My dad had brought me home from my appointment with the shrink and I'd dressed in my hunting gear before he left for headquarters. I told him I was going out for a job so he would hopefully refrain from checking up on me. At least for a while. After I watched his Jeep pull out of the drive and start off down the road I went to the basement into the armory.
My dad had asked me to make more wolfsbane soaked bullets as well as bullets with the poison inside.
I grabbed dried bits of the plant, flasks, silver, and other stray supplies I needed to do what he asked.
I set a pot boiling with water and grabbed the mold and molter. I threw in a couple small chunks of the silver to melt down and waited for everything to start working.
I sent a text to Jared reminding him that I really needed to talk to him in person, and that he could come over whenever he wanted.
I set the phone down and took the wolfsbane, grinding it into a fine powder. The silver had started to liquify so I added a few more pieces in, waiting for that to do the same. As I worked, I still had the shrink appointment stuck in my head. Everything we'd talked about. We were now down to an appointment every other week which was nice, but it still meant I had to go in every other week.
I took the pot of boiling water off and distributed it between three large flasks. I then took flakes of the wolfsbane and added some to each flask, watching at the water tinted slightly from the plant.
I added more silver to the pot until I had the amount I needed in there and waited for it to finish melting. The shrink's words rang through my mind, you seem different today. More open, less relaxed. It's like there's been a change.
Of course I was less relaxed, because there was a change, and I was going to talk to that change. My world had been flipped and I no longer knew which way was up. Had I been more open? I really hoped not.
I added bullets that were already made up into the bane liquid to let them soak. I'd add more to them when they were finished.
When the silver was done melting I pulled out the molds, some looking like regular bullets. Then a new set we'd recently gotten from The Organization. The new ones created bullets with hollowed out centers where the bane would go. As I set the molds on the counter, my phone started to buzz
I looked down seeing a text from Jared.
I'm out front.
I cursed quietly. I hadn't thought he'd come right this second. When I looked at the clock though, I saw it had actually been a couple hours. I'd gotten lost in the time.
I couldn't leave everything here when it was just started though. The silver needed to be poured and I needed to get the molds set up right, but I wasn't sure if Jared should come down into the basement. I groaned. I couldn't waste these ingredients. I especially couldn't leave the silver to keep cooking, and I also couldn't let it cool down in this large clump. My dad would ask what had happened and we'd have to wait until we got more in. I really didn't care to explain to him that Jared had been over while he'd been gone.
Down in basement. Door's unlocked.
I hesitantly pushed the send button. I really wasn't sure about any of this, about him, about us, about letting him see the weapons room.
What I was hesitant about didn't matter anymore because as I started pouring the silver into the casts, I heard him making his way down the stairs.
"Electra?"
I was quiet a moment, but I knew it was pointless. He was here, I'd told him to come down here.
"Back here."
Jared made his way through the basement and found his way to the doorway of our personal armory.
"What the hell is this?"
"It's exactly what it looks like. Can we just pretend it's not here?" I asked him, knowing there was no point in the question. I finished pouring the last of the silver and set the pot down.
"Pretend it's not here? Over half the stuff in this room can kill me."
"Well then do you trust me not to use it on you?"
"Honestly? Not really."
I looked at the ground trying to hide how much the answer hurt, but I knew he was right to feel that way. I hadn't given him any reason to trust me, and bringing him into the weapons room really didn't build any trust.
"I wanted to know more about you, about werewolves and mates."
Jared raised his brow at me as if that was the last thing he'd expected I wanted from him.
I turned back around finishing up setting the bullets, letting them set in the casts and then I leaned back on the counter looking at him.
"I- I want to know what this is. You said that we were mates, that we were made for each other. But what is this really? You talked about how painful it was for you, is that all this is?"
I could see the emotions flashing behind his eyes.
"It can be," he started. "But from what I've seen it can be the best thing in the world. I told you, you will never feel the way you do with me, with anyone else. That's not to say that you couldn't love someone else, because you very well could. I'm not saying that you will love me, because there's a chance you might not."
To say I didn't understand what he was saying, would be an understatement.
"Look," he said seeing my growing confusion. "Mates don't make love, the bond can spark it, get the feelings going, but it can't force you to love one another. Only you can open yourself up to that sort of thing."
"What does it make you do?" I asked him.
"What do you mean?"
"Like would a mate throw themselves into harms way to protect the other?"
It looked as if the question had thrown him off. "Well, I suppose."
"But why?"
"Think about it. If there was someone that you cared about deeply, would you do what you could to save them?"
I thought back to the day I had shot the vampire holding my sister. I loved my brother and sister, I loved my dad-or loved them as much as I was capable of loving-but would I throw myself into harms way to save them? I didn't then, instead I had just risked her life when it was already on the line. I felt the frown forming on my face.
