Um, I had the waiter put a couple of doses of Tabasco sauce in there." He knew she couldn't handle hot stuff, and this time was no different.

  Stephanie's eyes shot open and she clutched at her throat. Her tongue rolled out of her mouth and she gasped for breath like the last dinosaur. With a scowl at her sneaky partner, she shot toward the bathroom. Through the open door and in the mirror he glimpsed her stick her head beneath the running faucet. She lapped up the water, and finally had to come up for some air. Her eyes narrowed when she noticed him looking at her through the mirror.

  "You asshole," she remarked, and he just shrugged. "You didn't have to have them put in so much, you know."

  "They only put in a tablespoon or so," he teased. Stephanie paled at that amount, and she stuck her head back under the faucet. "Besides, it seems to have worked perfectly for what I wanted."

  "No it didn't, I'm still alive," she snapped when he came up for another breath of air.

  "It snapped you out of your funny mood. That's pretty much all I wanted," he pointed out.

  "Yeah, well, what's going to stop me from committing justifiable homicide?" Stephanie asked. She had quenched the fire and now stepped out of the bathroom. Her hands were balled into fists and she stomped over to him. He defensively held up his hands.

  "You still need me. No one else is going to teach you, unless you really do want to be Gregory's lap dog."

  "How about I see if I can teach myself?" she challenged him. She crossed her arms over her chest. "Maybe I'm a natural at all this stuff and don't need anybody to teach me anything."

  "Like how you didn't need anybody to teach you how to get your arm back to normal?" he reminded her. His partner flinched when she recalled him taking her to the park and showing how she could return her arm to normal. His manner lost the teasing and humorous touch, and he looked serious again. "Some things are nice to joke about, but maybe this isn't so funny. You really do need someone to teach you the ropes or you're going to get caught by someone." Stephanie's shoulders slumped and she nodded.

  "I know that, I'm just...I'm must trying to handle this stuff and I don't think I'm doing that well," she admitted. She looked tired again, and she plopped herself down on the bed beside Chuck. "I thought maybe I could handle everything you had to tell me, but this is just too much. There's too much going on here and I don't even know what I'm supposed to be remembering. I'm afraid of everything and everyone finding out about me. It's just too much."

  The pressure inside her welled up. She tried to push down the sob, but it broke from her pursed lips. Then she couldn't fight the flood of fear and worry she felt. She cupped her face in her hands and cried out those powerful emotions. Her shoulders shook and the tears flowed down her cheeks. Chuck watched the heart-breaking scene for only a few short moments before he wrapped his arms around her. She latched onto his shirt and sobbed into his chest.

  "I-I don't want this anymore," she whispered through her crying. "I just want everything to be like it was before. I just want my life back."

  "I know, and it's not fair," he softly agreed. He reached up and stroked her soft, long hair. "But I'm here with you. I'm not going to let anything happen to you, and I'm going to make sure you live the most normal, boring life you can lead." She choked out a laugh, and he pulled her an arm's length away. Never was he so glad for that sound of mirth as he was now. "What's so funny?'

  "You dummy," she scolded, but he was happy to see she had a smile on her face. "Neither of us is normal anymore."

  "To be honest, I don't think either of us was born normal," he pointed out. She rolled her eyes, but he shrugged. "What? You think being normal would have helped me live on the streets like I did? It probably would have made me stick out like a sore thumb and get beaten up all the time."

  "And me not being normal? I was living the American Dream before all of this happened. A business of my own, a nice paycheck every month-"

  "And a husband who didn't deserve you," Chuck interrupted. "I think your business life was a lot better than your personal one."

  "Well, most of the American Dream," she admitted.

  "That still didn't make you normal. You've got a wicked sense of humor and you torture your employees every chance you get," her partner reminded her. She waved off his words with her hand, but he could tell she liked his telling her she wasn't normal. It made her feel special, which is what he absolutely believed. She was special, and he intended to hold onto her. "Now let's talk about your future, shall we?"

  "Ugh, not planning, not now," she pleaded. "My plans never seem to work out so well for me."

  "That's why they're going to be my plans," he reassured her. He noticed a spark of mischief flicker in her puffy eyes. She leaned against him, and he wished she would both move closer and scoot away. Her scent really was intoxicating. It didn't help that her voice came out in a breathy whisper, but the words didn't quite match what he wanted to hear.

  "So if something goes horribly wrong, I can blame you?"

  Not exactly what I had in mind, but I suppose I would be the fall-guy," Chuck admitted. />
  "I suppose I could let you make a few plans," Stephanie drawled out. "Just as long as they're not complicated."

  "Well, we could have a simple wedding. We don't have too many acquaintances to invite, anyway, and I'm sure Bob won't want to come. Not after the divorce." Stephanie blinked and her head snapped to look into Chuck's face.

  "Did you...did you just propose to me?" she asked him. Surely she was misunderstanding him, or he was just teasing her. If that last was true, that wasn't a very funny thing to do right now when she was under so much stress. "Because if you're just fooling around with me-"

  "That's exactly what I want to do to you right now, but in answer to your question, it's yes," he interrupted her threat. He nodded at the wedding ring on her left hand. "If I had it my way, that cheap ring on your finger would be replaced with a real diamond ring."

  "Real diamond?" she wondered, and she glanced down at the ring. She had always thought it to be real, and Bob had certainly intimated as much when he'd brought it to her as his symbol of their love. Now that she thought about it, though, it would make perfect sense if the diamond wasn't real. A scowl crossed her face and she angrily pulled the ring off her finger. She clutched it in her hand for a moment before she threw it hard against the wall. It shattered when it hit the cheap plaster work. "That asshole, cheap to the end."

  "Yep, but after the divorce you won't have to worry about him," Chuck reassured her. He reached over and grasped her bare left hand. "But I wouldn't mind if you accepted another ring on that finger, if it's not too soon to be talking about this."

  "You really are asking me to marry you, aren't you?" she repeated her question, and he nodded. A smile parted her lips and tears of joy rose up from her eyes. "You idiot. I'd accept a ring from you any time, even if it was from one of those coin machines."

  "So that's...is that a yes?" he asked. He sounded so uncertain that she couldn't help but laugh. It was so unlike him to sound unsure of himself.

  "Is that a proposal?" she teased. He thought about that for a moment and then he grinned, proud and overjoyed at his triumph. He'd gotten the woman of his dreams to marry him. "But I think there might be some other stuff we should be worrying about right now then when to set a wedding date. I mean, it's a full moon tomorrow. My first full moon since you scratched me. Isn't that supposed to be a big thing."