Chapter 22

“How did you do it?” Sarah asked.

Aiden shrugged his shoulders then winced as pain shot through his arm and neck. “I don’t know. I just touched his fur and then the next thing l knew, my skin was being ripped apart and then I was charging at him, ready to rip his throat out.”

“Your father told me the first time is always the worst and each time afterwards, it gets easier and less painful to shift. How do you feel now?”

Aiden was hurting but it wasn’t the broken arm or the fast healing scratches that was causing it. “A little wounded but strangely, I feel better than I did an hour ago.”

“That will be the regeneration. You’ll heal quicker than normal now that your wolf is finally awake. I can’t believe it has taken so long for you to shift, but I’m glad you finally have. You make a beautiful wolf, you know."

Aiden wasn’t sure how he felt about finally shifting to his wolf form. On one hand, it was the one thing he had wanted to do since coming to the conclusion that he was a wolf, but on the other hand, it had ruined everything. The sheer horror in Charlie’s face and the hurt in her eyes when she realised what he was, were all that he could think about.

“I have to talk to her,” he said.

“She needs time, honey.”

“I have to explain and at least try to fix things, Sarah.” Aiden winced as he stood and he heard Sarah mumble something about impatient wolves. With a roll of his eyes and a shake of his head, he left the living room and walked up stairs.

“Charlie, we need to talk,” Aiden said, leaning against her bedroom door.

“Go away, Aiden. There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Open the door. You might not need to talk but I do. I have to explain," he told her.

Aiden heard the shuffle of feet, then saw a red-faced, puffy-eyed Charlie as she opened the door. “Five minutes. Not a second more."

Aiden nodded as he entered the room, then sat on the small bench in the large bay window. Wringing his hands, he waited for her to sit down. “I don’t really know what to say to make this better, other than I’m sorry.”

Charlie crossed her knees on the bed, hugged a cushion and stared at the floor for what seemed like forever before she finally spoke.

“Sorry for what? Lying to me? Not being completely honest? Scaring me to death as a humongous fucking wolf? Which part, Aiden? Which specific fucking bit do you think you can just say sorry for?”

“All of it,” he replied. “I should have told you about my parents, what they are, I mean. I’ve never met my father and the wolf comes from him. It’s never come out before, the beast, I mean. Not until today.”

“You still should have told me, Aiden. You kept that little bit of important information from me. Why? Didn’t you think I had a right to know that I was falling for a wolf? Didn’t you think that mattered?”

Her face was filled with hurt as Aiden looked at her and for the first time that he could remember, he was filled with guilt for deceiving her.

“You were falling for me?”

“Yeah, stupid, isn’t it? Falling for the guy who first wanted to kill me, then protected me, and then I find out has kept this whopping fucking secret from me. How fucked up is that?”

“We can fix this. It doesn’t have to be a problem. It’s all out in the open, now.”

Charlie's laughter was like a knife to the stomach and her eyes shot daggers alright through his heart as she looked at him with disgust.

“No, we can’t because I don’t want to. I don’t want to be around someone that I can’t trust to tell me everything that I need to know. It might be a tiny little detail to you that means nothing, but to me, it means everything. The fact that you couldn’t trust me enough to tell me, is a big issue and one that I don’t want to resolve. I’ve spent my life trying to avoid a lying monster and I refuse to allow myself to fall in love with one. It’s over, Aiden.”

Charlie's words may as well have been boulders that she flung at his cardboard castle. As each one landed, it hit him straight to his heart and his world came crashing down around him. His head almost burst as his beast erupted into a howl that should have woken the dead and his heart threatened to break itself in two.

“Charlie, please. Don’t say that.” His voice was breaking, filled with emotion that he had never dared to have before, let alone show. He had spent year’s turning his heart to ice, for Charlie to come along and melt it in the blink of a beautiful caramel eye, and now he had completely destroyed everything.

“Don’t, bother with the ‘please’. Whatever we had is over. It went the minute you turned into that pissed off, oversized, grey fucking furball.”

His eyes filled with tears as Charlie stood, grabbed a rucksack and walked out of the room. The door slammed home, quickly followed by the sound of her footsteps as she ran down the stairs. He heard Sarah shout for her to wait and then felt the house shake as the front door banged into its housing. A moment later, Sarah appeared at the bedroom door, her face filled with worry.

“She hates me…”

She was there in an instant, pulling him close as he laid his head on her shoulder and cried.