Unknown.

11- Aureates.

   I rise from my rest drenched in sweat and breathing hard as if I just ran a marathon. My hair is stuck to my face, my clothes clinging to my skin, my body feeling weak and numb.

   I try to calm my breathing as I realize a blanket is still on me. I throw it off with disgust, and then I hear a man's voice freak the crap out of me.

   "Hey hey, don't hurt me now, I'm just trying to wake you up."

   At first, I think of how I must be hallucinating, but the smarter half of my brain squashes that idea like a bug and registers Wolfe's deep voice.

   "Sorry." I breathe into the darkness, my eyes not adjusting at all. "I'm just hot."

   "Yeah, when I came in you were whimpering in your sleep..." Wolfe tells me, the awkwardness of his sentence pushed through the syllables of it. "Nightmares?"

   After hesitating a moment, I answer, "I don't remember."

   "Ah..." Wolfe responds, his outline finally coming into clear view. He looks as if he is still in his halter outfit, but this time I see shapes of items stuck on a belt that is around his waist. Clearing his throat, he says, "I'll be in the dining room... Get ready."

   "Gotcha." I reply, the edge in my voice clearly obvious.

---

   All ready, I walk out of the room in under ten minutes, since I had nothing to do except comb my hair and brush my teeth. I step into the hallway, shadows lurking in the darkness, gray and black spots dancing against furniture tantalizingly. I swiftly enter the dining room and just like Wolfe said he would be, he is standing in the kitchen doorway with his bulky arms crossed over his thick chest.

   "You ready?" He questions me, twirling an apple in his hands that I didn't notice right away in the dimness of the room.

   "Yeah..." I say. "Why did we have to get up so early though?"

   "The person we are going to see lives an hour away." He informs me and tosses me the apple he had in his hand. I catch it, of course, and then hold onto it as I follow Wolfe out of the room and into the dark kitchen.

   "Oh goodie." I mumble under my breath, Wolfe tensing at the sound of my words. A few steps ahead of me, he leads me through a dark room that I make out to be the living room, and then a coat room with racks full of clothing stuffed on both sides.

When he leads me outside, the wind whispers unspoken words in my ears as it brushes along my face. The stars in the sky hang over me like frozen balls of fireworks that never got to explode, the moon a glistening statue in the darkness.

The street lights of the neighborhood illuminate Wolfe's body in front of me as he lifts his arm with car keys dangling in his grasp. He veers off to the side and instead of unlocking the vehicle from before that is laid out in front of him with a broken windshield, he presses a button on the keys and a black truck in front of the car lights up, the engine purring to life.

   "Nice." I say aloud dreamily as I follow him towards the truck. "I love trucks."

   "It's mine." He throws his voice over his shoulder boastfully. "Don't scratch it."

   I look down, swiftly running a hand through my long dark hair as Wolfe glances back at me. When I look up, the only thing shining in front of me is his sky blue eyes, and when he blinks once and then turns around to get into his truck, my heart churns at the thought of the way he looked at me.

   He looked at me in a way that told me he doesn't think of me as a no-good, or a creature in other words. He looked as if... As if he actually thought of me as a person.