ROMANCE: The Bad Boy Meeting (21 page)

Caius snapped his head up. “Not wolves. Bears.”

Blythe glowered at him. How had he heard her?

But he stood feet away from her, his brow furrowed and his hand plastered to the wood of an oak tree. Why was he so far away?

“There haven’t been bears around these parts for—“ the police officer, Harvey, stood leaning against his car, stuck taking care of Blythe and Caius, while the detective and his partner assessed the carcass.

“Fourteen years and eight months.” Caius interrupted without looking up at Harvey or Blythe.

Blythe cocked her head to the side. “What?”

The police officer nodded. “Yeah. Whatever. It wasn’t a bear.”

Why was Caius so hell-bent on blaming it on a bear? How could he even know this kind of thing? Blythe tried on multiple occasions to ask Caius what was going on, but every time she had formed the right words in her head; every time she had mustered up the courage to approach him, he shut her down with one look. He knew she needed to talk to him about this and was just not willing to let her in.

In fact, he practically ignored her for the rest of the time that they were stuck in that forest. When the detective had satisfied himself at the scene of the “crime,” he came down the hill to interrogate the two of them.

“What time did you find her?”

“What were you doing around these parts?”

“Do you come here often?”

“Did you hear any strange sounds?”

The questions came at her like bullets, easily penetrating her raincoat and seeping in to pierce the skin beneath. She tried to answer every question as best as she could, but then, he said, “How does it feel to be back here after all of these years?”

Blythe made eye contact with the detective for the first time during the entire conversation. There it was: big glossy eyes. She found it perverted that he could be thinking about her stupid wedding, her stupid acting career when a woman was dead.

“That’s enough.” Caius snapped, throwing his arm in between Blythe and the detective.

Blythe winced at this, shooting him a disbelieving look. How could he be so rude?

The detective gulped. He stood up straighter, setting his jaw as he scribbled a couple of things in his notebook. “Forgive my questions.” He said in a voice strained with mock authority. “Believe it or not, but there have been a number of killings like this in recent weeks. We have been keeping it under wraps so as to not alert the public but… I don’t know… It might be time for a curfew.” He gestured over his shoulder and back up the hill at the woman still lying there. “An animal: a bear or wolf or whatever, might have killed her, but it wouldn’t have done that to her. It didn’t consume a thing, but it was exceptionally violent. Unnecessarily violent.”

“Like a human.” Harvey chimed in. “A human trying to make it look like an animal.”

The detective shrugged, his lips folded into a frown.

Blythe leaned onto the tree for support as the detective gave the two of them instructions for how to report anything else they would hopefully remember after the fact, then got in his car and drove off. Harvey and his partner offered to drive the both of them home. Blythe sat with her forehead pressed against the glass, her skin beginning to itch from the events of the day. The sun had retreated behind the clouds for the rest of the day, giving rise to a moon and an exceptionally dark night.

Blythe felt wildly like a teenager when the police officer offered to walk the two of them to the front door. But before she could speak for herself, Caius cut in, brushing the police officer off and yanking open his door. He seemed distracted, mumbling to himself as he rounded the front of the car, yanked open Blythe’s door and pulled her out.

The door slammed behind her.

She winced at the sharp pain in her arm, flexing it as she followed him to the front door. Every forceful distracted step struck Blythe. By the time the two of them had showered, she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She emerged from the steaming bathroom with her hair wrapped in a towel and her lips folded into a determined frown.

“Caius.”

He didn’t even acknowledge her presence. He was lost. Far away.

Blythe huffed out a deep breath, then crossed the room to him. “Caius.” She said again, trying to keep the begging out of her voice as she laid her hands on his back.

He was like a statue underneath her touch.

She wrapped her arms around him. “Talk to me. Please. That was really scary. Are you scared?”

He didn’t answer her, but shrugged out of her embrace and climbed into her bed. He turned over to his side and picked up his phone, nervously shifting between applications.

Blythe’s eyes watered with frustration. “What the hell is your problem?”

