Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It all started because Max had no sense of direction.

If he’d actually known where they were going, instead of just pretending, they wouldn’t have been driving around after nightfall. They wouldn’t have nearly hit the “something” in the road. Max wouldn’t have cut his head open on the steering wheel when they crashed into the trees. Laura wouldn’t currently be screaming, horrified by all the blood.

“Max! Max, wake up!” She didn’t jostle him, knew to be careful with possible spinal injuries, but her hands fluttered over his shoulders and head, over the deep gash across his right eyebrow that was streaming blood all down his face and onto his pants. The car horn was stuck, blaring loudly, heightening the already heavy sense of anxiety and dread in the middle of the dark and dense forest. The car was smoking and smashed, the front hood pulverized by the unyielding trunk of a humongous tree.

Laura wiped a drip of sweat from her forehead only to find it wasn’t sweat, but blood. She couldn’t remember what she’d hit her head on, the memory of the crash itself already blurry, masked by shock. She remembered the moments leading up to it though. Max hadn’t been looking at the road, he’d been cracking some stupid joke and not paying attention, and then something had been there, right in front of the car. He’d swerved. She’d screamed.

She observed herself. She was hyperventilating, panicked. She’d pass out if she carried on like this, hollering Max’s name when it was clear he was unconscious. She refused to think he was dead. That couldn’t be the way this ended. Death in the woods, in the blink of an eye.

She forced herself to take deep breaths through her nose. More blood dripped into her eyes and she swore, tearing the flannel shirt from around her waist to press against the wound. It felt like a small cut at her hairline, but sometimes the smallest cuts bled the most. Her cap had been knocked off her head at some point. Maybe the brim had kept her from being more seriously hurt, like Max? She thought of pressing something to his wound, but she was afraid to touch him. What if his neck was broken? What if she put too much pressure on his forehead and fucking killed him?

“Get it together,” she told herself, and a few moments later the horn cut off and everything fell eerily silent. It had been going off for so long and now everything was too quiet. How long had she been sitting in the car like this, being useless and afraid, while Max needed help?

She patted her hands down her body, checking for injuries. She didn’t feel any breaks, so she unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the door. It needed a shove to get open all the way, and then she eased carefully out of her seat. Her legs were wobbly as she stood in the darkness outside the car. It was a blessing the moon was full and bright, since both headlights were broken. The whole front of the car was destroyed and smoking. Wait. Smoke…fuck. A smoking car wasn’t good. She had to get Max out of the car. What if it fucking exploded or something?

It had been sprinkling rain all night, but it started to come down a little harder as she made her way around the back of the car and to the driver’s seat. She had to tug at the handle with all her strength to get the door open, since some of its metal was bent from the impact, but it opened eventually.

“Max?” She placed a hand on his shoulder, her eyes darting between him and the smoke that continued to billow from the hood. “Max, please wake up. I need to get you out of here.”

She didn’t know what the odds were of the engine catching fire, or whatever it was that happened to cars before they exploded. She didn’t know jack shit about cars and had never cared before now. The pros and cons list gathered in her head. To move him or not to move him? She was in the beginning throws of a full on panic attack when a loud noise put a mute on her brain and turned her in the direction of the road.

It sounded like…like a howl? Or a really loud growl?

She took a step toward the sound and instantly slipped in a patch of mud. Her feet shot out in front of her and she fell flat on her back. “Fuck!” Her entire backside was drenched in cold, wet dirt. She stared up at the sky, which was hardly visible through the leaves. Somewhere above her, there was another growly sound, only this time, it was Max, and he was groaning in a mixture of pain and disorientation.

She stumbled to her feet. “Max!”

He was sitting up in the seat, holding a hand to his forehead. His right eye was squeezed shut to keep the blood out of it. “Laura? What happened?”

“Can you move?” she asked, hurriedly taking his arm. “You need to get out of the car.”

“How come? I need to sit for a second,” he complained. He sounded groggy. And the one eye he kept open was wandering. Shit, he probably had a concussion.

“The car might catch on fire,” she explained, tugging at his sleeve. “Get the fuck out. Hurry.”

“Bossy,” he said, but he let her guide him out of the driver’s seat. He wavered on his feet and she had to take most of his weight as she led him away from the smoking car. The rain was back to a light drizzle again as she leaned him against a moss covered log several yards away, deciding that would be a safe enough distance if the smoke turned into fire and made their situation ten times worse.

He slumped, his hand falling away from his wound. Laura used her flannel shirt to staunch the flow of blood. Her own wound already seemed to have stopped bleeding.

She was so preoccupied with fussing over Max, she forgot about the strange noise she’d heard before. Until she heard it again.

“Bear,” Max said. “Shit, we’re gonna die.”

Laura stood up from where she’d been kneeling at his side, her eyes scanning the darkness for movement. Then she remembered her phone and swiped it from her pocket, using the flashlight function to light up the surrounding area. “I don’t see anything.”

“Ninja bear,” Max said, voice slurring. “Won’t see it until…until it wants to be seen.”

“I don’t think—” Laura’s words ended abruptly as several things happened at once.

A blur of movement flashed in front of her eyes and she recoiled, falling back to the ground, where mud spattered all over her face. The sound she’d heard before repeated, this time louder, and very close. Max toppled over from where he was leaned against the tree, his side hitting the earth and a shadow enveloping him. But it wasn’t a shadow.

“Max!” Laura screamed, because something had just charged them and was attacking Max, and it wasn’t a shadow and it wasn’t a bear and it wasn’t the silhouette of anything she’d ever seen before.

At her scream, the…thing…turned its head. She couldn’t see much of its dark features besides the glint of too-long teeth and the unnatural shine of its eyes. And as it stepped into a beam of moonlight, stepping away from Max and closer to Laura, she saw a crimson sheen around its mouth. She was so scared, she couldn’t move.

It took another step toward her, only a few feet away, at the most. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, just sat frozen in the mud. Her heart was beating a million times too fast and her mind was filled with white noise, a frantic whisper barely heard beneath the surface, saying, “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die.”

The thing sniffed at the air, its eyes roaming over her blankly, like it saw her there but couldn’t focus on her. Another loping step forward. She could see better now. Its skin was slick with blood. She’d expected fur, but there was none, giving it a nightmarishly humanoid appearance. A long tongue hung from its gaping mouth. She’d never seen anything so horrible. She’d never been so close to death.

A breeze picked up, making the leaves rustle, and the creature lifted its head, smelling the air. It roared, a deafening sound, and then leapt back into the shadows, running at breakneck speed. Laura remained on the ground and tried to remember how to breathe. She gasped in a rattling breath and exhaled a sob. She was shaking all over.

“What the fuck,” she said. “What the fuck was that?”

When her chest stopped constricting, she scooted over to Max, who was lying motionless on his side. His shoulder was torn open and bloody, but he was breathing.

“Oh my god. Jesus fucking—” She looked around for the flannel she’d used to compress his head wound, but she couldn’t find it. Instead, she ripped at the bottom of her shirt. It already revealed her midriff, and after a few more rips, she could barely call it a shirt anymore. But she was just thankful the material was some kind of knitted cotton as she pressed it to Max’s neck, applying as much pressure as she dared. Blood quickly soaked through it, and some seeped out around the edges, but it was the best she could do.

She kept the pressure on with one hand while reaching for her phone with the other. Only she’d dropped her phone, when they’d been attacked, and like her flannel shirt, it had disappeared in the darkness, possibly into a mud puddle.

“Max,” she said, her breathing still ragged. “Hang on. I’m gonna run back to the road and try to find help. Maybe, maybe someone will drive by. I need you to hold this to your shoulder, okay?”

He mumbled something at her and let her place his hand over the meager bundle of cloths at his neck.

“Keep as much pressure on there as you can, okay? It’s important, Max. Do you understand?”

“Pressure,” he repeated dazedly. “Got it.”

Not nearly satisfied but lacking a better choice, Laura left him. With no car and no phone and Max bleeding, possibly to death, she couldn’t just sit and do nothing. Luckily, the path to the road was an obvious one. She just had to follow the destruction the car had left as it barreled through the woods.

She ran, grateful yet again for the moonlight, which cast just enough light she could avoid tripping on roots or banging her head against low hanging branches. She was back at the main road in less than a minute. They really hadn’t crashed too far into the trees. That was a blessing.

The rain had stopped altogether now, but the asphalt was shiny and slick, a few puddles littered along the road. Now that she was out of the claustrophobia of the woods, she sucked in a deep lungful of air and concentrated. Her and Max hadn’t seen anyone else on this road for about an hour before they crashed. Was it more sensible to wait for someone to drive by and hope they stopped? Or to start walking in the direction of the last place they’d seen anyone? Or to keep going forward along the road and hope to reach the camp, where Chris Hackett could call 911?

She didn’t know what the right answer was. But it felt wrong to leave Max for too long. What if she forgot where he was? What if that thing came back and attacked again? What if…what if he died, all alone, wondering where she’d gone?

“Fuck.” She tightened her ponytail and smoothed the loose strands away from her face. She could feel blood drying in flakes on her forehead and she was soaked in mud, head to toe. If a car did pass by, they probably wouldn’t stop for her, not looking as scary as she looked. “What do I do?”

She waited, hanging around by the road for several minutes, until the need to check on Max consumed her. She would just run back real quick, make sure he was doing okay, and then run back to the road. It was only two minutes there and back. The odds of missing a car within those two minutes had to be small, right?

She took a final glance at the road, and then started sprinting back to the crash site. When she arrived, the first thing she noticed was that the car had stopped smoking. That was good. The second thing she noticed was that Max was gone.

That was...not good.

“Max?” She ran to the base of the tree where she’d left him. “Oh, oh my god.” She clasped a hand against her mouth as bile rose in her throat. There was blood. Everywhere. All up the side of the tree and on the ground. “Max?” she asked in a small voice. She examined the ground, expecting to see tracks in the dirt where he’d been dragged away, but there was nothing. Nothing besides a scrap of what looked like a piece of scalp, with Max’s hair attached to the flesh.

Laura fell to her hands and knees, her stomach roiling. She was going to be sick. She might’ve been, too, if another howl hadn’t sounded behind her a few seconds later.

“No, not again,” she rasped, scrambling to get to her feet. Her eyes darted wildly around her, but she didn’t see anything. Another sound, this one lower, a guttural growl. “Ninja bear,” she whispered, remembering with terrible clarity how neither she nor Max had seen the creature before it attacked. Whatever that thing was, it had taken Max and now it had come back for her.

But this time, she didn’t freeze. She did the only thing she could think of to do.

She ran.

Get to the road, get to the road, get to the road, she thought frantically, as if that would offer any more protection. Her lungs burned. She was moving faster than she’d ever moved. She could hear twigs snapping behind her, knew she was being followed. No, not followed. Chased.

A howl behind her, the open mouthed pants of some unknown monster.

Her mom would never know what happened to her. What would people say when they found the car out here? A kidnapping? A murder? Would they say Laura and Max just wandered off into the woods and died of exposure, their bodies eaten by wild animals? She was too young to die. There was so much left she needed to do. She had plans. Plans that didn’t involve getting her throat torn out.

She could see the road through the trees now. Her only hope was that the thing behind her was afraid of the main road, wary of cars like some animals were. That maybe a car would be driving by precisely when she needed it most. Almost there, almost there.

A small rock jutting unevenly from the ground sent her flying forward. She landed with a crunch, her face slamming into the ground, breaking her nose. Her eyes welled with tears, and she tried to get up, but she could already feel the creature catching up to her. She flipped herself around, putting her back against the ground, hoping to kick the thing off of her. She screamed and brought up her booted foot, catching it in the groin. Its arm swooped down in an awful swipe towards her face.

All she felt was a white hot flash of pain, and then she went numb with shock. Tried to scurry back, tried to kick. The creature wouldn’t get off her. It attacked, long, dagger-like fangs coming straight for her.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

The creature fell on top of her with a pitiful yelp, its weight crushing her into the ground. It didn’t move again.

“What the fuck? What the fuck?” She pushed it off, gasping for breath. The lifeless form rolled onto its back. That’s how she saw the gunshot wound in its abdomen. And that’s how she saw the second its face changed, in a burst of flesh and blood, from something monstrous into something even more horrible.

Lying there, shot dead, was Max.

“Oh no,” came a groan from behind her.

She didn’t have time to do anything but scream as hands grabbed her, one clasping over her mouth.

“We’re not alone out here. Shut up, lady.” It was a man’s voice with a hard edge. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t stop looking at Max. The hand covering her mouth fell away after a moment, and she was gripped unceremoniously under the arms and hauled to her feet.

“Max,” she said, her hand reaching for him.

