-Jared-
I had been frozen since I'd felt that blade and heard those words.
What are you?
They'd echoed in my head the whole way down the hall and out to the back. The entire time, she'd had the tip of the blade sharply at the center of my back.
It hadn't been a question I'd been expecting to hear. I never thought I'd hear that one. 'Who are you?' Now that was common, but what- that was a different story entirely. She knew I wasn't human. Somehow she knew.
I had slipped up, I'd let my wolf gain control of me and there'd been nothing I could do to stop it. I'd started the partial shift, my fangs and claws had started to draw out, and that's what had started it all. The change in her had been enough to get a grip on myself and reel it back in, but it had been too late. She'd felt it and she knew something wasn't right. How had she known though?
When we were outside I slowly turned back around to face her.
"What are you?" She asked the same question she'd asked inside.
I swallowed hard, I didn't know how to answer this. I knew what I was, but I didn't know how to tell her. I didn't know if telling her would be a good idea at this point, not when she was armed with something that could easily kill me.
I looked down at the dagger still clutched tightly in her hand, pointing in my direction.
"I'm not sure what you m-"
"You know exactly what I mean, don't play that game. Tell me what you are."
"I'm a person," I stammared.
"No. You're not just a person, you're something else...something else entirely."
Her eyes were narrowed and I saw the look of disgust on her face. I couldn't look at that, I couldn't stand here and see her look at me in that way; like I was some vermin to kill. How did she even know about this? Her dagger was pure silver and I'd seen a flash of a gun from under her jacket when she'd moved earlier.
"Who are you?" I asked quietly.
"No. You don't say anything unless it's answering my questions," she said raising the blade in her hand at me in warning.
Shouting broke through the tense silence between us as a group of people walked near the alley. Electra moved toward me quickly, backing me up against the brick wall, the dagger stuck between us again, trying to hide it from the passers by.
The blade sliced through the fabric of my shirt, touching my skin and I let out a hiss as it burned my flesh. Her angry eyes that had been staring into mine turned to worry and I knew she'd seen it. She'd seen the shift in my eyes.
"You're a werewolf."
Damn it. How much of this world did she already know about? I'd assumed when she found out she'd run away screaming from me. I'd never imagined she come at me guns-or daggers-blazing.
"Why?"
I didn't know what she was asking. Why what? Why was I a werewolf? I just shook my head. "I don-"
"Why did you do this?"
"Why did I do what?"
"Make me care?" Her voice broke and I wanted to help her. I wanted to tell her it was all going to be okay, but was it really? She was standing in front of me with a silver blade about to gut me.
"You're not natural, I hunt things like you," she whispered. "You're a creature of evil. You kill people. You don't have a soul."
"What?" I pushed forward taking her by surprise. "You don't know anything about me," I growled, my anger overshadowing the pain I felt from the blade biting into my skin.
"But I know your kind."
"My kind? What do you know? You know I'm a werewolf and that's it."
"And werewolves are soulless creatures of evil," she said pushing back.
Soulless creatures of evil? What was that even supposed to mean? Who was she to decide who had a soul and who was evil?
"Is that really what you think? Is that really what you felt before you pulled me into this alley?" I asked her.
She had been the one to come to me, she had been the one to kiss me in that hallway.
"I didn't know that you were a monster," she spat.
I flinched at her words. Monster, it was something I had called myself many times. Unnatural, I had considered that as well. What I was shouldn't exist, she was right about that, but to call me a soulless creature of evil?
"A monster? I'm not the one holding a blade to another person."
"And I'm not the one who grows fangs and claws and kills people because they can."
"Instead you use daggers and guns ,right?"
I felt the blade dig deeper and I let out a low growl, and her blue eyes hardened.
"I only kill abominations like you." Venom laced her words, her eyes burning into mine. I couldn't look into those eyes right now. Not with what I saw there.
"Like me? It wasn't like I chose this, Electra. I was never given an option."
"You were born a creature of evil. That doesn't change what you are."
"No, I wasn't born like this. I was made into this. I had my life taken out of my own hands and put in the jaws of some wolf and I haven't been the same since. I didn't choose this, I wasn't born this way, I was forced into this life and I have to live with it every single day."
