The arrival of the countless buses had interrupted my mindless distraction of watching the cold air change my breath into a puff of vapor.
After a short while of my usual search for Leone's face, my heart eventually drops at the sight of him slowly hobbling towards me with a familiarly drained and numb expression, his eyes and face devoid from it's usually intoxicating light and love.
I rushed to meet him halfway as he immediately crashed right onto my arms and chest in a fit of silenced cries. "What happened, are you hurt?" My chest heaved as I tightly held onto him, hoping that he knew that I'd never let go. "Talk to me, Leone. What happened?"
We walked further down the street, letting him tightly hold onto my arm and cry as I had to fight the urge to press who or what had wronged him and made him feel so sad. All I could do now was be there for him in silence, let him know that I was here, that everything was okay, and that I was never going to let him go.
I just want him to be happy again.
After awhile of listening to his sobs eventually turn into a fit of tiny hiccups and weak sniffles, he eventually looks up at me with a tearful glisten in his reddened eyes. "Dydan."
"Leone?" His name escapes my breath like soft velvet silk, wrinkled by an undying tone of pure worry and heed. "What's wrong?"
"It's gone Dydan-all of it!" His voice cracked out as I immediately stopped walking to turn and face him.
"What!? What's gone?" I carefully studied his face, his broken expressions rendering me completely hopeless to the vast unknown of not being able to help him in anyway. "Speak to me, Leone."
He sniffed all the while trying his best to gather up his composure, speaking up to me with his tiny little voice. "All my work, it's gone." He shakily pulled out his familiar sketchbook from his backpack, handing it out to me to examine. "They ruined everything."
Several pages of Leone's sketchbook had now been torn off, wrinkled, and tainted by fragments of dirt and leaves. The entire thing was in complete disarray and no longer had any hope for further use.
My jaw and fists inexplicably clenched as it didn't take long for my fury to take over and emanate from within. "Who did this?" I questioned with my voice sounding a lot more gruff.
Leone looked away out of hesitation as he kept his quivering hands against his elevated heart. "It doesn't matter, they're just gonna keep messing with me like they always do-like they have done for years!"
"Leone, look at me." I slid a gentle pointer finger and thumb right under his chin in attempts to make him face me. "I want you to tell me exactly what happened."
He aimlessly looked around, batting his big eyes a few times while trying to gather up his thoughts. "M-My teacher paired me up with this boy from my class and-and then he pinned me up against a tree thinking I was something entirely different-"
"What do you mean?" I interrupted, wholeheartedly confused.
"I-I don't know, I just remember him realizing that he was wrong so h-he apologized, and then all of a sudden Hudson and Eric came out of nowhere to mess with us and then they ruined my sketchbook, and then the boy hurt Hudson in his arm-I-I don't know, it was-it was horrible." I immediately brought Leone right back into my chest for a warm embrace, in attempts to calm down his panic-stricken rant.
"Who is this boy?" I asked, gently running my hand down behind his tense back.
"He's just some quiet kid in my art class named, Nikolai." He breathed out as my whole entire body immediately froze at sound of that name.
"Did you just say Nikolai?" I breathed out, audibly unnerved as I was unable to keep myself from widening my mouth and eyes in complete disbelief.
He rid his face from any tears with a sniffle, biting over his plump bottom lip as he nodded up at me.
I gulped down and looked up to process the unexpected turn of events. Above us were dark ominous clouds beginning to shift and band together to take the sun hostage, taking all of its light with it just to envelop the land and sky with a sullen ambience. My unbridled rage suddenly cleared my mind of all other thoughts, allowing me to focus entirely on what needed to be done which was to make Nikolai pay for thinking he could put his hands on Leone.
"Come on, get on." I eventually broke through the silence, turning my back around towards the small boy. "I'll carry you." He obliged as he was clearly burdened with way too much emotions to resist out of kindness.
His gaunt arms and tiny fingers circled around my neck, his nimble body feeling almost weightless against my back as we continued our gloomy journey back home.
"I'm sorry." He lowly hummed out in a shameful tone.
"For what?" I glanced at him with furrowed brows.
"For letting you down." Leone brokenly let out right behind my neck. "All I wanted was to come back and show you what I had drawn and-and I-I couldn't even do that."
"Hey, stop." I quickly resisted on letting him shift the blame upon himself. "That wasn't your fault, alright?"
"There where so many drawings I wanted to share with you." Leone was audibly suffocated by the weight of his own existence, devoid from any sense of hope and happiness, a state that I wished I had the ability to revert. "Even a drawing of you."
