The Wolves of London Book 2: The House of Striker

(Chapter song ‘Flawed Design' by Stabilo)

AVERY

When it comes to doing the hard stuff, I never had issue. I was first in line. Danger? No problem. I was saving people. I had to. It was engrained in me. Always the hero.

Unless, it’s for myself.

I put myself in danger daily and I paid the ultimate price for it. I lost Zen. I didn’t want to. I had to. It was my way of saving her from me. Trust me. Lying to her. Making her think something else. It’s better for both of us.

I’m actually use to it. I’ve been lying to her for so long, it became easier over time. When it came time to pull the plug, it was way easier than I thought it would be. For one reason. She wouldn’t accept me if I was honest. If she knew, she'd kill me. I thought what I was doing was right, but then remembered a talk we had one night.

****

‘What if you woke up one day and I was something else.’

I tilt my head on the pillow. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean…’ She sits up on my chest and meets my brown eyes. ‘What if I got turned? It wouldn’t happen, but what if it did? What would you do?”

I look to the ceiling, fix the sheet over my naked hips and turn to her eyes. ‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing. Nothing at all?’ Her beautiful, light eyebrows go up.

I shake my head. ‘I’d still love you.’

She tilts her head. ‘I know that but would you kill me?’

‘No. Why?’ I snort.

‘What if I was going to kill you?’ She raises a brow.

‘Nope. I couldn’t do it. I’d let you kill me.’ I say with conviction.

‘Huh.’ She lays on my chest. ‘I’d kill you.’

I chuckle. ‘Really?’

She lifts her head. ‘Yes. I love you too much to see you turned supernatural. So out of love, I’d put a bullet in your heart.’

I stare at her for a few seconds them smirk. ‘Guess I better not get turned.’

‘Nope.' She grins. ‘If you make me kill you, I’m going to heaven where you are and kicking your ass.’

‘Oh, really.’ I laugh.

‘Yep.’

I laugh more before smothering her in a deep kiss.

****

I rub my nape and stare at her picture on my phone. Her soft, milky skin. Her high cheekbones and gorgeous eyes make my chest tight. I touch her silky, blonde hair and ache for her full pink lips.

Maybe this was my way of killing us. Killing her. My lies are bullets to her heart because it’s just better than her knowing the truth.

My truth isn’t fair and she shouldn’t suffer for it. Either way, it ends in tears. Might as well give her a superficial reason to cry.

I close my pictures and check my messages. There’s several from Zen asking why. To hear her voice, it makes the claws rake across my ribs.

I raise a glass filled with whiskey to my lips while a cigarette burns between my fingers. I drink and hang up the phone. I haul on the smoke and blow it out. My smoke hand scratches at my forearm. The itch becomes a little less each day. But it will still always be a reminder of what I had to do to my life.

I feel it inside. I feel its anger. It’s pissed. But I didn’t do this for its feelings. No. I selfishly did this for mine. I guess I ruined two lives. I don’t know.

I kind of feel like she deserves a face to face. Would I just open a can of worms? Would she prove she lied about what she said to me that night? Or would she show me how much truth she was speaking?

There really is only one way to find out.

I stand and take a drag. As I blow out the smoke, I walk through it to the small, dirty window of my hotel room. I stand and look down at the parties in the street. The ethnic music of Mardi Gras is loud enough to hear through the glass. The broken neon sigh blinks its broken green light in my face and I raise my eyes to the city of New Orleans. She maybe an ocean away, but it feels like her ghost is here.

I scrub my face and pound back the rest of my shot. I raise the smoke and stop. I honestly can’t believe I’m still smoking these. That was half my problem right here in my hand. The other half was in the glass.

I turn and walk to a broken dresser and thump the glass down on it. I dump the cigarette in it to be put out by the ice.

I pull off my shirt and throw it on my bed. I take off my shoes and grab my keys. I throw open my dingy door and enter a dark hall with ripped red flower wallpaper, stained brown carpet and weird smells. People yell at each other in various languages. Some rooms have to sounds of sex coming from them and somewhere a baby cries. I walk barefoot down the hall. My face is void of expression. I don’t want to do this, but I have to. It’s for practice, Razor says. Ok. I don’t need it for this either, but I’m told if I don’t let it out, it’ll take over my body. Fine.

