Shift | Complete ✔️

31 | In Crystal Vision

My head throbbed with possibilities. But with no laptop or computer, there was no way of knowing what was on the USB.

Phelan had told me that I was better off resting. Apparently Sophia was out of town and on her way to purchase a laptop.

Wonders never did cease. The man I met at the Full Moon Restaurant and Bar who once proudly asserted that Haven didn't have the need for such things, had now arranged for those very such things for me.

The truth was, he was right. My temple felt like it was in a vice, my neck was so tight that I could barely move it from side to side, and my body was exhausted.

He'd explained that although my body had healed from its wounds, there was bound to be residual pain. Particularly from the mark itself.

The mark.

It wasn't the romantic experience I had worked myself up for. I had spent so long anticipating the moment. I had pictured him buried within me for the first time, before sinking his canines into my neck as our bodies came in unison.

But I had lost that experience. I was lying if I said I wasn't disappointed.

As I laid amongst the covers within his dimly lit room, I absentmindedly began to explore the mark on my neck. My body was too stiff to sit upright, but I could make it out with my fingertips.

It was on my left side. I could feel two distinct areas where my skin had ripped and somehow weaved back together like ribbons. Each mark where his canines had pierced the skin were softer, more sensitive, and still slightly tender.

As I laid there touching it, I let my mind wonder back to what happened with my father. With Leila.

I remember the expression on his face as his throat was slit. He knew it was coming. It was part of his plan, to be a distraction to them. To lull them into a sense of triumph that they couldn't see what was closing in.

I knew that I should be grateful that I got to meet him. That I had the chance to get to know him when I never thought I would, but to see him die, because of me, I didn't know how I was supposed to grapple with the weight of it.

And Leila. How could someone be so devious and rotten to the core? That she'd chain someone in servitude, not really because he'd fallen in love with the wrong species, although that was a good cover... but because he could be exploited to bolster her strength. Greed did awful things to people, werewolves I had learned, were no exception.

I sighed as I looked to the ceiling. If it weren't for my dad, I would have been trapped. Confined. Tortured. Dead. But now I was free. But... how could I feel free carrying the weight of what I had done?

The fact that I was still alive was miraculous, but I still couldn't believe that I was actually responsible for someone's death. I had killed a wolf. A man. And I enjoyed it.

Had I turned into a psychopath? If my brain were dissected by scientists, would they discover that I had some kind of abnormality in my pre-frontal cortex? Had I become emotionless? Did I lose my empathy?

I tried to find a peace with the past events, but doing so would never come easily. It couldn't be something that I'd overcome in a day, a week or a month. I knew that grief didn't have a timeline and like my new life, adjustments were part of the process.

My mind was tired. I needed a therapist, a punching bag or a stiff drink. Perhaps all three. But what distracted me from my pit of misery was noticing that despite being in a darkened room, everything was in crystal vision. I could read the titles of each book on the bookshelf, I could see the veins that ran through each leaf on the ivy that rested on the dresser. I could see each grain of wood in it's intricacies, carved to precision around the door frame.