Gaze (✔)

Chapter Thirteen: Bad Moon Rising

(Dedication for a commenter, as per usual...I think :) )

The car rumbled quietly beneath Clara as they sped down the dark highway, Joanna drumming her fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of the loud, unfamiliar music that blasted through her radio.

The dark sky outside was marred with the last streaks of sunlight, slowly receding into the horizon behind them. They were the only movement on the road, and had been for quite a while.

In her boredom, Clara’s thoughts circled back to what Joanna had said earlier.

“So what if you do find your mate?” she asked, eyeing her companion curiously.

“What?” Surprise was evident on her face as she replied.

“A lot of wolves find their mates, right? What if it happens to you?” A pause. “Or Dylan?” Clara pressed on, not failing to notice the uncomfortable look that her face was briefly pinched into.

“I don’t know.” Joanna answered truthfully, glancing at her passenger for a moment. “We haven’t really talked about it, but a bond like that is hard to ignore.” She paused, looking again to Clara for some sort of confirmation. “Right?”

“I guess.”

“What was it like for you?” she asked, surprising Clara and leaving her scrambling for an answer.

After a few moments’ pause: “Complicated. I was trying to kill him, after all.” She scoffed.

Visibly relaxed, Joanna laughed, the sound filling the small space as she turned down the radio. “So that’s how you met.” She remarked dryly. “How sweet.”

“But really, what’s it like?” she asked, looking uneasy with her own question. In Clara’s mind, Joanna didn’t seem like the type of girl to gossip and giggle over this sort of thing, but she had a quiet eagerness in her voice, as if she did want to meet her mate. From what little Clara had known about mates before she had met Wyatt, they were considered a blessing.

“You know we’re not really…together.” She reminded Joanna, who didn’t reply, instead holding a knowing smile that bugged Clara.

“Well -”

Whatever words she had been about to say went unheard by Clara as she stared in shock at the figure standing in the road – the one that they were rapidly approaching. Even from this distance, the headlights of their car illuminated him perfectly, and she could clearly recognise the boy she had grown up with, despite the many years that had changed and shaped him into the smirking young man in their path.

His blond hair, not too unlike her own, hung dishevelled just above his eyes, which held a malice she could barely recognise. This young man did not look like her childhood tormentor anymore – he seemed much worse. His body displayed no signs of moving to avoid the vehicle barrelling towards him, as if he knew that at the last second Joanna would spot him and swerve wildly to the left around him, screaming from shock all the way.

In fact, Clara could swear that just from that look in his eyes, he knew that the car would skid towards the trees creeping closer to the road, screeching the whole way as the driver desperately tried to regain control of it.

She found herself without a breath to cry out, staring at her eldest brother Sam until he was snatched out of her sight as the car hit the trees.

As much as she would have liked to pass out, to be gone from this road with this enemy, Clara found herself wide awake even as she lurched forward in her seat, the seatbelt digging into her body like a knife and the airbag exploding before her, jolting her violently back again. She gasped in air, her head spinning and body aching from the movements.