Pronunciations (French):
Isaac (ee-zic)
Bête-noire (bet-tay new-warr)
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Isaac Bête-noire sensed a disturbance. He's been bothered by something ever since four o'clock in the morning, when he awoke suddenly, uneasy and wired by adrenaline.
It was the feeling that something terrible was wrong, and it was persistent in not letting him sleep. He spent the remainder of the night restless, pacing every room of his lakeside chateau. At first he thought it was the beast rising within him, but he knows that feeling too well to mistake it with another.
He waited for the sun to rise, biding his time with pushups, situps, pullups—any activity to exert his anxious energy.
At the crack of dawn, as soon as the first streak of daylight shines through the otherwise shadowy sky, Isaac storms out of the grand chateau, down the marbled white steps and down the trail that leads to the village of the Lake Louise settlement.
As he strides through the village streets, the atmosphere is dead. Not a single light is on in any of the houses or shops, leaving the place desolate of any signs of life, save for the single sleepless soul marching down the pavement.
Isaac stops at a familiar house styled with old French architecture, a theme that's quite common in the reservation. He raps his knuckles against the door, so forceful and rapid that it sounds as though he's ready to beat it down—which is his second course of action if the residents don't open it in time.
"Open the goddamn door, Delano!" Isaac barks, pounding the wood harder. "It's urgent. You have two minutes before I let myself in!"
A few seconds pass: a light comes on upstairs. More pounding, another beat of silence, and then, the mechanical click of the lock disengaging before the door swings open from the inside.
Delano stands in the threshold in nothing but his boxers, rubbing his eyes and yawning. Typically good looking, his current out-of-character appearance proves that even the pretty boys can fall victim to bed head and under eye bags.
"What is it, Isaac?" Delano asks through a voice previously dormant, shaking out his almond colored hair with a clumsy hand.
"Something's wrong," Isaac replies, "I don't know what it is, but I haven't been able to sleep. There's something pulling me toward the forest. Rouse Mason out of bed and meet me where the trails start."
Delano is silent for a short moment before exhaling. "Alright," he says, dropping his hand and stepping back from the door. He doesn't want to go out in the cold air before sunlight, traipsing around in the woods, tracking down the result of someone else's premonition while a warm body is waiting for him in his bed upstairs.
But he would be a fool to deny Isaac—his best friend and the master of North America's one and only werewolf reservation—and nobody wants to be a fool.
Fools don't live long after becoming fools. Not in these parts.
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At the edge of the forest, near the village just below Lake Louise, Isaac, Delano, and Mason have rendezvoused where the main system of trails begins. Those trails weave all throughout the woods surrounding the lake and over the mountains which hug it, making nearly every piece of land claimed by the reservation accessible. Nearly... but not all.
They start their hike up the wooded mountain, traveling single file with Isaac in the lead, inhaling the chilly air to sort it for scents.
"Search for anything unusual," he orders, the muscles in his legs tensing further as the trail's incline increases. "We're not leaving until we find it."
Delano and Mason oblige, their eyes scanning their dim surroundings. Their ears are open, listening for any movement within a six mile radius, while their noses are turned upward, waiting to detect something foreign.
"And you had a dream about this?" Mason asks, although keeping his attention locked on his task.
"No," Isaac replies, "It woke me up. It's just this... feeling."
After some odd minutes pass, probably eleven, the three of them come to a peak in the path.
"Split up," Isaac demands, his gaze raking over each tree. "Cover every crack and every crevice. Call if you find anything."
Delano and Mason both nod. Simultaneously, they both start to take off their jackets, stripping down until they can shift from man to wolf. Their bones break and remend, their muscles and tendons stretch and reheal, and their veins reroute all in the matter of a second.
Two abnormally large wolves take off into the forest from where Mason and Delano once stood—one gray and one tan—leaving the trail for the more rugged terrain of fallen trees and jutting rocks. Isaac, however, remains on two legs.
This feeling in his gut, the one which had awoken him from a dead sleep, is telling him to repress his feral nature. He can't put his finger on why exactly, and he detests the thought of being human, but he obeys it anyway.
As he always has since the day of his birth, he allows himself to become a slave to his instinct.
He hikes without any sense of destination, and yet, he feels as though he's going in the right direction. It's getting closer, stronger. It takes half an hour more of walking, sniffing, searching, sensing.
His muscles are flexing on their own, with a tensity in his shoulders so severe it could bend metal. His teeth are elongating into canines, sharp and serrated, while his fingernails have thickened and grew into claws. He can feel his aggression rising: his heartbeat increasing and the irritating emotion of red hot anger blossoming behind his sternum.
He wants to hurt someone. No, that's not right; he wants to mutilate them. That desire is clear.
When he emerges from the woods and into a small, grassy field overflowing with yellow wild flowers, the feeling is uncontainable. When his eyes land on what lies in the middle of the field, his adrenaline is pushed over the edge.
Lying there, amidst the daffodils, is the source of all of his erratic emotions—the overwhelming adrenaline, anxiety, and aggression. Lying there, amidst the daffodils, is the thing which has been making him feel things so profound and uncontrollable.
It's a girl, lying still and unconscious in the field of flowers, her placid face turned toward the lightening sky. Before Isaac can realize it himself, he's running to her, all of the energy built up within his taut muscles releasing in a burst.
When he reaches her, he drops to his knees at her side, hesitant on whether or not to touch her.
She's bare of any clothing or markings, her skin pale and unflawed, lying naked as if she'd just been birthed from the earth itself. Yet she's fully grown, appearing to be a teenager or a young adult at the oldest.
One of her arms is laying limply across her small chest and her hips are angled, with one of her legs bent and laying over the thigh of the other, conveniently covering all of her private parts.
Her hair is sprawled out over the daffodils above her head, such a rich, deep brown that it borders black. Her eyelids and mouth are closed, not a wrinkle or crease present on her sharp featured countenance, making her look as though the angels have chiseled her themselves from the stones of the mount.
Isaac fears she may be dead, but he can hear the shallow beat of her heart and see the subtle rise and fall of her smooth stomach.
He removes his thick, fluffy jacket to lay it over her. And then, with shaking hands, he takes up her shoulders, cradling her against his chest, holding her delicately as though she may break at the lightest of touches. He wraps the jacket around her further, covering as much of her frigid skin as he can.
She doesn't react, not even when he takes her into his arms fully and stands up with her, hooking one arm under her knees and the other around her back. She's utterly limp, her body falling against Isaac's. He lays her head on his collarbone, preventing her neck from any strain.
Carrying her across the field, Isaac throws his own head back, letting out a long, steady, lupine howl. It's a call to Delano and Mason, signaling to them that he now has in his possession the source of his distress.
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I know a lot of stories on Wattpad are in first person, but hopefully no one minds third person?
Anyway, thanks for reading!