Isaac looked down toward his lap. It felt like a long time before he answered.
“I gave her what she wanted,” he said. “I Turned her.”
I started to speak, until I realized I wasn’t sure what to say. Being a werewolf myself was something I never thought about much. Truthfully, I avoided those thoughts as much as possible. The things I had seen, the terrifying transformations, the pain; everything about it made me want to run the other way. Everything but Isaac.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
What more can you say to something like that? I wanted to; I felt like I should, but anything I could think of sounded stupid.
“She was relentless,” Isaac continued, “threatened to have her mother do it if I didn’t. My family did not trust, nor like her; warned me she was unstable.”
“Why didn’t you just let her mother do it?” I said, “If you didn’t want to be the one.”
“Because her mother was a rogue werewolf,” he said. “We, my brothers and I, were hunting her mother. There was no hope for her.”
“Well then you saved her,” I said with confidence. “Don’t you see? If you hadn’t, she’d be dead no matter what.”
“She did die,” Isaac said, draining that confidence right out of me. “I killed her, Adria. I could’ve refused to Turn her, let someone else do it and my conscience would be clear, but I didn’t.”
“The transformation killed her?”
“Yes,” he admitted, “and I knew the possibility existed that it would, but I did it anyway.”
“Isaac,” I said with intent and calm, “I know you hate what you did, but you’re not a murderer. And I know this probably won’t make you feel any better, but I just want you to know...,” Our eyes locked; I could’ve stared forever into his eyes. “...I would never ask you to do that for me. I don’t need to be what you are to be with you. All I care about is that we’re together.”
I meant every word. Isaac Mayfair was my world now. Asking for anything else would be asking too much. The thought of being a werewolf was frightening, yes, but the process killing me was much worse. Only death could take me away from him and I wasn’t about to invite it early.
His lips were soft and tasted like fading mint. Every time he kissed me, it felt like an assurance that my life was complete, even a little magical.
He pulled away slightly; I could still feel his cool breath upon my lips. “It does make me feel better,” he said.
We sat quietly for a moment.
“I was wondering,” I said, finally breaking the silence, “why is it only girls that can die during the transformation? Kind of sexist, I think.”
Isaac chuckled and fell back into the seat again. “Honestly,” he began, still sort of laughing, “No one knows how or why it turned out that way. Just like how some human diseases affect different sexes and races more than another, I guess.”
“Well, it makes girls look weak.”
He held up his index finger. “Not true,” he said. “Girls that do survive the transformation are usually stronger than men. Zia can take down Damien and Dwarf easily.”
“Wow, really?” I pictured Zia taking her brothers on at the same time, and winning. It was a comical mental image, which I’d mess with Damien about later.
“I guess Zia can beat you then too, huh?”
“In her dreams,” he said with a big grin. “She’s too new.”
He added then, “I should get you to school.”
The abrupt change of subject caught me off guard. If all this talk was Isaac’s attempt to cover up his mention of someone else taking me to school, it wasn’t going to work with me.
“Not unless you promise to take me the rest of the week,” I said.
“I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Adria—”
“No, you take me to school, or I stay home.”
He looked uncomfortable, and although I got the sense I was slowly winning this game, I knew he didn’t like it. It wasn’t a joke to him like it was to me.
“I know you can control it,” I said putting the joke aside. “Maybe you should learn to trust yourself more.”
“Maybe you should learn,” Isaac said, “to trust me less.”
Okay, then the game was back on.
I smiled wickedly, thrust open the car door and ran out into the cold. “No promise, no deal!” I said as I ran away from the car, climbing over a small stone wall and down a path.
Finally, I dashed straight into the woods, looking back only once to see how far behind he was. Who was I kidding? Isaac was a werewolf and could catch up to me easily. But he was playing fair, still barely past the trees and obviously running like any human would. I ran hard, trees and bushes whipped by. I jumped across a small flowing stream and then over a fallen tree, surprised I could leap that far. I could hear Isaac behind me, the sound of leaves crunching and sticks snapping underneath his fast and heavy feet.
It was so cold. I swear the temperature dropped ten degrees since he picked me up. The only thing that kept blood flowing through me was how hard I ran. It pumped fast and intensely through my veins. I was beyond the point of being out of breath.
“Is it a promise?” I kept running.
“No!” he shouted.
When I thought the woods would never end, finally I made it to the outskirts and ran out into an endless field.
I stopped, trying to catch my breath and admire the sight before me at the same time. Isaac stood behind me then, not the slightest bit winded.
“It’s beautiful,” I said with unsteady words.