"I wouldn't be able to let you do that. Not for me."
"Electra, if I had the chance to protect you, to keep you safe, you bet I would step up."
"I wouldn't want to have to watch out for you too, Jared."
"I'm a werewolf. I can hold my own. And if I'm being quite honest, the only thing I'm in danger of is your family."
"I wouldn't let any of them touch you," I said looking down at the ground.
"And why's that?"
I looked up from the floor, looking at him through my lashes. "Because even after everything I've been taught, despite what I've 'learned,' I like you."
Jared shifted in place and I could tell he was hiding a bit of surprise. He had to have known it, but I don't think he expected me to say it outright.
"I'm scared that I like you. Liking you makes things so difficult. I've been taught that supernatural creatures are monsters, and that they kill people without regard for human life. That if we don't hunt them down then they'll hunt us down, and they'll have the ability to run wild and enslave us. Vampires, werewolves, sirens, all of those creatures, they have so much more power than humans. We would be forced beneath them."
"Me."
"What?"
"Beneath me. I'm one of those things, Electra. I'm not lumped in with you humans, I'm something more than that. But I don't run around killing people like you say-like they've told you-do I?"
"I know that," I whispered. "That's the problem. I started to like you on that first day, the way you were so sure of yourself, so funny and nice. You got me to say more to you about myself on the first day than some people still know about me after knowing me for years. You know just what to say to get me to open up. I don't want to have any barriers between us, but there's this huge one that is making it really difficult to cross."
Jared stepped forward, closing the distance between us until there were only a few inches that separated us.
"It wasn't that hard, now was it?" he asked in a low voice that sent a shiver down my spine and my skin on fire.
"The Organization frowns on stuff like this," I whispered. "I don't know what they would do if they found out."
"I won't let any of them them touch you."
"And why's that?"
"Because despite everything I know you've done, I like you."
My stomach flipped at his words that mirrored mine, and my heart started to beat wildly as he closed the distance. I knew he could hear my heart, and his smile acknowledged as much as he kissed me.
It started out slow, gaining momentum the longer we were together. The kiss became even more intense and my arms wrapped around his neck, my fingers running through his hair.
I heard a growl and Jared stepped back quickly. I found myself reflexively reaching behind me for any weapon that might be within my grasp, my fingers closed around something and I held it tightly, my heart pounding loudly in my ears.
I relaxed slightly when I saw him standing back, shock in his eyes not anger.
"What the heck was that? You burned me."
My heart sank when I registered his words and realized what had happened. I'd had small shavings of the silver on my hands from handling it. I went to the sink and started scrubbing them with soap, trying to get everything off.
"What were you doing in here?"
"I was doing what my father told me to do."
"Which was what?"
I kept my back to him. What was I doing? Making ammunition that could kill him. I dried my hands off slowly and carefully.
"I was making bullets," I said with my back still turned. "Silver bullets soaked in and made with wolfsbane."
"You brought me down here when you were working with poisons?"
"I didn't mean for you to come down here, and it's not a poison."
"It is to me," he pointed out.
He had me there. While to anyone else it was perfectly fine, to his kind it was a poison. An extremely lethal one at that. I was lucky that I hadn't still been boiling the wolfsbane in the water. If he would have breathed in the steam it could have severely harmed if not killed him.
I turned back around to find him still in the same place.
"I'm really sorry," I sighed. "I didn't mean for that to happen, I just wasn't thinking. Turn around, I need to make sure that none of it got left behind in your hair."
I saw his eyes lighten. I knew he still wasn't happy, I don't think he was happy about any part of this situation, but he hadn't run away. He reluctantly turned around. I knew his hesitation, and I knew him giving me his back was a huge sign of trust, especially when we were still standing in this room.
I ran my hands through his hair, going straight down to the scalp and combing my fingers upward. I felt the tingling in my fingertips and I saw his body relax with a sigh.
"Let's go upstairs," I said shaking off the feeling and moving toward the door. Jared nodded and followed me out. I turned off the lights and locked the room up.
I jogged up the steps and led Jared to my room. I sat on the edge of the bed and he sat stiffly beside me.
"It's all gone," I said holding my hands up.
He nodded, but I could tell he still didn't feel at ease.
"It's one thing to know you're a hunter, but it's something else entirely to see you in action. Something different entirely to see the room you go to, where you keep your weapons. I just saw the very tools you've used to end countless lives, and yet I'm still sitting here. You just burned my skin with silver, and yet I'm still sitting here with you."
