Verona Rose

There was that feeling again, that feeling of rightness when our eyes connected.

Jeremy.

Verona

I jumped back, startled by the sudden thought whispered in my mind that was not my own. I knew the voice from earlier this afternoon, from Jeremy’s desperate question and my fragile response.

Jeremy?

I didn’t quite know how I did it, but by the way his eyes lit up, I knew that he had heard. He took one soft, slow step forward, watching me with careful eyes. Jeremy was scared I would run away.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t.

Jeremy was about to say something else—I could hear the beginning of words in my head—when the world ended.

The woods exploded with sound. A ripping, snarling, crashing, howling sound, a sound filled with bloodlust and hatred and a horrible, psychotic love for violence. My nose was insulted with the thick stench of old and new blood, of fur matted with dirt and wet. There was motion all around me, and I couldn’t make sense of it, until

Yellow ryes.

My breathing stopped because they had yellow eyes.

I would’ve been angry, if it wasn’t for the terror.

Yellow eyes, yellow eyes everywhere I looked, eyes that were exactly the same as the ones I had seen so long ago. Ochre irises mixed with cruel insanity.

I had the vague idea that I couldn’t breathe. My heart was a wild, erratic animal in my chest, thumping so wildly that it started to cover the sound of carnage around me. I couldn’t move, couldn’t feel, think or speak.

VERONA!

Jeremy’s voice screamed, desperate, in my head. I wanted to respond, I did, I just couldn’t seem to remember my own language.

Verona…

Jeremy’s voice whispered now, soft and faraway sounding. My thoughts, too, were getting softer and further away, my heart’s crazed beats taking center stage in my head, until even that faded into the distance.

And then

Black.

*~*

“Verona, c’mon, please wake up,” Jeremy’s voice low and fierce in my ear, was what I came to. My vision was fuzzy and blurred, as if I’d woken from a long night of crying. My hearing, too, was sluggish and strange, all of my senses struggling to keep up. I wanted to open my mouth, but my jaw felt sore and awkward, too big for my face.

“Jehr-meh?” I managed. My tongue felt disgusting and heavy.

I realized only then that I was being carried, tucked carefully into his chest. In that moment, I couldn’t remember why I’d run from him, because I felt so content in his arms. My previously wild heartbeat had calmed.

Jeremy sighed in relief, a sigh that used his whole body and moved me too.

My arms tightened unconsciously around his neck. The movement made me very aware of another fact. He was shirtless, and I was wearing only a too large shirt. It occurred to me that I ought to be embarrassed—I was being carried against a half-naked guy when I was half-naked myself—but for some utterly bizarre reason, I wasn’t.

“Wah happ-ed?” My words were still slurred and hard to make sense of. My head was leaning against his chest. Idly, I wondered where we were walking. My head hurt.

“Curse Wolves. They attacked up, and you hit your head. It’s a Goddamn miracle we’re not dead right now.” I was barely listening. My head was swimming. Curse Wolves? What was that? The wolves with yellow eyes? Cursed Wolves certainly fit them.

“Where’re we going?” I asked next, regaining control of my senses.

“My house. It’s close, and I want to make sure you’re okay. You’re not healing. My mom’s a nurse.” I nodded, though the words didn’t quite sink in. I was enjoying the sound of his voice despite myself. Deep down, I could feel the needling little seed of guilt, the part of me that hissed Vienna, Vienna, Vienna, what about Vienna? accusingly in my mind.

I’m hurt, I thought to myself. I’m allowed to feel a little selfish.

But that didn’t do very much in the way of erasing my guilt.

In a comfortable silence, we came to a stop at a cherry red door in the middle of the woods. There was no driveway, really, just a beaten down dirt road with a mud splattered red jeep sitting still in the middle of it. The house was medium size, with white siding and black trim. It was alive with nature and I already loved it.

“Jeremy! What-what-?!” A woman was running out, stunned by the sight of me, incapacitated, in Jeremy’s arms. She moved to pull me away but I clung ever tighter to him. The selfish part of me I was currently indulging wanted to growl at this woman for threatening to move me.

“She’s, erm,” Even without seeing his face, I could tell he was sheepish.

“Verona’s my mate. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything, just—she hurt her head and it wasn’t healing and, could you look at it?” Wasn’t healing? I thought to myself confusedly. Yeah, it wasn’t healing because it just happened.

But then I realized that Jeremy had just called me his “mate”, and I didn’t know what I thought of that. Part of me crowed with affirming happiness, while the other side of me looked warily on the possessiveness of such a word.

