The Wolf - Chapter 8

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Sophie drew to a stop in front of him. Just close enough so that their outstretched hands could touch. She turned hers palm up to allow her fingertips to gently skim over the bottom of his then over the top. The soft texture of his hair tickled and for a moment she felt a strange desire to bury her hand in it. Instead she traced the sinew tendons leading to his shifted fingers, finishing the gentle appraisal by clicking her nails against his claws. Their sharpened tips promised to do a significant amount of damage. Proven in nearly decapitating the head of a crawler, something she'd never seen.

Derek was surprised about the gentleness of her touch. Usually people were curious at best, but more often they were repulsed by his sight. But Sophie's warm fingers gently traced his skin without hesitation. She wasn't scared of him at all, despite the gruesome exterior. He was a predator by nature and even though he had killed before, he was no killer. This was a choice he had made a long time ago and he never regretted it. 

Where others, she knew, would have pulled back repulsed, Sophie was curious and tender in her observations. She stepped closer still after he did not take her hand off so that she could look up into his face. The transformation gave very little room for any tenderness to his appearance. His eyes glowed red, his teeth jagged and the bones structure stood out harshly around his eyes. There was a lot more facial hair, wicked sideburns - she thought humorously though said nothing. The pointed tips of his ears inspired an urge to touch them though even there she was reserved. Yes, it was a very different face from the handsome one before, yet, still held a similarity that could not be denied. 

Derek thought that she would touch his face but she didn't. She just studied him calmly with a tenderness and vulnerability in her eyes he hadn't seen on her before. She was way more welcoming and open about his wolf side than she had been about his human side and Derek suddenly wondered what she was seeing in him. It was obvious that she hadn't seen a werewolf before, yet there was no fear lying in her eyes and no disgust, as he was used to seeing when someone saw him for the first time in this form, no matter how well hidden.

It was a strangely intimate moment and something changed between them. Derek wasn't sure what it was yet or if it only changed for him but when he returned to his human form, she looked different to him.

After he shifted, Sophie withdrew. The moment passed and she allowed the severity of what this meant to rush over her. It was dangerous. For him. Normally she would not care so much but from the beginning she felt different around him. More protective. She wanted him to succeed, not only during the trials but within the walls of Eden.

"You are magnificent but this is a part of you that must be left behind. Once we reach the summit you can never shift again." Her voice left little up for debate. "You being here means they don't know what you are. What you can be. If they were to find out you would never walk the streets of Eden freely." Realization seemed to finally settle on her shoulders as she paced in front of him, occasionally stopping to look at him as if she expected him to shift again. When he didn't, she continued the pacing.

"They would keep you in the citadel. A prisoner to their curious minds. Poked, prodded and experimented on. Believe me, you don't want that." Having first hand experience with her father and the likes of his kind...she wouldn't wish it upon anyone. The habitual push of her hand through her hair pulled the blonde tendrils tight around her forehead before she allowed the loose curls to spring back up when her hands dropped back to her sides.

Returning to stand before him she took a deep breath, realizing she was likely telling him to let go of a large part of who he was. "You will have the next twenty-nine days to let it go. You must."

He smiled at her sadly when she had finished speaking, only realizing when he did so that he was actually smiling at her for the first time at all. "Sophie," he then said, and his voice was as gentle as her touch had been before. "This is nothing I can let go. This is who I am. It is not a habit like biting fingernails, a habit I could get rid of. I am born a werewolf. My genes are different to yours. They always will be. If I ever reproduce, my children will be werewolves too. How can the council not know what and who I am? They chose me to do these trials, didn't they?" 

She paced as he spoke. The bits he offered gave some color to the picture but there were too many pieces missing. Too much speculation and not enough facts. Through all of his craziness with his expectation for how life should continue, her father was a careful man. Everything he did, he did after a great deal of study and detailed preparation. Edwin Grey was known for his impeccable calculations and theories.  

