James.
Sitting at the kitchen counter the next morning, I stared off into the abyss, thinking about everything that had happened last night. Ivy had come into my room and rocked my world as she usually did, but she said something I couldn’t explain.
A feeling that overwhelmed me, and like a passenger in a car, I was forced to take a back seat while something else moved forward. Thinking of it now, how whatever it was moved with Ivy in sexual pleasure all night long, slightly haunted me.
My Lycan was brought forth, awoken from its slumber, and I wasn’t sure how it had worked for my brothers, but for me… it was completely done in a sexual nature.
And now that it was awake, I could feel it underneath my skin.
Waiting to break free.
Cackling in the back of my mind.
“Hey, James,” Talon exclaimed happily, causing me to jump six inches off my chair as I spun around, staring at him with wide eyes.
“Don’t do that.”
Laughter escaped him as he stared at me with an odd smirk, furrowing his brows. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I replied quickly as I tried to divert my attention back to the soggy cereal in the bowl in front of me.
How was I supposed to explain to my brothers what had happened? How Ivy was acting was completely unnatural.
It was like she was her, but also not.
As Talon stared at me, I tried to ignore his gaze, but then Hale came bounding into the kitchen with a smile upon his face and an empty bottle in his hand. He had taken shifts this morning with Ivy to feed the twins. We kind of rotated it just to make it fair, seeing as I spent most of my time with her and them, and they didn’t get to that often.
I was grateful, though, for the rotation this morning because, honestly, I didn’t think I could face her. After what she had done with me last night… I was in shock.
Whatever was inside me, she put it back to sleeping and just left, and I lay there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, trying to wrap my head around whatever the fuck had just happened.
“What the hell is the matter with him?” Hale replied, causing me to glance up as he and Talon exchanged curious looks.
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I came in here and said hey, and he jumped out of his seat as if the boogeyman was after him.”
As their eyes both turned back towards me, Hale stepped forward, raised a brow, and placed the bottle down on the counter. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Why would you think something’s wrong? I’m perfectly fine.”
“Cut the shit. I can tell something’s wrong with you. I haven’t seen you this fucking nervous since the day you lost your virginity,” Hale replied, causing Talon to snort with laughter as he crossed his arms over his chest, giving me an amusing look.
“Fuck you. Tracy Ann was a complete fucking psycho bitch, and you, Talon, were the one that set me up with her,” I snapped at him, narrowing my gaze as I crossed my own arms over my chest, trying to show him he couldn’t get underneath my skin.
Not that he’d be able to.
There was something else lurking beneath there now. Something that laughed in the back of my mind at the current situation.
“Oh, stop it,” Hale snorted. “I can tell that something is wrong with you, so either you tell us now, or else Ivy will worry when I explain to her you’re not yourself.”
Mentioning her name, I froze and both of them stared at me and then looked at each other, seeing how I reacted upon saying her name. “There’s no need to tell her.”
“Did something happen between the two of you?”
Shaking my head rather quickly, I was doing a horrible job and trying to show them I was perfectly fine. So, deciding to avoid the conversation, I quickly stood from the chair, taking my bowl to the sink and rinsing it out. “No. Why would you think that? I just had a bad dream, that’s all.”
“A bad dream?” Hale replied. I could feel his eyes boring into the back of my head, but I refused to look at him.
“Oh look, here she comes. Now, why don’t we ask her?” Talon said, making my heart lurch as I spun around, only to see an empty doorway and Talon and Hale, looking at each other with smirks on their faces.
Fuck, they caught me.
“OK, now that we got that out of the air, we definitely know that it has to do with Ivy. But what I don’t understand is why. You were perfectly fine with her yesterday, and now all of the sudden, you’re acting as if you’ve seen a ghost. So you can either tell us what’s been going on, or we can go ask her.”
Hale had a point. I couldn’t keep it from them forever. I had to tell him what she did, not that I didn’t enjoy it. I did enjoy it. I enjoyed it very much.
But she pulled the Lycan from me, awoke it, or whatever she did.
Glancing around, I stepped forward, looking down the hall, and then looked back to my brothers before gesturing to them with my hand to follow me out back. The last thing I wanted was for Ivy to hear the conversation I was about to have with them.
Opening the door, I stepped out into the cool air, and looked over my shoulder at them, waiting. They looked at each other and back at me, letting out a scoff that was almost the sound of laughter as they stepped outside.
But even being out here just on the other side of the door wasn’t good enough. So instead, I started walking toward the guest house. Towards the woods that laid on the other side of it.
I had to get far enough away from the house so Ivy would not hear me tell them what I was about to, or anyone else for that matter. The last thing I needed was somebody else laughing at me.
“Dude, where the fuck are you taking us? We don’t have time for this shit today,” Talon said as he rolled his eyes, following behind me.
“Will you just shut the fuck up and follow me? Jesus,” I whispered harshly as I glared at him.
By the time we made it to the tree line, I looked around at the house, making sure she wasn’t looking at any of the windows or anything like that, and when the coast felt clear enough, I finally let out the breath I had been holding.
“Well…” Hale said with irritation. “Speak, now that you have us all the way out here.”