My face subtly lit up at the thought of Leone even taking the time to do that. "A drawing of me?" An appreciative exhale left me as I felt a fluttery feeling in my stomach.
"Yeah." He solemnly whispered.
I glanced back at him with a growing smirk in attempts to uplift his mood. "Well you can always draw me again, and this time you're more than welcome to get as close and personal as you want with me." I winked, successfully making him smile back at me as a flustered pink went across his cheeks.
"I wish I was tougher, Dydan." He let out in deep thought. "If I was, then maybe things wouldn't have happened the way they did. Maybe those boys would just leave me alone, and my dad-maybe he'll finally love me more."
"Hey, didn't I tell you to stop blaming yourself?" I reminded as the rain began to go along with my voice. "Those guys are clearly just miserable with their lives so they have to drag you down along with them, your dad too. You're perfect just the way you are Leone, don't ever feel the need to change yourself for anyone, you understand?"
"Yeah." He adorably grumbled out into the air.
"What about the place?" I brought up in attempts to deter his mind off from his troubles. "Was Cloud Lake nice at least?"
"Yeah." I could hear a small gentle smile form on his face as I seemed to have sparked an underlying enthusiasm. "It was really nice. It looked exactly as I remembered it. I-I wish you were there to see it."
"Well then one day we'll go, just you and me, and then you can spend the whole day drawing whatever you want." I stoutly arranged in a promising tone.
"Really?" His large doe-eyes immediately widened, lighting up his soft cherubic face. "You promise?"
"I promise." I attempted to return his enthusiasm no matter how much the thought of those boys and what they did to him uncontrollably boiled my blood, making me teeter on the edge of my emotions as I didn't wanna just outwardly show it and risk further scaring him or making him sad.
All I knew was that a boundary had been crossed, and a few people on my mind deserved whatever was coming to them.
Once Leone and I had arrived to the front of his house, I gently placed him down and turned to look at him. "Is your dad home?" I ask, pulling his hoodie forward to keep his face away from the cold.
He anxiously bit his lip and nodded. "Yeah."
"Are you gonna be okay?" I worriedly asked with a soured expression as I hoped that his dad wouldn't be so hard on him today.
"Yeah, t-thank you." He amends, almost inaudibly. I watched him hesitantly make his way towards his front door, throwing me one final look and wave before entering the god-forsaken place.
I waved back, watching him vanish right behind the creaky screened door. My entire demeanor instantly changed once he was out of my sight, tensing up every bone and muscle in my body as I immediately gravitated towards the road that lead towards the skate park.
The travel was short as I used my anger as fuel to zoom right past the streets as well as the deep forest, letting the brisk air run and skim against the fabrics of my clothing until the area became all to familiar. I eventually stopped and approached the chain link fence and it's recognizable rip that was used as an entrance. I peered right over the distant commotion, closely observing the countless people who were gliding against the ramps and the overall space.
All of a sudden, my instincts were rapidly provoked by a heavy shift made in my surroundings, prompting me to quickly turn around and face what had caused such a dramatic pull.
In a series of swift unrelenting motions that could easily be mistaken for light-speed, I immediately lifted up an open palm to stop a tightly clenched fist half way from making contact with my face.
"What are you doing here!?" Nikolai begrudgingly growled as our clashed hands shook within each others visibly fuming proximity.
I responded by closing my fingers right over his fist, pulling him towards me to return a knuckled punch of my own. "Who the fuck do you think you are putting your hands on him, huh!?" I sharply let out while circling him, watching him try to process my punch that had blown him back into a few disoriented blinks.
"Who the hell are you talking about?" He lowly murmured as he spat out blood to the side.
"I'm talking about Leone! You stay away from him, you understand?"
"It was an accident!"
"Oh really?" I contested with a scoff. "Just like how it was an accident when you growled and pounced on me like a rabid fucking dog!?"
He didn't seem to like that very much as he rapidly latched both of his hands on my shoulder, effortlessly lifting me up from the ground to toss me right into the other side of the empty road with enough force to send me right over the steep, decline. The unpredictable fall consisted of rolling down vast stretches of jagged branches and crunchy leaves that coalesced with the sounds of my huffs and battered breaths.
Once my fall had balanced out into a much flatter terrain, I quickly got myself back up to return into a high-alert stance, letting my adrenaline soothe the scratches and splinters I had just gotten. My breath hitched when a howl echoed from a distance, inducing a sense of uneasiness all throughout my body and mind as I looked around the dark eerie forest.
The sounds of something big effortlessly jumping from one tree to another began to sound off from above, causing my heart to incessantly pump as leaves and branches began to fall to the ground all around me.
