~ ☾~
"I'm just gonna put these away."
Riley released the towel she had twirled around her head and let her hair fall, the damp strands darker than normally as they framed her face, her features still slightly flushed from the hot water.
She rounded the bed I was sitting on, picked up the other two towels and had already turned halfway towards the door when I caught her wrist and stopped her.
"I killed his brother," I whispered, my voice refusing to admit it out loud.
I felt her freeze. Faltering in the middle of her step as she turned back around.
"Warner's younger brother," I clarified, slightly louder. "I poisoned him."
She sat down next to me, the towels still gathered in her arms and she looked at me but I couldn't look back at her.
I was too scared to watch her reaction. Terrified for her opinion of me to change; that she would never look at me the same, but I had to say it. I had to face this now or I would never have the guts to do so.
"I can't- I can't blame Warner for what he's doing because I'm no better than him. I'm worse. I'm the reason his family's dead."
I let go of her wrist only to pull my hands into fists so tightly my knuckles crackled. "And he's not the only one. There are so many others. People I've hurt, that I took down and they didn't even do anything wrong."
I shook my head sharply. "Who am I even kidding, Ri?"
"Warner's brother? He was Reese's age. Even younger, maybe. He was tied up to a tree and defenceless and innocent and I poisoned him. I killed him before my father could consider to torture him, but it's still murder, Ri, I could've chosen to untie him and let him go just as easily but I didn't. He was just a kid."
"I know," she said softly. "I know what you did."
The statement caught me so off guard that I felt brave enough to meet her eyes.
"When I took your pain," she said. "I don't know how, but I guess- because you were thinking about it, I saw it, too. Exactly the way you remember it. Through your point of view, I guess. It was like replaying a memory in my head except it wasn't mine."
"I didn't know you could do that."
"Neither did I," she muttered.
I pinched myself, pushed myself to tell her everything else, forced myself to continue.
"You don't know the rest," I stated through clenched jaw, looking down at my hands so I couldn't see her reaction out of the corner of my eyes because this... this is what I guessed Jack had found out about. What had caused him to turn against me.
And shit, I couldn't blame him.
"That's not all," I breathed. "God, I wish that was it. You wanna know how we were able to find them?"
I hesitated. Postponed. Felt her eyes on me until my throat squeezed shut with fear. "Because he was on the list."
"What list?"
I reached for my phone on the nightstand and opened up a document before handing it to her. "This one."
I swallowed, hard, felt the atmosphere around me change; suddenly heavy with silence, as she scrolled through the list of names. Names of people like her.
She stared at the names that were crossed out. "Who are these people?"
"Zach-"
"Born werewolves," I confessed, nearly choking on the words.
"This is why born werewolves, like you, are so rare to find," I said softly. "Because it's easier to track them."
Her eyes snapped up, her heart racing. "How?"
I wetted my lips, swallowed against the tension in my throat. "In the medical world, the werewolf gene isn't known as 'the werewolf gene', but they do label it in your birth certificate. Same way as they label your blood type."
"We were part of... some kind of community. We had people, doctors, among us who had access to those documents. Who spread a list among those who did the-" I bit my inner cheek. "Fieldwork."
I rubbed a hand down my face. "We knew exactly who to hunt and we had no reason to do so except for the plain fact that their name was on this list."
My voice barely caught sound anymore, and it felt like my body was physically fighting me to keep talking. "It could've been Jack, or Isla or your mom. It could've been you, just as easily."
I wetted my lips, stared at some point in front of me. "It would've been you, if I hadn't got to know you first."
It took her a long time to figure out how to react and even longer to remember how to form words.
When I hesitantly turned to look at her, all the colour had drained from her face. The warmth had vanished from her eyes, the confession visibly shocking her to the core.
"Am I...? Is my family... are we on this list?"
I told her "no" way too fast, stopped myself too late from reaching for her hands and experienced for a first time what it was like to have her flinch away from my touch.