I jog down the steps and push the door to the outside open. The mix of jazz, Caribbean music and partying got louder as I turn away from the street and walk to the back of the building. I step into the trees and blow out a breath.

I close my eyes, focus and open them again. They glow orange and a wind comes across the ground from the trunks, kicking up leaves and other debris. It swirls around my ankles and I feel it. The pain. I clench my teeth and hold back a scream as the first bone breaks. The wind climbs up my body leaving breaking bones behind it. My skin sweats and I fall to my hands and knees. I’m suppressing breath and hollers in pain as the wind turns to a tornado.

My bones rearrange and my skin grows a thick dense white and black fur. My face elongates and my senses are now 100 times better.

My wolf shakes out his fur then runs into the woods. They tell me it’s therapeutic for both me and him. I see it as trying to outrun my lie and guilt, but it never happens. My memories and what I did are always there.

****

‘What can I do?’

‘I’m sorry. There’s been some breakthroughs, but they’re still 10 years away from being able to be used.’

‘6 months?’

‘If there was anything I could do, Avery. I would. It’s just… too late.’

I hang my head and come to terms.

‘I can make you comfortable, but I will advise you to get your affairs in order now. It will move fast.’

I lift my head. ‘Yeah…Ok.’

‘Again, Avery. I’m sorry.’

‘I am, too.’

****

He curls up under a tree and tucks his nose in his tail. He often does this when I want to think. It’s weird sitting in your own head like you’re on a ride.

I think about how it absolutely sucks to be human. It’s the most flawed creature on the planet, yet we’re the superior race. When a simple habit destroys everything inside, how is that superior?

When an even simpler agreement can take all that away, why would you want to go back? I will admit there’s rules to this I wasn’t prepared for, but humans have much more rules, I feel. If we aren’t ruled by other humans, we're controlled by tiny single cells that stamp expiry dates on your head.

Isn’t self-preservation a fundamental instinct of a human? Shouldn’t we do want we can to save ourselves? The answer was right there, sitting in a file in Zen's office safe. All I needed was a name. That’s it. A name shouldn’t carry this much guilt, but it does.

Still, I pushed away my second lie. My first was telling Zen I was fine. My second was to make the first true. But at the time, I didn’t know that the bastard sleeping under a tree right now needed to be shown. If I didn’t need to do that, I wouldn’t have ran. Then there was the third lie. The other name I found in Andrew Strikers files. Miranda Williams.

What I found with this name is enough to get me killed. The problem is I can’t prove any of it. The Strikers were in some shady shit and I can’t say a damn thing. Zen loved her dad. For me to ruin that for her, she’d never talk to me again.

No matter which way I spin this, me leaving first is the solution that makes sense.

Even still. The nagging urge to see her keeps pushing on me and I’m starting to believe it’s his fault. Honestly, I think he wants me dead, but I don’t think I can fight him on this.

Leaving Zen at the alter like that has my conscience going haywire. She deserves to know what happened. And for the last three days, I’ve been thinking about what I’d even say to her. How I even begin to explain this?

A twig snaps and my wolf raises his head. He growls as his ears twitch and his eyes scan the dark.

A figure steps out of the shadows.

“Relax. It’s just me.”

I call the wind, shift and grab my shorts. I pull them on and join her. “Razor. What’s going on?”

She flips her brown hair over her shoulder and looks me over with her cat-like blue eyes. “We found her in the western states. She’s running some sort of tech company.”

“That checks. When do we leave?” I cross my arms.

“We'll contact you. Be ready.” She eyes me, shifts to a black wolf, then runs back into the dark.

This doesn’t give me a lot of time. What I’m about to do will rip the human world apart.

I was on the fence, but now I have no choice. I have to find Zen and tell her what’s going on. She needs to know that her house will never be the same and the High Council isn’t going to like what we're about to do.