Caius turned his head up to the sky, then looked down at her. “I can’t talk about this.”

“But—“

Caius rolled his eyes. “Yes, but you’re scared. But you’re hurt. But you’re offended that I don’t want to talk about my feelings… Yes I know.”

Blythe ground her teeth. “This isn’t about your fucking feelings. You’ve been acting weird. You’re hiding something.”

“Why are you so convinced someone is out to get you?” Caius glared at her.

Blythe glowered at him. “I’m not the one hiding something important from my
wife
.”

Caius shook his head. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Don’t insult my intelligence.”

Caius flexed his jaw. “Look, I’m just so fucking tired. Okay. I’m stressed. I have a full time fucking job. A 400% job and I have a wedding and I just saw a carcass. So give me a fucking break.”

Blythe nodded, a humorless smile stretching across her face. She had known him over a decade. There was no way she would back down that easily. “This isn’t about your goddamn stress. What. Aren’t. You. Telling. Me?”

Caius stared at her long and hard before turning over and flipping the switch on the light.

“Aren’t you so fucking smart.”

Blythe could just barely hear it as darkness descended on the room.

***

It took Blythe a whole three cups of coffee to be excited about meeting Alexander Wang in the flesh. He had agreed to do her dress, so she had sent in her measurements a whole three months in advance and he had worked his magic. Now they had reached the fractious day. She stood on a raised platform in the dressing room in the back of an inconspicuous boutique in downtown Portland. Her mother sat on the couch a little off to the right, sipping champagne with a smug look on her face.

Alexander burst through the double doors, his long sleek hair flying along behind him. Blythe’s eyes went wide. It was her turn to be star struck.

He raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow at her. “Ah. Just like I thought.”

Blythe looked down at the sleek, white dress she wore, then at the image of herself in the mirror. She had pulled her long, bleached blond hair back into a sharp ponytail, her ears donned with white gold hoop earrings. Her skin looked splotchy, but the dress. Oh the Dress. Her heart fluttered at the thought of what Caius would think when he saw it. She hoped he’d cry. Was that sadistic? That she hoped he’s be so overwhelmed with emotion on her wedding day that he would cry tears of joy like so many men do? “I know it’s beautiful!” She was failing at her attempts not to sound like a fan girl.

He gave his head a little shake, then bent over, his fingers fiddling with her hem.

Blythe heard the distinct sound of a camera flash.

“The length is off…. One inch here…” He set to work on her hem, on her neck line, on the sleeves, on the back.

Blythe’s mother leaned over, as if his every move was an educational opportunity. She emptied her glass multiple times, going for another every single time.

As he worked. As the cameras flashed. As she responded to his requests and questions, Blythe couldn’t help but think about Caius and how she had gone to bed angry at him the night before. Wasn’t there a rule against that? They weren’t even married and they were having married fights. Her heart fluttered in her chest as she was anxious to fix things.

But when she had finished her fitting, gotten her moleskin diary autographed and finally made it back home and up into her room, nothing but an empty-unmade bed greeted her. With a sigh, she put down the bag that contained the vintage boots she had purchased (impulse-buy) and sat down on her bed, wondering where Caius could have gone. 

Of course it was about the marriage. It had to be about the marriage. Caius ran through the night, blazing through the forest, until he came to the plateau where he had been with Blythe only a little over twenty-four hours before. He couldn’t deny the stress of the situation. It was more than sex, or Blythe or a cigarette could alleviate. He needed to be alone. To phase.

He stood up, his full height reaching all of seven feet, and extended his arms to each side of him. Every phase was like a new body. And yet he hadn’t done it for years. He had renounced that life decades ago, had run from home with the intention of never dealing with his murderous father again. He thought he could renounce his heritage and for a long time, that his parents had let him do this. No contact.

Almost fifteen years and no contact.

Then the deaths. It had his father’s mark all over it. His giant heart pounded against his rib cage as he let his arms fall down in front of him. Unwelcome memories of a childhood he had long since forgotten folded into his mind. There were so many carcasses like that. Hundreds.