"You're not the only one that is chosen for trials," she rebutted. "It's a constant cycle. I'm here twice a year and there are four other guardians." Her gaze shifted from her path to look at him, stopping when she saw the smile on his face, however sad his tone was. She found herself oddly transfixed and though unwise, allowed it to linger for longer than she should have.  

"I am not sure I actually want to live in that place you call Eden. To me it sounds more like hell and you don't seem to be too fond of it either,"he finally admitted. 

Derek had fallen silent for a moment, realizing that he still had no idea how and why he had been chosen and where he had been over the last twenty years. But he also realized that he suddenly seemed to believe Sophie's story and he actively needed to remind himself that it hadn't been verified just yet. He couldn't allow himself to trust her. Not entirely. 

"You don't have a choice," she answered. "Enjoy these next twenty-nine days because they will be the last of your free will." His believing he had free will to walk away from Eden had her smiling in return though it did not offer any gentle reassurance or support that a smile should have. It was sad, almost cynical and lingered for as long as it took for her to draw a new breath.

Derek took Sophie's warnings very serious. His lineage, and also his whole race, always had been chased by hunters. Werewolves had been hunted down, tortured and killed for centuries and being forced to either run or hide who he was came almost like a second nature to Derek. She had given him important information right now though, information that was new to him. At the end of this was a summit and it was going to be in twenty-nine days. Afterwards, if he lived, he would be allowed into Eden. He realized that he only was here for a day yet it already felt like an eternity. 

"I am good at hiding what I am," he then responded. "So this would be an option. My species has been doing it for centuries already." There was no bitterness lying in his voice, it was merely a statement. "But something doesn't add up," he then said, almost like an afterthought. "If they don't know what I am, why that letter in the beginning that spoke of a hunter? Why the trail with your blood? They must have known that I am different. And if they only wanted to study, why having me do this trial?"

He made good points about the letter which drew her close to him again to stand in front of him. "You're right. Which is worse. If they know who you are and if they paired you with me it was for a reason. This is their experiment. You and I." She had to be even more careful with him. "Everything has been different since the beginning. The letter, the basement...the trail of blood. Normally I wake up to the chosen lying beside me. I've never had to play bait for one."

As soon as she had finished speaking, Derek suddenly realized that his side was burning. He frowned and he looked down his body before he lifted up his shirt to reveal his perfect muscular upper body now was marred by four angry red, parallel claw marks at his left side. It seemed as if Spiderman had scratched him at some point during the fight. "That's probably not good," was all he said before looking back up at Sophie.

Her eyes naturally dropped to the span of flesh he revealed. What she saw made her pale slightly and curse beneath her breath. "No, it's not good. You should be on the ground. I'm guessing the only reason you're standing right now is because you're a werewolf but that won't last for long. I need to get you to safety."

She was moving before she even stopped talking. Climbing the tree with ease, she retrieved both her jacket and their meal still secured at the top. When she returned to him, she was already removing the top from the water bottle to repeat what she had done before. Only this time, she applied the mud to his wound. It'd be a bitch to clean later.

"I need to mask the scent of your blood or we'll draw in more and the crawler isn't the worst of them."

Moving back to the dead spiderman, as Derek liked to call it, she nudged it onto its back with the toe of her boot then knelt beside it. With a precision befitting the years she'd spent here, she cut it open from neck to groin. Like all the times before she grimaced and was mentally repulsed as the two sides parted with a crack. A sound, she had long ago, paired with that of a watermelon being pulled apart. She hadn't been able to eat the fruit since.

Wirey bits of rotted tendons and black goo spanned the two sides like a web, forcing her to slice through them as well before she pulled the innards from its belly to offer up to him. "Cover yourself with them. I've never guided a werewolf before so I don't know how long you'll be able to withstand the venom before you collapse. So we need to move fast without drawing in a crowd." If he didn't take them, she would have smear his clothing with the entrails herself before doing the same to her own.

"There's a cabin about two miles southwest of here. You're going to be very sick. For how long, I don't know. The sooner we get you there, the sooner I can help you. Let's go." 

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