Love Like Winter

The last thing she wanted to do was talk, but Aiden was looking at her so fiercely that she found herself taking a seat on the grass a comfortable distance away from him. It was partly because she knew that running would be fruitless – her seemingly being the only person around that couldn’t change into an animal nowadays, and also partly because she wasn’t keen to find out just what fed a wolf like that. But it was also because there was that damn feeling nipping at the corners of her heart that told her that Aiden was okay. And it could have been what Lucas had said about him, and it could have been fear or denial or sympathy, but it also could have been that lost girl arriving in a new town who had once found a friend in him.

“What do we need to talk about?” she asked finally, avoiding looking him in the eyes.

He looked offended and cross then, resting his large arms against his knees and spreading his legs a bit to get comfortable. Aurora felt a flush creeping up the back of her neck as she tried to stop herself from remembering what he looked like naked, and directed her eyes furiously towards the ground, determined not to look at him again.

“You ran,” he said simply, eyeing her intensely. “I don’t understand why you did it. We were having such a good time in the water and then you just got up and ran away like I was a monster.” He almost looked sad in that moment, but his eyes did not leave her face.

Aurora lifted her gaze to look at him, startled. “You turned into a wolf,” she said slowly, her eyebrows slightly raised as she watched him. “That moody girl from the shop turned up you both turned into animals.”

His glared at her slightly, looking offended. “That’s who I am, Princess. Sometimes I am more wolf than human.”

What did you expect me to do… throw a stick and play fetch? she thought to herself, rolling her eyes slightly but stopping the words from leaving her lips. Instead she simply watched him in bewilderment, unsure how a man who looked like any other human could be so extraordinarily different.

“You turned into a wolf,” she repeated, reaching up to push away an errant strand of hair that had fallen in front of her eyes. “That’s not a typical thing to do where I come from.”

And she still wasn’t quite okay with it, she wanted to add. She could still barely get her head around the fact that humans weren’t always quite humans, and that there were all these rules and regulations that she had never heard of. Everything had changed. It had all changed because she had thought life was okay and normal and then he turned into something out of a nightmare.

“I can’t help who I am,” he said after a few moments of silence, finally looking away from her. His shoulder were tense and his body was guarded, and his eyes were staring furiously out into the woods around them.

And for some reason, she felt bad for him. And so she tentatively reached out and placed her hand on top of his, softly brushing the top of his calloused hands before resting it gently against his. He turned to look at her in bewilderment and she found herself blushing slightly, and she was about to pull away when his lips began to curve into a slight smile. And in that second, she thought to herself as she watched him smile, he looked undoubtedly human.