Deja Vu: The Healer

Chapter 62: Offering

KARA/CAROLINE

"What?!" I twisted to William in horror. "You turned Rick?"

He nodded, staring straight at the bent man. "It was me. Wasn't it? In that parking garage after you shot us. I did bite you. It was a death bite, not a turning bite." He turned to me, brow shading his eyes. "You healed him. I watched the scratches heal, but I didn't check over his bite wound. I didn't think of it. But when you heal wounds and scars, the markings always stay." He turned back across the table. "So that bite must not have healed completely, and it caused you to turn at the full moon."

Rick's head bobbed and then a frail hand lifted to his dirty shirt collar and pulled it away to reveal his shoulder, like he'd done it many times before and that's why the button was missing. There were scars there that had to have come from a large wolf's powerful bite.

Rick finally spoke, his voice unruly and stammering. "I...I thought I imagined all that fight down there." He swallowed. "But there was this scar on my shoulder. I was angry, and trying to figure out what to do to..." he bent even lower, "sorry, but I was still consumed with getting Caroline back. Even then." He was still lowered, but finally just the sides of his eyes looked on me for a dash of a second. "One day I was more irritable than I had been for a long while. My assistants at the clinic were getting annoyed as the animals were picking up on my anger. They made me go home, but at home I was still jittery and raging. I hit into walls and pushed over furniture to cure my tension, but nothing was helping. Then suddenly I'm in this dreadful pain and falling to the ground in agony. My body is changing, fevering, and breaking, these horrible noises consumed me."

He stopped speaking staring at scratches in the table and then his human fingers followed over them, chasing the pattern with his nails. "And then I was alright. I stood up and felt tall and powerful. I saw myself in the tv reflection. I passed out and when I came to, I was still the creature. I ransacked my apartment trying to pull myself together. Then at sunrise I was suddenly a man again. I put on my suit and raced to your father's. I don't know what I expected. Maybe he knew what was going on. But yes, I was shouting rather inappropriate things for a father to hear of their daughter. I deserved to be put in my place."

My father continued his story. "We fought until his wolf submitted. Then I brought him inside, got him a new change of clothes and a coffee. Had to give him the talk, if you know what I mean. The supernatural is real talk. He told me of you twos fight and I figured that's where he got bitten. Well, I guessed that meant he was a new Hightop pack member and that it was time for me to move after all. I figured once we got here, Rick was Hightop's problem. If he did somethin' in Seattle, DOSS might come sniffing and find themselves two wolves for the price of one. I spent the next two weeks teaching meathead here about what it was to be a proper wolf and took the time to get my affairs in order."

"What affairs?" I asked.

"I sold the house. Really, I just handed the deed over to a buddy of mine from the underground. The truck and dogs are parked outside. So? Will 'ya take us?"

I looked at Rick, a strange mixture of disgust and pity on my face. "You want to move here? Why? You can't imagine that it would be a friendly environment to see the two people you shot every day."

The corner of his eyes met mine for just a second again. "I have nowhere else to go. I lost my fiancée. I lost my prize worker. I can't hold a veterinary practice when the animals sense me like this. My home is a mess. I'm out of control in my own skin." He finally tilted his head just enough to see William and I. "I need to start over anew. Your father assures that being a wolf and part of a pack can help me do that. And," he reached into his pocket and pushed a long folded paper across the table to me, "I would like to make recompense for my awful actions to you over the last two years."