Crissa's Mate

Chapter Fifty-One

Driving back to the campus that night, the moon was lower in the night sky and much less full. The students in Becky's car could not stop talking about the lone wolf which saved their male colleague from great bodily harm and possibly death. All right before their eyes. They expressed with emotion how the larger males in the pack had knocked the student down and seemed determined to attack him. Becky raised the issue that the wolf they had witnessed stepping in to save their club member looked in size and characteristics to be similar to the wolf she had seen in the still frames of CCTV footage earlier. She was referring to the maverick wolf which had shockingly entered the outskirts of Vancouver several days before, causing a panic among the residents there. To Crissa's mind, these two wolves were one in the same—and yet not entirely a wolf at all. She knew the following day she had to get back up to her cabin to look after David, and hopefully, oversee and assist his return to human form.

As the group pulled into the parking lot, Becky told them she would pursue her theory of the two rogue wolves and try and analyze why this large male they had witnessed that evening would have been rejected by the larger clan and then behave so altruistically toward the species' natural enemy, Man.

Returning to her dorm room at one-thirty AM, Crissa could see Trisha had still not returned from the party. Though she knew she had been invited by new friends, she worried about Tory in particular, and his obvious designs upon apparently any attractive girl on campus. Though she was understandably concerned, Crissa tried also to convince herself that Trisha was not a child and capable of making her own decisions.

As she changed out of her hiking clothes and into her pajamas for the remainder of the night, her mind was on David and how he would be spending what she hoped was his last night as a wolf on the mountainside. She knew that somehow in the morning she would have to be with him during the transition—this a change back to humanity which, as she had experienced, could leave him dazed and vulnerable.

* * *

Waking early that Sunday morning, as the sun had just risen, and daylight was illuminating the campus outside her window, Crissa looked across the room and to her shock could see that Trisha's bed was still empty. Her roommate's things were lying around as they were when she left for the party the night before. This gave her a serious reason to worry, much more than before when she had not seen her arrive safely at some point during the long night. She thought about calling down to Veronica and causing alarm at the front desk, but for the moment refrained from this, so as not to draw attention or cause undue concern about Trisha's reckless ways. There were mannerisms Crissa did not approve of in Trisha, but these were things about her she also had to tolerate. She understood the right to give the girl her freedom to do as she pleased, but also in the end simply understood she might have little or no influence over her actions.

Yet to be safe, Crissa's nurturing ways and stubborn ethos got the best of her, and she decided to pick up her phone and call Trisha's number. After five rings the voice on the other end answered it, slowly and whispering.

"Yes? . . . Crissa?"

The girl had obviously been asleep.

"Yeah, It's me, Trish. So . . . you OK?

"Shhhhhhhh . . . Yeah. I think I am . . . Just can't talk now. Don't want to wake up Troy."

"Oh. Alright then . . . Sorry."

"It's OK. You understand, right?"

"Yeah, I do. Just go back . . . to sleep."