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because I've been checking it. Every day, ever since I knew-" I faltered, already feeling like, and sounding like, I was begging her to forgive me, even though I knew I couldn't ask that from her.
"Your name isn't on it. Never has been. None of you."
"Why?" She shot up, shaking her head as she looked down on me. "Why everyone else and not us?"
"I don't know," I told her. "I really don't."
She pursed her lips. "You should've told me."
Looking at her, I felt such a strong wave of shame and guilt flooding my body that my lungs seemed to strangle themselves. "I know," I muttered. "I'm sorry."
She ran a hand through her hair, pressed her palm to her forehead, released the air from her lungs.
"Is there someone who controls it? Do you know who created this list?"
I nodded slowly. "I don't know his name, but I met him, once. Right after what happened with Warner."
I looked down at my hands as I twisted the ring on my index finger around. "When I got hurt, my dad took me to him. He patched me up. I thought he was just a regular doctor, at first. Turns out my dad and him knew each other. Worked together."
"Of course," she breathed harshly.
She turned quiet and I knew she was waiting for something.
After a few moments I looked up at her.
"How many? How many people did you..?"
I felt my stomach drop. "Please don't make me say that."
"Zach..."
"I don't want you to know." My heart was pounding in my ears, racing with panic.
"So you know? You kept track of the number?"
She caught me off guard and for a second I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what she wanted to hear. And it didn't even matter because there really wasn't a good answer to any of this.
"I wasn't lying when I told Warner I remember all of them, and I do, Ri. But I can't- it's not something I'm proud of and it's the last thing I want you to know about me, okay?" My voice faltered, cracking under the tension in my throat.
"That number is killing me, it's been killing me, every day, and I wish there was something I could do to take it all back but I can't. So please, don't make me say it."
I shrugged, swallowed hard, pretended I didn't feel anything but the mask I used to put on didn't fit me anymore. "What difference does it make, anyway? Wether it's one or it's dozens, it still makes me a murderer."
My eyes snapped up to hers. "Right?"
She looked back at me, and I could see her panic because she knew she needed to say something and she didn't know what.
Actually, I think she did know. I think everyone did. I just think she couldn't.
Because she couldn't say no.
"I'm going to get some air," she said, and when she turned for the door I didn't stop her.
And I wondered, just like every time I watched her leave, if she was actually going to come back again.
If maybe this time she finally realised how insane it was to keep coming back.
~ ☾~
I knew she never actually left and I told myself it was because she couldn't go home.
Neither of us knew what to say so we didn't speak for the rest of the day and it killed me.
It killed me as I stared through the darkness up at the ceiling, unable to catch sleep, and I listened to her breathe on the air mattress on the ground knowing she couldn't sleep either.
I tried to think of something to say until my head started to hurt and I gave up with a sigh. Turned around. Immediately felt guilty for not trying harder and turned back.
"Zach?"
I froze, unsure wether it was from surprise or relief, and nearly forgot to hum a response.
"Promise me." She turned onto her back and I could tell by her silhouette that she was staring at the ceiling. "Promise me we're going to put an end to it. To that list and whoever controls it, because this..." she bit her lip, shook her head. "It has to stop."
I nodded, slowly releasing the air from my lungs. "I promise. Right after I figure out how to solve all this without anyone else getting hurt."
She looked at me, her voice soft. "How are we going to do that?"
"I'm working on it," I breathed, running a hand down my worn out features.
"There's something else we need to talk about," she said, aiming her eyes back at the ceiling. "And you're not going to like it."
I turned my head to look at her. "Okay."
"Tomorrow's a full moon."
All of a sudden it felt like there were ice cubes in my lungs.
Fear is cold. That's why it causes chills to run up and down your spine. Why it makes you tremble.
Why it leaves you frozen to the core.
~ ☾~
I wasn't sure if it was because of the full moon inching closer or because of the nerves coursing through my veins — probably both — but everything got worse after that.
