"RED! RED?!" Aster thundered down the stairs.
Elaine and I both leapt to our feet. I grabbed the kids and shoved them behind me, shielding them from the angry man.
Aster spun around the corner, panting. When he saw me, he instantly froze. "Oh my god- I thought you left!" he cried, resting his hands on his knees. "You scared the shit out of me, Red!" he added, wiping beads of sweat off of his forehead.
Elaine smiled. "Looks like he missed you," she whispered to me.
I stood in front of the kids still. "I went to look around."
Aster wheezed. "I thought that you ran off or something, either into the forest or back to town. If one of my wolves found you... especially one that wasn't in my meeting, I didn't know what they might've done. You're still a stray, and strays don't belong in someone's territory." He looked up. "Thank you for watching him, Elaine." He glanced at the bed. "And Suki. I'm sure she gave him an earful."
Elaine smiled. "I think she likes him."
Aster arched an eyebrow. "Really?" He grabbed my wrist and pulled me into a tight hug, crushing me in his buff arms. "I was so worried about you..." he mumbled, his breath hot on my ear. It was kind of amusing, seeing him act so gentle around me. All the other wolves acted scared of him. He was a real cuddlebug. I wonder why the others treated him like he was some sort of tyrant. Was that just how wolf hierachy worked?
Elaine smirked at me over his shoulder. She made a kissy face and pointed to Aster. I grinned at her. I liked Elaine.
Aster pulled away, running a hand through his hair. "Seriously, you scared me. Tyler would've ripped you to shreds, waited for you to heal, and then rip you to shreds again!"
I glanced at Elaine, wondering if she was offended that he was talking about her husband like that, but she merely stared at her shoes. I pushed Aster away from me a little bit. I liked Aster, but I wasn't sure I was comfortable with how touchy he was. It was the same with Jamie, they were both touchy people, but I just didn't like it as much as they wanted me to. "I'm fine. The kids have been keeping me company."
Aster groaned. "Why can't you listen to me when I tell you not to go wandering off? Why don't you understand how dangerous it is?"
"Elaine told me we have healing powers."
"They're hardly powers, and much less of a blessing than you might think. You can still feel every bit of pain in the moment, and you'll remember it always. It means you could get shot every day for the rest of your life in non-vital areas and live the rest of your life in misery."
I frowned. "But-"
Aster hissed. "No buts, I'm serious. Start listening to me."
Elaine nodded. "It's for your own good, Red."
Aster handed me my phone. "Your friends called you like a dozen times. It was the ringing that woke me up. That and lack of warmth," he said, almost accusingly. I rolled my eyes and took the phone from him.
"Thanks. I need to get home anyways, my mom is probably worried sick. I'm usually back by ten or eleven, and it's nearly nine o'clock now." I glanced at Aster. "Do I need my big, strong werewolf bodyguard to walk me home or can I do it myself?" Elaine snorted.
Aster scoffed. "Let me go get a jacket, and then I'll take you home. Stay here."
"Aye-aye, beefcake."
~*~
"Fuck you!" I cried, slamming down five hundred more dollars on the ground. Jamie grinned maliciously as she snatched up the dollar bills and added them to her growing pile. We were trying to play a peaceful game of Monopoly to help us through this all-nighter, but Jamie was bent on my destruction and was pulling everything in her power to make me lose. She was no manipulative- all that psychiatry training was coming in handy.
I only had a thousand dollars left, while Jamie was nearing ten thousand dollars already. I was like, a billion dollars in debt while Jamie was peacefully floating in her pool of cash like Mr. Krabs or Scrouge McDuck.
Jamie smiled and moved her cat a couple more pieces down the board, landing on a railroad. She put down two hundred dollars. "Sold!" she chirped. I flipped her off angrily. Jamie shook her head at me and gestured for me to roll the dice. I had ironically chosen the schnauzer piece, that little furry dog, and I moved it six pieces down and landed on one of Jamie's properties. I whined as I handed over another couple hundred.
Jamie rolled her die and landed a double. She rolled again, and landed yet another one. I laughed as she sadly marched her cat piece down the spaces to the jail. "It's not that funny!" Jamie protested.