She was snatched by the wrist and spun around, brought face to face with the man who’d come out of nowhere to save her life and end Max’s. “Holy shit,” he said, and she might’ve said the same, if she’d had the nerve, because the stranger’s face was covered in blood.

She tried to pull away from him, but he held on tighter. “Stop squirming,” he berated, holding her close with a single hand while the other rummaged into his trouser pockets. Her eyes followed the movement, scanning over a sheriff’s badge and a holstered gun at his waist. He pulled from his pocket a small bottle, brought it to his mouth, and yanked the cork out with his teeth. “Tilt your head back,” he said. “Close your eyes. Uh, your eye.”

“What?” she asked, but did as she was told, too frightened to disobey him. “What do you mean, ‘eye’?”

“Jesus,” was all he said. “Just shut ‘em.” When she did, he lifted the bottle and poured its contents all over her face. She sputtered as some of the substance dribbled into her mouth. She couldn’t identify the taste, but the smell was rancid.

“It’s a good thing you’re covered in mud,” he said, tossing the bottle when he was done, then taking both hands and rubbing carefully over her face and down her neck, avoiding her left eye. “It probably helped mask your scent. Kept it from attacking outright until I could find you. Were you bitten?”

“Bitten? No,” she said. She opened her eyes when his hands left her face. “It just, it scratched me.” She lifted a trembling hand to her face, hovering over her eye. “I think it scratched me.”

He shot her a dark look. “Right. I’m gonna take a look anyway. Hold still, ma’am.”

“My boyfriend, Max,” she said, tensing up as the stranger started feeling over her arms and back, then kneeling in front of her to stare at her legs. “He’s. I think he’s…”

“No one was supposed to be out here,” the man said, standing back up. His eyebrows were drawn together. He had large eyes and a wide mouth. She wondered absently what he looked like when he wasn’t coated in blood. And then realized, disgusted, that’s what she had on her face now, too.

“You shot him,” she said, voice wavering. “Or…you shot that thing and then…then Max was dead. I don’t. I don’t.”

“Yeah.” The man rubbed at the back of his neck and sighed, giving his head a shake. “I wouldn’t have used the silver if I’d known it was just a fucking kid.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Fuck.”

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” he spat, seeming to recover from whatever emotion had just overwhelmed him. “Like I said, we’re not alone out here. Whatever bit your boyfriend could still be nearby. The blood will mask our scents but we shouldn’t stick around. And you…you need medical attention. Come with me.”

“But Max,” she cried.

“He’s dead,” the man said. “I’ll come back for his body later, but we need to get you out of danger first. I don’t want to bury two bodies tonight. Fucking stupid kids,” he muttered, gripping tight around her wrist and dragging her in the direction of the road. “What were you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”

Laura was aware of the tears streaming down her face as they walked, but she ignored them, feeling oddly calm. She was in shock, she reminded herself. That’s why she was letting a blood covered sheriff drag her through the woods without protest. That, and something was wrong with her vision. She hadn’t noticed it before, because too much had been happening at once and she’d been about to die. But now that the initial burst of adrenaline was somewhat subsiding, she began to realize something was wrong. Possibly very wrong.

“Answer me,” the man said. “You two had no business being out here so late.”

“We’re new counselors at Hackett’s Quarry Summer Camp,” she told him. When she nearly tripped over the same rock that had fucked her over before, strong arms kept her steady.

“Bullshit. Camp doesn’t start until tomorrow.”

“I thought it’d be fun to get here a night early.” The road was close enough now that she could see the moonlit reflection of the slick asphalt. “I called ahead.”

“The hell you did. Watch your step.”

There was a cop car parked by the tree line. The sight of it made her laugh out loud. If she’d made it to the road, someone would have saved her after all. As it was, she’d been saved anyway, by the same someone.

“Get in,” he ordered when they reached the car, opening the passenger side for her, giving her a little shove when she hesitated. “Buckle up.” He made sure her elbows weren’t in the way and shut the door. She watched him round the front of the car. The headlights cast eerie shadows across his face. She wondered how old he was.

When they were both inside the car, the doors closed and locked, the rain started coming down again, hard. Laura sighed deeply and slumped in the seat. She felt relieved to be safe, and she felt guilty for feeling relief. Max was dead.

Max was dead, and she’d nearly been killed by him. No, not by him. Her head ached.

“What was that thing?” she asked the cop.

He side-eyed her as he started the engine. “Why don’t you take it easy, ma’am? You’re in no condition for this conversation.”

“My boyfriend is dead,” she said, not yelling. She didn’t have the strength to yell. And something about the cop’s face made her not want to yell at him. He looked as tired as she was.

“And I’ll tell you why that is,” he answered, taking off down the road. “But not right here and not right now. Believe me when I say you’re not in the right mind to hear me.” He waited until he saw her nod, then gestured with a hand towards his glove compartment. “There are some gauze pads in there,” he said. “Might wanna take one out and hold it on your eye.”

Her eye.

Laura reached for the visor, wanting to flip the mirror down so she could see herself.

“Don’t,” the cop said. “Just…don’t. Now’s not the time. Trust me.”

After a moment's hesitation, she reached for the glove compartment instead of the mirror. For some reason, it seemed like a good idea to trust him. He’d saved her life, after all.

Chapter Text

He drove fast and for about twenty minutes, until the trees started to thin out and North Kill became less wilderness and more small town quaintness. He pulled into the parking lot of an apartment building, across the street from a dilapidated playground. Creepy.

But the apartment building itself was okay. Normal. He ushered her inside after checking that no one was around. It was late enough that no one was. Good, since they were both covered in blood and Laura looked like she’d taken a mud bath. Inside, it was all beige walls and staircases that needed sweeping. He lived on the third floor, first door on the right. After unlocking it, he held it open for her, gesturing for her to hurry up. He seemed annoyed and tense. It worsened once they were in the apartment together and everything was silent.

“Why didn’t you take me to a hospital?” she asked, still holding the gauze against her eye. “Or a police station?” It was definitely a home meant for one person. Small and absent of charm. There was a bookshelf lined with countless titles that she was drawn to, but she couldn’t read any of them; her vision was fucked.

“Sit,” he ordered, pointing at the sofa in the living room. Like everything else in the apartment, it looked old and worn, but it was soft when she took a seat. He paced slowly in front of her, turned on a lamp, paced some more. She watched him prowl back and forth a few seconds before clearing her throat. She had a fucking headache, and she hadn’t come back to this cop’s apartment to watch him freak out. She was the one who should be freaking out.

“I think I’m getting mud on your couch,” she said.

He stopped pacing and stared at her. “I hate that couch,” he replied, and just like that, the outward anxiety on his face receded, replaced by a cool mask of indifference. “Wait there. Don’t go snooping around.”

“There’s nothing to snoop,” she said to his back as he disappeared down the hall. “I can’t fucking see anyway.” She dared to pull the gauze from her eye and the tiny movement caused her entire face to throb. “Ah!” she gasped, curling into herself, a hand clenching her stomach. The gauze was bloody.

The cop came jogging back into the room with a first aid kit. He sat beside her on the couch and touched her shoulder, coaxing her to turn towards him. She studied his face, tried to guess how bad it was from his expression, but he didn’t give anything away.

“How bad is it?” she asked.

He pursed his lips. “It’s not as bad as it could have been,” he answered. “You’re lucky to be alive.” He opened the kit and proceeded to pull out half its contents, placing them on the coffee table. He nudged a bottle of pain pills in her direction. “Might wanna take one of these. This is gonna hurt.”

“What are you doing?” she asked, watching him with unease as he reached for a packet of alcohol wipes.

“You want it straight or sugarcoated?” he asked her.

She swallowed. “Tell me.”

“Your eye’s gone,” he said abruptly, pulling out a wipe. “It was scratched out. There’s nothing I can do to help it except get it cleaned out and covered up.” He watched her for several seconds, waiting for her reaction.

She only nodded. Like he’d said, she was lucky to be alive. Max was dead in the woods right now and she was cozied up on a couch, getting her wounds treated. How could she rightly be devastated by something as insignificant as losing an eye? “I didn’t feel it happen,” she said softly. “Not really. But…it hurts. Now that I’m thinking about it.”

“Pills,” he reminded her.

She shook two out of the bottle and put them in her mouth, prepared to swallow them dry before he handed her a water bottle she hadn’t noticed before. He waited for her to be finished, and then reached hesitantly for her face.

“This is gonna sting,” he warned. “I’d appreciate it if you kept the volume down. I’ve got neighbors.” He pressed the wipe to the skin below her eye, dabbing carefully, his expression fixed in steely concentration. His face was still bloody, but his hands were clean.

It did sting. She sucked in a sharp breath and clenched her fists in her lap. “My face is fucked up, too, isn’t it?” she asked.

He met her eye and shook his head. “Nah. Just a few scratches on your cheek. Gotta clean all this shit off before I clean out the socket.”

“How about a distraction?” she offered, trying not to shift away from him while he worked. “One that doesn’t include using the word socket?”

He remained silent, diligently swiping at her face. He tossed one wipe aside after a few seconds and reached for a fresh one. “Fine,” he finally answered.

“Who are you?”

He tossed away another filthy alcohol wipe and started using a new one, diligently removing the grime from around her mouth. His fingers brushed against her lips, but he didn’t seem to notice. She noticed though. “You can call me Officer Hackett.”

“Hackett?” she asked, gears turning. “As in Hackett’s Quarry? Are you related to Chris Hackett? He’s my boss at the summer camp this year. Or…he was going to be.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Why is there blood on your face?” she continued. Now that she had started, a slew of questions popped into her head. “How did you find me in the woods? Why did you shoot…Max?”

He sighed. “Your face is clean. Wait.” His fingers brushed against her nose. “This is broken.”

“Oh, yeah.” She’d forgotten. “Can you fix it?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he snapped her nose back into place without any warning whatsoever.

“Fuck!” she cursed, wincing at the snap, but feeling instantly relieved once the initial pain had faded. “A warning would have been nice, asshole!”

“Neighbors,” he chided. “Lean your head back so I can clean your socket.”

“Don’t say socket,” she reminded him with a nauseated shiver. “Jesus. I’m gonna throw up.”

“You can throw up if you need to,” he—Officer Hackett—said. “I told you, I hate this couch.”

She shuffled back so she could lean her head against the cushions. Her one eye stared up at the popcorn ceiling, but as Officer Hackett scooted closer, she closed it, trying to shut out the light and shut out the reality of the moment.

“You haven’t asked for my name,” she said, trying to keep her mind preoccupied, distracted from the sounds of a bottle opening and more packages being torn.

“Who says I care what your name is?” he asked.

“Fuck you,” she hissed when a trickle of cold, burning liquid touched her wounded socket—fuck, don’t say socket. “It’s Laura Kearney.”

“Keep still, Laura,” he responded drily, continuing to flush her wound out with some torturous liquid. Hydrogen peroxide? It burned. She cried out of her good eye and he was kind enough not to mention it.

“What did this to me?” she asked, hating the way her voice sounded so scared and broken. “I know it wasn’t Max. But what I saw, I can’t explain it.”

“What were you two doing off the main road?” he asked, changing the subject in a way Laura didn’t mind. As long as she didn’t have to think about how much pain she was in.

“There was an animal or something in the road, so we swerved,” she explained, though the memory of it felt so distant. It was like explaining a moment from someone else’s life. “Max crashed the car into a tree. He was hurt pretty bad. The car was smoking so I pulled him out. And then we were attacked by something. It bit him, almost attacked me, but then it just ran off, I don’t know why. I went back to the road to get help. And when I came back to check on Max, he was gone.”

“I’m done,” Hackett announced.

“Thank god.”

He helped her lift her head. “I’m going to wrap it up.” She kept her good eye shut while he placed a thick pad of gauze gently over the wound, then started winding a bandage across her eye and around her head. He started speaking again only once he’d finished, tying off the end of the bandage so it would stay in place.

“Max’s wound must have been pretty bad, for him to turn so quickly,” he said. “I’ve never seen it happen that fast.”

Laura opened her eye. It felt better looking through it now that the other one was covered up. “What do you mean by turn?”

“I mean,” he sighed, sounding dead-tired. Looking it, too. “I can’t stay here and chat all night. I’ve got to get back out there.”

“Get out where? Wait, you’re leaving me?” she asked, surprised by her own panic.

He stood and glanced down at her. There might have been sympathy in his eyes for a moment, but it was gone in a flash, replaced by something much harder. “Take a shower, but don’t get your bandage wet. You’re filthy. I’ll be back at sunrise.”

“You can’t go back out there if there are more of those things,” she said, reaching for anything to make him stay. She didn’t want to be left alone in this unfamiliar place, one-eyed and still in shock. “Let me come with you.”

