Bitter Blood (BBi)

Chapter 42: Hour of the Wolf

Chapter Forty-two
Hour of the Wolf

Again I part with Rhys at the end of the driveway and go to my front door, unlocking it and then glancing back at him briefly before stepping inside.

I'm too focused on his retreating figure to notice the sounds going on within; the scraping of cutlery on plates, voices, a soft feminine laugh.

I drop my things and dart into the doorway to the kitchen.

Dad's sitting at the small table in the middle of the room where a dinner is set out. He's wearing a freshly washed light blue button up shirt with his hair combed back. He looks more awake, more sober, then he has to me in a long time.

But it's the person sitting across from him that sends my thoughts into a tailspin.

Elise turns to look at me.

At the sight of her, my anger flares.

I can imagine the quiet "oh Henry" that must have slipped from her lips the moment he opened the door, and the way his eyes must have widened the second he heard her voice, the way it felt when that piece inside of him that had remained so hollow all these years suddenly clicked, burned, sparked with astonishment, with a sign of hope.

Eleven years of feeling lost, heartbroken, betrayed – gone?

Elise smiles. “Parker– “

“Get out.”

Her smile slips away.

“Parker!” Dad protests.

I take a step further into the room, ignoring him.

“Get. The hell. Out!” I shout, my anger boiling over.

Elise sets down her fork, pushes away from the table and stands.

“I'm sorry,” she says to me, then looks over at Dad. “To you to, Henry.”

“No, it's okay. I'm sorry.” he stands up as well. “You don't have to go.”

She doesn't even have to look at me to know that she does.

“It's probably best if I do.” she takes her coat from the back of her chair and shrugs it on, flipping her chocolate hair out from underneath it. She moves into the doorway of the kitchen where I've stepped from and glances back, catching my gaze.

A moment passes between us. There's a look in her eyes that tells me something, something I can't quite fully decipher, before she's walking out of the house and into the light rain.

Dad is standing beside me now, staring dumbfounded at the lounge room door as it closes behind her.

“Why did you let her in here?” I ask him.

Why did you speak to her? Why did you sit down and have dinner with her? Why did you pretend that nothing was wrong?

He turns his eyes to me. “She's my wife.”

I shake my head. “No, she isn't. She was. A very long time ago.”

-
-

I don't sleep that night.

I lay awake staring at the ceiling. Blue sleeps at my feet though, black paws resting against my ankles. Outside my open bedroom window the light of night pours in, an omen of the approaching full moon.

I have to tell Avery and Rhys and everyone that my mother is here. I have no choice.

I roll over in bed to face the window, staring out into the darkness to trace the tops of the trees at the edge of my backyard with my eyes.

The howl breaks the air softly; a rising, sad crescendo that makes my eyes widen in the dark space of my bedroom. Because even if there's three hundred meters between us, a crowd of pines, a quiet house, the difference between human and not, I'd know Avery anywhere. Her call is as clear as if she's standing right here with me.

I slip from my bed sheets and go down stairs, gliding over to the back door to step out into the night. I sit down on the deck steps with my face resting on my hand as I wait for her to come. When she does it's the shadow of her shape that I see first; the form of a slender, white wolf in the midst of the pine needles and gloom, weaving herself like a needle and thread through the trees.

There's only eight meters between the line of the forest and I, a distance we could cross and meet in the middle of within just a few moments.

She looks up at me with a burning gaze, a pale shadow of the girl inside the body of this wolf.

The full moon is still a few days away so I know that this shift is a result of her own doing. I wonder how long she's waited out in the forest, slowly building up the nerve to call me from my sleep. The sleep that has otherwise been frustratingly elusive.

Avery moves closer, slowly shortening the distance across the backyard.

She's a large animal seemingly born from light, her pelt woven from the threads of stars, so white and soft that it makes you want to reach out and run your hand through it despite the chance that you'd probably lose your fingers in the process. But it makes you think that maybe it would be worth it just to touch something so ethereal, so wild.

Avery looks up and her gaze meets mine. Her eyes are summer blue; so clear and focused and full of hope. Her eyes that are so human it's shocking. Her eyes that make for my heart .

And find it.

I outstretch my hand and lay it between Avery's twitching ears, her muzzle rising so that I can stroke her face.

“This isn't forgiveness.” I tell her. "I nearly died, Avery. You didn't just ditch my ass and I was lonely for a couple days. I nearly died. I called you right after the attack. I called you when I was sick. I called you a thousand times and you never picked up, never tried to get into contact with me."

The white wolf drops her head.

I move down to the bottom step and sit cross legged, my hands in my lap. The she-wolf plants herself in the grass, sinking down onto her stomach before looking up at me.

My thoughts play over in my head, slow and twisting. I move my gaze up to the trees beyond the wolf.

“She's here.” I whisper. “Eleven years of nothing and now she's just... here.”

In the edge of my vision, Avery bristles at the mention of eleven years because there's only one person that relates to that, one person who lurks in both our minds, one person who we know has been gone for that long. She knows what it means just as well as I do.

I look back at her.

“I'm angry, too.” I say.

She stares at me for a moment, then pushes her head under my hand. I go with it, drawing my fingers through her fur.

“This isn't forgiveness.” I tell her again.

But she closes her eyes anyway and moves further into my touch.