"You got arrested because you robbed me!" I said dramatically, throwing myself against the pillow I was propped up against.
Jamie couldn't help but laugh. "This is nice," she said as she used her get out of jail free card on her next turn. "I feel like we haven't hung out together, just us, in forever," she said wistfully, moving her cat a couple pieces down the board. She dished out two hundred dollars to herself as she passed GO. "Usually Adam is there, and I love him to death but he can be a real buzzkill. He's kind of a bitch to Amy."
I frowned. "Really?"
"You know Adam, I think he's kind of jealous. He's pretty attention deprived so he gets upset when I'm not paying attention to him and instead hanging out with Amy. He blew up last time I told him I couldn't hang out because I was at Amy's house. Now I tell him I'm here at yours so that he doesn't get mad."
"Huh."
Now that I was a werewolf, I was getting a lot better at reading body language. Aster told me that would get better as time went on, and it was kind of nice always knowing what people were thinking. They gave it all away in the shy way they touched their hair or the guilty way they rubbed their neck. There was something that Jamie wanted to ask me about, I could tell by the way she kept opening her mouth and then rethinking what she was about to say and finally closing it or explaining it by making a joke, acting as if that was her plan all along.
"Well I saw what they were building in the forest," I said.
Jamie perked up. "Really?"
"Yeah, it's a giant house with this huge family in it. It's a big white mansion and there's like two or three dozen wer- er, people that live there. Isn't that crazy?"
Jamie gasped. "What, like a cult?!"
No. Like a pack of half-wild animal, half-human hybrids? I couldn't tell her about that though, could I? I groaned inwardly. This was the first time I had a secret I couldn't share with her, and it made me feel awful- like I was somehow lying to her. My stomach was all twisted in knots as I thought over my next words carefully. One, I had to straighten out Jamie's views of these people, and two, I had to make sure not to let anything slip out about their lives.
"No, I'm kind of friends with the head of the house now."
Jamie gaped. "Huh?"
"Yeah, he's pretty cute. Big, beefy, brunette," I listed them off, counting the attributes on my fingers. "Strong, a great leader, good with kids, caring-"
Jamie cut me off. "Red Tenneson do you like this boy?"
"Man. Er, he's more of a man. He's basically a dilf, he just doesn't have any kids."
Jamie crossed her arms over her chest. "I don't believe this. When did you two even meet? I thought you were sick at home, yet here I find out you've been sneaking around the woods with some religious boy? You sly little boy!"
I laughed at that. "Not really sneaking. He found me walking around in the woods and we talked for a while, then I got sick and he took me home and took care of me for a bit. I went back to the mansion, met a few people, and that was basically it. He's really nice, but he's got a mean side," I added with a shudder. Just picturing the way his voice sounds when he's angry makes my stomach quiver. It's strange that Jamie will never feel that way. She's not a werewolf, and probably won't ever get bitten by one. It's almost sad, not being able to relate to each other about everything anymore.
"Cute. He's cute, right?"
I nodded earnestly. Though he had the physique of a gym bro, he was a total cuddlebug. He was a lot clingier then you might realize in the beginning, he just doesn't want to admit it. The whole time we were walking back to my house he was telling me about his favorite constellations and what they meant in different languages. It was really adorable. Hard to believe that that sweet, caring werewolf was the one that did this to me. He was seperating me and my friends. I ought to hate him for what he did to me, but he seemed sincerely sorry and I trusted him. I didn't really have a choice, my "Wolf", as Aster called it, told me to bow to his every command. What could I do?
"You've been so distracted. Am I bothering you?"
"No, no of course not!" I exclaimed. "I've just been thinking. Hey, are you tired? I'm tired. I think I'm ready for bed." I stood up and offered my hand out to her. Jamie pouted, but let me help her up and walk her over to her air mattress. "There. Mom's making pancakes in the morning and we can go for a walk in the woods if you want to see the big house," I offered.
Jamie shook her head. "I don't want to get caught up in that. But pancakes definitely sound awesome."