Bite or Howl

Chapter 4

Chase POV

"Who's Catherine?" Phoebe asks me.

I can feel my eyes burn through my skull, glaring at the door that had just closed. My hands grip the bed sheet so hard, my knuckles go red. "Chase?" Her knuckles graze my arm, feeling the worry and concern in her bloodstream. My breathing pitches back to normal as she touches me. I stop gripping the sheets underneath me and my eyes shift back to blue as I start to calm down.

And I don't even know why I got mad in the first place. "Sorry." I muffle. "Are you okay?" She asks.

I look at her and give her a reassuring smile. "I'm fine, don't worry about me."

"Who's Catherine?" She asks again. "She's my little sister." I say, smiling. She nods and looks away. Her mind is clogged with anxiety, asking herself what to say. I can feel her twitching, feeling awkward and uneasy. 'Calm down, I don't bite.' I speak into her thoughts. 'Oh well, I kinda do but, you know what I mean.' Her cheeks grow pink, remembering that I can step into her mind anytime I like. 'You're such an invasion of privacy.' She giggles.

I laugh at her remark. "Why are you so rattled up?" She questions. I stare at her for a moment, confused about what she's talking about but when I realise she's talking about Catherine, I answer. "Nothing, I'm just really cautious of what information gets fed to Catherine. Overprotective brother hormones." I tell her. She laughs and gazes up at me. "I wish my brother could be like that, you know?"

"You have a brother?" I asked, surprised. She smiles. "Yeah. His name's Felix. Well, he only really became my brother before you kidnapped me. Before that, we were strangers." She looks out into the room. I can sense the thoughts in her mind, remembering the warmthness in her brother's voice as he hugged her a few hours back.

"What do you mean strangers?" I ask again, intrigued by her back story. She adjusts her position, moving further away from me and shifting her legs out. "For the past 9 years, he abandoned me in the palace. I stayed there, alone. An entire wing just for me. I was so alone, desperate for someone's company." She explains. My heart aches for her. Goddamnit. I feel every one of her emotions. I lean closer, wrapping my arm around her back as she lays her head on my shoulder. "I'm sorry." I tell her. "It's okay, it's not your fault. It's mine." I didn't quite understand what she meant by that. But I didn't push it.

"Why did he neglect you for all those years?" I ask, finally letting my hands scavenge to her hair, letting my fingers run through them. "He was mad at me." She starts. I'm quite surprised she let's my hands wander around in her hair, but she doesn't mention it.  "When I was eight, my parents were taking me out of the castle one day. We went to the borders when a vampire clan attacked us. My father told me to run back and get help but I couldn't move. I only ran when a vampire attacked him. I didn't make it in time though." She explains.

"When I told Felix, he took a few stronger werewolves to go help but when he came back, the only thing he brought with him was my mother's necklace, covered in blood." Her fingers trace over the silver necklace in her hands.

"My parents didn't just die that day, but a part of Felix did too. I didn't see the loving brother that brought me food every night anymore. I could see in his eyes that he'd grown cold." She adds.

Something in her speech triggered that memory inside me. That last moment, stuck in a hallway burning itself down. Catherine in my arms, crying and yelling at me to get out of there. My mind was somewhere else, finding a way to get to my parents. "My parents died too." I tell her. "I'm sorry." She whispers. "I could've got to them, if only my head was in the right place. I could've saved them. But I was too late." I say, defeated.