"I can help with that," she said in a cold tone. I could tell she was pulling away. She was trying to hide herself deep inside where she could protect herself from what was going on, so she could keep free from any attachments she might have.
"Electra, please look at me."
She just shook her head back and forth. She didn't want to look me square in the eye, she couldn't do it.
I slowly moved my hand over to hers, the one that was holding the dagger at my abdomen. I felt all of her muscles tense under my touch, shaking at what the mere contact did to her. I gently pulled the blade away, showing the growing line of blood that was soaking into my shirt. The pain subsided slightly as the silver broke contact.
"Go ahead, cut your hand," I said looking down at the dagger. Her eyes flashed up to my face looking at me like I was insane. Why would she cut her own hand? That's what her eyes were asking me.
"You can do it yourself. Just let me prove my point, or I can show you," I said sounding darker than I had originally intended, but I was fairly sure the tone would get the job done
She looked down at her hand and made a small cut on her palm. The dark red started to well up in her palm.
"Now look," I said pulling up my shirt revealing the place she had cut me. "I bleed just as you do."
I saw her eyes travel from the slice she had made and over to the scars left behind from the bite that had turned me into what I was.
"Electra, I like you. If I'm being honest, I feel more than that toward you. And I know you feel something for me as well."
"Don't even go there," she said holding the dagger at me again. "Don't you dare go there."
"Go where, Electra? To say that I love you? No, I wouldn't go there yet because love is something that has to be built up, and it's hard to build something like that when the person you like is waving a dagger in your face and calling you a creature of evil.
"Where I am going to go is this-and you better listen up. I like you. I like you a lot and on that first day of school, within that first day of us meeting, I discovered something totally crazy. That we're mates."
"What are you even talking about?"
"Mates. Soulmates. we were apparently made for each other. How a werewolf and a hunter could be made for each other, well I don't know but we were."
"You're lying."
"Am I really? Is that why you feel that pull inside toward me? Is that why every little touch sends those sparks through you? The reason you feel like you're going to burn down in flames?"
"How do you know any of that?"
"Because I feel it too. I feel it every time I touch you. Heck, I feel it every time I'm near you. I get a yearning just to touch you, to be close to you. I want it like I've never wanted anything before."
"Creatures like you can't have mates, you can't feel love. You need a soul in order to do that, and you don't have one." I could tell that she was reciting it in her mind. It was the only thing she could grasp onto because everything in her world was being flipped upside down. I just had to prove to her that what she thought she knew, was wrong.
"How do you know? Have you ever asked a werewolf what they feel? What have you done to test if we have souls? If we're soulless creatures, then what does that make you?"
As soon as I said it, I regretted it. I had meant it-meant every word of it-but I regretted actually saying it. If she called me a monster, then what did that make her? I could see the hatred burning behind her eyes. I had seen the way she'd changed so quickly from that intense flame into the stone cold huntress she was. I had never dreamed that I would be the huntress' mate.
I could barely look at her when I realized what this meant. She had no qualms over killing werewolves, she didn't have any problems with it at all. She'd turned into this cold person so fast in that hallway that it had nearly given me whiplash. What had she done in the past? How many of my kind had she killed?
From the look in her eyes, I could tell she had lost count. The lives she ended, the families she broke up, the lovers she had killed. I could only imagine what the tally must be by now.
I wanted to like her less for it, I really did. My entire body and soul tried to go against this feeling I had for her. I was probably as disgusted with her as she was of me, and yet I still felt the damn pull toward her.
I didn't know if there was a single thing I'd be able to do to convince her that I wasn't the monster here. I couldn't accuse her, that wouldn't get us anywhere. I had to show her, to prove to her that I was the same person she'd first met, that I was the same person she'd started to have feelings for. But when she was like this, I didn't know how I was supposed to do that.
"Electra," I began slowly as I raised my hands. "Look at me, and just put your dagger down."
The look she was giving relayed just what she was thinking, that that was the last thing she was going to do right now.