“Hell no,” he snapped, pointing a finger at her. “You stay here with the door locked. Get clean. Sleep. There’s food in the kitchen. I’ll be back at sunrise. We can continue this discussion then.”

He grabbed his keys off the coffee table and practically ran out of the apartment, leaving Laura to stare in confusion at the door. She’d never interacted with a cop before. Were they all this crazy?

--

Officer Hackett’s bathroom was tiny, like the rest of the apartment. It was one of those super cramped setups, where the toilet was shoved between the sink and the shower. But it was clean and there was a stack of fresh towels on a shelf above the toilet. And there was a mirror, of course.

She stared at herself for a long time. Her face was clean, but it was the only clean thing about her. Mud matted her blonde hair with thick streaks of brown, and her ponytail was so tangled, it took several minutes to free it from the elastic. Her shirt was ripped, exposing her entire torso and all the splatters of mud and blood there. Her legs were filthy and bruised. But her eye…she didn’t have the courage to lift the bandage from her eye. She could see right away that he’d lied to her about the rest of her face though. It was fucked up. Long, red claw marks were embedded down her cheek. There was no way they wouldn’t scar. This is how she’d look for the rest of her life.

But she wouldn’t cry about it.

She set about peeling the ruined clothes from her body. Soreness was setting in all over, from the car accident, probably. She rubbed at her neck, trying to ease the strain. Washing up was difficult. She decided washing her hair would be impossible, not without getting her eye bandage wet, so she scrubbed her body and kept her head away from the stream. Red swirled down the shower drain, and mud so dark it looked black. Only when it stopped did she get out.

She wet her hands in the sink and finger-combed her hair. It didn’t get the mud out, but it helped her feel a little less gross. She’d shampoo it later, when she had more brain power to figure out how. But for now, she just gathered it back into another ponytail, mindful not to mess with the bandage winding around her head.

Officer Hackett’s towel was soft as she wrapped it around her body. She didn’t feel guilty as she went through his cabinets, searching until she found an unopened toothbrush and some toothpaste. She brushed her teeth, happy to be rid of the lingering taste of blood. Her nose was starting to bruise. She looked like she’d had her ass thoroughly kicked.

Lucky to be alive, she reminded herself. It was just a broken nose. It was just a few scratches. It was just an eye.

She steadied herself against the sink, her hands gripping the faux marble so hard her knuckles were white and her arms trembled. She heaved a breath. Another. Another. She was lucky to be alive. Nothing else mattered. Except. Max. Max was dead.

She walked out of the bathroom wrapped in the towel. And since she couldn’t very well put her ruined clothes back on, she started wandering through the rest of the apartment, until she found the bedroom.

“My first cop’s bedroom,” she said, taking it all in.

There was a single-sized bed with a checkered quilt. A night stand with a lamp and a book, a pair of reading glasses folded on top. He had a small wardrobe for clothes. A spare uniform was hanging up inside, but the rest of the clothes were folded, some neatly, some shoved haphazardly. She grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt with “North Kill Police Department” written on it. It was soft and smelled good.

She found his underwear drawer mostly by accident. “Nope,” she said, before hastily shutting it. But she did help herself to a pair of socks, a silly pair with a handcuff pattern. She pulled them on, along with the rest of the clothes. No bra, no panties. Whatever.

Lucky to be alive.

She didn’t linger in his bedroom longer than she needed to, and soon found herself back on the couch, where the pile of dirtied alcohol wipes finally made her burst into uncontrollable tears.

“Fuck,” she sobbed, grabbing a throw pillow and squeezing it tight to her chest. It hurt her absent eye to cry. Did the tear ducts even work anymore? She swallowed down another pain pill and let herself cry. Might as well, while she was alone. She cried for Max, and for herself, and for the way the world used to be, only an hour ago. Nothing would ever be the same.

She cried until exhaustion claimed her, nestling into the pillow and slipping into sleep on the very soft but much hated couch.

--

She woke up the instant he returned but pretended to still be asleep. He slipped through the front door silently, and she watched through slitted eyes as he walked with careful footsteps into the living room. He looked wretched. Sweaty and bloody and covered in a layer of dirt and grime that hadn’t been there when she’d seen him last. He sighed heavily and collected the used wipes from the coffee table, scooped up the first aid kit, lingered a moment, and then crept down the hall. After a minute or so, she heard the shower turn on.

She must have fallen asleep after that, because when next she woke, it was to a soft tickle against her cheek. A brush of careful fingertips caressing the side of her face. Her eye opened in a flash and she sat up. Officer Hackett took a few steps back, his eyes searching her from head to toe, taking note, most likely, of her fresh clothes, still dirty hair, and fucked up face. She probably looked worse than ever because of the bruising and swelling of her injuries.

She took note of him, as well. Without the mask of blood on his face, and in the warm morning light streaming through the window, it was like seeing him for the first time. He was older, but not old, with deep character lines here and there, making his face interesting to look at. His eyes were large and dark, expressive, even while trying to appear expressionless. His lips were thin but full, curved into an almost-pout he couldn’t seem to help. His hair was clean and damp and dark. He exuded a bone-deep tiredness. He had dressed in his uniform again, the clean one from his wardrobe, and she wondered if he was going back to work, when he’d already been out all night. His feet, funnily enough, were bare.

“Let me make some coffee,” he said, after standing awkwardly for too long. He fiddled around in the kitchenette until the smell of coffee began permeating the air and she could hear the gurgle of the machine. He didn’t return to the couch until it was done, then he handed her a mug and took a seat on the couch beside her. Not next to her, but on the other end, putting as much space between them as possible.

“I don’t have any cream or sugar,” he said.

“I don’t like cream and sugar,” she answered, taking a sip.

He had a mug of his own. They were two of a matching set. Simple, white ceramic. “You stayed,” he said, the steam from his mug drifting up, swirling around his face. “I didn’t think you would.”

“Why would I leave when you haven’t answered any of my questions?” she countered. In truth, the thought of leaving had never occurred to her. She worried now whether it should have, if she’d made some grave mistake by trusting in this stranger. He’d killed Max, hadn’t he? Maybe she was next. But she didn’t think so. “I want to know about Max.” She turned to face him, folding her legs under her on the couch, making herself small. The coffee mug was heating her hands in a comforting way. She wondered if he could tell they were shaking.

“I dealt with it,” is what he said.

“What does that mean?”

To his credit, he didn’t avoid her gaze. “I buried him.”

She spilled her coffee. “What?” she asked sharply, ignoring the bright burn of the hot liquid on her hands.

He moved closer in an instant, taking the mug away from her and dabbing at the spilt coffee with the sleeve of his shirt. She shrugged him off, but they were much closer now, and she could almost see herself in the dark reflection of his eyes. He had long eyelashes, thicker than hers.

“It was the easiest way,” he said. “Better for him to go missing than to try and explain the truth.”

“What truth is that?” she demanded shrilly. “Because you haven’t told me a damn thing about what happened last night, and I think I’ve been pretty fucking patient, considering you murdered my boyfriend.”

He recoiled, his face blanching, but he recovered quickly. He eyed her uncertainly, a smirk forming on his lips. “I don’t make a habit of telling kids all my secrets.”

“I’m not a kid,” she said. “I’ll be twenty-one soon. I’m going to vet school. I’m a fucking adult, and you said you’d tell me what happened. So tell me what happened. Tell me why Max is dead and my eye got scratched out of my head last night!”

He couldn’t look at her for the next part, apparently, because he turned away and ran his hands over his knees instead, wiping sweat from his palms. “Short story? Your boyfriend was bitten by a werewolf last night. The same werewolf I’ve been hunting for six years. When he changed, and I saw him standing over you, I thought it was…well, I thought wrong. Silver bullet killed him.” He sighed, picked up his coffee mug, then set it back down. “I shot your boyfriend because he was a werewolf and he was about to kill you. And because I thought he was someone else. If I’d known there were idiot fucking kids running around in the woods, getting bit, I wouldn’t have shot him with silver. I would have been more careful. But that’s what happened.”

Laura had never been a big believer in the supernatural. She’d never seen a ghost, didn’t give a shit about Big Foot. It was all a certain kind of nonsense that she just never had time for. But what she’d seen last night, that was unexplainable, and Officer Hackett was offering her an explanation. She remembered sharp teeth on a humanoid face. She remembered how the monster had been there, and then Max had been there in its place. Unexplainable. Except for the clear explanation she was being given.

“Werewolves,” she said. It had been the full moon last night. She’d been thankful for the extra light. “Are you serious?”

“Dead serious,” he replied, finally looking at her again. She could see in his eyes that he was telling the truth. His entire demeanor screamed of sincerity.

“Okay.” She nodded, head spinning. “Sure. Max was bitten and he turned into a werewolf.” If she hadn’t seen it for herself already, she wouldn’t have believed him. Or maybe she would have.

“Really quickly,” Hackett added. “Never seen the infection take hold so fast.”

“So it’s an infection?”

He shrugged. “Just what I call it. Not like there’s any known science behind it. You get bit, you turn under a full moon.”

“You said you were hunting another werewolf, the one that bit Max?” He nodded and she continued. “That’s why you were out there, covered in blood?”

“Werewolf blood. Helps mask human scent. They track by smell and breath.”

“Breath?” She remembered the creature standing in front of her, how she’d held her breath in fear. That had probably saved her life. “Oh my god. I can’t believe I’m having this conversation and actually believing what you’re telling me.”

“I heard a car horn and followed the sound, followed the signs of the crash through the trees, and then. Well, you know the rest.”

“You killed Max and saved my life,” she whispered. “Fuck, I was almost killed by two different werewolves. And my boyfriend was one of them. Fuck me.”

“You should take some time to think all this through,” he said, standing up from the couch. “Process.”

She grabbed his wrist. “I don’t need to take any fucking time.” She stood up, keeping hold of his wrist. “I’ve processed.”

“You have not processed,” he argued, his eyes darting between his held wrist and her face.

“I can multi-task,” she insisted. “I can process and learn everything you know about werewolves at the same time. I’m fucking smart.”

“I told you enough.” It was his turn to grab her wrist. Neither was letting go. “You don’t need to know everything.”

“I do,” she said. “I do need to know everything, because I’m going to help you kill the werewolf that bit Max.”

He remained silent, just staring at her, possibly in awe.

“You might have shot him, but that piece of shit werewolf is the real reason Max is dead. Let me help you find it. Let me help you kill it.”

“You…you want to help?” His response surprised her. She’d thought for sure he would say no. Instead, he sounded hopeful, and a little shy.

“You mean do I want to avenge my dead boyfriend and kill a monster?” she asked, eyebrows raised. She felt more like herself than she had since the car went off the road, and she chased after that feeling with everything she had. “Teach me what you know. I’m a fast learner.”

“Vet school. I remember.” There was a hint of humor in his voice and she smiled, knowing that meant victory. “Your depth perception is gonna make it hard to aim a gun.”

“That’s what practice is for, Officer Hackett.”

He cleared his throat, his hand tightening over her wrist before he finally released her. “It’s Travis.”

She gave his wrist an answering squeeze. “Travis. Let me help.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, you can help.”

Chapter Text

“This isn’t a lot to go on,” she said, handing Travis back the strange scroll of paper. They’d moved from the couch to the small, round table in the kitchenette, and she’d just read the weirdest poem of her life.

“It’s all I got,” Travis sighed.

“Where did you even get something like this?”

He shrugged. “Lots of research.” He nodded to the bookshelf in the living room. “I must’ve read every werewolf lore book there is. This thing, though, it’s been the most accurate, far as I can tell.”

“But why does it have to rhyme?” she asked.

He snorted. “I dunno.”

“So according to this weird-ass rhyme, werewolves don’t like water, they like attacking things that breathe—Jesus Christ—and they have to be killed under a full moon. What are you staring at?”

He averted his eyes, but she knew he’d been staring at her. They’d both been sneaking a lot of looks at one other, but Laura liked to think she was a lot less conspicuous about it.

“You didn’t wash your hair,” he told the table, shifting awkwardly in his chair. “You took a shower but you didn’t wash your hair.”

“Oh.” She touched her ponytail, grimacing at the stiffness of dried mud. “I forgot. There was kind of a lot going on last night. And this morning. I didn’t get any on your couch, did I?”

“Will you shut up about the couch?”

She tried to roll her eyes, but the expression felt wrong with only one eye to roll, and the movement caused a throb of pain. She couldn’t hide the wince. Travis opened his mouth to speak, but she quickly spoke over him, not wanting to hear him be sympathetic, or worse, dismissive. “You told me not to get my bandage wet, remember? How was I supposed to wash my hair? I did the best I could by myself.”

‘By myself’, she said, the implication hanging loudly between them, that he would have helped her and she would have let him. How had her life turned to this so quickly? How did she suddenly exist in a world where she actively wanted some strange, werewolf hunting cop to wash her hair?

