Seducing My Werewolf Hockey Captain

Chapter 13: Trying Not To Freak Out In My New Life

Chapter 13: Trying Not To Freak Out In My New Life

~ Gwen ~

The house smelled like whatever Aunt Anne was cooking, something with garlic and herbs that reminded me, unexpectedly and without warning, of Sunday evenings back in Boston. My mother used to cook on Sundays. She would put music on low and move around the kitchen like she had all the time in the world, and the whole apartment would fill up with warmth and the smell of something good.

I stood at the dining table and laid out the cutlery without thinking too hard about that, because thinking too hard about it led somewhere I wasn't ready to go.

"So how was school today?" Aunt Anne called from the stove.

"It was good," I said.

A pause from the kitchen. "Just good?"

"Yep."

"Nothing specific? No class you enjoyed? No conversation worth mentioning?"

I turned to look at her. "How do you define enjoying a class when half the people sitting next to you could physically turn into wolves if something upset them badly enough?"

Aunt Anne set down her spoon and walked to the kitchen island, leaning against it with her arms folded. "I walked into that one."

"A little bit," I said.

She sighed — not with frustration, more with the particular patience of someone who had been expecting this conversation and was prepared to sit in it for as long as it took. "I didn't tell you the truth to frighten you, Gwen. I told you because it was yours to know. Your history. Your blood. You had every right."

"I know that," I said. "I'm not angry about it."

"Then what are you?"

I smoothed the edge of the tablecloth, just to have something to do with my hands.

"Weirded out," I said honestly. "Like — thoroughly, comprehensively weirded out. Living like all of this is normal is just not something I know how to do yet."

"You'll find your way into it," she said. "RavenBane has a way of becoming home when you give it a chance."

"For wolves, maybe," I muttered.

"That is not true," she said, more firmly this time. "There are humans who live in this town their whole lives, Gwen. They go about their days and they are not afraid."

"Because they don't know," I said. "They don't know what's around them. I do. That's different."

Aunt Anne looked at me for a long moment, then decided not to push it further.

"Are you done with the table?" she asked instead.

"Nearly," I said.

---

Ten minutes later we were sitting across from each other with dinner between us, steam still rising from Aunt Anne's cooking. I looked at the food, then at her, then opened my mouth.

"Are wolves actually allowed to —"

"Gwen." Her voice was patient but her eyes said she was close to the end of it.

"I was just going to say grace," I said.

She gave me a look that told me she didn't entirely believe that.

"You're judging us," she said. "I understand why. But I need you to understand something — we are not monsters. We are not the creatures from the stories. We care about people. We care about each other, and about the humans who live alongside us."

I looked at her face. She meant it. Every word of it.

"You're right," I said quietly. "I'm sorry."

She reached across the table and covered my hand with hers. Her grip was firm and warm.

"All will be well," she said simply. "I need you to trust that."

I didn't say anything. But I didn't pull my hand away either.

We said grace and then started eating, and for a few minutes it was just the sound of cutlery and the faint creak of the house settling around us.

"I saw your mass comm workbook on the counter," Aunt Anne said eventually, cutting into the quiet. "And the reporter's club sign-up list. Your name was on it."

"Yeah," I said.

She was smiling now, in that unhurried, satisfied way she had when something pleased her more than she was letting on.

"What?" I asked.

"You joined a club," she said. "At your school. Without anyone pushing you into it."

"That's a normal thing to do," I said.

"It is," she agreed, pointing her fork at me gently. "It's an incredibly normal thing to do. That's exactly the point." She took a bite, still smiling. "You're blending in. You're building something here. That's what I want for you."

Something in my chest shifted at that — not dramatically, just a small quiet thing moving slightly to one side. Making room.

"Thank you, Aunt Anne," I said after a moment.

"Of course." She set her fork down and looked at me directly. "I want to say something else and I need you to actually hear it."

I met her eyes.

"You don't open up easily," she said. "I figured that out fast. You carry things alone and you let them pile up, and eventually they get very heavy and you still don't say anything." She paused. "I don't want that for you here. Losing your parents does not mean losing yourself, and it doesn't mean losing everyone who is still here. I am here. Every step of the way, for whatever you need, whenever you need it."

I swallowed against something that had risen up from nowhere.

"Thank you," I said again, and this time I meant it in a way that went several layers deeper than the words.

She smiled and patted my hand once. "Good. Now eat before it goes cold."

---

After dinner I tried to take on the dishes and Aunt Anne redirected me toward the stairs before I had even finished the sentence. We said goodnight and I headed to my room, closing the door behind me.

The moment I locked it, something in me released. Not in an anxious way — just the particular exhale of being completely alone after a day of being observed and watched and read by a school full of people with senses that went several levels past normal.

I dropped face-first onto the bed.

Lay there for a solid minute without moving.

Then sat up and stared at the window across the room.

The curtains were drawn shut — had been since that day. Since Yates saw my naked body. I hadn't touched them since, which I was not going to overthink, except that I clearly already was because I was sitting here thinking about it.

I thought about what Elodie had said. Yates and Fanny are endgame. She's going to be his Luna. And then I thought about what I had said in response — that he was an asshole, a scary one — which was true. Mostly true.

Because he had also walked through a broken door in the middle of the night and put himself between me and something I still didn't fully understand. That was the inconvenient part. That was the part that made the word asshole feel slightly incomplete.

I didn't know what to do with that, so I filed it under not my problem and moved on.

A sound outside pulled me out of my thoughts.

Sharp. Close. Coming from behind the window.

I went very still.

Then I got up slowly, crossed the room, and reached for the curtain edge with one hand. Stood there for a second, bracing myself.

I pulled it open.

There was no one.

Not even the outline of someone who had been there a moment ago. It was just the yard, it was dark and quiet, with the small persistent sound of crickets filling the night. A branch shifted slightly in the breeze. There was nothing else.

I stood at the window for a long moment, looking out into the dark, feeling the particular foolishness of having worked myself up over nothing.

"I'm hearing things now," I said under my breath. "Perfect."

I drew the curtain back across and returned to the bed, sitting on the edge of it and trying to slow down the part of my brain that had immediately gone to worst-case scenarios. Old sounds in an old house in a town full of werewolves. I needed to develop a higher baseline for what counted as alarming before I gave myself a heart attack before my second week was out.

My phone buzzed on the bedside table.

I picked it up.

A notification from the reporter's club group chat — the admin had posted an assignment. First task: find a story worth telling. Any headline, any angle, submitted within the week.

I read it twice.

Something in me came alive a little.

This. This I knew how to do. Finding the story, digging for the truth underneath the surface version of things, putting it into words that made people pay attention. Before everything fell apart, this was the direction I had been building toward. This was mine.

I set the phone down and sat with that feeling for a moment, letting it settle.

Then I got up, grabbed my things, and headed to the bathroom.

Whatever RavenBane was turning out to be — and it was still a lot, still strange, still more than I had signed up for — there was one thing I was starting to slowly, reluctantly accept.

Parts of my life here were beginning to feel like mine.

And maybe that wasn't the worst thing.