Beast Beloved

Chapter One

It hadn't even been five minutes and Eli had already been abandoned by Noah. They'd driven here in silence, and Noah had ditched him without explaining anything. It was a house party, sort of. It was being held in a boarding house, there was just as many sober people as drunk ones and if the hushed voices he heard from people coming down the stairs was right half the people here were already asleep. Seriously, what kind of party was this supposed to be?

Eli had wanted to stay home and sleep, but his dad, his dad, insisted he come out. After Eli complained about it to Noah he explained shortly, 'it's date night'. So he'd been kicked out by his dad, abandoned by his brother when all he needed was to curl up and fall into a coma. He knew they'd be spending the night, so his eyes kept drifting to the stairs.

"You can go up" A girl stepped into his line of vision, "There aren't any empty beds so I'd recommend the first one you find with under four people you snag a spot"

"With strangers?" Eli raised an eyebrow.

"Most of them won't bite." The girl smiled. "I'm Kaylen by the way"

"Eli." He introduced.

"Noah's brother." She nodded, and he suspected she knew that before she'd approached him.

Eli hesitated a moment, and peeked at Noah to make sure he wasn't looking in their direction. "He mentioned me?"

"I wrung it out of him" Kaylen confirmed, "Anyway" she looked in the same direction as Eli, "I'm going to go join in before they start, go find yourself a bed."

Eli stood awkwardly for another minute, waiting till Kaylen had joined Noah's group who were crowding around a table of cards and cups, then he made his way up the stairs. The walls were lined with landscape paintings and images of deer, trees and waterfalls. There was even a bear's head mounted at the end of the hallway.

He reached for the nearest door and peeked inside. There were two double beds, and so many bodies every inch of them was covered. Eli shut the door quickly before the sounds from downstairs woke them. He tried the next door, and found the same thing. His hopes of finding an empty bed were dashed, and it seemed that there wouldn't be enough room on any surface for him to curl up on.

Eli pushed open a door in the middle. This room only had one double bed in it, and he perked up when he saw it was almost entirely vacant. Soft snoring reached him in the doorway. A commotion of giggles and hooting laughter bellowed down the hallway. Eli slipped inside the room, pulling the door softly shut behind him. He waited a second by the door, but the sleeping person didn't stir.

Other people in the hallway did. Eli listened as curses and shouts suddenly came from all directions, and whoever had come up the stairs got cussed out by a dozen people. The doors were pulled shut again, and the hall returned to silence.

Eli couldn't help shaking his head. This place was weird. Who came to a party to sleep? Apart from himself that was.

He made his way across the dark room, going to the side of the bed that was empty. The person was closer to the edge than the middle, so this shouldn't be any trouble. Eli pulled his shoes off, then unbuttoned his top. He would have taken it off, as well as his jeans, but then he would have felt like a pervert as well as a weirdo.

Staying as close to the edge of the bed, Eli settled down. Even from the distance he could feel the heat radiating off the other person under the covers. It was hard to ignore. It was probably because of all the moving he'd done the past few days, but all his exhaustion caught up to him and he started to drift off to sleep. He let out a relaxed sigh, breathed in the scent of pines and let sleep take him.