18

Well now it was time. Tyler and I, accompanied by easily 5 other werewolves, were on our way back down to the basement. I ran ahead, Tyler just a step behind me. Step by step, level by level, it went down and down.

At least one other werewolf and his mate were brought down ahead of us. I could hear her screams from here. She begged and shrieked. Probably didn't want to go into the cell with the werewolf under any circumstances. But she suddenly stopped screaming. At the same time, the sound of metal hitting metal was heard.

I flinched and stood on the stairs. The werewolves from this pack looked at me, probably suspecting an escape attempt on my part. A quick look over my shoulder at Tyler showed me that he probably wasn't completely cold either. He gave me an apologetic look, but gestured for me to move on.

I descended the stairs more slowly than before. Getting closer and closer to this cell where I had to stay the night with Tyler. At the bottom I saw one of the twins standing in front of the open metal door.

"What are you doing here?!" growled one of the werewolves who accompanied us. "I just brought a few things here.", he just said. The other werewolf just growled again. But his counterpart seemed quite unimpressed. His opponent probably noticed that too. "Then let's get this over with." The werewolf turned to us and gestured for Tyler and me to go into the room. Tyler put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me toward the room.

A look around the room showed an obvious change. The twins really seemed to have acted on Tyler's instructions. A blanket, two pillows and our bag have now joined the mattress. There was also a larger, gray plastic box.

When Tyler and I finally stood in the room, I didn't dare to turn around. After all, I expected the massive door to slam any second. Tyler, who was standing behind me, also put his second hand on my other shoulder. Not a second later what I had expected came. The door closed with a loud, metal bang.

I felt for a moment as if my heart would skip a beat, only to continue beating twice, if not three times as fast. I imagined the most disturbing possibilities of what could happen now. The worst scenarios played out in my head, like in a movie. My legs felt like pudding during this and I wasn't sure how much longer they would hold me up.

"Lily, I'm so sorry. I know today was a bad day in itself and that this is probably making things a whole lot worse for you. I wish I could do something about it, but unfortunately I can't."

Tyler was still standing behind me with his hands on my shoulders. I, however, could only stare at the wall opposite me and the deep gouges and scratches in it. Upon closer inspection, some of these were even deeper than I first thought. I could hardly imagine the forces it took to create them.

"Lily please believe me when I say I'm worried about you. If it doesn't work for you, there is another option. One of the twins, at least I think it was the doctor of the two, gave me an injection with an anesthetic without the others noticing. If it doesn't work, you don't have to endure it all. There's a good chance the drug will put you to sleep until tomorrow."

Now I was sitting here on the mattress with the blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I was able to dissuade Tyler from his idea with the syringe and was relatively happy about it. After all, it couldn't always be the solution to numb me. I also found the thought of not knowing what would happen to me while I slept creepy.

Meanwhile, Tyler was pacing restlessly. His gaze kept darting from one corner of the room to the other.

After what felt like an eternity, however, he began to speak again. "You know, for a werewolf, being locked up on a full moon is one of the worst things that can happen to a werewolf. Except for death and serious illness, in every sense, there is actually nothing worse for most. On the full moon we are together with our pack, our family." He fell silent again, seemed to be somewhere in his thoughts. "Do you actually still have family? The one doctor in the hospital where you were told told me that during the revolt your parents died in your old hometown." I nodded and thought of Mary with a wistful smile. What was she doing? And does she think about me from time to time? "You miss your family, don't you?" My gaze went back to Tyler and I nodded. I certainly can't imagine what that's like for you. For werewolves, family is the most important thing. Knowing that I could never see her again would depress me immensely. Even if it were just about my mother, and you know her, she's kind of her own."

As he said this, he sat down on the concrete floor about a meter in front of me. "But maybe it will comfort you a little if I tell you that I will always be by your side. And if it's at all possible, I'll make sure you get to see your family again sometime. What goes into the pack in many laws is long outdated and many of our generation in particular want to change something, even if not all of them."

What he said sounded almost utopian to me. Since the revolution, humans have been worse off in most packs. We were separated, locked up in the cities and controlled in almost everything we did. You were divided and assigned, in all matters. If you followed the rules and were normal, you could probably live relatively well in this world. But it wasn't exactly easy for me because of my limitations. For the werewolves I dealt with in my life, my only advantage was that I couldn't bother them with questions or contradict them. It often seemed to me that humans were just an annoying evil to werewolves. In my experience, quite a few people were companions of werewolves. And even though Tyler said he'd always be by my side I was already wondering what became of all the human companions. After all, we got to know how many people were chosen and disappeared. Nobody ever came back. And being human, we imagined the most impossible things.

"What's on your mind now?" Tyler asked me, "Is it about tonight's schedule?" I looked at him confused. It just sounded so incredibly ambiguous to my ears. "Okay, maybe that sounded a bit wrong...", he came to the conclusion himself. "But I think it's important that you know what's coming. Because as soon as the moon rises, I'll be in transform into my alternate form and remain in that form until the moon sets. And there's a good chance that instinct will make me want to be near you."