"I'm asking you to trust me. Listen to what your heart is trying to tell you. Don't let your walls cloud your judgment. Open yourself up to the possibilities and just give me a chance. I'm not going to hurt you. I promise."
She didn't put the dagger down, but she did lower it to her side, and that was good enough for now.
"I'm going to take your hand," I warned her.
I did just that, grabbing her free hand in mine, her muscles once again tensing under my touch. I brought her hand up, resting it on my chest over my heart.
"Do you feel that?" I asked her. When she nodded I moved her hand over her own heart. "And do you feel that?" She nodded again.
"Tell me what you feel."
"Heartbeats."
"What about the heartbeats?"
"What about them?" She asked sounding slightly frustrated.
"Did they feel different? Were they the same?"
"They felt similar," she said sounding skeptical again.
"Our hearts beat the same, we bleed the same. The only difference between us Electra, is I was ripped from my world of normalcy and thrust into the world of being a werewolf. I was turned into this thing and I've been making the best out of my situation. You were ripped from your world of normalcy and chose to hunt people like me."
I couldn't tell if I was reaching her, but I was still alive at the moment. That had to count for something.
"With all of this, is it really so hard to believe that we can love the same? That it's possible for werewolves to feel the same way regular humans do? Electra, if it's possible for your own heart to thaw and for you to feel something even a little bit close to affection or love, then isn't it possible for someone-something like me to feel it too?
I let myself touch her, my hands running up and down her arms lightly. I could practically feel the battle raging inside of her. The ultimate decision between what she had learned from her people and what she felt inside. I still felt betrayed by her, the way she could be a stone cold killer, and yet there was a small part of me that didn't blame her.
I had been turned by a werewolf who didn't even pretend to be nice-to be human. He had taken me in the middle of the night, attacking me, biting my side and leaving straight away. He had found me again a few days later, assuming I'd just leave my home and family to go with him and his pack.
There had been no way I would have ever done that, I hadn't even believed him in the first place. When you're a bitten, you don't start your shifts until the next full moon, so I had a month to forget about him and his crazy words. The bite had healed a little sooner than I thought it should have, but I was just glad that it was healing. I was happy it hadn't been infected and done something worse to me. Little had I known that it had done something far, far worse.
That first full moon had been something else entirely. I had never felt such excruciating pain as I had in that first night of being a werewolf. That man had come to me again, offering up his assistance and I had agreed out of desperation.
My impression of him had never changed. While I had agreed to learn from him-while he and his people had taught me everything I knew about being a wolf-he had never felt like a leader to me, and I had told him I wouldn't be staying with him. I never felt like I truly belonged there. He had seemed fine with the idea at first, thinking it would just take me some time to come around, but it never happened. He hadn't been happy about that.
I was glad my family had decided to move when we had, or there was a chance he would have had his people kill them, or turn them as well. And I didn't wish this life on anyone, especially not my sister. If anything had happened to her because of me, I wouldn't have been able to live with myself.
When I think about that, and about how I feared for my family's lives, it made it hard to imagine how Electra could ever think we don't have the capability to love. But I also can understand where she gets the idea of the monster. My Alpha had been that monster.
"There are beasts out there-werewolves who do terrible things- but that's not all of us. Some of us are just trying to survive, we just want to make it through another day. Some of us are trying to keep our families and our loved ones safe."
"Your sister-"
"Is an ordinary human who knows nothing of this crazy world." I said. "Well, I'm not sure I'd really call her ordinary, but she's completely human."
My hands moved up Electra's arms to her shoulders and she turned her face to look away. She refused to look directly at me and it hurt. It crushed me more than anything else ever could. The animal inside yearned to be closer to her, but the rest of me couldn't do it. I couldn't stand the pain of her rejection. I didn't think the wolf could handle it either.
We were both sitting at a crossroads and neither of us knew which way to turn. I knew that eventually, one of us was going to have to give, and there were only a few different ways it could end.
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So there was Jared's POV on what's going on. His thought process in this whole reveal, and the revelation of what Electra is as well as what he is.
What do you think? Leave your COMMENTS and don't forget to leave a VOTE if you liked the chapter. And as always, thank you so much! :)
~Red