It was sick. Shameful.

And it was happening again.

A warning.

One principle no shifter could break: You must marry within your blood. A lifelong mate of human blood, a child, half human, half shifter, would pollute the line. It would dilute it. Preservation was the ultimate aim. A non-negotiable.

Caius knew good and well that he was breaking this, but he didn’t think they would come for him. But they did. They had been for months on end. He just hadn’t noticed.

It was a warning.

“Caius!”

His eyes went wide at the sound of Blythe’s muffled cry. He shook his hairy head. He had been out too long. Knowing Blythe, knowing how she overestimates her capabilities and constantly feels the need to save everyone around her, it was no wonder that she came looking for him.

“Caius!” The cry came out more desperate this time.

The roar of a bear followed. The crack of snapping trees cut through the air.

Caius’s heart stopped. His father.

He launched into a sprint, his own roar echoing in the trees and the distant mountains. He followed her scent; the essence of his wife through the night.

Another roar shot through the night towards him, his father answering his call.

Blythe’s pained screech shortly followed.

Caius couldn’t get there fast enough.

He rammed his entire body into the brown and gray bear that had cornered his fiancé. His bones ached under the strain, his brain bouncing around in his head as he tackled his father to the ground. Almost immediately, his father began to change. His hair fell off to reveal raw skin underneath as layers and layers of flesh peeled off of him.

Caius followed suit, the slightly orgasmic feeling of reassuming his human form overcoming his entire body. He trembled in every inch of his bones as he collapsed onto the ground and into the pile of fur and flesh that greeted him. His teeth fell out, growing back almost instantly. He spit the blood out of his mouth as the bones of his skull broke and reformed, disintegrating and growing all at once.

“Father.” He croaked.

The man in front of him stood to about six feet. His thick head of hair had begun to gray and his skin, tough and laden with wrinkles, stretched tight along his naked body. He shook his head. “I must say. I am deeply disappointed.”

“You have no right…” Caius began as he approached Blythe’s motionless body. She looked impossibly peaceful with the moonlight shining on her pale skin.

“I have every right. I own your blood more than you do. You cannot marry her.”

Caius set his jaw. “And what’s your noble plan? To kill every living thing until I comply?”

The man shrugged. “It’s a start.”

“I won’t let you do that.” Caius said. “And I’m marrying her. I don’t care what you say.”

“I’ll kill you.”

Caius’s eyes went wide.

His father slinked towards him. “Don’t think I won’t do it. I offed your mother when she got creative.”

Caius’s heart dropped. He wanted to cry out in a rage. While he was out shirking his heritage, he had failed to protect his mother from this monster. His father continued to speak, hundreds of words flying out of his mouth, but Caius couldn’t register any of it. He was seeing red. His blood boiled hot, coursing through his veins and fueled by the thick adrenalin that filled every organ inside of him.

I could kill him.

I could kill him.

I could…

And just like that, Caius took the final step, closing the distance between the two of them. His hands wrapped around the man’s neck easy. He had a good four inches in height over him. The man trembled at his touch, but Caius found it almost pleasurable. He deserved it. If anyone needed to be murdered, it was him. His body slowly grew limp and lifeless, before he slipped right from between Caius’s hands.

Panting, Caius turned his attention to his wife. He caressed her smooth face with his hand, then pressed her fingers into her neck. There was a pulse. She was alive.

By the time he had lifted over his shoulder, his father had assumed his true form again. He lied there, a beast in the mud.

Caius hadn’t murdered a person. He had slayed a monster.

***

Blythe’s eyes flipped open. She shot up in her bed, her hands patting the sheets next to her.

Caius?

But he wasn’t there.

In his place was a small piece of paper lying on his pillow. It read:

“Happy Wedding Day.”

Blythe smiled. Somehow, she had managed to reunite with her mother, solve a murder mystery and get married… all in ten days. She checked her watch: 7:47 AM. With a gasp, she swung her legs over her mattress. She was already late.