Skins & Needles (COMPLETE)

Crossing Lines Part 1

Arsen

I felt bad leaving Charlotte behind. We had to run— as a pack— and check the perimeter around the entrance to the Pass for signs of sorcerers, but running meant shifting, and she could know nothing of it.

Even still, I hated the look I saw on her face when I shut the door. It was a look she never intended to share, but I caught a glimpse in the second before dark wood blocked my view. It was a look of loss. Loneliness. And I wondered not for the first time who she had in the world to rely on.

We circled our land for a few hours, communicating through the mental link all shifters could access. Yet somehow, there were no signs of the sorcerers anywhere on our land. It was disconcerting, given the level of aggression they had approached us with just weeks earlier, but also a welcome break. There was a war brewing over Lycan, and any moment of peace was received with thanks.

Sorcerers weren't usually overtly aggressive toward shifters, besides general animosity left over from the second shifter-sorcerer war. It had been a bloody fight for our home land, a land sorcerers felt they had a right to because of its magical properties, but it had ended before my lifetime. Before my parents' lifetimes. And the first war was barely a distant memory. Only some of the oldest and most dangerous shifters remembered anything about it.

But whispers of the sorcerers gathering, organizing, reached our ears too late, and they'd sent a small group to charge the Pass. We'd stopped them, but they'd already confirmed the exact location, and ever since, they had been sending scouts to try and find a way through. That's why after a night of drinking and card games, my circle and I still had to prowl the woods, checking for any sign of entry or scent of magic. On another night, we might not have been so lucky as to find nothing awaiting us.

When I returned to my house hours later, every dish from the evening was clean and put away, or discarded if disposable, and Charlotte was asleep on the couch. She was tightly curled around the spare pillow tonight, with her brows tightly furrowed, as if having a bad dream.

I wish I could have helped.

I went to bed.

The next day, I went to work as usual, hoping to reinstate some semblance of routine into Charlotte's and my life. I went through my regular tasks at the warehouse, taking inventory of both legal and illegal wares and contacting the respective product dealers, and then spent my afternoon tracking down a potential shifter threat to our circle. He ended up being no one important, an innocent kid from the Hayato circle caught snooping around one of our checkpoints, but it was something to do.

On my way home, my mind drifted to what could be waiting for me when I arrived. What concoction had Charlotte prepared for dinner that night? Would she be wearing one of her crop tops, or would I find her in my clothes again? Would she still be upset from yesterday?

I remembered a detail from the night before and scowled. She had fit in well with my friends and family, almost disguising herself as part of the circle. I could tell she was having a great time, as was I, until that stupid deal. The thought of her kissing Ethan made my vision go red, with an intense, possessive anger that I couldn't explain. She had every right to kiss whoever she wanted. But the thought of her like that with someone— someone else— made my stomach turn.

I wasn't supposed to have these thoughts, or feel these things with someone I had no mate bond with. It took time for those to form, right? And they were more certain. Not like this, where everything I thought and felt caused me confusion... Right?

The fact that I was even considering the idea of a bond with Charlotte terrified me, and I shut down the train of thought immediately. No more romantic fantasies of Charlotte. She was a prisoner, and in a few days, she would be gone. From then on, she was only there for holding, and I was only her supervisor. No worrying or getting to know her or flirting over dinner. Nothing.

All of these mental promises flew from my mind the second I opened the door.

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I love this chapter. Part 2 is just... aaaaaa.

Brain has been melted gumdrops since the time change so I can't think of what to type. I love winter but the seasonal affect it has on my depression is not my fav. I am still working on this book and the plans I have for it though! Just veryyyy slowly.

Happy reading!

-Haybails