Page 13 of Isabel and the Werewolf Beast

His eyebrows rose at each statement. “I can change into a wolf?”

“Yes. It’s what most shift into during a full moon. The half-shape you’re in now is unusual for werewolves to run around as the half-beast and half-man version of themselves. I suspect it’s because you haven’t truly accepted who you are now.”

Did anyone truly accept themselves for who they were? I’d struggled when I was a human woman. Weakness went hand in hand with being a woman a hundred years ago. I’d reveled at the strength a vampire possessed when Lucian turned me. No longer had I felt weak. Vulnerable. Not until Silas and this curse. Yet again, a mortal man had made a woman merciless to his power. History seemed doomed to repeat itself.

Dante dropped his intense gaze from my face to the book in his hands. His lips pursed as he stared at the glowing orb of the moon high in the inky sky through the window in the library. “Your words have merit. Ever since Asher changed me, I’ve fought the beast living inside me. The only time he comes out is during the full moon when I have no control over the outcome.I’ve even tried hiding from the moonlight, but it still happens.”

“You can’t hide who you are. Even if this isn’t who you started out to be, it is who you are now. Vampires are created too. I was once human.”

Once, so long ago.

His massive head lowered as his gaze once again sought mine trying to confirm that I too understood being one thing and then turning into another. And I did. I understood the change too well. His mouth opened, lips that for all their beastly appearance appeared soft, and he closed them again without a word coming out. I sensed he wanted to ask about my human life, but he realized I’d get annoyed with him asking more questions. Giving a werewolf knowledge of myself was wrong on so many levels. We were natural enemies. Created to kill each other.

“If I embrace this change, then I’ll be able to shift into a wolf?” he asked instead of the questions about me I saw hidden in the depths of his eyes.

I rolled my shoulders in a dainty shrug. “I’m not a werewolf and couldn’t tell you the way it works. Perhaps the book might give you the answers you seek.”

“Right.” He opened the book again but glanced at the library shelves, searching, seeking the knowledge he hungered to learn. “Are all the books in here like this one?”

I smirked. “No. There are fiction works too. My treasures. If you harm them, then I’ll kill you.”

“I’d never damage a book.” He hugged the book to his chest with his hairy, muscular arms.

“You’re a strange werewolf.”

“So you keep saying.” His lips lifted into a wry smile.

I cracked an answering smile. What was it about this strange werewolf who kept making me smile when Ishould have ripped his throat out and rejoiced at his death?

His attention dropped to the book in his lap. Eyes the color of molten chocolate scanned the pages. The pad of his finger carefully lifted the pages and flicked it over faster than I would have guessed he’d read. Werewolves were fast but not as fast as vampires. I was almost tempted to stand behind him and read the words too since I couldn’t open a book in my cursed state. I couldn’t do anything inside the castle except sit or lie on the furniture. Doors opened themselves for me whenever I wanted to go into a room, which was handy since I couldn’t open them myself. It was as though a part of me had become the castle.

I steepled my hands and placed my chin in them. His fur was soft-looking, and I wondered what it would feel like under my fingers. I’d killed a few werewolves before, but I’d never taken the time to register how their fur felt or anything about them. I had the time now to study this werewolf. He was appealing annoyingly. I wanted to hate him, but so far there had been nothing about him to hate.

They taught vampires to kill a werewolf on sight. I tilted my head. Why were they our enemies? I couldn’t recall the reason. Had I even been told? Or was it a fact drilled into us from the time we changed with no explanation? I guess in a way I’d been lucky when Lucian changed me all those years ago. His sire and my grandsire helped run the Nightshade Academy for new vampires, perhaps still did to this day, but I wouldn’t know since I was stuck here. At least at the academy, we’d learned who and what we were and, most importantly how to control our blood lust.

Dante had none of that. Werewolves usually ran in packs and passed down the knowledge that way, butsince it was just him and his brother, then he’d missed important learning in his growth as an immortal.

“Werewolves live in packs,” he said, as if reading my mind, but it was the book’s information he was parroting.

“Yes.”

It was why we usually picked off a lone werewolf whenever we found one. Easier to kill a single werewolf than a pack.

“Why didn’t my brother and me join a pack?”

“You’d have to ask whoever bit your brother.”

“All I know is that it was a woman. One he didn’t have sex with.”

“The clarification was necessary?” I cocked an eyebrow.

He chuckled. “Probably not, but it shocked me they didn’t have sex.”

“Changing someone and having sex with them are two different things.”

He glanced up from the pages. Our eyes met and held for a moment before he dropped his gaze back to the book.

“Did a vampire kill her?” he asked.

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