“I didn’t think of that,” he said, his voice breaking the silence.

She waited for him to say no.

Instead, he stood up, took hold of the back of her chair, and started dragging it across the kitchen. She squeaked, grabbing the armrests and gaping at him. The chair made an awful noise against the linoleum and didn’t stop until they’d reached the sink. He let go, smirking.

“Stay there. I’ll get a towel.”

--

He had to unwrap the bandage from around her head. Taped the gauze over her eye with medical tape instead.

Bending her head back against the sink was uncomfortable, the same way hair-washing basins at the salon were uncomfortable, but Travis placed a rolled up towel under neck to help when she complained. He approached her with the sleeves of his uniform pushed up his forearms. He had nice forearms.

The sink had one of those hose detachment things, so she didn’t have to strain to get her hair wet. She simply sat and let him rinse the filth away. Initially, she tried to watch him as he hovered over her, but after her face was splashed with a bit of water, he muttered his discontent and placed a clean dishcloth over her face. “Gotta keep that dry,” he explained, but she had a feeling he just didn’t like her watching him.

He was being gentle, working each knot from her hair with careful fingers. He scrubbed her scalp with a flowery smelling shampoo and she tried not to take too much pleasure from it. It felt good though, being touched. It was comforting, sent tingles through her, raised the hair on her arms. It made her realize how much she needed a fucking hug. Werewolves? Dead boyfriend? Ruined face? She’d cried over it already, but she hadn’t been comforted yet, not physically or verbally. But this…this felt a little like the comfort she craved.

He had to shampoo twice. “Huh. You’re blonde. I couldn’t tell,” he commented.

“Fuck off,” she replied, surprised by how breathless her voice sounded. All from a little scalp massage. Pathetic, really.

But it only got better when he added conditioner, his hands spreading it through her hair in slow pulls, his fingers combing through the strands, brushing the back of her neck. As he worked the conditioner into her ends, it almost felt like he was softly pulling her hair. She shivered at the restrained strength of his hands. Felt a pulse of excitement between her legs.

Wait, what?

She was glad for the cloth over her face because she was definitely blushing by the time he was back to rinsing her hair. Should they have been talking all this time? Was it weird that they hadn’t been talking while doing something so intimate? It was all she could think of now, the silence, the steady touch of his hands, the warm, cascading water.

He yanked the cloth off and was abruptly right there, right in her face. He touched her cheek, his eyebrows furrowing as he studied her bandage. “You’re dry,” he proclaimed.

She was not.

His fingers were feather-light against the patch of gauze. “I should check this. See how it’s doing.”

She groaned. “Do it fast.” She didn’t want to think about her eye. It was much nicer thinking about Travis’ hands, his fingers, his quirking mouth. Not the cavernous hole where her eye used to be. Fuck.

“You okay?” he asked, hesitating.

“Fine,” she lied. “Just do it.”

He was quick, only slightly lifting the pad of gauze to check beneath. She felt it stick to her skin a little, and that nearly made her gag, but then it was over, and he was re-applying the bandage. “It’s not infected,” he told her.

“Great,” she answered, trying to muster some enthusiasm. But she was swept up in another whirlwind of longing when Travis slipped his hands under her neck to gently lift her head from the sink. His hands were hot from the water as they pressed against her skin. But too soon his touch was gone and he was wrapping her hair in a towel.

She rubbed at her neck, trying to act nonchalant as he retook his seat at the table. “Now that I’m all clean, let’s get started,” she said, needing to distract herself from the intense attraction she had suddenly developed in the form of one grumpy sheriff.

He crossed his arms, no clue that the bulge of his exposed forearms was killing her. “Get started with what?”

She huffed and started towel drying her hair. Distraction, distraction, distraction. “Teaching me how to hunt a werewolf, obviously.”

--

The wolf’s name was Silas, and he was from a traveling sideshow that had caught fire six years ago. That was pretty much all she got out of Travis over the next several weeks. She slept on the couch he hated and ate the meals he cooked her. When he was at work, she poured over his cryptozoology books until her eye started hurting, and when he was home, usually at night, they’d drive out to the woods around Hackett’s Quarry and he’d teach her how to hunt.

“Some hunter you are,” she’d scoffed at him on the first evening spent in the darkness together, hunched over some broken twigs. “It’s been six years and you haven’t caught it yet.”

“It’s harder than you think,” he’d spat.

She discovered early on that it was easier to antagonize him than accidentally give away her inappropriate attraction, because ever since he’d washed her hair, she’d been struggling with the bizarreness of wanting the man who’d kill Max. Like, really wanting him. It was the weirdest thing. She knew he was too old, that he’d never be interested, but she couldn’t help but admire him when he didn’t think she was looking.

He was abrasive when they were together, for the most part, and they weren’t together often. He usually spent the full day at work, off doing whatever the sheriff of North Kill does, and when they were hunting at night, it was all business. That was for the best. The few times she’d caught him at his leisure, sitting on his bed and reading a book with his glasses on, she’d nearly had a heart attack.

That was why now, two weeks into knowing each other, two weeks into Max being dead, and two weeks into Werewolves 101, Laura felt like she hardly knew Travis Hackett. He was secretive and rude most of the time, and confusingly gentle when he was changing her bandage or bringing her fresh sheets for her setup on the couch. And when he was teaching her how to track Silas? Total dick.

“That’s not the stance I showed you,” he reprimanded, moving behind her to help adjust her arms. Tonight, he’d gone ahead of her in to the woods to hide something, and her job was to find it, following the tracks he’d made. Only he kept stopping her every few minutes to complain about everything she was doing wrong.

“Seriously? I’m doing it exactly the way you said,” she complained.

“Yeah, if you wanna break your shoulder when you fire. Don’t forget about the kickback. Like this.” His hands were on her body, moving her arms, her hips, the position of the gun when she aimed. “You don’t need to hold the gun up like this the whole time. Keep your eyes on your surroundings. You can’t look for tracks if you’re constantly aiming. Staying alert is more important, until you see it.”

His hands were so warm she could feel the heat of them through her clothes. He’d gone back to Max’s car to retrieve her bags that first night, so she had her own clothes and toiletries now. But she still slept in Travis’ North Kill t-shirt, and tonight, she was wearing one of his jackets. It was big and soft and smelled like him.

“Good girl,” he said as she corrected her stance, way too close to her ear. She shivered.

“You getting cold?” he asked, stepping away and taking his body heat with him. “Better find your target before we both freeze to death, then.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “Get going.”

“Ugh,” she answered, and stalked forward through the woods. Travis had been fairly obvious with the tracks he’d left. There was a broken twig here and a snapped branch there. She followed a heavy trail of boots for a quarter mile, so pronounced it was clear he must have stomped all along the path.

“What are you smiling about?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “Just that it’s no wonder you’ve never been able to find Silas, if you’re this fucking indiscreet. He can probably hear you from a mile away.”

“Shut up,” he said. “I made the trail obvious for your benefit, lady.”

“Call me lady again and it’ll be the last thing you do,” she snapped, but there was laughter in her voice she couldn’t hide. She looked at him askance, thought maybe he was smiling, too. He was grimacing in a way that was less severe than usual.

“Just keep your eyes on the trail,” he commanded.

“Yes, sir.”

It took another half hour of weaving through the woods to find the target Travis had hidden for her. The week before, it had taken her two hours, and she’d found a watermelon, which he then had her shoot at. This time, tucked within a thick holly bush, was a six pack of beer. Her sleeves got snagged on the prickly leaves, but she was victorious in the end, pulling out the beer and lifting it above her head in triumph. “Am I supposed to shoot this with silver now?”

“That’d make it a lot harder to drink,” he said, snagging the six pack from her and sitting on the ground.

“You’re joking,” she said, adjusting the strap of her new eye patch. Travis had given it to her earlier that day, announcing her wound was well enough to forgo the gauze and, in his words, “Stop walking around here looking like a train wreck.”

“Car wreck, technically,” she’d joked, trying to hide how excited she was when he’d fitted it around her head. She had gone the past two weeks successfully avoiding having to look at her ruined eye. She didn’t look in the bathroom mirror, she didn’t have her cell phone to take a picture. She just…wasn’t interested. The eye patch made things better. It was a hell of a lot more comfortable to wear than a bunch of gauze and bandages, and she felt a little more badass and less pathetic. It was soft, too, and felt expensive. Travis hadn’t said anything about it when he gave it to her, but she knew he must’ve put some thought into it.

God, eye patch or not, she was still pathetic.

Travis pulled a bottle opener out of nowhere and had two caps popped before Laura had time to decide whether or not she should sit with him on the forest floor. “You did good tonight. Have a drink.”

“I’m not twenty-one yet,” she reminded him, sitting down beside him, so close their knees touched. It wasn’t an accident, but she pretended like it was one and didn’t try to put more space between them.

“Think I care about that?”

“Well, you are a cop,” she said, taking the beer from him and clinking their bottles together. “I just want to make sure this isn’t entrapment, or whatever.”

“You’re real funny,” he deadpanned. “Drink your beer and stop being a smartass.”

“It’s not even cold,” she commented after the first taste.

“It would’ve been colder if you’d tracked it down faster,” was his answer to that. He took several deep swigs and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looking far too pleased with himself. It wasn’t a look she had seen on his face very often, but it was one she really liked.

“Beers in the middle of the woods with a cop and an eye patch,” she muttered to herself. “Who would’ve thought?”

“Sorry I’m not better company,” he said, quieter than normal.

She clanked their bottles together again, hard enough that her beer bubbled up and ran over the lip, getting on his uniform pants—because he wore his uniform all the time, even when they were all the way out here. She snickered at his irritated expression. “Who said you weren’t good company?”

She was very aware of their knees touching. Wondered if he was, too.

He sneered at her, sighed. “You’re just confused,” he said, gesturing vaguely towards her face. “Because of the eye. You think I’m better company than I am.”

“Think I can’t see you properly?” she teased. Her hand touched his knee, just lightly, just casually. “I’m vision impaired, not blind.”

He huffed out a laugh. “Sure, sure.” He glanced down at where her hand was still resting on his knee and his eyebrows lifted, like he’d just noticed. “Uh.”

She dared herself not to retract her hand. He looked up at her, surprise bright in his eyes.

His phone rang.

He jumped to his feet like he’d been shocked. Looked down at his phone and cursed. “I gotta take this,” he said, and scurried off into the trees, leaving Laura alone in the dark with her beer.

“Um, what the fuck?” she asked, getting up to immediately follow him.

Thanks to his lessons, she was light on her feet as she crept along, following the sound of his voice. He hadn’t gone far, so she caught up to him in about twenty seconds. He was pacing anxiously behind a tree and she hid behind a bush to eavesdrop, because it had been a very odd two weeks and her curiosity about the sheriff had become insatiable.

His tone was hushed, but she could hear him perfectly. She could almost hear the woman on the other line, too; she had one of those loud, obnoxious voices that didn’t translate well to phone calls.

Laura crouched there and listened, riveted.

“I told you, ma, I couldn’t come to dinner tonight, but I can be there tomorrow…I told you I had to work…It was important, ma. I can’t take off just because it’s my birthday…It’s not suspicious, it’s called having a work ethic…Ma…Ma…No, don’t come over…Because I’m not home and the place is a mess. Just…I will. Of course I’ll be there. Why would I miss the full moon this month?...What did Chris say? He was lying…Yes, ma. Sorry, ma.”

Laura couldn’t see Travis’ face, but she could read his body language well enough. He was anxious and pulled into himself. His voice was something small and subservient that she didn’t like hearing.

“Ma, wait, wait…I don’t need another couch. You don’t need to get me anything…I love you, too, ma…Yes…Yes, I’ll be good…Tomorrow night, yeah. I’ll be there…G’night, ma.”

He hung up and slipped his phone back in his pocket. Laura crept backwards and immediately stepped on, like, the loudest twig ever. It snapped and Travis went rigid.

“Laura?” he said, and she decided not to insult him by pretending she wasn’t being a total creep.

“Um, yes?” she answered, still crouching.

He walked right to her, grabbed her arm, and yanked her up. “Spying on me?”

“Happy Birthday,” she said, smiling guiltily. “How old are you this year?”

“Old.”

“Come on,” she smiled, even though she was shouting on the inside, because his grip was tight and felt so, so good. “You don’t look that old. You’re what? Fifty-ish?”

“Something like that,” he replied sharply. He was mad, but she got the feeling most of his anger stemmed from his phone conversation instead of her being a sneak.

“You should’ve said. I would’ve gotten you something,” she said, wiggling in his hold just to feel his hand tighten around her arm.

“What could you have possibly gotten me?” he asked with insulting incredulity.