It was just a field. I had seen hundreds of them in my life. Somehow, even those underneath a bright blue sky and blanketed by springtime flowers were nothing compared to this one. It appeared endless, stretched across the horizon by a blanket of frost-covered, dead grass. The sky suspended over it with thick, draping gray clouds that hung so low they seemed to touch the grass in the far distance. The air smelled so clean, as if never touched by human pollution. Only the swish of windblown trees and the low whicker of grazing horses could be heard. There were three out ahead, standing closely together, completely oblivious to the cruel world around them.
“Must be someone’s farm,” said Isaac.
“Let’s get closer,” I urged, taking him by the hand and pulling him along.
“That’s not a good idea.”
“Oh come on,” I said. “No one will see us. I just want to look at them.”
I ignored his warnings, even the hard reluctance in his body as we walked along the border of the trees. I hoped we weren’t trespassing, but usually signs are posted on the trees and there were none.
“Adria,” he said, tightening his hand to stop me, “I mean it; we should just leave.”
We were already close enough to the horses that I could count the black splotches on one of them.
I let go of his hand.
“Why?”
Isaac backed a few steps into the cover of the trees, but he didn’t answer.
In the corner of my eye, I saw the salt and pepper speckled horse rear up onto its hind legs. The other two followed, and neighed frantically. At first, I thought they were going to run right toward us. I pulled back and stood next to Isaac, holding onto his waist. The frightened horses ran a full circle before dashing hard through the field and away from us; the sound of hooves hitting the ground left in their wake.
I looked to and from Isaac, back and forth, questionably.
He watched out ahead where the horses had been standing. A look of guilt lay in his face. The cold air was finally beginning to affect him too; his cheeks and around his eyelids were slightly red.
“We should go,” he said simply.
“No,” I said with concern, “what’s wrong with you?”
He looked at me. “I’m a predator, Adria; they can sense it.”
I lowered my gaze, shamefully.
“Don’t do that,” he said. “I just didn’t want to scare them off since you wanted to see them so badly.”
Part of what he said was true, I believed. The rest of him was bothered by it, that such peaceful creatures were afraid of him. That’s how I would have felt if it were me. But Isaac hid that small truth from me and I let him believe that he did it successfully.
The cool kiss of tiny raindrops touched my face. The trees shielded us mostly from the rain, but in the field, it came down like a delicate veil of mist.
“It’s going to snow soon,” Isaac said, interlacing our fingers.
Surprisingly, I wasn’t as disappointed to hear that as I thought I’d be.
I guess Isaac just made everything better.
“You run fast for a human,” he said.
I shook my head. “No, no, no,” I scolded him, “you’re not getting out of this one. Are you going to drive me to school every day, or not?”
My body shivered. Isaac reached behind me and pulled the hood of my coat over my head, adjusting it to fit snug.
“Adria, listen to me,” he said.
This time I did, but that sense of victory I had before was gone.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” He placed both hands on my freezing cheeks, warming them instantly. “I hate to bring it up, but you saw me that day when Rachel was in my room.”
“But you were out of it,” I argued. “I can take care of you when you’re like that. What’s wrong with that?”
I knew he was right and I had known it all along, but I had been relentlessly trying to trick my human mind into believing that he could never hurt me.
Isaac let out an uncomfortable breath and drew me into the tight fold of his warm arms. “If I begin to Turn and you’re there....”
“I know you can control it, Isaac.” It didn’t seem to matter how many times I said it.
He jerked his chest from mine, his hands gripping my arms. The desperate look in his eyes paralyzed me.
“No, you don’t know that,” he growled. “Would you ever put a child in a cage with a bear? Would you?”
He shook me.
“Learn a lesson from the horses,” he snapped. “They knew what I am and what I’m capable of...and I’m still in human form.”
I still didn’t want him to be right, so I pulled away from him fully and started walking back through the woods. I crossed my arms tight at my chest and buried my hands in the bends of my arms. My fingers were finally starting to feel the sting of the cold.
I heard Isaac’s footfalls behind me every step of the way.
“Adria, I love you too much....”
It was the first time he ever said it to me. Hearing it, the way he said it with so much devotion and pain, it pierced my soul. I felt my heart stop and start again more rapidly. I turned around to see him.
I went back into his arms where he held me tighter than ever before.
15
IT FINALLY DID START to snow. I expected school to let out early and the roads to be deserted when the first flake fell, but life in Maine was much different than in Georgia. In the South when it snows just a little, because it doesn’t snow often, life comes to a halt. Bread flies off the shelves in the grocery stores, wreckers gear up rather than salt trucks. School is closed. An inch of snow is the major newsmaker. In the north, well, it seems the only thing that changes are the coffee and hot cocoa sales at Finch’s Grocery.