The biggest apologies for the delay in updates! I had the hardest time writing this chapter because of... outlining problems and the holidays. I can never write with family around.
But I hope you enjoy this chapter! Vote + comment at will!
This was also not edited. At all. Peppered with mistakes but I'm just tired.
Happy Christmas Eve, darlings!
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I laughed before the dawning horror could crawl on his face.
"Okay, that was a joke. I am not secretly a butcher." I leaned back on the sofa, legs folded underneath piled up blankets. "Although, that would've been a really interesting ending to this."
He exhaled and buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking in wary laughter. "That was good, and... too much. For a second I really thought I was at some werewolf-soup making witch's house. And that I was going to die. And that I haven't had shepherd's pie yet."
"You talk too much about food."
He smiled slightly. "You say that as if it's a bad thing."
"It's not." I pursed my lips, closing the book. "You want to know why I'm not so inclined to have your skin on my floor?"
He blinked. Slowly. "Yes. Nice... phrasing."
I laughed lightly, then looked over at my lap, running a hand over the cover of an old edition of Sherlock Holmes. Nonna had an extensive collection of books - they're piled neatly on the only bookshelf in the house, something I made her after months of learning how to cut up trees, replant, and make something out of its bark.
She had taught me from which is best for wood fire to making house items to learning how to carve stories into the wood, imbedded, a tale. The bookshelf was one of my presents to her on her birthday, something that she had glimmered in pride in.
On one of the shelves' part's was a carving of a curled wolf surrounded by trees.
"It starts with my grandmother." Orion shifted himself, sitting on the floor, cross-legged and calm, awaiting a story. "Everything about me starts with her. From the start, it was just me and her in this house. Apart from the pictures of my parents, I never asked about them or cared to know who they were. I never felt the need to. She raised me perfectly well on her own, enough that when she... passed, I could live by myself."
I stood straight. Remembering my nonna's face was never hard. She was the only person in my mind that stayed crystal clear. Poofy hair tied back, smile weathered but present, and the type of intensity that made you love her. "Her beliefs tied with mine about werewolves - about any other supernatural m. Just like humans, there are evil and good. It doesn't give one thing for them be marked another. People are people. Period."