I felt bad about the silver, really I did. I didn't feel bad about him seeing me in action when I killed that vampire. The way I felt about him didn't change the way I felt about that thing in the alley, it didn't change the way I felt about those monsters. As for him seeing the weapons-he shouldn't have, but there hadn't been any way I would have made him wait outside until I was done.
"I'm really sorry about the silver," I said yet again.
"Do you even feel remorse about what you do?"
The question took me off guard. Out of all the questions he could have asked in that moment, out of all the things he could have said to me about what I had just done to him-
"You want to learn more about me and what I am. I want to learn more about you, about what you do and why you do it. How you feel about it."
He wanted to know more about me and my hunting habits?
"Not really."
Jared nodded silently. His face had been covered by an expressionless mask and I couldn't tell what he thought of the answer.
"If I'm being honest here, I haven't had a second thought about a single thing I've been taught in the past four years. Until recently that is. My mother was killed by a werewolf, an Alpha, and my father told me that every supernatural creature in the world was just as evil. He told me they wouldn't hesitate to do that to him, me, or any other person if paths ever crossed. I was brought up in the darkest part of the supernatural world, and I believed every word that he and The Organization had to say about it."
I held Jared's gaze, not wanting to look away for even a moment. I wanted him to see the truth of what I said in my eyes.
"I never had anyone to tell me anything different, and none of the creatures we ever went to tried to prove those words false. I've never gotten to know one of them-one of you-personally before I found out what you were. If I had met you on the street and found out you were a werewolf right then or if I would have been sent to your house as a job, I probably would have killed you. No questions asked. It's what I was taught, it was what I learned how to do, and I'm really good at my job.
"I'm still good at it, and I still believe in it. I'm just starting to think that The Organization may be misguided. If you don't attack people, if you aren't like what I've learned about, then there have to be others like that as well. However, The Organization's beliefs have to be based on some sort of fact."
"I completely agree. The Alpha who turned me is one that you would have been warned about. There can be darkness everywhere you look, Electra. People have darkness, werewolves have darkness, even vampires, and witches. But if there's darkness, then there is also light. They have to balance each other out."
I nodded, I understood exactly what he was saying. It was like what I'd said to my father; people went around killing people all the time, but we didn't hunt them down. Just like there was evil inside humans, I had to admit there was a possibility that there was some good in those creatures. As much as everything I'd learned since I'd been introduced to the world disagreed with that, Jared was living proof, sitting right in front of me that it must be true.
I felt Jared's hand touch my knee and I looked down at it.
"I'm not going to say that I understand everything that you're feeling, but I do get it. I get believing what you're told when you have nothing else to go on. It's hard to question what you've been taught when you have nothing else to go on. I hope to be that something else though. I want you to see that we aren't all bad. I'm not going to guarentee that everything will be wonderful. There are most certainly some dark spots in this world, but it isn't like what you've been told."
"I'd like that," I said looking back up. "I want to know more."
The fear of what might happen if my father found out about this sent a shiver through me. Jared misread it as me being cold and covered me up with the blanket at the end of my bed. I had smiled, but there was no amount of blankets that could keep me warm and safe from what would happen if The Organization found out about what I was doing.
I was breaking their first and one of their few rules by being with him right now. What would my father do? There was a chance he'd try to keep it quiet. He wouldn't want anyone catching wind of a Jaeger being friendly with a were. Would he kill Jared himself or would he just force me to leave?
I had meant what I'd said to him earlier; there was no way I was going to let anyone in my family, or The Organization for that matter, touch him. He was not going to die because of me.
Maybe we should think of an escape plan or a safety plan for him just in case he does get discovered. A way to get away from my family and the hunters at least until everything died down.
How could he possibly hide from the hunters? They're everywhere.
I wasn't sure how it would work out, but the idea stayed in my head. I would really need to think of something if this was actually going to happen. We couldn't just stay together and hope no one found out about him, because truth was, there was no way he could be close to me without them finding out.
"Will you stay with me?" I asked against my better judgement. I tried to ignore everything running through my mind.
Jared nodded silently and we both laid down on my bed facing each other. Jared lightly swept his fingers across my face, pushing the hair back. He looked into my eyes before kissing my forehead lightly. Every place he touched me my skin lit up like a match had been drug across it, and the heat felt amazing.
When his hand went back down, I laced my fingers between his wanting to keep the feeling close. I wanted it. The longer I felt it, the more I needed it.
I turned around, nesting my back into him and we stayed like that, his hand firmly in mine his arm draped over me. I had been completely engulfed in the warmth of his embrace and for once, I felt completely at ease without needing the calm of a battle to wash over me. This was the calm of peace, this was what I needed.
**************
So that was interesting... And they're still making some progress. Hopefully this doesn't all backfire. We will have to wait and see I suppose.
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~Red