Free Cry Wolf by Aurelia T. Evans Page A

the sound of the sink faucet.
    “I don’t know what it’s like not to,” Kelly said.
    “I bet it’s not as cool as it sounds,” Lotus chimed in from where he was eating his third sandwich at the table. He had been listening and watching without comment prior to that point.
    “You’d be right. It used to be completely out of control,” Kelly said. “You wouldn’t think so, but it’s calmed down a lot since I was bitten.”
    “Yeah, I never got that,” Lotus said. “Why did your becoming a werewolf make you more in control?”
    “My magic was too much for the human,” Kelly said. “The werewolf was just big enough to handle it. It isn’t completely in control, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes I feel like I’m sitting on top of a suitcase that’s only just closed and latched but will burst at any moment. Maybe if I had grown up knowing I was a witch and around other people like me, I would have been better. But it just kind of oozed out of me like a radiation leak. Some teens have acne breakouts and breakdowns. I had prophecy blackouts and electrical failures. Now it’s fairly mellow.”
    As long as I stay mellow , Kelly thought to herself. As long as I don’t push it too far . But she didn’t say that. She had been in control for the last four years. She knew her limits.
    “Still, even though I got the magic reined in, I was initially out of control as the wolf,” Kelly added. “We all have to go through a variation of it. David let me get it out of my system.”
    He had been a patient man. He had patiently stalked her, made sure that she was something he wanted. Then he’d patiently waited for the wolf to run itself ragged. He’d ended up with the prize for his patience for four good years. But somehow, after all that time and in spite of all that patience, David still hadn’t understood what he’d worked so hard to possess.
    Kelly thought that only Grant had ever seen what she really was, and that was the only reason she’d let him spend time with her, run with her, fuck her, watch her magic and be a part of it. David had seen her magic as an accessory. Only Grant had known how much she kept under the surface.
    Grant’s wildness had been a welcome counterweight to Kelly’s personal control. Sometimes Kelly wondered whether she had been the reason why Renee had caught Grant’s eye. It wasn’t magic that had attracted him to Renee, because Renee didn’t have a magical bone in her body. But they had that same almost pathological self-discipline—except he had been able to break through Renee’s. Grant had screwed Kelly for the same reason that Renee had screwed him—because they liked playing with fire. Of the three of them, Renee was the one most easily burned, but Grant had immolated himself in the end.
    Grant had been a grade-A prick, but Kelly missed him anyway. And that was why Renee kept the knife. She missed what Grant had been to her as well. He would always be a part of her. A part she could never poison with silver, even if she sometimes wanted to.
    Just like Kelly could never outrun her magic. All she could do was keep pressing down and hope that the worst was behind her.
    * * * *
    Kelly had forgotten how expansive yet cosy and comfortable the cabin was. Renee welcomed her in with a hug around her waist and invited her to eat with them. Kelly initially wanted to refuse, since she had promised to keep her distance. But Ki couldn’t hide a smile at Kelly’s conflicted expression when Renee offered Kelly the rare steak that Jake had cooked for her.
    It would just be rude if she insisted on going to the living area in order to eat her dinner, so although she wasn’t part of the main pack, she sat next to Renee and across from Malcolm at the dining room table.
    Kelly periodically checked on Malcolm, but he was doing better than even he had expected he would so near Renee, who smelt positively delicious given the amorous activities in which she’d engaged with Britt earlier that