(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 35 ; Ziya

"Okay. Dinner," he said, following her through the old cedarwood door. The light shifted inside, the sun sunk away and he was blinded for a moment by the darkness. "But first, you have to tell me—"

When his sights adjusted and the dark was burned away by dim fiery candle lighting, it was not one face, one set of eyes sticking into him like arrows, but thirteen. Skulking around her, burrowing their faces affectionately into the bare skin of her knees were twelve simpering wolves. She had selected the ones at her side, one hand on each head, fingers curling, dragging through the short, coarse fur of their skulls. The others paced at her feet, eager for her attention.

"Who are you?" Jaylin released.

The woman lifted her hands from the heads of the beasts and they sulked away, displeased to be excused from her presence. Some lingered by, lounging in doorways and beneath side tables. Others clomped off to retire in peace.

"I forgot to introduce myself, didn't I?" The woman smiled again. She was always smiling. She reached forward to shake his hand and he took it like her mere touch was a drug to his skin. "I am Ziya. Ziya of the East."

-

Sadie found herself standing in the door of the Sigvard's private library. Libraries had become something like the gates of hell to her. She remembered the night she spent, watching Jaylin scan in the new donations. How she ended up cowering on a table, clinging to him for fear of her life. It was a question that floated to the surface no matter how many times she'd shove it back down: what would have happened that night if she hadn't escaped the wolf?

What would she be remembered by? Taking up photography last year? The love poems she wrote as a teen, banished to darkness of her Lisa Frank spiral notebook? She remembered those days, spent fawning over Sarah J. In algebra class. Admiring the way the sun melted through her ember hair, kissed the sandy freckles on her cheeks. Sarah broke her heart that summer, those poems, dedicated to her sun-soaked eyes, now banished to the darkest corner of a bedroom closet. God, if someone found them now, she'd wish that wolf had gotten her.

But then, Sadie had grown, developed intuitively, spiritually. She wasn't the same Sadie who spent all of Freshman year crushing on that scheming bitch, Sarah J. No, this Sadie didn't waste time on heartbreak. This Sadie didn't fall for girls like that anymore—she didn't melt for icy women.

But even still, if she were to die today, she would have nothing to contribute but a few garbage poems about a romance that never sparked beyond its making—a sloppy, tipsy kiss at her first high school smasher.

This Bronx guy had saved them then, but she had that same sick pit in her stomach. Like something was watching her, climbing the walls and prowling the ceiling, following her as she tiptoed through the halls of the Sigvard's home.

Maybe she was just frightened because she'd been singled out, but why had she? Why had Quentin ordered her to meet with Alex? Why couldn't she go with him like Tisper had? Quentin wasn't unusually built; he was fit, but no more athletic than any gym rat she'd seen before. And yet, there was a comfort when he was around. A feeling of natural protection. An order.

Oh, Jaylin, she thought, breathing in the realization. No wonder. No wonder you like him so much. It was no secret that more than anything, Jaylin needed protecting. He'd spent his whole life doing it for others. He'd done it for her.

No, it wasn't Quentin that had saved her life. It was Jaylin. It was the sound of that book snapping shut against the wolf's skull that had whisked her away from its deadly jaws. It was Jaylin that had protected her. But who was here to protect Jaylin?