I felt it for the first time during breakfast the next day; sitting around the table with my family, as I listened to them bringing up old memories while eating the blueberry pancakes Reese had proudly presented to all of us.
I felt what it was like to lose control.
Every time someone put down a mug too harshly, cut off a bite of their food and scraped the plate with their knife, spoke a sentence with too much excitement or shoved a chair backwards across the tiles to get up, I felt myself flinch, growing smaller as if the sounds wouldn't be able to find me then.
Each noise was just as unexpected as the next one until it put me so on edge that even the steady ticking of the clock in the back of the house started to scare me with every
Tick
Tack
"Zach, you okay?"
My eyes snapped up to Ryan, his question turning all the attention on me.
I put down the knife and fork in my hands, realising I was holding them so tightly the steel had started to bend.
"Yeah, fine," I swallowed. "Just a headache."
I rose to my feat and lacked so much caution that I think I scared everyone else around the table — but the sound of the coffee machine roaring to life had shocked me to the core and all I wanted was to get out of here.
"I really need to lie down for a second, I'm sorry," I rushed out, refraining myself from pressing my hands to my ears.
I felt their eyes in my back as I headed back to my bedroom, completely forgetting to fake a limp in my step.
I pushed the door shut after me — flinched at the slap — fell back against the wooden surface because I was too busy pressing my ears shut to find my balance.
For a second I thought someone was using a drill to bore into my skull, digging right through my ears to get to my brain, because that's what every piercing sound felt like.
"Stop. Please, stop." I squeezed my eyes shut. Prayed they would change back but all I saw were explosions of colour.
I couldn't even hear myself thinking over the rush of blood in my ears, my heart beating so fast and hard it seemed to thud right against my skull.
I could actually feel my mind disconnecting, threatening to lose self-control, and somehow I forced myself not to pass out from horror.
I was breathing too hard, even though it felt like there was a creeping, tremulous terror clenching its fist around my lungs. An aching in my bones; sharp stings with each gasp for air.
Then someone grabbed my arm and yanked me out of the room, and before I knew it my head was being pushed under the tap, cold water splashing up into my face.
It felt like waking up from a nightmare.
Except I knew that, this time, I wasn't dreaming.
My mind tapped back into place, like a rubber band snapping back into its original, round shape. I gulped in a deep breath, lifted my face from the stone cold water and looked up only to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror above my head.
I stared back at the bright, reflective circles around my pupils.
"What colour are they?"
Riley met my eyes through the mirror. "You can't see it?"
"All I see are flares of red and yellow, like some kind of messed up infrared camera," I mumbled. "What colour are they?"
She reached past me to close the tap and I didn't know wether it was her heartbeat or my own pounding in my ears.
"Blue."
I stared harder, tried to see it until my eyes started tearing up and when it didn't work, I bluntly put the imagine in my head. Pictured what it was like to have these electric, lightning blue eyes stare back at me.
The exactly same shade, the same kind, the same eyes as the ones that had peered into my face, right before I lost my mom.
They screamed murderer and they couldn't had been any louder.
I dropped my gaze, blinked so hard I got dizzy and grabbed onto the sink for support.
"It's worse than before," I said, nearly shattering my own teeth from clenching my jaw too hard. "I feel like I'm going insane."
Riley handed me a towel, her features soft. "It's because of the full moon in a few hours."
I shook my head. "I can't do this here. I can't stay here."
"We can't go anywhere. We can't go home. They're going to know- they'll find you."
I pressed the towel to my wet features, barely refrained myself from screaming into the fabric.
"We're gonna have to, because I can't stay here," I snapped. "Not when my family are the first ones I come across, the first ones to get hurt when something- when I lose control."
I turned around to face her. "So what's the safest place you can think of? Where did everyone else sit out their full moons?
"At my house. But we can't-"
"Take me there."
"Zach-"
"I don't care. I can't hurt anyone, Ri. Please."