And she didn’t like him thinking the idea of her getting him something for his birthday was ridiculous. So, in a moment of madness, she kissed him.

It was a quick thing. More than a peck, but not much more. And then she pulled away, licking her lips, adrenaline surging through her. “Happy Birthday,” she said, casually, like it wasn’t a big deal. He was still holding her arm, was holding it so tight.

He stared at her for several long seconds, seconds that felt like individual little lifetimes. And then he said, his voice in a startlingly deep register, “I just turned fifty-six.”

“Cool,” she said, breathlessly. “So I was right. Fifty-ish.”

He looked at her like she was crazy. And…fair enough. “You’re twenty, Laura.”

“Um, yeah? I know how old I am.” She feigned confusion. “Did you not like your birthday present? Was it not enough? Here.” She kissed him again before he could react.

Laura learned about two weeks ago, when she was getting her hair tenderly shampooed by a total stranger who’d killed her werewolf boyfriend, that life was unpredictable and weird. She could never have predicted that signing up to work at a summer camp would lead to Max’s untimely end, just like she never could have predicted she’d end up kissing Travis Hackett, not once, but twice, the second time lingering. His lips were dry and warm, soft as she placed more pressure against them. She hadn’t surprise-kissed anyone before, and she hadn’t planned on surprise-kissing Travis, had actively tried not to do that very thing, actually, but with his birthday as a flimsy excuse, she was suddenly daring. Reckless.

He kissed her back for an instant. And then he slowly pushed her away, finally letting go of her arm, which now boasted the pattern of his fingerprints. “Stop,” he said, but his voice sounded wrecked, ruined, devastated.

She hated how he sounded, so she grabbed hold of him, winding her arms around his waist and tucking her head under his chin. Hugging him, the way she’d wanted to for weeks.

“What’s gotten into you?” he asked, letting her hold him, but not hugging back. “Are you drunk?”

She scoffed against his chest. “I had two sips of beer.”

“Okay,” he said. His hands rested hesitantly on her shoulders, like he didn’t know what else to do with them. “You know, sometimes, when you go through something difficult, you can start seeing things…not so clearly…”

“Fuck off,” she said. She let him go, then, mostly so he could see how pissed off she was. “Just because I kissed you, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me.”

He raised his hands in exasperation. “You know what? It’s late. We should head back. I’m gonna forget about this little, uh, lapse in judgment, or whatever the fuck it was, and you should do the same.”

He strutted back to where they’d left the six pack, scooped it up, and started walking in earnest in the direction they’d come from. “Time to go,” he ordered.

Laura followed him, feeling stupid, feeling angry. At him, at herself, at his mother, who’d been so loud and annoying, even on the phone. Remembering the phone call, and revved up for a confrontation, she hurried to catch up with Travis. If she couldn’t kiss him, the next best thing was arguing.

“Your mom knows about full moons?” she asked.

He wouldn’t meet her eyes, started walking faster. “Yeah.”

“So she knows about werewolves? Knows you’re hunting Silas?”

He laughed, and it was bitter. “My whole family knows.”

“What? Really?”

“I don’t wanna talk about my family,” he sighed. “My family…Look, family is the most important thing in the world.”

She didn’t miss the way his eyes shifted when he said that, or the emptiness in his voice. “You don’t believe that,” she said softly. He didn’t respond. “Your mom got you that couch? The one you hate.”

Silence.

“Do they help you hunt?” she pressed. “They don’t let you handle everything by yourself, do they? How does your whole family know about werewolves?”

“Because half of them ARE werewolves, Laura,” he blurted suddenly, stopping in his tracks and turning to face her, wild-eyed. “My family is fucked, okay? For the past six years, everything has been completely fucked. And I didn’t want you to have to deal with it, so I didn’t mention it.”

“Your family was bitten?” she asked, horrified.

“Six years ago, my niece and nephew, my brother.” His eyes were distant, as he recalled it.

She didn’t press for details, not now that he was sharing something so personal with her, and looking deeply pained about it.

“Silas is the one who bit them,” he continued, surprising her by stepping closer. “Silas is the one who started all of this.”

Laura remembered the poem. “Kill the first,” she whispered.

“And be free of the curse,” he finished. “I need to help my family. I need to kill Silas. It’s taken six years of searching. But we haven’t had any luck. And every year, something goes wrong. Silas bites someone else, or kills them, and I’ve gotta…I’ve gotta get rid of the evidence.”

“Like Max,” she said, a tear welling up in her eye. Not for Max, but for Travis, who was carrying so much pain, he was nearly choked by it. “It’s not your fault, Travis.”

He shook his head. “I’ve done terrible things. I try to avoid it, but sometimes it can’t be helped. I don’t want to have to keep doing terrible things.”

“We’ll find him,” she assured, reaching out, wanting to comfort him with a touch, but he shied away from her. “Travis.”

“I think we might find him,” he said. “With your help. Maybe…maybe you’re what’s been missing.”

They stared at each other. She thought, for a second, that he might try to kiss her. And then.

“Who the fuck is this?” came a shout from behind them.

Laura gasped as Travis pushed her back and stood in front of her. She peered over his shoulder at the men standing a few yards away, each with a shotgun, each with a menacing grimace. The one who’d spoken was quite old, the other younger, but huge. Neither looked happy to see Travis. They seemed even less happy with Laura, when she stepped out from behind Travis with her gun raised.

“What the fuck, Travis?” the old man yelled. “You said you dealt with those kids weeks ago. Now she’s got a gun in my face?”

“Shit,” Travis rasped, turning around and manhandling the shotgun out of Laura’s hands. “Dad,” he began, the subservience in his voice returning, just like it had when he’d been speaking on the phone to his mother. Laura eyed the old man with disdain.

“Explain yourself, Travis,” his dad ordered. “First you ditch your family on your birthday, and now we find you wandering around here with some girl. Who is this?”

The younger man laughed. Laura could tell right away that he was dimwitted. “Finally got yourself a girlfriend, Travis? Couldn’t score one with two eyes?”

Travis bristled visibly at that. “Shut up, Bobby. It ain’t like that.”

Laura didn’t miss the way an accent was creeping out, now that Travis was speaking to his family. Nor did she miss the way he was stepping in front of her again, as if she needed shielding from them. And while he wasn’t aiming the shotgun at them, his body language was tense, alert, ready for something—anything—to happen.

“You better explain what it’s like, son,” his dad said. “Better yet, why don’t the two of you come back to the house, and we can all have a nice talk. Your ma wanted to wish you a happy birthday in person, but you’re always so damn busy these days, too high and mighty to spend any time with your family.”

“I’m not going back with you tonight, dad,” Travis said. “I’ve gotta get her back home.”

That was the wrong thing to say.

Travis’ dad stomped forward, shoved Travis out of the way, and pointed a bony finger in Laura’s face. “I’m not gonna ask again, Travis,” he growled. “Who the fuck is this girl and why is she going home with you?”

“Don’t touch her!” Travis recovered from his dad’s shove, and came straight back, lifting Laura by the waist and swinging her away. She yelped, stumbling to find her footing, but Travis had her hand before she could fall, and a second later he was rushing them away. “Hurry, Laura,” he said.

“Your ma’s gonna hear about this, Travis!” his dad yelled at their backs.

Laura could still hear the other man chuckling about her eye. She gripped Travis’ hand tight and let him take the lead, winding a sure path through the dark woods.

“What the fuck was that about?” she asked breathlessly a few minutes later, once they’d put plenty of distance between them. “That was your family?”

“I don’t even know anymore,” Travis whispered, so faintly Laura could barely hear him.

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she just squeezed his hand.

He squeezed hers back.

Chapter Text

The mood was awkward and sad when they returned to the apartment. Laura was thinking about the six pack when Travis opened up a cabinet and waved a bottle of whiskey at her. “Drink?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

They sat on the couch he hated, and passed the bottle between them, knocking knees.

“So, no offense, but your dad was sort of a dick,” she said, once the alcohol had untangled her tongue.

His answering exhale could have been a laugh, could have been a tormented sigh.

“Who was the other one?” she ventured. “Bobby?”

“My brother. One of ‘em.” Travis took a long pull from the bottle. “Sorry for what he said. About the eye.”

She hadn’t forgotten it. It was surreal, being seen by someone else, when all she’d known for the past two weeks was Travis. In all that time, he’d never made her feel less than because of her injuries. He never cringed when he looked at her, or laughed at her, or made her feel ugly. But a few seconds of interaction with his family, and Laura felt like a freak. She knew her face was fucked up, but it was one thing knowing and another thing having someone else know it. And then throw it at you like a weapon.

“It’s okay,” she lied, stealing the bottle from him. “I know I’m not going to vet school on a beauty pageant scholarship.”

“No, you are,” Travis said.

“Huh?”

He took back the whiskey. Drank it. “You could go to vet school on a beauty pageant scholarship,” he muttered. “You’re not, uh.” He sat up a bit straighter, his eyes studying the whiskey label like it was the best read of his life. “You’re not ugly.”

“Wow,” she laughed, horrified to feel the lump rising in her throat. Nope, not happening. Stop it, Laura. Fucking stop it. “Thanks.”

Travis twisted to look at her straight on. His face was doing something complicated. “You’re pretty, is what I mean,” he said. “You could’ve lost both eyes that night, and been scratched up a lot worse, and you’d still be pretty. You just are. It’s just a fact.”

Her lips parted on a surprised gasp. He blinked, held her gaze, blinked, glanced away.

“My brother was just being an asshole,” he continued, like he hadn’t just blown Laura’s mind. “But he didn’t mean it. He’s…well, Bobby’s a little bit touched, if you know what I mean. He was probably copying something he heard from someone else, trying to be funny.” He sighed and his posture deflated in an instant. He ran his fingers through his hair, which was slightly damp from the sweat he’d accumulated in their rush to get out of the woods. Laura hadn’t asked him yet why exactly they’d needed to run away from his dad and brother like that, but she was dying to find out.

“So your family does help you hunt for Silas,” she said, joining him in his lean against the pillows. “And I guess you didn’t tell them about me.”

“Affirmative.”

“Why not?”

He gave her a look like, “Duh,” and took another drink. “They’re secretive. I told you I’ve had to do some unsavory things in the past to try and protect them. I didn’t want them to find out about you. I was afraid they’d force the issue.”

She swallowed, suddenly afraid. Not of Travis, but of the memory of his mother’s shrieking voice on the other end of the phone. “You were trying to keep me safe,” she said.

“They never go out to that part of the woods unless it’s a full moon,” he lamented, closing his eyes. “I was being careful. And I still fucked it up. Now ma knows, and she’s…”

Laura leaned a little closer to him, wanting to feel his warmth.

His eyes flickered open, found hers. “She’s not gonna like it.”

“You mean she’s not going to like me,” Laura guessed.

“She doesn’t like a lot of people.”

“Well, I have to say, I’m usually a pretty big hit with meeting the parents, so this is a first for me.” She smiled when he sneered at her.

And just like that, they both seemed to recall what had happened in the woods before his family showed up.

“Oh my god, I kissed you,” she said.

“Did you seriously fucking forget?” he asked in disbelief. She loved that he sounded a little disappointed.

“To be fair, there was a lot going on. I kinda thought your dad was going to murder me.” She raised her eyebrows. “What, have you been dwelling on it or something?”

“No,” he was quick to say. “Jesus Christ. You’re just a kid.”

“You don’t even believe that, so why do you keep saying it?” She took the whiskey from him, because he’d had it long enough and she needed the courage. She swallowed some down, enjoying the burn in her throat. After several such swallows, she was beginning to think she’d had enough. Tipsy, but not drunk. She didn’t want to be drunk. Just a little braver.

“Hey, Travis,” she said. “Hey.”

He looked at her, his lips already turned down in disapproval, like he knew she was going to say something he didn’t like.

Well, the joke was on him, because she didn’t have anything to say. Just do. She tipped the bottle of whiskey over, spilling the rest of the booze all over the couch cushions.

He jumped up, eyes comically big. “That’s—”

“The couch you hate?” she asked. “Yeah, I know.” She gave the bottle a shake, making sure to get every last drop of whiskey out. “You don’t have to keep things in your life you don’t like, Travis.” She stood up and threw the bottle onto the couch. It reeked of booze now, and had a big, dark stain at its center. Laura wished there was more she could do to ruin it. “You don’t have to keep people you don’t like in your life either,” she said, softer, gently. “That…” she took a deep breath. “That includes me, I guess. I know you took me in to try and protect me, but I can take care of myself. You’ve taught me a lot already, and I still want to help, but I don’t need to be living here with you. I know it’s annoying, living with—“

She couldn’t continue because she was being kissed. Suddenly and thoroughly.

