He reached out his hand. I took it and stepped toward him. I hugged him and caressed his long locks as his father quickly scrambled around the tree on the opposite side of Brandon.
While I continued to hold Brandon, his father crept up behind him and pushed the syringe into Brandon’s arm in an attempt to tranquilize him.
Brandon jerked angrily, and I fell from his embrace. He yelled out a fiery howl.
I was startled. Apparently we all were.
The needle was still stuck in his arm, but the tranquilizer hadn’t been injected. Brandon turned to his father with an angry stare, and Dr. Maddox, ghost white, stared back at his son. Dr. Maddox didn’t say a word, the tension in the woods as thick as the brush itself.
As Brandon continued to glare at his father, I quietly rose to my feet behind him. I quickly pushed the plunger in, then grabbed the empty syringe and withdrew it from his arm in an instant.
He whipped around to me with a maddened look. I was afraid, and the needle shook in my hand. But when we locked eyes, his mood once again softened and his tense body relaxed.
Dr. Maddox took the syringe from my shaking hand and packed it away in his bag, and we watched as Brandon stormed off. We heard him shuffling through the brush, but he soon stopped.
We cautiously crept after Brandon and found him still standing, panting heavily by a tree.
“Stay back,” his father said to me.
Just then Brandon’s legs wavered. He stumbled as he tried to stay upright. His eyelids started to droop, and he fought to stay standing and awake.
He grabbed the tree for support but began to lose the battle. The tranquilizer had taken over, and he was clawing at the tree as he continued to stumble. He reached out to me again, but by the time I got to him, he was already lying on the ground.
“No—” his father said. “It might be a trick.”
“He wouldn’t do that!” I said.
I took his hand, which was limp in mine. His eyes were closed, and he lay fast asleep. Brandon was beautiful, lying there in the woods like a sleeping prince. I continued to hold his hand, and I brushed his hair away from his face and caressed his cheek. He was warm and sweaty from his battle with us and the medication.
“I need to take a blood sample now,” his father said. “I’m not sure how long the tranquilizer will last.”
“I’m going to stay here with him,” I replied.
“I can’t let you do that,” he said. “It’s not safe.”
“It’s safe now,” I said, still stroking Brandon’s cheek.
His father gave up fighting me and withdrew a needle from his bag. He wiped Brandon’s forearm with an alcohol swab. “Wow—it’s really easy to find a vein now,” he said.
He quickly stuck the needle into Brandon, who didn’t even flinch. Dr. Maddox placed the samples in a plastic bag and sealed them away in his medical bag.
“I’ll walk you to your car,” he said.
“I told you, I want to stay here with him,” I countered. Brandon was so handsome lying next to me. I wanted to stay with him all night until he awoke.
“I’m going to watch him to make sure he’s all right,” he said. “From a distance. I don’t know when he’ll wake up and what mood he’ll be in, but I can only imagine. There’s nothing for you to do here.”
I knew I wouldn’t be able to convince Dr. Maddox to let me stay, and I did feel secure knowing someone, especially a scientist, would be observing him.
Dr. Maddox patted my shoulder and guided me away from the sleeping werewolf. I felt bad for Brandon that his heroism had come to this.
“He may be angry tomorrow,” Dr. Maddox said when we reached my car.
“I think I will be, too,” I mumbled.
ELEVEN
willow park
Unfortunately the next day was a Saturday, so I awoke with a bit of melancholy, knowing I wouldn’t see Brandon in class. I could only imagine how Brandon would be feeling today, given his struggle with us last night. I called and texted him obsessively but didn’t get a response. I got dressed and hurriedly drove to his house, but it didn’t appear that anyone was home. I knocked on his guesthouse door and the main house door, but no one answered. Even Apollo wasn’t barking.
I wondered if his entire family had picked up and left town. Or did Brandon flee the area or not come home and they were out looking for him? I was worried. My mind was overcome with worst-case scenarios.
When I got home, “Fly Me to the Moon” began to play. I scrambled for my cell phone.