Glaring at him, I hesitated a moment before rolling my eyes. “Okay, so… last night I was sleeping. We all went to bed, remember?” I said, starting off the conversation.
“Yeah. You were one of the first people that went to bed and said you were tired and had a headache,” Hale replied, giving me a scrutinizing gaze.
“Okay, well, I know that’s true. I hadn’t been feeling well all day yesterday. But that’s beside the point, because I woke up in the middle of the night to Ivy standing in my bedroom naked… and not just that, she was calling my name like some weird… ritual or something. Then she straddled me! We, you know….”
Gesturing with my hands, I tried to get them to understand what I meant without actually saying it. The two of them smirked at me again, crossing their arms with laughter.
“No, we don’t know. Can you be specific about what you did?” Talon asked, causing me to groan with frustration.
“We fucked okay?” I snapped at him, running my hand over the front of my face before it reached up to rub the back of my neck as I thought about what had happened.
“Okay, so why are you acting like that’s a bad thing? You’ve had sex with her many times.”
Hale’s statement was true, but none of those times were quite exactly like they were last night. “Trust me, I know. The problem being though, is that she was like different and not just regular different like she was really different. Eyes black, wing whipping… you know that kind of difference. To top it all off…. she did something…”
“She did something?” Talon said with annoyance. “Well, you just fucking tell us exactly what it is she did and stop beating around the bush… I have shit to do today.”
“Fuck my life,” I sighed. I just had to say it. It was going to be like ripping off a Band-Aid. I just had to take a deep breath and do it. “I think she awakened my Lycan.”
Both of my brothers stood there stunned in silence with dead panned expressions on their faces as their arms that were once crossed over their chest fell loosely at their sides.
“Dude, did you hear me? I think she awakened—”
“I fucking heard you,” Hale said, cutting me off and mid-sentence. “What exactly… in detail… not the sex detail, but that situation detail…” he sighed. “What exactly happened?”
Now they want fucking details on that shit!
Like it was something I really wanted to explain. I mean, being a werewolf is one thing I had years to adapt to. The fact that I shifted into a wolf, that is.
This, though, was not natural to me at all.
“She was… you know…” I shrugged. “Riding me, and then she kind of like, I don’t know, said this name. It’s a name I don’t want to say because I don’t want to accidentally wake myself up again… but it was like I was pushed into the back of my mind and watched as a passenger. As she and the animal, whatever thing I was kind of like, continued to fornicate.”
My explanations were exaggerated as I used my hands to kind of show the motions of fornication. All of which made Talon burst into laughter, as if it was the funniest shit he had ever seen in his life, slapping his hand against his knees, clutching his stomach kind of laughter.
Hale, however, didn’t laugh.
He stared at me with that scrutinizing gaze once more, as if he was unsure to believe what I was telling him. But I was being honest. I wouldn’t have been freaked out if it was all a fucking joke.
I mean, come on, it’s not every day your girl comes in and wakes you up playing with your Johnson and then decides she’s just going to awaken the beast like a tickle me fucking Elmo.
“I think we may have a problem,” Hale replied before he reached over to Talon and shoved him to get him to shut up.
“Hey man, why did you do that?” Talon yelled at him. “You can’t say this shit ain’t funny. I mean, we all knew it was going to happen one day. She just did it a lot sooner.”
“The problem is though, Talon, she shouldn’t have been able to do that until he had already shifted, and he hasn’t. The Lycan awakens in battle. That is the story. That is what we’ve been told, even what Father wrote down in his journals. The Lycan always awakened in battle.”
Never once had I heard that, and perhaps that was something Hale and Talon should have shared with Damien and I a long time ago when he researched it. However, I was also always too busy with the different women, so I can see where that lesson would have been lost in translation, so to speak.
“Can I read the journals?” I asked, watching as Hale turned to me with a curious glint in his eyes.
“You know, I did try to get you to read them and learn about it years ago, but instead, at the time, you’re only thinking with your dick. So now that your dick has gotten you in trouble, you finally want to heed the warning I gave you.”
Nodding slowly, I bit on my bottom lip until a voice called through the air that made me freeze on the spot. It was Ivy, and as I glanced towards the house, she was standing at the backdoor calling for me and my brothers.
“James, where are you?”
Fuck.
What the fuck was I supposed to do now? I couldn’t confront her. What if she was gonna, like, make me change again? I was panicking, and my brothers must have been able to tell because they each laid a hand on my shoulder and smiled at me.
“Hey man, you need to calm down,” Talon said softly before Hale spoke up.
“Talon is right? You need to get your shit together, because right now, Ivy is herself, and if she feels like she’s done something to upset you, there is a good chance that she will fucking snap at you. So unless you want to have an argument with her, pull yourself together. You’re acting like she just gave you the fucking plague.”
As my brothers turned and walked towards her, clearing the massive grassy space in between where we were standing at the back of the house, I could see the smile on her face light up as they drew near.
The same smile that drew me from my panic and urged me forward.
They were right. I did need to get my shit together, but I could not believe the crap that happened last night.
I wasn’t sure what exactly she was, but she was my mate, and I had to trust her.
Maybe this was for the best… or maybe I was delusional, and she was up to something.
