Creatures

TWENTY-FIVE

Cast: Jordyn Jones as Ryn

Home didn't feel so sweet.

After several weeks in the hospital, Chrissy was cleared to go home.

Tristan could tell that she was really trying to tough it out, but she was in a lot of pain, and the woods were now terrifying. She quit smoking for good but he was sure that wasn't due to the health risks.

She talked a lot about college and getting out of Louisiana.

They managed to fight over anything and everything. Tristan slept more on the couch than he did in the bed, and she made it that way so he couldn't see her have nightmares.

The winter was predictably mild. He watched relationships bloom around him. Ryn and Jasper were the talk of the pack. Jas had finally started getting out, as long as he had his little witch by his side and those black leather gloves. Ryland and Alex were a regular Bonnie and Clyde, wreaking havoc wherever they went and making huge amounts of cash off bounties. They were good. Almost as good as Talin and his demon crew.

Unless Chris was in heat, they didn't have sex. If she didn't need anything, they didn't talk. She was sleepwalking through life and he didn't know how to stop it. One of them was always mad at the other one for some reason.

She'd gotten into every college she applied to. Rather than some big Ivy League, she chose a smaller college in North Carolina, up in the mountains.

Before long, it was time to pack. She had to live in on-campus housing, but he got an apartment near the school to be close by.

War was threatening between the pureblood and the turned - everywhere. The vampires were struggling as well. The feud between lykans and vampires died out eons ago, but they were in no shape to help one another. Witches were being stretched thin between both sides, and no one ever knew what game the demons were playing at. They always had their own agenda. Fae were siding with turned lykans, and ghouls were feeding on the tension and heightening it. No agenda, just chaos for the sake of it. Haphazard attacks on everyone and anyone in the fray.

You could even tell mortals were beginning to feel it, but that came out in a vastly different way. There was no specific cause for turmoil, just animosity for anything you don't stand for.

It was like someone was holding a match to the earth, waiting for it to go up in the flames, and no one wanted to get a bucket of water.

"You're quiet." Chrissy remarked.

He realized how tense he must've looked, and slackened his grip on the steering wheel. "I don't want to fight." Tristan muttered. "So I'm not talking." He looked over at her briefly. She was rubbing his pendant over her bottom lip and staring out the window.

Tristan sighed. "I'm sorry. It's just all we do is fight. We're never not fighting. You refuse to let me in."

She rolled her eyes. "You know enough about me."

"It's not that. Knowing one another comes with time. You don't trust me. At all."

That comment she didn't deny.

*

It was cold here, a lot more than Louisiana. Chrissy loved it. There were so many real minds, friends to be made, stories to be shared, and things to learn. It was only September, and yet she found a perfect little spot where she fit in.