“Brandon?” I asked, breathless. “Are you okay?”
“Celeste?” a man’s voice answered.
“Dr. Maddox?”
“Yes. I wanted to call you and say thank you for your help last night. You are braver than I am.”
“Uh . . . you are welcome.”
“And I think the medical profession would be lucky to have you, though I’m not sure how many patients will struggle like my son did last night.”
“Where is Brandon?” I asked, worried.
“He’s right here.”
I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
“I just wanted to talk to you first,” he continued.
“I appreciate your help, Dr. Maddox, and I’m sure Brandon does, too.”
I heard a pause and another voice in the background. “Celeste,” Brandon said into the phone.
“Brandon, are you okay?” I asked anxiously.
“Yes,” he said. “Now that I am talking to you.”
I melted hearing the comfort of his sexy voice. “How are you feeling?”
“A little moody, but I know a cure for that. It’s seeing you.”
I smiled into the phone.
“Meet me at Willow Park tonight?” he asked softly.
“Of course!”
“We’ll have a real date,” he said. “This time without my father.”
I hummed, sang, and whistled the whole way to the park. It was going to be a date to remember. It was the third day of the full moon. It was the last day in this cycle that Brandon would turn into werewolf form. And if we were lucky and his father could make an antidote, then this might be the last time I saw him in werewolf form forever.
That said, Dr. Meadows’s words still haunted me. But if Brandon was really dangerous, wouldn’t he have bitten me already? Last night, he could have bitten me or his father—and with all his anger, he still hadn’t. That’s not who Brandon was as a human or as a werewolf. He was kind and generous and ultimately so magnetic that the thought of being apart from him made me physically upset.
I carried a basket with a picnic dinner for us—a baguette sandwich with layers of roast beef, along with two sodas and chocolate cupcakes I’d made and topped with plastic wolves. I’d tied a pink scarf around the handle of the basket to add a little flirty romantic flare. I wanted to bring something special for my hot carnivore. I headed out early, just before sunset, so I could set the scene in the woods before he arrived.
As I drove through the twisting roads, I noticed a car following me into the parking lot. I caught sight of it in my rearview mirror. It was a familiar Beemer. Nash had followed me.
I got out of my car in a huff.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“Nash. You can’t follow me everywhere.”
“Celeste, I can’t let you put yourself in danger.”
“I’m not in danger.”
“The full moon will be out soon. Please, come with me.” He grasped my arm.
“No, Nash.”
“Then I’m going to have to tell Ivy and Abby—”
“No, Nash. I want to tell them. They are my friends. The truth needs to come from me.”
“Then you admit it. He’s really a werewolf!” Nash seemed shocked by my statement.
“No—I admit that I’m dating him. And I’m happy to tell them.” I’d been keeping Brandon’s and my romantic relationship a secret for
Brandon’s sake—so he wouldn’t be more tormented at school if Nash proclaimed he’d seen the Westsider’s transformation. But the part about Brandon truly being a werewolf—I wasn’t planning on telling anyone about that.
“It is a full moon tonight and it’s almost dark, Celeste,” he said. “I’m really asking you as your friend—come back with me.”
“And I’m asking you, as your friend, to let me go.”
“Celeste—we don’t have to get back together—” he said. “It’s not about that anymore. It’s about you. Please. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Nash was as sincere as I’d ever seen him. This was different from when he had tried to charm me to get another kiss. He was really pleading with me not to go—for my sake, not his.
“I can’t just stand here and watch you walk into a darkened place to meet a werewolf,” he said. “Are you insane?”
Perhaps I was, if Brandon had been like what people might expect a werewolf to be. Dr. Maddox, Dr. Meadows, and Nash were concerned for my safety. So why was I so sure Brandon would be different? Maybe I’d been so blinded by love that I couldn’t see the forest through the wolves.
I paused. For a moment I really reflected. Nash was my friend, my first crush. A guy I’d known for years. He was happy and handsome and well liked. Brandon was an outsider, a guy whose father was now afraid of him, and a werewolf. It wasn’t very logical, but I knew I had to follow my heart—and that would lead me into the woods.