All of the noise eventually crescendoed into a large impactful landing that had caused a rippling crater to be made right on the ground behind me. I slowly turned around to face the creature that was emitting all the guttural growls and brutal bellows, uncontrollably stumbling back once the sight before me had reaffirmed all of my conspiracies and assumptions in the most terrifying way possible.
A tall beastly figure that stood around seven feet tall now stood right before me. It had a large head that somewhat resembled a wolf, the only difference being that it's features seemed to be a whole a lot more fearsome. It had broader shoulders, muscular chest and stomach, unsheathed claws that matched the sharpness of the teeth, and an incredibly immense size that consisted of pure muscle and brawn. It's humanoid body we're mostly covered in a grayish white coat that looked just as soft as a cloud and yet as thick and impenetrable as a sterling diamond.
The only way I recognized that it was still Nikolai were the beast's distinctly colored eyes, one blue and one green, which meant he was the goddamn Alpha.
Of course I just had to unknowingly put my life at risk by dealing with the Alpha himself, because why not!?
My crippling shock were immediately cut off by the beast proceeding to make me dodge past a few swipes done with its long fibrous claws.
"Oh wow-alright!" I nervously laughed all throughout the chaos ensuing. "You're really trynna-shit-fuck! You're really trynna kill me aren't you!?" My voice was overpowered with the most terrifying roars.
The beast mercilessly lunged towards me as a response, causing me to dodge his attack by rapidly climbing up a tree and making him crash right against the tough bark. My eyes widened as I landed right behind him, watching him shake the concussion away like a dog as the tree began to drop and topple right over the ground.
I cautiously backed up away from him once I saw how much that seemed to only piss him off further.
Holy shit, I can't believe I've lasted longer than thirty seconds with a werewolf! Wait, that kinda sounded wrong.
"Oh shit!" I exclaimed as I rolled myself to the side to dodge over the beast lunging up at me once more, snarling at his ever growing annoyance for me as he changed his stance from being bipedal to now being disturbingly quadrupedal.
Nikolai rushed towards me with his steps heavily impacting the ground beneath us, his strikingly furious eyes piercing into my soul as I had no where else to go but face him.
I decided to risk it all by meeting his immense bite with both of my hands, causing my feet to forcibly slide a few distances back as I held his bloodthirsty mouth wide open.
Nikolai let out a gravelly roar that met my face and hair with his hot fuming breath. I immediately decided to return a roar of my own as I tried to gather up every possible strength I could to readjust the grip I had on his jaw, simultaneously turning while lifting him up into the air, a sequence that ended with me slamming him down onto the ground before me.
He let out a canine-like whimper as he thrashed himself away in attempts to get back up. I keenly watched as he readjusted his dislocated jaw, our chests uncontrollably pulsing and heaving at one another in response to our intense showdown.
A triggered chord in our destructive symphony made us rush towards each other one last time, ending us right into a thunderous brawl that consisted of him portraying his durability and power through his heavy hits, alongside my fast agile dodges that were shortly followed right after with a punch or a scratch of my own.
The sound of Nikolai's jaws snapping and getting punched eventually stopped once he caught me at a weak spot, catching me off guard by biting onto the arm that I lifted up to defend my face. "Argh!" I exclaimed at the sharp excruciating pain as I used my other hand to land a few punches, scratches, and formidable gouges against his head.
He continued to gnaw on my arm, brutally stabbing his sword-like teeth against my flesh and bone. Every time I tried to get him off me, he'd pick me up just to plunge me right back down onto the ground, rendering my chest to be emptied from all air and reducing my chances of escaping to an absolute zero.
Just before I could've accepted my fate that I may have to leave here with a missing arm, another large wolf that consisted of a dark onyx-like coat rapidly lunged right over Nikolai from the side, causing them to abruptly land and wrestle each other a few distances away from me. I hissed and bit my lip at the sight of my arm instantly beginning to regenerate as I wondered who the other wolf was and why they cared enough to stop Nikolai from continuing to maul me alive.
After their tussle, the two wolves briefly communicated within themselves, with the large black werewolf appearing to calm Nikolai down and preventing our fight from continuing once more.
They glanced back at me for only a moment before disappearing off into the dark foggy forest, leaving me behind with widened eyes and too many thoughts to process.
Holy crap, I just fought a werewolf!
0.0 it's starting to get intense and we're not even half way into the book yet!!!!!
I am so excited for you guys to read further because believe me when I say that things are only going to get much CRAZIER
I just wanna say thank you for those that constantly vote and comment, you're support really means a lot and ily. 🥺
PS. Who do you think won that fight?
1. Dydan
2. Nikolai