Page 110 of The Lone Wolf Café
My eyes snapped open. The wolf’s head was still frozen in place, wide eyes staring vacantly at the night sky. The moonglow was receding, dissipating into thin air like a dying star, until Big Red’s dimmed eyes came to a close.
The wolf slouched forward, and I could tell they were losing consciousness.
The vines cracked, followed by a hard thud.
Big Red was already in their human form by the time they hit the ground.
I stood there, ribs aching, head throbbing, and eyes wide in disbelief.
I did it.
I actually did it.
I should have been celebrating. Rowena and I should’ve been lovingly embracing, jumping for joy, basking in our impossible accomplishment. We should’ve been running back toward the other witches, to happily declare that itwaspossible to calm down frenzied werewolves.
To prove to them that there was a benefit to letting me stay in Wisteria Grove.
But none of those things happened. Instead, my attention was solely focused on the crumpled human form in front of me.
They were face down, arms splayed out by their head and their legs bent in a fetal position. They were wearing a long flowy dress, a diluted forest green in color, with brown lace-up boots that were similar to my own. They were an adult, short but not overly so, older than I was but not elderly. Their pale hands weresmall and calloused, but were yet to show any wrinkles or other signs of age.
But their most distinctive feature, the only one that truly caught my eye and made my breath hang in my lungs, was their hair.
Their long, thick, wavy red hair.
Big Red was a woman.
I took a step towards her, feeling like I should offer the unconscious woman some sort of assistance. But I froze when her hand twitched. A few seconds later, it shifted, and the woman’s head rose off the ground.
She took a few moments to fully stand up, still sore and exhausted and shaky on her feet. It wasn’t until then that I was able to fully see her face.
She was middle-aged, likely somewhere in her forties. Her face was pale, round, and youthfully plump, but I could see her age in her eyes – from the thin crow’s feet to the heavy bags that pulled at her eyelids. It made her look tired. And sad.
Oh gods…
I knew that face.
Even if I hadn’t seen it in fifteen years.
She rubbed her eyes, blinking a few times to rouse herself back to reality. Then she looked at me,reallylooked at me, and her face fell. As if her world just turned upside down.
“N-Nettie?” she stammered, her voice croaking.
I knew that voice, too. It used to sing me lullabies at night.
No… this can’t… this can’t be possible…
“It’s you!” the woman exclaimed, taking an unsteady step towards me. I noticed her thin, spindly hands were shaking. “It’s… it’s really you! Nettie, my love, my sweetheart… I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry…”
Everything I knew, my entire life story, had changed in an instant.
I felt like I was going to be sick. Not from the stress or exhaustion or the pain, like when I’d been trying to subdue the werewolf woman in front of me.
This was a different kind of sickness. The kind that resulted from a discovery so shocking it ripped the ground out from beneath my feet. The kind that sent my mind into a spiraling freefall where nothing made sense anymore.
The woman let out pained, mournful sobs as she stumbled forward, nearly tackling me to the ground with her embrace. Her whole body was trembling uncontrollably, but she was real. Solid. Alive.
My mind was so heavily steeped in disbelief, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.