His hands were in her hair, pulling out her ponytail and sliding his fingers through the strands. His mouth was open and insistent, his tongue seeking out hers. His lips were a steady, perfect pressure. He smelled so good, like the woods and cologne and sweat. The sweat part should have been gross, maybe, but it wasn’t. It was just Travis, and he smelled so good. He kissed her so well.

Her knees literally buckled, because she couldn’t handle how well he was kissing her. She fell to the couch, and he fell on top of her. They kissed and kissed. His hair was thicker than she’d thought it would be. The bulge growing in his pants was bigger. The aggression of his hips was stronger. Being wanted by him was heavier than she ever could have imagined it being, and she wanted to be crushed by the weight of it.

“I like you,” he huffed against her neck, then started sucking a bruise there, as if to prove his point. “You’re not someone I want out of my life.”

“Ah!” she cried, arms winding around his back. “Okay, okay, I believe you.”

But he must have really, really wanted her to believe him, because he slid to the floor, onto his knees, right between her legs. He gazed up at her, some of his hair falling over his forehead.

“Travis, I’m wet,” she said.

He looked like he might die, so she quickly amended, “I mean, my butt is wet. I’m sitting in the whiskey.”

“Tragic,” he said, then yanked her forward by the hips so she fell off the couch and into his lap. But he refrained from kissing her again, opting to stare at her instead, into her singular eye. “I kissed you,” he said, and if she’d doubted his sobriety before, she didn’t doubt it now. His lips were kiss-swollen, yes, but his expression was serious, and his eyes were clear. Something had shifted in him, too fast for her to keep up.

“You can keep kissing me,” she said, hoping she was imagining the change.

“But I shouldn’t,” he answered. The hair tie he’d pulled from her hair was around his wrist. She liked the look of it there. “It’s not right. Laura, my family, it’s not safe for you here anymore. You’ve gotta go.”

She cocked her head at him, not understanding. “You just said you wanted me in your life.”

“That’s still true,” he said. “Doesn’t change the fact that my family’s gonna want me to deal with you. Same as I’ve dealt with everything else.”

“I’m not afraid of your family,” she said, and she wasn’t. Not really. His dad and brother had been jerks, and his mom was obviously a bitch, but the Hacketts didn’t compare to the werewolf roaming the woods. Silas was who she feared, and he was who she was going to kill. “I’m not leaving until Silas is dead,” she told Travis, brushing the hair off his forehead. “I owe it to Max.”

Max. Though she was doing this for him, she’d put his name in the back of her mind since that first day. It was too hard to think about him, and about his death. She wanted to avenge him, but she didn’t want to think about him too much. That was a road she didn’t want to go down. It was easier to focus on her tasks at hand.

Or maybe there was another reason she didn’t think of him often. Another reason why Travis had so easily slipped his way into her heart. Sometimes, there was dark whisper inside her, reminding her she never loved Max, not really, that she was going to break up with him after the summer anyway, that she was a little relieved to be free of him…But no. She always shut that whisper up right away. Because even if it were true, she would never admit it out loud. Not ever.

Regardless of the way things might’ve been, this was the way things were now. She was sitting in Travis’ lap and he was telling her to leave. That was the reality.

But Laura decided to take it as a challenge instead. She stood from his lap and held out her hand. “Come on,” she said.

She was a little afraid he wouldn’t accept her, but he only waited a moment before taking her hand and letting her pull him to his feet. She could see he was still hard, could see the swell in his trousers. Good. She led him through the living room, down the hall, and into his bedroom. She’d only been in here a few times, tried to let him keep his private space, but now that they were standing together, his bed right there, it didn’t feel like she was invading his space. It felt like she belonged within it.

“I offered to leave before and you told me to stay,” she said slowly, pushing at his shoulders until he sat down on the edge of the bed. “So I’m ignoring the request for me to leave that came almost immediately after. Thanks for the whiplash, by the way.”

He shook his head, exasperated with her. And that was fine. She was exasperated with him, too.

“I told you I’d help kill Silas, and that’s what I’m going to do. For Max, for me, and for you.” She got on her knees in front of him, the way he’d done to her in the living room. Placed her hands on his thighs. “If your family has a problem with me, we can deal with it.” She kissed his knee. “You’re allowed to have nice things, Travis.”

He rolled his eyes. “Get up.”

“What if I don’t?” she asked. “What if I like it down here?”

“Laura.”

“Travis.” She met his glare, unafraid. “We kissed.”

Another eye roll. “I think that’s been well established.”

“It doesn’t have to end, just because we’re afraid of what might happen later. Does it?” She wanted to wait for his answer, but he was taking too long. “Let me suck you.”

That certainly got a reaction out of him. He jolted, like he’d been burned, and his eyes were all pupil, blown huge and black. “What did you say?”

“Let me?” She reached slowly for the buckle of his belt, giving him ample time to push her away. He only stared at her in surprise, staying still as she unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his pants, eased down his zipper.

Laura never considered herself to be a sexpert, for lack of a better word. She hadn’t dated much outside of Max, and though their coupling was copious, she usually received neutral feedback from him. For instance, the first time she’d blown him, he’d spent five minutes after explaining to her how his ex-girlfriend did it, and that, while Laura didn’t do a bad job, maybe she would benefit from watching more porn.

He corrected her hand job technique with a similar attitude. “Do this. Do that.” Laura was all for communication during sex, letting each other know what they liked and all that. But she couldn’t help but feel constantly condescended to. Having sex for the first time had been the worst. By the end, she was so self conscious, she hadn’t even considered being able to finish. He’d been offended when she told him the truth.

“It’s not my fault you didn’t come,” he’d said. “You have to figure it out. Stop being so timid, honey. It’s not, like, super attractive in bed, you know?”

All of this felt normal to her, since it was all she really knew. Max sometimes made her feel like shit when they were intimate. That was just how it was. She was too sensitive, maybe. She needed more practice. Max made sure she practiced a lot. When he was alive.

Now, as she sat before an entirely new cock, the confidence that had gotten her on her knees in the first place waned. If Max had always been disappointed in her skills, what would an experienced man like Travis think? She was all bravado when she’d kissed him, and when she’d led him to the bedroom, but none of that was real. Laura wasn’t as brave as she let on. She never had been. She acted impulsively sometimes and people took that as bravery, as gumption, as some brand of badassery she’d always tried to emulate but never felt.

“Laura,” Travis said. His hand cupped her cheek.

She tried to remember, she tried really hard, but she couldn’t recall Max ever saying her name that way. “Laura,” like she was something precious. Like having her lips wrapped around his cock would be the best thing to ever fucking happen to him.

But that’s the way Travis said it.

She leaned forward and swiped a kitten lick over the head. Travis was a little over averagely endowed, and thicker than she was used to; her hand only just fit around the base of him. He had a thick patch of dark hair and she rubbed her nose there, calming as she breathed in the familiar musk of him. Despite their trek through the woods, he still smelled like soap from his after-work shower. He always smelled so good.

She felt his hand smooth over her hair and rest against the back of her neck, not pushing, just touching. She licked up the length of his shaft, didn’t try to look up at him as she did it. It would probably strain her eye, at that angle. She closed her eye instead, and then suckled the tip of him, careful of her teeth.

His response was enthusiastic. His hips twitched and he let out a long, guttural groan that made her blush. But best of all was the praise that started spilling from his mouth, like a broken faucet that wouldn’t stop gushing.

“Fuck, your mouth,” he said. “You feel so good.”

She took more of him in, her tongue flattening to make room. He was fully hard now, and felt huge. The pulse of him thrummed against her lips.

“Ah, ah, ah,” he breathed, voice going soft and winded. The hand on her hair became two hands, his fingers burrowing in her strands, but not pulling, not being rough. He was giving her full control of what was happening. Usually, that would make her anxiety spike, but with his constant encouragement, she was only spurred on. “Fuck, you’re good at that,” he said. “Jesus fucking Christ, how—fuck. Yeah, yeah. Keep, keep going. Oh, oh fuck.”

She bobbed her head, gagging a little as she tried to take him all the way to the root. He was leaking into her mouth and his taste was thick on her tongue. His hips bucked up a few times on accident, but she didn’t mind. If it was Travis, and Travis was doing it, she liked it.

“Yeah. Ah, ah! Laura, fuck,” he went on, his words shooting straight to Laura’s groin. She’d never been this aroused while giving head before. She hadn’t known it was even possible. She hadn’t known any of this was possible. She sucked and slurped, trying and failing to swallow him into her throat. He didn’t seem to care, or even notice. He fell back onto the mattress, his hands leaving her hair so they could fist the blankets. “Laura, Laura,” he chanted. And then, a few minutes later, when Laura’s jaw was starting to get sore, he said, “I’m close. I’m gonna come.”

She gave it her all, working him with her hand while her mouth sucked at his tip. She felt the moment before it happened, the way his balls tightened and cock twitched, and then he was coming in her mouth, down her throat, and she swallowed frantically, trying to catch it all.

When she pulled away and wiped her mouth, she finally looked at him. He was a heap on the bed, panting hard with an arm thrown over his face. “Fuck,” he whispered to himself. “Fuck.”

She sat on the edge of the bed, suddenly unsure again, and he must have felt the dip in the mattress, because his hand shot blindly out for her, grabbing her and yanking her close. He wrapped his arms around her, turned his head and found her mouth, kissed her hard. “Laura,” he said. His new favorite word.

He rolled on top of her, his mouth everywhere, his hands everywhere. It was all she could do to snake her hands between their bodies and unbutton his shirt, feel his hot skin under her cool palms. He sucked a hickey onto her neck while his hands unbuttoned her jeans. She helped him push them off, pushed off his shirt, too, then hers, then his pants, one useless article of clothing after the other, until it was all gone and there was nothing left but them. When they reconnected, their bare skin touched, and Laura groaned from the pleasure of it.

His hands skimmed over her breasts and over her navel, then cupped her crotch, dipping a tentative finger between her legs. She was wet enough for him to push the entire finger in, a slow and steady press that filled her sweetly and made her breath quicken. “Travis, Travis,” she said. “Fuck me.”

He groaned, then kissed her. “No,” he said, and she whined, miserable until he moved swiftly down her body and, for the second time that night, ended up between her legs. “Can I kiss you here?” he asked.

She nodded weakly, covering her face with her hands and spreading her legs for him, so he could fit better between them. He kissed along her naked thigh, rubbing his lips over her sensitive skin, nipping at the fleshiest part of her inner thigh. She gasped, beside herself. No one…no one had ever done this for her.

She didn’t think she could stand to watch him, couldn’t conceive of seeing his head between her thighs. So she kept her hands over her face and tried not to implode before he’d even gotten started.

He kissed her. Right there. Soft at first. A few gentle kisses that sent her heart fluttering. Then he opened his mouth to her, letting his tongue explore in wide, long swipes that made her sob. “Oh my god,” she whispered. “Oh my god.”

He hooked her knees over his shoulders and started aggressively eating her out, his nose rubbing against her clit, his tongue penetrating her steadily. For someone who had a hard time reaching her climax with a partner, she was shocked to find herself on the verge after only a few minutes of his thorough worshipping. She sank her hands into his hair, encouraging him.

“T-Travis,” she cried. “I need, I need—”

He tore his face away and plunged two thick fingers inside her instead, fucking her so hard, she grunted in surprise, couldn’t catch her breath. Another finger rubbed circles over her clit. His mouth clamped onto the damp skin of her thigh and sucked.

She couldn’t stop herself now. She opened her eye and looked at him.

She didn’t expect him to be looking at her, too.

Their eyes met and she came, her back arching off the bed, tears rolling down her face. She shook and shook while his fingers slowed inside her. He hushed her, smoothed his large hands over her legs as he set them back down on the mattress.

“Good girl,” he whispered, finding his way back to her side. “Look at you.” He adjusted her eye patch where it had started to slip a little. Then he kissed it, right over where her left eye used to be. “Fucking beautiful,” he said. He kissed her softly, tasting of her. She thought that was perfect, because she tasted of him.

“Don’t ask me to leave again,” she said against his lips.

“I won’t,” he promised.

“Can I sleep here, since I fucked up your couch?” she asked, already cuddling against his chest.

“Hmm. Hate that couch,” he muttered. His arms tightened around her.

She smiled. Guess that was her answer.

Chapter Text

The next two weeks passed much differently from the first, and not just because Laura was sleeping on a mattress now, instead of the couch. Travis was exceedingly awkward with her, but affectionate, in a standoffish way only he could achieve. They still spent most of their time apart, him going to work while she stayed in the apartment and kept busy, exercising and researching and timing herself to see how fast she could unload and load the shotgun. But at night, he was hers. Or, she liked to think of it that way.

