Centuries of Sin (Mature)

Lone Wolf

“How can you stand to be around me right now?”

She sat up again, wiping the tears from her face as he downed the rest of his own drink and set the glass aside.

She pushed him down to lie on the bed and curled up as close as she could beside him.

“Elizabeth? Please answer me?”

“I hadn’t felt alive for a long time before yesterday. I don’t know if I am ever going to speak to you again after you leave, but I want to feel this for a little longer. Please.”

He didn’t respond.

After a while her phone started to ring downstairs. She ignored it the first two times, but the third time it started to ring she reluctantly went to fetch it.

Mike. Of course – her friends had all chosen to side with Kia and Matt, it wasn’t going to be one of them. They were awkward about it – they knew the couple were in the wrong, but they were funner to be around then Elizabeth.

She picked up.

“Everything alright?”

“Just finished reading the outline. We love it. We’ve already started talking to Netflix about adapting it – they’re super keen.”

“Oh. That’s great, thank you.” Her voice was not enthusiastic.

“You sound down, didn’t you hear me? You’re set for the next few years. Netflix don’t normally start putting offers on the table like this for unfinished works. They’re loving the True Crime stuff right now and they are going to be a lot more generous with their offer now they know that there are other companies interested.”

“Yeah that’s really awesome Mike. I’m just tired at the moment. Busy researching, you know?”

“Fantastic! Let’s talk deadlines.”

“Next Friday. I’ll get a hundred pages to you. I’m going to need to do some real investigative work on this, but I’ll have that much done for sure.”

They agreed that they would meet up at his office this time, to talk through things in more detail. She was inwardly relieved that she had given herself something to focus on, she needed to take her mind off everything she had just found out.

She went upstairs again with the phone in her hand, pre-emptively dialling in the number of a local pizza place.

“You’ve gotta be hungry, and I just got some good news about another deal with Netflix. Pizza’s on me today.”

She didn’t wait for him to respond, she just hit call and placed her own order before handing the phone to him.

“You deserve that deal. I really liked the first one.”

“Oh? Thank you. I wasn’t happy with a couple of the adaptations they made.”

“I preferred the book too, to be honest. Your passion really shines through in your writing. You have this way of making sure people remember the victims were real people. The documentary didn’t quite manage to do that.”

“I guess I have you to thank for all this. I finally had the motivation to finish my first book when I was unable to leave the house for weeks after the attack. And I also saw on a very real level that the people behind these tragedies were real people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Another awkward silence.

“We should go downstairs and wait for the food. Apparently my sheets already smell bad enough without the added odour of pizza grease.”

“I didn’t say it was unpleasant. I like how you smell.”

 He started to go downstairs. Elizabeth followed, then changed her mind and quickly went to the bathroom. She fished the t-shirt the Tinder hook-up had left out of the hamper. She had assumed it was deliberate – who the f**k brings a spare shirt with them on a date? But he ghosted her when she tried to give it back.

Sawyer was right. The shirt smelled of cheap aftershave even after a month forgotten in the bottom of her hamper - it was bright white and she had nothing to put it in the wash with.

She took it downstairs and threw it in the trash can outside. The way he smiled at her when she came back in made her certain he knew what she had done, and she was weirdly happy that he approved.

“Isn’t it overwhelming being able to smell absolutely everything in that much detail all the time?”

“It’s all I’ve ever known.”

“I know but this room still smells like s*x, even to me. Isn’t that distracting?”

“Not usually. I’ll admit it’s a bit harder to concentrate right now. It brings up strong emotions, which other stuff usually doesn’t. But it can be useful,” he smiled, “like knowing the pizza is here.”

The doorbell rang a few seconds later, confirming what he’d told her.

She handed him the TV remote as she went to pay for the food, and when she came back the first episode of her show was on.

“I hope you don’t mind. But I would really love to watch with you and talk to you about it. I don’t have many friends anymore, and I really have wanted someone to talk about this kind of stuff with. It would be an honour.”

“Obvious flattery. But sure, I’ll watch it with you.”

They watched, talking about the show. She had to admit she was enjoying it, she hadn’t been able to talk about this stuff in detail with anyone before. And he seemed genuinely interested, too.

By episode three the tension between them had melted away. She was sat close by his side, and his arm was around her.

Conversation turned to the new book. She was enjoying talking through theories out loud, and he was really contributing the conversation with her.

“Are you some kind of mind reader?” Elizabeth asked the question abruptly and he was a little taken aback.

“I suppose you could say that. It’s not that simple. I don’t hear every thought everyone has all the time. I can explain in more detail if you want?”

“Yeah. This is a little insane but f**k it. I want to know more. Who wouldn’t?”

“Alright. It’s not easy to do. It’s a skill only the oldest bloodlines have. The ritual I told you about earlier? Part of that was a pack with no mind reading ability trying to unlock it in their members. Some of my own pack were more capable than others. Some of us have different abilities like that, and they manifest to different degrees. I can read minds if I want to, or if a thought it particularly strong. That really isn’t my strongest skill.”

“What other skills do you have, then?”

“I’m able to feel what other people do if I try hard – I’m not amazing at it, but that is a very rare skill so it is one of the things which makes me a good Alpha. I can feel it physically if a member of the pack gets hurt. If someone was missing for more than a few hours I could usually tune in to them well enough to know if they were injured, or scared and in hiding, or just off with a partner we didn’t know about. Or I guess it would have made me a good Alpha if I hadn’t done something so awful they didn’t want me around anymore.”

“I take it you use that as a cheat during sex.”

“Honestly? I’ve only ever done that twice. And no, it wasn’t with you. Feelings like that are too intense when they’re twice as strong, and the effort it takes to tune in to someone else’s feelings like that is too distracting to just be in the moment. I do use the mind reading thing sometimes though.”

“I noticed.”

“I’ve got the standard things – all of us have a great sense of smell, our reflexes are heightened, and we’re far more perceptive when it comes to things like tracking.”

“What about the rituals and magic you’ve spoken about?”

“It’s forbidden in all the older bloodlines. It was frowned upon before, but after the mutations it was outlawed.”

“Even changing people?”

“You have to apply to a council for approval. They very rarely accept the applications, and there is no appeal process. They won’t ever accept it if I make a request.”

He sounded sad again.

“You can’t know that.”

“I can. I don’t have a pack anymore. Everyone knows I was cast out, and they know why. They may have considered it even if I was still an Omega, because of who my father is. But I’m a lone wolf now. And not in the cool ‘forges their own path and doesn’t give a damn’ way that people like you use. In the real sense. I have no pack to support me. They expected me to give up by now, or end up in a fight over territory and make a stupid mistake.”

“Everyone you loved sent you away to die because of what you did.”

He was silent.

“What I felt for you – most of us never find that connection. None of them could understand, and most of them didn’t believe me. Having those feelings for a human is completely unheard of. How was I supposed to convince them that I felt with every fibre of my being that you were meant for me? When that happens to us, it’s a mutual bond. A bond that can’t possibly have formed between us. It wasn’t just the fact I killed your boyfriend that upset them. They would have forgiven me for that, I wouldn’t even have had to give up my position. Their problem was with why I had done it.”

“I don’t understand. Killing an innocent teenager was fine, but killing him for me was a mortal sin?”

“We have a lot of rules, and traditions, and etiquette. When I told them I had formed that bond with you, all they heard was that I had something wrong with me. That I was defective. They couldn’t let me lead them.”