Page 62 of Blood Moon
The trail we followed hadn’t been paved by the groundskeepers. With the tangled weeds and broken branches, a simple squint and anyone would have missed it, but Julian zipped through the foliage like he’d forged these woods by hand.
Often, he’d glance behind his shoulder to see if I was still there. To my own surprise, and idiocy perhaps, I was. A lamb being led to slaughter, one might say. An obedient lamb. A too curious lamb.
We slowed at a clearing where the trees broke away from each other in a sort of uniformity. The splashing sound of rushing water came from a brook, bordered by a modest clearing covered in dead leaves and dipped golden from the sun. Everywhere else was a maze of trunks. If I spun in place, I’d have no way of knowing how to get back, and besides me, there wasn’t a sign of another human heart for yards.
Julian placed his backpack on a large rock beside the brook. Moss scaled up parts of it, and when he moved away, I climbed onto the rock and sat down, removing my own bag.
He walked a ways in front of me before pivoting. As he inhaled, I wondered if this was how it happened. Was it as simple as envisioning a werewolf before transforming into one?
Something wilder ensued. In a single swoop, Julian lifted his arms and removed his black shirt, tossing it to the ground. I pursed my lips and leaned forward. “Julian, I—”
He interrupted. “It’s part of the process, trust me.”
I chewed at the inside of my cheek, partly annoyed from all the sudden trust he’d requested of me. Did he not know how much I still loathed him?
Beneath his shirt was a tank top. He removed that, too. I tilted my head to the side, not even realizing the way my mouth popped open as I stared. Underneath his layers of shirts was a tanned, broad chest. An abdomen twilled with distinct muscles. A gold chain resting against his sternum. A tattoo of a sun and a moon beneath his collarbone, close to his right shoulder. On his inner left arm, a tattoo of a fern leaf. All of it mesmerizing and reminiscent of attributes I’d only seen on the internet.
When he unbuttoned his jeans, I choked on air, and my face warmed as I eagerly raised a hand. “Are you stripping?”
A sly grin formed, and Julian tugged on the zipper. “We’re not in class, Mira. You don’t have to raise your hand.”
I leaned forward, trying to gloss over the fact that he’d said my name while he was undressing. I’d tackle that later. “Wait, wait, wait,” I said between nervous laughter. “Are youseriouslygetting naked in the woods?” I looked around, wishing there was someone else here to witness this.
Julian paused. “Right. My apologies.” He straightened his frame, smiled widely. “I suppose I could have warned you better. If it’s okay with you, I need to remove these clothes in order to shift because if I don’t, they’ll tear, and I happen to really like these clothes.”
“But how—” I clipped the remainder of my sentence, still giggling like a child. It was embarrassing. When I caught myself, I said, “How am I supposed to see you transform?”
He didn’t say anything or move.
I waved my hand. “Yes, yes, you can undress … it’s just. I wasn’t expecting a show. What am I supposed to do with the eyes on my face?”
“Look or don’t look. I don’t care.” He slid his jeans off, kicked away his shoes. His legs were perfect, muscular … I looked away, and Julian laughed.
“It’s like you’ve never seen a naked man.”
I held a hand up, blocking anything my peripheral might catch. “Can we please not talk about the naked men I’ve seen?” Because I hadn’t seenmanynaked men, and I didn’t want him to know that.
A deep, throaty chuckle came from him. “Sure. Best we don’t do that.” Moments passed, and I heard a boisterous intake of air. It made me wonder if he was nervous. “Okay .…” he mumbled, and after a second or so, I felt a small breeze brush my arms, heard a rustling in the undergrowth.
My eyes were pinched shut, and I waited, thinking he’d give me a cue, alert me when it was time to uncover my eyes, but then I understood that the signal I wanted would never come. Animals couldn’t speak, not generally.
I felt a nudge to my hand, something cold and damp, like a snout. I’d been using my hand as a shield, afraid of my own reaction. What if I screamed and that startled him? What if he had no self-control, and he attacked me? What if following him out here was a mistake? He said he was dangerous.
But he also said he was safe.
He swore he wouldn’t hurt me.
When I opened my eyes, before me was an enormous gray wolf. It bore striking gold eyes cut with flecks of emerald green. They were Julian’s eyes, only grander to adapt to the new shape he was in. Most notable was that Julian was an actual wolf. Not a werewolf with fangs coated in venom, but a wolf. While massive in size, he was still quite slender, and when he took a step forward, he ruffled a bit.
Julian’s nose glistened, and he bowed his head in my direction, almost as if he were greeting me. My smile widened into a gasp. The creature before me was stunning, remarkable in a way I could have never imagined. The curiosity in me wanted to reach out and touch him, stroke his fur with my fingers, but I considered it a step too far, as this experience was still so fresh.
But seeing Julian like this was solidifying. Hewasthe folklore, living and breathing before me, and it was incredibly better than any of the tales I’d been told, better than the picture books and the artifacts, better than the images I drew up in my head.
In every way imaginable, it pinned me like a reverie, and I was so taken, so lost in a deep pleasantness at the sight of this discovery.
CHAPTER31
And if I were to perish before my time, let it be because I’d drowned in her.