He didn’t fuck her. “Not yet,” he kept saying. But he would hold her hand as they passed each other in the hallway. He would lightly scratch her back when they went to bed and she couldn’t sleep, and he would kiss her, every day, every time the thought seemed to flit through his head. It was a flatteringly high amount. Sometimes he was shy and gentle about it, pressing a light kiss to her mouth after taking off his shoes at the end of the day. Sometimes he was eager and forceful, pulling her flush against him in the shower.

His phone rang often in the evenings. Half the time he answered, excusing himself and hurrying to another room, closing the door so Laura couldn’t hear. The other half, he let it ring. Kissed her until it stopped. And then after it stopped.

She knew it was his mother. He hadn’t wanted to discuss it much, and she hadn’t been too keen on insisting, afraid of shattering the tentative happiness she was starting to feel, tucked away with Travis Hackett in his little home for one. But it was a raincloud on the horizon all the same, threatening a downpour neither could predict. It worried him, stressed him out more than the werewolf situation did, and kissing the stress wrinkle between his eyebrows seldom helped the way she wished it could.

Two weeks of shared kisses and touches and laughter and beds. Then it was time for the full moon again.

So of course that was when Travis’ mother came to fucking visit.

The bangs on the door happened when he was at work. Laura was doing crunches in the living room, trying to work out some of her excess energy, preparing for the hunt. Tonight was the night she’d been waiting for, and she was buzzing. Her missing eye ached, a phantom pain, reminding her of what she’d lost to the previous full moon. She was so on edge that, when the knocks came, she jumped, scared. It took her a second to realize it was just the door. It took her another second to recognize the voice in the hallway. She’d only heard it through the phone before, and at a distance, but she recognized it all the same.

Travis’ mother was knocking. Rudely. And hollering something awful.

Laura was not mentally prepared for this confrontation.

She walked to the door, her feet silent on the carpet. There was a peephole and she looked through it. An elderly woman with a harsh face was scowling at the door, like she could see Laura right through it. She had shaggy grey hair and deep lines around her mouth, a woman used to frowning. Her eyes were deep-set and black. She was wearing a dress with flowers on it, but the flowers were all worn and faded. She beat her fist against the door, stronger than she had any right to be at her age. She had to be nearing eighty, from the looks of her. And if her eldest son was fifty-six, she could be even older than that.

Laura decided to definitely not open the door.

“I know you’re in there, you fucking piece of shit!” the mother yelled, continuously beating her fist.

Laura stepped back, unsure what to do. Ignore her?

“Open the door, you good for nothing slut!”

Ignore her, Laura decided.

“You stupid whore! Tempting my good boy away from his family! You fucking cunt. Are you fucking my son? Are you fucking my Travis? I’ll kill you, you stupid bitch! Open this door!”

Jesus fucking Christ. Laura went to the couch, heart rate accelerated. A glance out the window told her that evening was fast approaching. Travis would be home soon, and then they’d be heading out for the hunt. How long was his mother going to be screaming outside the door?

“That’s it!” the mother screamed. “I gave you a chance, bitch!”

The sound of keys jangling had never been so terrible. Laura had a crazy urge to run and hide from the woman, but anger kept her rooted in place. She watched the door like a hawk as the knob twisted, and then finally it was thrown open. The old woman barreled in, her eyes casting around the apartment like a predator until she spotted Laura.

“You,” she rattled, slamming the door shut behind her. “You’re the little slut my husband told me about. You’re the reason my Travis has been neglecting his family.” She spat at Laura. “You’re not even anything to look at, are you? Skinny little Cyclops whore.”

Laura put her hands on her hips. “Wow, it’s nice to meet you too,” she said with as much sarcasm as she could. “Travis has mentioned next to nothing about you. I wonder why.”

His mother screamed, picked up a book Laura had left on the kitchen counter, and chucked it straight at Laura’s head. She only just managed to dodge it.

“Hey!”

“Shut your whore mouth!” His mother was fast approaching. Laura moved to put space between them. It didn’t feel like nearly enough, though. This lady was out of her mind, and the effect was worse the closer she got. Laura could see in her eyes that she wasn’t stable. Her heart felt a pang for Travis that this monster was his mother.

“Is that…what the fuck happened to this goddamn couch?” the woman asked, voice shaking with rage. She jabbed a finger at the cushion, where Laura had upended the whiskey. No one had bothered cleaning it. In fact, they’d hardly sat on the couch at all since that night. “What did you do?” Her eyes were on fire with hatred.

So Laura laughed in her face. “Your son hated that couch, so I ruined it.” She smirked. Couldn’t help herself from adding, “Then I fucked him on it.” It wasn’t even true, but the response was well worth the lie.

His mother sputtered and spat, cursed and screamed. It was almost funny, the extremeness of her. Until she spotted the shotgun Laura had been practicing with, which was on the little kitchenette table, and snatched it up.

“Shit!” Laura yelled, turning to run, but the cock of the safety had her feet freezing.

“Don’t move a muscle, you fucking piece of shit whore,” the mother said, coming closer.

“Are you crazy?” Laura asked, a sincere question. “Are you seriously going to shoot me? Because I’m in love with Travis?” Fuck. Well, there was nothing like a life threatening event to bring about a revelation. Of course Laura was in love with Travis. What wasn’t there to love? She loved him. She’d been loving him. Maybe since the night he saved her life, a month ago.

Now, his mother, she had a little less love for.

“I’m gonna wash out your mouth with battery acid if you don’t keep my son’s name out of it, little bitch.” She shoved the gun right in Laura’s face.

Werewolves 101 with Professor Hackett hadn’t consisted solely of hunting and tracking in the woods. Along with weapons training, he’d also made sure to go over some basic self defense, including hand-to-hand grappling. Laura remembered that lesson well, because it had been so embarrassingly arousing.

It was during the first week of her arrival. Travis had moved the coffee table, making a space in the living room, and summoned Laura to him. “Ever been in a fight?” he’d asked.

“Do I look like I’ve been in a fight?” At his raised eyebrows, she’d laughed. “Uh, I guess I do. But no, I haven’t. Why? You wanna try and take me? Think we can just punch Silas in the face?”

“Don’t be stupid,” he’d snapped. “There could come a time when you’re too close to Silas to aim your gun. Then what?” He rushed at her, backing her up until she was against the wall. “This is how close you were to Max, right before he tried to kill you.”

“He wasn’t quite this close, actually,” she replied breathlessly.

“Shut up.” Travis pressed into her, grabbing her wrists, pinning her to the wall. His face was close to hers. He was trying to be intimidating, like usual, and it was working. “How would you get away?”

She struggled against him, but it was halfhearted. “It doesn’t matter. If a werewolf got this close I’d be dead already. Or bitten.” His eyes flashed as they met hers, sending a shiver through her and leaving a warm tingle low in her stomach. “You gonna bite me?”

He smiled, baring his teeth. “I’ll bite you if you keep fucking around. This is important.”

The thought of him actually biting her wasn’t a completely unpleasant thought, but she hadn’t been ready to face that quite yet, so she tried to concentrate like he asked. “Okay. So, if a werewolf had me pinned to a wall—”

He rolled his eyes at her.

“—after asking him for his number, I’d probably…” She twisted her wrists, trying to loosen his hold. It didn’t work. “Come on, Travis. A werewolf isn’t going to hold my wrists like this!”

“Fine.” He let go of her wrists and slammed his hands on either side of her head instead, caging her in. He even snarled a little. She tried not to laugh. “What do you do?”

“That night, I kicked it away,” she said, the memory hazy.

“Good. Try that now.”

“I mean, I kicked it in the groin,” she clarified. “Should I…?”

“Uh, maybe not. Maybe just try and kick me in the abdomen.”

She couldn’t get her foot between them, and he grabbed her ankle when she tried. Somehow, her leg ended up around his waist and he fell toward her, grinding their hips together.

“Shit! Sorry!” She said, at the same time he said, “Jesus Christ,” and they both pulled away at the same time, staring at each other, both breathing a little heavier than they should be.

“Let’s…try again,” he said after a moment. “This is what you do when you find yourself in close quarter combat, whether it be with a werewolf or a human.”

“A human?” she asked. “I’m not gonna need to fight a human out in the woods.”

He fixed her with a serious look. “You never know,” he said. “So listen up.”

That lesson was three weeks ago, give or take, but Laura remembered it well. That’s why, when Travis’ mother shoved the shotgun in her face, she didn’t hesitate to duck away from the barrel, shove an elbow in her crazy-ass face, and grab hold of the gun herself.

In a perfect world, Laura would have ended up with the gun and the confrontation would have been over. But in this fucked up universe, where old ladies had freakish upper body strength, she ended up struggling over the gun instead. Travis’ mom was fighting her for it.

“Let go, you piece of shit!” she cried, spitting again at Laura.

“Ugh!” Laura yelled, thankful when the glob missed her. Her face twisted in disgust. “Stop trying to spit on me!”

“I’ll blow your head off, cunt!”

“Calm down, you crazy bitch! Let go before I accidentally shoot your face off!”

“You’ve whored yourself to my boy for the last time!”

“Someone wanna tell me what in the goddamn hell is going on?” Travis yelled from the doorway.

Laura had been so distracted trying not to get shot that she hadn’t heard the front door open. She risked a glance in that direction now, and saw Travis standing there, his taser raised and a look of pure panic on his face. Laura probably didn’t look much better.

“Travis!” she yelled, struggling to take back the gun and failing. Her palms were getting sweaty. Shit. “Your mother stopped by to say hi!”

“Ma.” Travis approached them cautiously. “You gotta stop fighting over the gun. It could go off.”

“I hope it goes off in this whore’s skull,” was her lovely answer.

“She’s not a whore, ma,” Travis said calmly. “Her name is Laura and she’s my—she’s been—we’re friends.”

“You’ve been fuckin’ her, is what you mean,” she spat. “My sweet, good boy, letting a stupid little slut take him away from his family!” She nearly wrestled the gun from Laura. How was this bitch so strong?

“Travis,” Laura rasped, fingers slipping.

He was much closer now, still holding up the taser. “Ma, why don’t you both just relax? If Laura lets go of the gun, will you hand it to me? She’s not going to hurt anyone. But the gun might, if it goes off.”

“Goddamn, Travis, you think I started this? Your little whore here attacked me.”

Travis looked at Laura, who answered by shaking her head. His mouth was a thin, pursed line. Possibly, he was sweating. This had to be his worst nightmare. Laura had sympathy. She did. But she was also getting pissed. And tired.

“I’m letting go,” she declared.

He gave her a weak, grateful smile. “You hear that, ma? Laura is going to let the gun go. When she does, you’re going to hand it to me. Okay?”

His mother’s eyes were black. Maybe Laura had been reading too many cryptozoology books, but she looked like a demon. “You say that like you don’t trust me, Travis.” She smiled at Laura, a sickening grin that showed yellowed teeth and dark gums. “Go on and let go, dearie,” she said. “I’d never do anything to hurt my sweet Travis.”

Laura released her grip on the gun.

“There,” Travis said. “Now, ma, hand me the gun and let’s—”

His mother raised the shotgun, aiming straight for Laura’s head. “You think I’m fucking stupid? You think I’m gonna let you keep screwing this slut and forget your own family?”

This was it. This was how Laura was going to die. Her head blown off by some backwoods bitch who could’ve maybe been her mother-in-law, if she’d let her live long enough. She only had a second of time left in her whole life, and she spent it looking at Travis. Things had been exciting, at least, before the end. And she’d found someone she really liked. Loved, even. Most people didn’t get that. It would have to be enough.

She waited for the gunshot.

But it never came. That was because Travis tasered his mother a split second before she could pull the trigger.

His mother dropped to the floor and Travis swiftly picked up the gun, put the safety on, and went to Laura, holding her chin in his hands and turning her head left to right. “You’re okay?” he asked, frantic.

“I’m okay,” she assured him.

Travis nodded, kissed her quickly on the cheek, then turned to his mother, kneeling at her side. “Ma, I’m sorry,” he said. He put away the taser and touched her shoulder.

Laura knew something was horribly wrong as soon as she saw his back stiffen. “Travis?”

She watched him put two fingers to the pulse point at her neck. Watched him bend over and listen for breaths, listen to her chest.

“Oh,” he whispered, sitting up on his knees. “She’s dead.”

Laura went to his side and put a hand on his shoulder. She didn’t know what to say.

“She was going to kill you,” he said. She thought he’d have tears in his eyes, but when he turned his face to her his eyes were clear and dry. “I didn’t have time to restrain her.”

“I know,” she said softly.

“I know what she looks like when she’s about to kill someone,” he continued, still gazing up at her.

“She would’ve killed me,” she agreed. She sank to her knees beside him and took his hands in hers. “This isn’t your fault.”

