The Girl Cried Wolf 19 Tell Me And I'll Kiss You

"You and I, we're werewolves," he said simply.

Hunter's face was serious. He didn't smile like he usually did, which made his face seem unfamiliar to Ash. She was used to seeing Hunter as a friendly person. Even as he seemed out of reach for her, he always had a happy air about him.

The boy sitting in front of her now seemed like a different person. He didn't have his usual positive charm, and it made Ash feel uneasy.

This was the first time she had seen him as a serious person. It was unnerving, even more so, considering what he was saying.

"We exist here, at this time, in this world."

Ash stared down at her hands. A few minutes ago she had used her fist to punch Hunter in the face, and she had done so with a force that could not have been created by her natural human arm. She didn't even pull her arm that far back, and yet she had enough power in her fist to draw blood.

"How long have you known?" she asked.

"All my life."

"Like, since you were a baby?"

"Well, no, not that far back. But I knew I was a werewolf even as a child."

"How did you know?"

"Well, the same way you knew from looking at me. The eyes and the teeth, mainly. They were the first to change."

Hunter was having a very strange conversation with Boots, and it made him feel uncomfortable. His entire life he only had his family to talk to about werewolf things, and even then there weren't very many conversations about it. His mother and father had always stressed on the dangers of revealing this secret to others and so it had this doomy air to it, almost as if discussing it were prohibited.

Despite that, Hunter loved being a werewolf. His love for being a werewolf and his family's ominous silence and sensitivity to discussions regarding werewolves was a long-standing internal conflict that he struggled with.

Now here was another werewolf outside of his own family, and she didn't seem to have a clue about what being a werewolf was.

On one hand, Hunter was excited about having another werewolf to share his joy and struggles with, especially one who was the same age. On the other hand, he was hesitant to guide her through the ins and outs of being a werewolf. He had hoped that Boots already knew enough about being a werewolf so they could just hang out and talk about it. But Boots didn't know anything, and he didn't think was ready to be a mentor.

"What do you mean, they were the first to change? You could change your eyes and your teeth if you wanted to?

"I couldn't just change them if I wanted to, but they s.h.i.+fted if I was feeling really angry or frustrated."

Ash thought about her little-girl dream, the one she had every year about being in a yellow-lit room with a faceless stranger. In the dream, her eyes had changed from brown to golden yellow and her teeth had grown into fangs as the arm went around her.

She realized then that her dream wasn't just a stress dream: it was a memory. The child psychiatrist she used to see when she was younger had told her that the dream was probably a memory, but she had dismissed the changes in the eyes and teeth as Ash's subconscious mind working through trauma with dream imagery.

Ash knew better now. It wasn't just a memory within a dream, the entire dream was a memory.

"Yeah, I think I did that too. I think I was around five years old and my eyes and my teeth changed while I was combing my hair," she told Hunter, remembering her own past.

"You must have been very mad at your hair," Hunter said, smiling.

Ash smiled back at him. She felt much better around him when he smiled.

"How does everything else change?"

"What do you mean?"

"I get the changes with the eyes and the teeth, that's fine. But what about everything else? Do you change into a werewolf by choice or does that have something do with the phases of the moon or whatever?"

"Boots, why are you asking me this? You've done it before. I've seen you. You should know this."

"You've seen me?"

"Yes, out in the woods. You hunted down a deer and you ate it. I was there."

"Wait, wait. Tell me about that. What happened? How did I change?"

"First of all, it's called 's.h.i.+fting.' I didn't see you do it because you were already a werewolf when I got there. I didn't see how you killed the deer, but I saw you eating it. And I didn't see how you s.h.i.+fted back, but when I saw you again, you were human and you had pa.s.sed out."

Ash grabbed both of Hunter's hands and squeezed them hard. She took a deep breath to steady herself. She spoke to Hunter in a low voice.

"Hunter, I don't remember what happened. I think I was dreaming the whole time and I can't tell the difference between what actually happened and what was a dream. Can you tell me what happened?"

Hunter's eyebrows furrowed together. He tilted his head and looked at Ash out of the corners of his eyes, confused and skeptical.

"Can you tell me about the dream?"

Ash sighed. She ran her thumbs over his fingers, feeling them and fidgeting at the same time.

"I think you should tell me what you saw first and then I'll tell you about the dream. The dream didn't really make any sense, so maybe it will after you tell me what you saw."

Hunter told Ash about the night when he saw her, the only female werewolf he had ever seen in his life. He told her about how he saw her rip into the deer and feed on it. He told her about how she had reached out a hand to him as he approached her, and of how she just suddenly ran away. In the course of his story-telling, he discreetly s.h.i.+fted his hands over Ash's hands. He was holding her hands now, not her holding him.

Ash noticed his hands moving over hers, even as she listened to his story. She knew what he was doing, but she didn't say anything.

"Okay, now you tell me what your dream was," Hunter finished.

"Wait, but how did I get back to my dorm? And why was I naked in my bed when I got back?"

She felt Hunter's hands go slack and she saw his expression go from neutral to nervous. He was withholding something.

Ash pulled him by his wrists and pushed her face closer to his. She looked into his eyes.

"Tell me."

He felt her breath on his lips as she spoke and the warm feeling started again in the back of his neck. He just wanted to pin her down and kiss her on her sweet mouth. He felt beads of sweat building on his temples.

He moved forward to kiss her, but she pulled back.

She looked into his pleading eyes and shook her head.

"Tell me," she said. "Tell me and I'll kiss you."