“Wait—mate? What?” I asked, breaking into the conversation. Jeremy’s mom turned from analyzing the thumping wound on my head to staring curiously and confusedly at me. Jeremy’s arms shifted around me. My moment of clarity was fading, the fuzziness encroaching again, followed by black that rimmed my vision becoming thicker and thicker and thicker.

“Jere…get…inside…she’s fading…hurry—”

Her voice was going in and out, loud and then quiet and then loud and then nothing, nothing at all, but

Darkness.

*~*

Light. That was my first sensation as I slowly came to. It was a beautifully white light, and for a moment, I thought, not unhappily, that I was dying. The thought was oddly comforting. After all, dying would mean I would see Vienna again, and my heart was soaring at the idea.

Why hadn’t I thought of this before? I wondered, stretching toward the light, awash in gentle happiness.

It would have been so much easier.

With a smile, I went toward the light.

And promptly sat up in an unfamiliar bed. Bitter confusion and dismayed agony flooded through me as I looked around the utterly normal and entirely not my own room. Glancing up, I realized that the light I’d seen had been a skylight. Hot, scratching tears pricked my eyes and my throat filed with a sick bile.

Vienna, Vienna, I miss you! I lamented silently. My face was already wet with tears that had sneakily escaped my eyes and coursed down my cheeks.

Beside me, a blue pocket knife winked in the deceiving light, sitting innocently and beautifully on the bedside table. My heart leapt into my throat, from either happiness or fear I couldn’t tell. But I grabbed the knife and deftly released the slim, glimmering blade, like someone had crafted it from a slender shaft of moonlight. It was wickedly sharp. I pressed it to the crook of my elbow, wincing at the tiny prick of pain, staring with a sick fascination at the tear shaped drop of blood that swelled and the slipped down my arm, leaving a trail of red behind.

I pressed the blade a little deeper, and began to pull.

The door opened, admitting none other than Jeremy.

“Verona, I-er-thought you might be hungry, and—” CRASH

Jeremy had been carrying a tray of food that was now spilled over the floor. In a flash of movement, he was at my side, pulling the little knife from my grasp and flinging it away. I watched the now crimson blade arc and then fall on the smooth wood, flecks of my blood splattering the honey-colored fllor.

And then he was hugging my, pulling me into a tight, desperate embrace, his face buried in my hair, my face tucked into the crook of his neck, smelling his woodsy, wolfsy scent.

And then,

I started to cry. I started to sob because I realized it was not happiness I had felt, but fear that I had come so close, fear that I had wanted it al to end so badly, fear that I’d felt happiness over the possibility of my own death. Somewhere, not so deep inside of me there was a primal, survival instinct that was screaming. It shouted live, live, live in time with Jeremy’s fierce tugs, drowned out the steadfast chant of Vienna, Vienna, Vienna.

“Why?” Jeremy’s voice was a saddened croak whispered into my red hair.

“Why?” He asked again, drawing back to look at my tear stained face.

And I told him. In slow, halting detail. I told him about Vienna and I told him about the depression and I told him about my transformation. Jeremy first wrapped my arm in an ace bandage while I talked, and then he climbed into bed with me and held me while I tried, with a thick voice choked my tears and grief, to make him understand.

“So,” he said, once I’d finished talking and was sniffling unattractively. My head was laid comfortably across his chest, his—muscled, very muscled—arm wrapped protectively around me wait. My heart was already feeling less burdened with the release of Vienna and I’s story, and it soared at this gentle, loving contact.

“Is that why you ran away when we first met? Because of Vienna? He asked. I couldn’t look him in the eye when I nodded.

“But I was also confused. I mean, I was bitten less than a year ago. I didn’t know what was happening. What was happening?” I asked, pretending that I was very interested in a picture on the wall. It was a picture of a wolf, though who I couldn’t tell. It was just a strange grey wolf.

“Do you really not know anything about werewolves?” Jeremy asked, tipping my chin up to look into my eyes. He really did have gorgeous eyes. I was about to answer when the door banged open and a loud, high-pitched voice rang out.

“Jere! Is that her?! What’s her name?! She’s really pretty—” I jumped, startled by the sight of a little girl standing at the door, excitedly babbling.

“Brielle Silver! I told you not to go in there!” Jeremy’s mother popped her had in, giving our position a curious look. My face burned.

“Sorry, Jeremy. I’ve been trying to keep everyone out, but they’re getting impatient.” With a strange, warm smile, the door closed. Jeremy chuckled.

“We’ll talk about werewolf stuff later. Right now, it’s time to meet the family.”