He shook his head. “I—I can’t think about this right now. There’s too much to do. The moon will be rising soon. Silas.” A tremor was building in his voice. His hands were shaking in Laura’s.

“Silas can wait,” she said. “We can hunt him the next full moon, okay? You’re…you shouldn’t be out there like this.”

“No,” Travis said, shaking his head again and standing up. He was riled, his eyes a little crazy, though nowhere near approaching the wildness of his mother’s eyes. “No, Silas is dying tonight, and I’m going to kill him.” He pointed down to his mother. “Ma wasn’t this bad before the curse ruined our family. Silas has poisoned every last one of them, one way or another. It ends tonight. You coming?”

“Yes.” She picked up the shotgun and the silver shells. “I’m ready.”

He didn’t pay his mother’s body another glance before storming from the apartment, and neither did Laura. She did catch a first glimpse of the moon through the window though, and a sense of foreboding washed through her. But there was no time for second guessing anymore, so she hurried after Travis.

--

Travis should not have come. He was quiet and traumatized on the way to the woods around Hackett’s Quarry. When Laura tried to engage him in conversation, he said the bare minimum and then fell silent again. The radio at his chest kept going off, and Laura could hear his father’s scolding voice calling to him, asking him where he was, had he seen his mother, was he hunting tonight or not? Travis ignored each call, and switched the radio off completely when his dad started cussing him out.

He should not have come. He’d just killed his own mother. It hadn’t been purposeful, but he’d done it. He’d tasered her and she’d dropped dead. And now he was stomping through the woods, barely pausing long enough to let Laura rub werewolf blood over his face. He sighed as she put it on herself, impatient.

“Travis,” she tried, but he just shook his head.

“He’s out here somewhere. We’re gonna find him,” he said solemnly.

So she followed him through his path between the trees, keeping a lookout for tracks. The moon was bright and the sky was clear, so Laura’s vision was even better than the last full moon, despite having one eye less.

They came upon the area where Max had crashed the car, and while the car was long gone, signs of the crash were still there. She stood and stared at the spot where Max had been propped against the tree and tried to muster up the sensation of missing him. It was strange. When he’d died, she’d been deeply disturbed. But…had she ever truly missed him? And now that he’d been gone a month, had she wasted any time mourning him?

Travis was mourning. And it was making him sloppy.

“Travis,” she called, jogging to catch up to him. “You don’t have to do this.” There’s been enough death for one night, she wanted to say, but didn’t dare.

She still wanted Silas dead, but it was different now. Before, she’d wanted him dead to avenge Max. But somewhere along the way, her reason had changed. Now, she wanted Silas dead to avenge Travis. To free him from the six years of torture he’d put himself through, trying to protect his family.

“I have to,” Travis argued. “I have to, or else what the hell was any of this for?”

Laura was struck with the sudden desire to kiss him, and she was still reaching out to him when it attacked.

Travis was knocked off his feet. Laura screamed as the werewolf tore at his neck.

“Get off him!” she yelled, lifting the shotgun and shooting without hesitation. Silas roared, leaping off Travis, but her aim had been off. She hadn’t hit him. “Fuck!” She shot again, but it was too late. Silas bounded off into the darkness, howling as he went.

“No!” She crouched down to check on Travis, but he was already standing up, his hand pressed over the gash at his neck. He was pale faced and bleeding, but alive. “He came out of nowhere!”

He hushed her. “I should’ve heard him. Damn it, I should have heard him coming.” His eyes widened. “Laura, I’m bit. You’ve gotta leave.”

“What? Are you fucking kidding me right now? I’m not leaving you.” She grasped his arm. “We have time. We can track him and kill him before you turn.”

“Think of how fast your boyfriend turned, Laura,” he hissed. “It’s not a science. It’s unpredictable. Look.” He held his hand up, his palm bloody. His shoulder was a mess, too, covered in blood, but when she looked closer, there was nothing else.

“No,” she whispered. “It already healed?”

“You need to get out of the woods,” he said, shoving her away. “Go, Laura!”

“Fuck you,” she countered, stepping into his space and grabbing him by the hair. She pulled him close and kissed him hard. “I’m not leaving these woods until this is over for good. And you can’t stop me.” She kissed him again, and then pushed him away, as hard as she could.

He stumbled back, surprised, and fell to the ground.

Then she ran.

She ran in the direction Silas had gone. It had only just happened. He couldn’t be far. She heard Travis running to catch up behind her, but she was faster and she had a head start. She lost him after several minutes, pausing to catch her breath, her back to a tree. She checked her shotgun shells, reloaded with fresh silver until she had a full chamber. Adjusted her eye patch. Her hair had been hanging loose for the past few weeks. She’d lost her hair tie, and Travis seemed to prefer it down anyway, always playing with it before they fell asleep. She wished she had something to tie it back with now, though. She tucked it behind her ears instead, and then started hunting in earnest.

Thanks to Werewolves 101, she knew what werewolf tracks looked like. She found a few beside a tree, where claws had raked over the bark. She watched for disturbances in the foliage, a twisted leaf here, a broken twig there. She followed the signs, creeping quietly along, her footsteps light.

Inside, she was screaming. Travis bitten, just like that. Silas had truly come from fucking nowhere. They hadn’t had a chance. Just like Max hadn’t had a chance. Now Travis’ only chance was her, and she wasn’t going to let him down. She wasn’t going to let him live another day with the weight of this curse on his shoulders.

She heard a throaty growl up ahead and paused, holding her breath. They’d practiced this, too, her and Travis. She was better at it than he was. “Young lungs,” he would huff. She waited until she heard it again before walking slowly forward. The growls were accompanied by a crunching sound and she winced. She knew they were close to the camp, but Travis had told her Chris kept them all on lockdown during the full moon they were in session.

“Still seems super irresponsible,” she’d said, and he’d nodded sadly, agreeing.

She hoped whatever crunching she heard wasn’t the crunching of little kid bones, but she was ready for anything as she made her way forward. And then there he was. Silas sat hunched over in a beam of moonlight, eating some kind of woodland creature.

Laura froze. This was her chance. Kill Silas. Cure Travis. Lift the curse. She raised her shotgun. She wouldn’t miss this time.

A sound behind her gave her pause. She turned, slowly, not wanting to take her eye off Silas, but needing to check behind her, because it had sounded like—

Another werewolf lunged at her, mouth open and tongue lolling. Laura rolled out of the way, too stunned to scream. She jumped back to her feet and ran. She didn’t need to look back to know two werewolves were chasing her; she heard their howls. Two werewolves, and they both wanted to fucking eat her. Fuck! She could take on one, maybe, if her aim didn’t suck, but two?!

They were gaining on her. She couldn’t outrun them. She had to fight. She had a gun and she had to use it. So she stopped running and turned. And it all happened so fast.

The werewolves were only a few yards away, coming at her from different directions. She raised her shotgun. She couldn’t take on two, but she didn’t need to. Because only one of these monsters was Silas. And the other? The other was Travis. And she only needed to kill Silas. If she could manage that, then Travis would be cured. Instantly. That was how it worked, right? That was how it was supposed to work. She just had to choose.

But they looked too similar! Travis had called Silas the white wolf a few times, but one didn’t look any whiter than the other to her! They were both huge and bloody and rushing at her. She didn’t have any time. How was she supposed to know?

When they were so close she could smell the blood, Laura smiled.

She fired.

One of the werewolves crumpled to the ground in a whimper. Laura held her breath and watched as the other werewolf, the one she hadn’t shot, exploded in a mess of flesh and another spray of blood. She blinked the blood out of her eye and looked at the two male figures lying on the ground.

One was dead. And the other was Travis.

“Thank fucking god!” she said, and leapt on top of him. “Travis, are you okay?”

He was gasping beneath her, utterly stunned. “How. How did you.”

She laughed and held up his wrist. There was a pink hair elastic around it. The stretchy kind. “You’re wearing my hair tie around your wrist,” she said. “I’ve been looking for this, you know.” She kissed his wrist. The elastic hadn’t broken when he’d turned. She almost hadn’t seen it in time, and then there it was, pink and beautiful in the moonlight.

“Sorry,” he said, his voice a higher pitch than usual. “I should have given it back.”

She cupped his face in her hands. “Thank you for not giving it back.”

“Silas?” he asked.

Laura nodded beside them, where a young man was lying naked, shot through the heart by Laura’s silver bullet. “It’s over.”

Travis stared at the body for a full minute, memorizing the sight, memorizing the way it felt to be free again. “Laura,” he finally said.

She was sitting astride him, running her fingers over his chest. Enjoying the lack of his police uniform, which was lying in shreds somewhere in the woods. “Yes?”

He tore his eyes from Silas, turned them on her instead. She blushed under the fierceness of his gaze. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

She eyed the dead body beside them. “I mean, me neither. Let’s get you home and…” She remembered what was waiting for them back at the apartment and fell silent.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said, his eyes sparkling.

And she suddenly understood, really well, exactly what he meant. “Then let’s leave.” She leaned forward and kissed him. It was kind of disgusting, since they were both covered in blood, some their own, some not, but it was still one of the favorite kisses of her life, because it was with Travis and he was alive. “Everyone I know back home expects me to be gone for another month at summer camp. And there’s nothing keeping you here, Travis.” She rubbed her cheek against his cheek and whispered in his ear. “It’s over. Your family is free. You’re free. We can go anywhere you want to go.”

“But,” he began, his hands still trembling, adrenaline pumping through him from the change, “there are things I should do.”

Laura threaded her fingers through his hair. “Let someone else clean up for a change. You’ve done enough.”

He nodded, and his lips turned up in an unsteady smile. “Hey, Laura.”

She cocked an eyebrow at his tone. “What?”

“Would you be against me fucking you right now?”

She considered their current state: Travis’ mother was dead on his living room floor, Silas was dead a few feet away, they were both covered in blood, his family was probably hunting somewhere nearby, and Laura had never been more turned on in her life. “I don’t know what it says about me as, like, a person, but I’d be really into it,” she answered.

He squeezed her hips and she wiggled in his lap. “I was outside the door when you said it, you know,” he told her, already working open the button of her jeans.

“What’d I say?” she asked, picking up her hips so she could shimmy out of them. When she rested again in his lap, his erection was straining against the curve of her backside.

Travis brushed the hair out of her eyes. Eye. No one should look so good covered in blood, but he did. “That you love me.”

“Oh.” She laughed, then coughed, then cleared her throat. Nervous. Fuck, she was starting to act like Travis. She’d been infiltrated. Compromised. “I don’t think I’ve ever been compromised before,” she told him.

He nodded, like she wasn’t a nonsensical mess, and then said: “I’ve also been compromised.”

It would have been stupid, to cry because of that, so Laura kissed him instead. And there they both sat, bloody in the woods, mutually compromised, Laura grinding on his lap and Travis squeezing her ass.

She had a vague sense of worry for mosquitoes as he pulled the crotch of her panties to the side, but once he pushed into her, she forgot about bug bites and West Nile and just enjoyed the feeling of him deep inside. Later, she’d remember that his dick was also covered in blood and be a little disturbed, but for now, she would take him any way she could have him.

She didn’t even think about Max, and the constructive criticism he always had ready for her, because Travis was as enthusiastic as ever to be with her. His mouth was so filthy, if his dad and brother did happen upon them, they’d be scared away immediately.

“Oh, oh, yeah,” he panted, thrusting up into her, guiding her hips with wonderfully demanding hands. “Better than I imagined. So tight. You feel so good. I could fuck you forever. Fuck, fuck, you like that? You like my cock?”

Laura groaned, embarrassed and turned on, not knowing whether to cry or laugh or cease to exist or live forever, letting Travis fuck her until the end of time. The one thing she knew was that she was inexplicably happy, screwing this blood covered cop in the middle of the woods. She didn’t think the sentence, “Bounce on my cock, baby,” would ever be something she found romantic, but when Travis said it, she swooned. And she bounced.

He asked if she was his good girl and she nodded emphatically. He asked her if she wanted him to fuck her on her hands and knees and she flipped herself over in an instant. Maybe there was still a trace of the wolf left, even after being cured, because Travis was nothing less than animalistic as he rutted into her. And she liked it. She liked it so much.

He turned her chin to kiss her, even though the angle was awkward for both of them. At some point, her eye patch slid askew, and he didn’t stop to fix it. Neither did she. Because he looked at her and saw her and didn’t care. He didn’t think her face was fucked. He loved her and he didn’t care. And so she didn’t care either. She felt the cool night air on the still sensitive skin around her missing eye and felt free.

Travis finished with a husky groan across her back and she felt loved.

He finished her off with his fingers and she felt fiercely happy.

And later, when they were leaving the North Kill city limits, zooming away in the cop car, headed somewhere far away, Travis reached for her hand. And she felt ready for anything.