Chapter 62

Nina

After Ronan left me at the fair, I decided that it was time to go home. The sun had already set, casting the sidewalks in darkness, but I felt strangely comforted by the wolf plushie in my hands.

Suddenly, as I was walking, I stopped in my tracks as a blood curdling scream echoed from the woods. I paused, my heart quickening. Maybe it was just the screams of someone having too much fun at the fair…

But she screamed again, this time even more desperately. “Help!” she screamed.

Panic set in. I couldn’t just walk away if a woman was in danger; I had to help her. Without thinking, while still clutching my stuffed wolf in one hand, I took off toward the screams and plunged into the woods. I found myself deftly leaping over rocks and tree roots as I tried to follow the source of the screams, as though I had done this a thousand times before.

“Help!” the woman screamed again, this time much closer. I took a sharp right turn, leaping over a large fallen tree. My foot caught on the trunk and I tripped, tearing my shirt and scraping my palms on the forest floor, but I kept going. It wasn’t until a few moments later that I realized I had dropped the wolf plushie, but it didn’t matter. As I came to a clearing ahead of me, I felt my heart drop at what I saw before me.

A rogue was dragging a woman by her ankle as she clawed desperately at the ground, sobbing and screaming uncontrollably with all of the strength she had.

“Let go of her!” Enzo’s voice suddenly shouted, his voice almost sounding like a growl on its own. The rogue looked up at him, the woman’s leg still in its mouth. I, too, whipped around to see Enzo standing behind me, his hands curled up into fists by his sides, before I turned back to face the rogue. It dropped the woman’s leg and began to snarl more viciously.

I couldn’t explain it, but there was also something oddly familiar about the rogue’s gaze.

Enzo and the rogue began to circle each other, preparing to attack. I ran up to the woman and grabbed her hand, quickly helping her up and pulling her away from the fray.

Before anything else could happen, however, the rogue met my eyes, staring at me for a moment -- as if it recognized me -- then turned on its heels and took off into the woods like a wraith in the night.

“Where is it going?” I asked, not even bothering to also ask how Enzo had found me so quickly, my voice shaking as I held the sobbing woman and rubbed her back.

Without a word, Enzo turned and stormed toward me, grabbing the woman from my arms and scooping her up, his eyes fixed on me. They were glowing red, brighter than I had ever seen them.

“Run home as fast as you can,” he said sternly over the woman’s sobs. “Get home and stay inside until I tell you it’s safe.”

“But I--”

“Just listen to me, Nina,” Enzo said, his voice low and serious. “Please. Just this once, I need you to trust me.”

Before I could respond, the woman’s painful wails grew louder, and in the blink of an eye, Enzo and the woman were just… gone. The forest was silent once more, as if nothing had ever happened -- but I was too stubborn and determined to find out who that rogue was, because something about it seemed too familiar to simply run away.

Instead of turning back to run home like Enzo told me to, I began to go in the direction that the rogue took. I carefully crept through the forest, trying to stay as quiet as possible as I followed the rogue’s trail; it had crashed so haphazardly through the woods that I could make out a clear path just from all of the trampled bushes and broken branches.

I must have been following the rogue’s trail for nearly twenty minutes when I finally stumbled upon it.

It was sitting on its haunches in the middle of a clearing, staring up at the moon with its head tilted back. As I approached through the bushes, it heard me and jumped up, snarling. I felt my heart quicken as I cursed myself for being so stupid and not listening to Enzo, but then something strange happened.

The rogue stopped snarling and sat back down. Its eyes stayed focused on me, but for some reason, I no longer felt frightened. Somehow, I knew that this rogue wasn’t going to hurt me.

I stepped out of the bushes and slowly approached it, my hand outstretched and my breathing ragged. With each step closer, I expected the rogue to suddenly jump up and attack me, but it never did. Even when my hand touched its massive muzzle, it hardly moved.

For some strange reason, as soon as my hand touched the rogue, I knew who it was.

“Justin?” I whispered.

He cocked his head at me -- then, all of a sudden, as if knowing his name made him remember that he was human, he shifted back and collapsed on the forest floor. I fell to my knees next to him, cursing under my breath as I cupped his face in my hands and gently slapped his cheeks to try to wake him up. His face was clammy, but he was breathing. Within a few painstaking moments, his eyes cracked open and he looked at me with confusion on his face.

“Where am I?” he asked, looking around.

“You don’t remember?” I replied.

Justin shook his head. “Last I remember, I was heading home from the fair… Then the moon came out from behind a cloud. I remember looking up at it, then it all went dark.”

I furrowed my brows and pursed my lips, unsure of what to say -- but before I could say anything, Justin cupped my face and pulled me down into a tender kiss. It took me by surprise, and before I could pull away, I was suddenly alerted by the sound of twigs snapping under foot as someone approached. I jerked my head up to see Enzo emerging from the forest with the wolf plushie in his hand.

“You didn’t listen to me,” his voice rang inside my mind, making my head throb and taking me by surprise. Was this the telepathy I had heard about werewolves possessing?

Without another word, Enzo walked over to Justin, tossed the wolf plushie into my lap, and suddenly grabbed him by his shirt collar. Justin thrashed in his grip as Enzo raised a fist to punch him, anger written across his face, but I lunged forward and grabbed his fist before he could. He turned his head slowly to look at me, and I shook my head.

“He doesn’t remember,” I thought to him, using all of my energy to convey the words in my head to Enzo. He looked at me, seeming slightly confused, but lowered his fist and released his grip on Justin.

“Tell me everything,” Enzo said, his eyes fixed on Justin.