I turned away from Nash and made my way to the end of the asphalt before he stopped me.
“You are just going to walk into this forest alone?” he asked.
I didn’t reply. He already knew the answer.
He peered in my basket—noticing the contents.
“Are these the things a werewolf eats?” he asked, the sun setting behind him. “What if it’s you he’s planning to eat for dinner?”
A deer shot out from the woods a few yards away from us. It stopped along a wooded brush near our cars.
“See?” I said. “It’s beautiful out here.”
“Yes. But you should be enjoying it with me, not some circus freak.”
“But you never wanted to do these things,” I charged.
“I do now,” Nash said sincerely. “And I want to do them with you.”
He stepped in front of me, blocking me from going any farther toward the woods, and then I noticed a pair of gray eyes a few feet behind him.
I raised my hand to him. “Uh . . . you need to stay still.”
Nash and I were between a wolf and his prey.
“Don’t tell me how I should behave,” he said angrily.
“Nash, I’m serious.” I spoke softly, my voice quavering. “There is something behind you.”
“Are you pranking me?”
I shook my head with fear.
“What is it?” he asked.
“A wolf,” I whispered.
“Now I know you’re pranking!”
He swung around so quickly that he startled the wolf. It growled low and fierce. Nash gasped and, in the motion, twisted and lost his footing. He stumbled.
The wolf must have thought Nash was attacking. The animal sprang forward and within a heartbeat had taken Nash’s arm in its mouth.
Nash yelled a horrible, gut-wrenching yell.
I screamed and dropped the basket.
Nash tried to kick the wild wolf away, but it kept its jaws clamped on his arm.
I screamed again as I searched the area for a branch or anything to help.
Just then I heard another howl from the woods.
The wolf’s ears perked up, and he released Nash. Nash yanked his arm away and stepped back from the wolf.
The wolf stared at Nash and growled as Brandon raced out of the woods and jumped between Nash and the wild wolf.
Brandon stared at the wolf with such fierce intensity that the wild animal retreated in fear, backing away slowly before turning and loping off into the woods.
I was very relieved but still scared, and tears streamed down my face.
“Are you okay?” Brandon asked me, resting his hands on my shoulders and looking at me squarely. His gray eyes stared down at me. I could barely nod my head.
“But he’s not,” I said, pointing to Nash.
Brandon noticed blood dripping from Nash’s arm and ran to the basket. He untied the scarf from the wicker handle and handed it to me.
“I thought that thing was going to kill me,” Nash said, in shock.
“You’re all right now,” I said, trembling. “It’s over.”
I tied my silk scarf around Nash’s arm, just like I’d done to Brandon in the wintry woods. The pink scarf was quickly dotted bloodred.
Nash was clearly shaken. The things he feared most in life—wolves—had attacked him. Maybe he had a sense about them all his life. Legend’s Run was known for a wolf population, but Nash wasn’t a hunter, and before this school year, we hadn’t seen any up close and personal. I always found his fear to be odd, but it was one of the things that made Nash vulnerable.
I rubbed Nash’s back as he was, understandably, still visibly shaken.
“It’s okay, man,” Brandon said. “You’ll be okay.”
“I can’t believe you look so different,” Nash said. “You look like a wolf yourself.”
Brandon cracked a smile, exposing two sharp lycan fangs.
“You’d better drive him to the hospital,” Brandon instructed.
Brandon didn’t have time to kiss me good-bye before he disappeared into the woods. His gray eyes shone through the edge of the woods as I drove Nash out of the park.
Instead of spending a romantic date with Brandon in the woods, I hung out with Nash and his family at the hospital while he got his wounded arm stitched.
Though the handsome jock might never admit it, I knew he was grateful to Brandon for saving him from the wolf.
