Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Piper

Why would Merrik say…what he said to me? He would never be in the shower with anyone but me. It doesn't make any sense. And he pretty much just told me there is no chance of anything happening between us since he thinks Annie is too young and I am younger than her. By a couple of years.

"Is the person out in the field okay? Is the person I tripped over…? She was dead, wasn't she?"

He looks at me and gives me a slow nod. Fragments of what happened flash through my mind but none of it makes sense. Why was I out in the woods in the first place?

A memory that comes as a murky whisp of smoke settles over me.

"I was running from…that can't..."

Memories come back but they're not making any sense. I pull away from Merrik. "Did I hit my head?"

The look in his eyes makes me put even more room between us.

"You didn't hit your head, Piper."

If I didn't hit my head causing all of the shit to become massively jumbled in my mind then…, "Oh my God!"

The way he is looking at me, the depths I see in his eyes, tells me I might not have made up the shit inside my head. I push his hands from around my waist and really look at him. His chest is wide, and a triangle of sparse curly hair leads down to his…I jerk my eyes back up before they fall any further. It's not his chest that has my attention…well, not all of my attention. It's the marks on his skin and the fact that they look half-healed already but are distinct enough that I can make out bite marks.

I shake my head but can't verbalize what I want to say. If he's got bite marks all over him then that means he was…there. He was one of the creatures I saw, one of the things that tried to eat me.

"I can explain."

"Explain! Explain!" I use the wall of the shower to push myself up so that I am standing. "What are you explaining? That you wanted to wash your meal before you ate it. That you wanted to take your time and make sure I was clean before you…! Fuck this!"

I take off running. Thankfully the way Merrik's shower is designed is wide and open and all I have to do is sidestep to run away from him. A growl comes from behind me causing me to run even faster, and confirming that I was right about everything. I don't even care that I'm not dressed. I just need to get away.

I run out of the bedroom and into the hall but that's as far as I make it before a large arm bands around my waist and lifts me off my feet. I kick but he's got too good a grip on me. There's no way I'm getting away…for now.

"Calm down, damn it!"

"You calm down!" Yeah, I know it doesn't make any sense but nothing does anymore. "Let me go!"

"I want to explain what is happening, Piper."

Noise on the stairs has Merrik turning with me in his arms. The growl that rumbles out of him is so deep it vibrates through his chest and into me.

"Mer, I wanted to…oh…kay. I'll come back!"

Merrik steps back into his room and locks the door before letting me go. I rush to the opposite side of the room trying to keep a good distance between us. His eyes send a chill through me when he runs them over me, from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, and not in an 'I'm so scared' way. It's then that I realize I've been running around his house, carrying on full conversations, with no damned clothes on! I look around but can't find the clothes I was wearing so I yank the entire bedspread off the bed and wrap it around me.

"I just want to explain what you saw tonight. I don't want to eat you." Under his breath, he adds, "At least not like that anyway."

I tell my lady bits to settle down when they grow heated at his words. No! We do not fuck the hot guy who turns into a dog monster because that's just wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong! I most certainly don't think about what it would be like to have his tongue brush over me in all my most sensitive places.

A small growl emits from Merrik and my eyes widen when I realize he is sniffing the air.

"Oh shit! You can smell that?!"

Instead of answering me he moves to the closet and opens it. When he shuts the door it's with a huge, blue robe in his hands. He holds it out to me. "Please, let me explain who we are and what happened."

"W…we? There are more of you?"

He nods. "Some of the children from camp even."

"M…my kids?"

This completely floors me. All the fight drains out of me and I sag against the wall. I don't think I've ever felt so tired or confused as I do now.

"Oh my God! You weren't the dick at the camp when you were ‘correcting' little Ralfie. I was."

He gives me a slow blink but doesn't correct me either. I cautiously step forward, one foot in front of the other but go slowly so, that if he…attacks or charges or growls I can reclaim that space, and snatch the robe from his fingers.

"Please sit. I'll sit over here in the chair if you sit on the bed. I worry some of this won't be easy to…digest."

"That…is a lousy choice of words."

I quickly wrap the robe around me and cinch the belt as tight as I can before I sit down on the edge of the bed on one side. He pulls the chair up to the same side but leaves enough space that I don't feel trapped.

"We are a species called Lupin." I know enough to know that means wolf in a whole bunch of languages. "We don't exactly know where we came from other than maybe Ancient Rome. Either way, there are small groups of us all around the world. We usually remain pretty self-contained for the most part, probably because we were hunted at one point or another throughout history."

So, he's telling me he and all of his friends are…not human. Sure. Cool. No biggie.