VEUX

Twenty Two

March 2

"Speak to me, please."

Saoirse's door was wide open, stopping at her foot where she sat across the ground. She had been cornered just far enough into her room that no one could touch her, yet each time she tried kicking the wood closed, somebody's hand stopped it.

"You know I had to do it. It was the only way."

Wearing only her short robe, Saoirse stared at the male in bewilderment. She had been trying to relax in the bath after waking up, but Eye wouldn't let her.

"No," Saoirse said without really any tone in her voice. "I don't know that you had to do it."

Eye was flustered. His skin steamed beneath his dark shirt, his curls sat unbrushed with the many times he ran his hands through them. He had persistently knocked on her door until she opened, and wouldn't leave until she listened to him. It resulted in numerous efforts from Saoirse to close her door, almost being grabbed out of her room from Eye. So now she sat in a huff, too far away to be grabbed, the sole of her bare foot toying with the door that Eye wouldn't let budge.

"They saw us, as wolves. I couldn't let them get away." Eye tried desperately to explain himself, to comprehend his own actions.

Coming from the same place as Saoirse, bitten and turned recently, Eye was best to put words behind his actions. Yet Eye knew the Laws after three years; Saoirse did not.

"So you murder them?!" Saoirse pushed her foot to kick the door closed again, Eye's hand over the oak swinging it forcefully enough backwards to make a dent in her drywall.

His rich brown eyes were wide, frantic. Throughout the whole ordeal, of cleaning up the bodies and investigating how the three humans trespassed Patrols, Eye's mind was solely on Saoirse. And how much the girl he's in love with must hate him.

"I don't think like that, Saoirse." His throat strummed the strings of begging chords. "But they shot at us first, they were—"

"Because you lunged at him!" She frowned, crossing her arms tighter across her chest. "It didn't have to be that way."

"Regardless," Eye ignored her cutting him off. "Those humans saw us, unexplainably, a human amongst wolves. I couldn't let them get away, they would have told the whole world about us. It's Pack Law."

She burst, kicking the door except backwards this time; encouraging Eye's growing dent. "Fuck Pack Law!"

His head hung, his breathing heavy as his ears cringed from Saoirse's yell. He knelt in a crouch, reaching eye level with Saoirse when he picked his head back up. It was important she understood. So utterly important.

"We have to do what is right to protect the pack," Eye watched her furious orbs as angry, hot breath panted from her lungs. "Think of your brother wolves, Saoirse. Do they deserve to be hunted by the humans, because of you?"

They didn't. Not because of her. Saoirse ran stressed hands over her damp hair, the frizz quickly forming as she didn't spend an hour combing through it. Slowly, she accepted the fact that it was either those three humans, or her entire pack. And others, if she figured anything about werewolf culture.

Indeed, Saoirse was grateful to see Eye alive and well from the looks of it, but it still hadn't been enough to make her leave the safety of her sanctuary and embrace him. It didn't help that each time she looked at him, all she saw were her memories stuck on a play back button of what he'd done. Who he'd killed.

Eye sighed deeply as he watched the emotions cross Saoirse's face, inhaling for a sense of her smell; finding something else instead. Eye shifted his gaze into her bedroom, where no wolf had stood since she came to live with them, but that had changed. The mass of the male's left over scent stood in two foot prints on her hardwood, only visible to Eye's senses like heat to uv lamps. The male hadn't stayed for long. His scent flowed into her room, and out just as fast; lingering in that one spot.