CEASELESSLY (J. HALE)

2.3

The grass beneath my feet barely makes a noise as I pass over it slowly, barely aware of the eyes that watch me in the night as I approach our house.

The air is stagnant, stale even in the pale moonlight. Lore would have me out hunting humans like a madwoman, but here I stand only ready to hunt for my soul. I scoff silently, knowing that at one point in time I actually believed that to be the lore of the vampire. Life has humor, so it seems.

"I know you're still there." I call into the seemingly empty forest trying to pinpoint the wolfboy in the midst of the trees.

"Well, fuck." He emerges, tanned and shirtless from behind a tree alarmingly close to me.

"Go home, Paul." I roll my eyes.

"No, you're pack, and you're walking straight back into a house with a leech. I don't have to go anywhere." He narrows his eyes at me, coming to stand face to face with me.

"I'm a god damned leech." I hiss for nothing more than emphasis, hoping to jar him into hating me so much that he actually leaves.

"Stop that, you make protecting you awfully hard when you're reminding me of every reason I should wipe you out from the earth." He growls, but I see in him that he could never, something is tethering us together, I can see that much.

Beyond that tether, my mind goes black, our differences baring the entrance I could have into his mind.

"Why can't I read you, wolf boy?" I cock my head at him, gaze attentive on his eyes.

He shrugs, looking beyond me at the house in the distance. I can tell that he wants to ask me about it, his arms cross over his chest, and he stands straighter in the dusk.

"You're going back to him." He states, looking at me inquisitively.

"He's," I can barely form a sentence because I don't know what to even tell him about this situation.

"It's pretty fucking twisted, if you ask me." Paul shakes his head, looking more disgusted by the thought of us together than anything.

"It's messy." I chose my words wisely.

"You'll always go back to him though."

I challenge him with my eyes alight, but he doesn't back down.

"You say that as if you know me." I growl, standing up straighter.

"I do." He sighs, running a hand frantically through his hair.

"No, you'd like to think you know me."

"Oh, spare me. Calina Laraunt, you run, and you run home. I can even see that. You get brave, you get strong and then you let it all go because you don't have a God damned spine. Keep running home, you're going to get hurt in the end if you just stay, you always will." His words are harsh, and his face is drawn in a tight line, rage throwing tremors through him.

"And how have you put all that together? Did that girl tell Jake all of this in the short time we were gone? Have you all gossiped enough for you to think you actually know me? Because trust me Paul whatever your stupid last name is, you know nothing."

"I know more than you think, and I wish that I didn't." he sighs, a heartbroken look falling over him before a howl rings through the forest, and he phases quickly.

I close my eyes to ward off the sound of his limbs snapping and reforming. It sickens me.

I want to follow after him, keep yelling at him about my life and how he can't possibly know it, but the steady thump of Jasper's pacing feet against the hardwood in the house draws me back to why I'm here.