BLOOD DREAM (Ongoing)

2.3: Say Its Name To The Mirror

Kitra looked on after her brother went out of sight. She wanted to chase him down and wring some gratitude out of him, but with Liam still beside her, pacifying Theron was an exercise in futility. He was never nice unless it was just the two of them.

A gentle brush against her shoulder pulled Kitra back to Liam. He entwined his fingers in her loose strands of hair. "I'm not gonna let him walk all over me anymore, Kit," he said.

"I know. It's not your fault... He's just worried about me hanging out with you guys. It's dangerous." Negating the fact that Kitra handled storming Sadie's hideout like a total boss, she understood it would take some time for Theron to trust that Kitra was capable. Their family was irreparably fractured by the very affairs Kitra was getting herself into. But there was no more ignoring it, acting like the Dire were some distant dream unrelated to her human life; not when her brother so blatantly embraced the dangers himself. Not when it felt like she was the only person who could stop him.

Liam snorted. "Don't you find it a little overbearing?"

"Sort of. But I know he means well."

Her friend turned visibly skeptical. "If he meant well, he could be less of a jerk about it."

"It's not that easy." Kitra leaned into Liam's arm and ran her hand up his chest, but his eyes were lodged in the direction of the hallway.

Nothing was ever easy. Not even this stupid little crush she had on Liam, that he finally relented to only to get distracted by Theron. Like he was trying to one-up Theron now that her brother was deposed—but wasn't that what wolf Dire did? Fight each other for dominance?

She did second-guess Liam's motives sometimes. But he'd always been sweet; she found it hard to believe he'd wish harm on anyone, unlike his sister Dorothy, who intimidated her. Then there was Gabby. Shy, weird, nerdy Gabby. Utterly disarming, and quickly becoming one of her favorite Dire, if only because she was so unlike the rest. All Theron's friends, now becoming hers after so long. She wondered if she could have won over Sadie.

That night, Liam didn't stick around. He left at 10:30 since there could be no tomfoolery with Theron home and his dour mood made them both tense. Kitra closed the door and watched his car pull away. She wandered the house for twenty minutes, made something to eat and folded a few pieces of laundry that were sitting in a basket beside the couch, feeling restless. Partly she expected to hear the floor creak and Theron to emerge and bitch at her, but there was nothing. It couldn't be that he'd actually fallen asleep, could it? He was usually awake much later than this.

Kitra stood in front of his door. "Are you still up?" she asked softly.

Near her feet, right on the other side of the door, she heard his weight shift. "Don't even try to come in. I'm not in the mood."

So he'd been sitting on the floor this whole time. He probably overheard everything she and Liam said about him, even if they'd been quiet. Good thing Kitra had only tried to defend him. She knelt beside the door, feeling his body heat leeching through the wood. "If you just texted me before you got home, you wouldn't have walked in on that."

"It's not about that."

"Then what is it about?"

"I don't know," he muttered.

Kitra leaned her back against the door, pulling up her knees. "I know what I'm doing, Theron."

It took a couple minutes for him to reply, "I just don't want you to get bit."

Because it would change everything if Kitra got bit. If Kitra finally became Dire, like her father, like her brother, like her entire family except her good-for-nothing absent mother. And yet... "Theron," she uttered, rising. Kitra opened his door, finding him with his back to her, his brow on his knees, picking at his fingers. One of them was bleeding. She jabbed his spine with her toe. "Get up."