Nash was tested for rabies, and the doctors said we would know within a few hours if he was infected. But it wasn’t rabies that gave me cause for concern. I thought that Nash might be safe because he didn’t have the werewolf blood that Mr. Worthington had talked about having in his own ancestry running through him.
Or did he?
TWELVE
catfight
I spent the next day, Sunday, inside, worried and exhausted from last night’s events. Everything I was doing seemed to be bringing harm to others—Brandon saving me in the woods and now Nash following me, both resulting in them being attacked by wolves. I didn’t have the strength to leave my home, and at this point I wasn’t sure if I should. I used the time to regroup and hope that my lack of presence would ensure no one was harmed.
The following day at school, Nash was greeted by the student body as if he were a hero. The story that floated around the hallways, locker rooms, and classes, and took on a life of its own, was that Nash had saved me from the wolf and was bitten in the process. He held out his bandaged arm like a warrior on a battlefield.
Nash was getting the acclaim Brandon deserved. Both times. It was Brandon who’d saved me from a wolf pack when I was lost in the woods, and it was Brandon again who’d saved Nash from an attacking wolf. And somehow, Nash got the credit. But I knew it wasn’t a good idea to tell anyone what really happened—especially that Brandon was a werewolf.
“Brandon saved your life,” I said to Nash later that day.
“How are you so sure? Maybe he was the one who sent the wolf out there.”
“How can you even think that? The wolf was stalking a deer. Brandon helped you!”
“And how can you be so naive? You saw how he was . . . he’s not human.”
I was fuming. I knew it was his pride that kept him from admitting the truth: that because he didn’t believe me he stumbled, and the wolf, feeling threatened, attacked him.
“Are you okay?” Ivy asked Nash when she got to class. “Celeste called me from the hospital.”
Nash flashed his bandaged arm like a medal.
“I can’t believe you were bitten,” Abby said, examining the bandage.
“Maybe it really was a werewolf,” Dylan added.
“A picnic in the woods,” Ivy said. “How romantic. But no wonder you came across a wolf. Haven’t you ever heard of a restaurant?”
“Maybe Nash should stick to movies,” Jake said.
I was about to tell my friends right there and then that it was Brandon who had saved us from the wolf when my hero entered the classroom.
Brandon locked gazes with me as he took his seat. The girls continued to coo over Nash’s wound as Nash turned back to Brandon and gave him a thankful nod.
After class, Brandon gestured for me to meet him. I gathered my books and told my friends I’d catch up to them and found him waiting for me underneath the staircase.
“My dad left today for Europe,” he said. “He’s going to try to make an antidote.”
“That’s great news!” I said, giving him a hug. “How long do you think it will take?”
“It will take a while, but he said he’d check on me and let me know as soon as he has something.”
“That’s terrific!” I said. I snuggled up to Brandon. I imagined what our life would be like together without the threat of his transformations.
“I was going to tell my friends about you saving Nash,” I said. “They don’t have to know why or how you saved him, only that you did.”
“It’s over with now. I’m just glad you’re okay—and that he is, too.”
Brandon’s caring nature made my love for him even deeper. It was then I knew I couldn’t keep the secret any longer.
* * *
I found Ivy and Abby at a round table in the library. Ivy was fiddling with her makeup, and Abby was working on homework.
I didn’t plan on telling them every detail about Brandon and me, but I was bursting to tell them it was him who I was interested in—not Nash. How could I continue to keep this a secret when my heart was going to explode with love every time I saw or even thought of him? And to see Nash parade himself around school as a self-proclaimed hero when in fact he’d have been torn to shreds if it hadn’t been for Brandon? I was sure Nash wouldn’t tell them that it was a werewolf that saved him, but I knew that my former boyfriend wasn’t in the position to publicly disparage Brandon now. There were two witnesses Saturday night who knew who’d really saved him from the attacking wolf. And Nash had more to lose by us telling everyone he wasn’t the hero than Brandon had in Nash proclaiming the Westsider was a werewolf. It was time to come clean. I sat down and was anxiously bouncing in my chair when Abby looked up from her textbook.