Chapter 25: A Howl in the Night
WINTER BREAK - December 22nd
Another full moon. Just what I needed...
On the plus side, Aries came to grab a beer with me before I had to slink off into the woods for the night. Things with him are fine.
Mostly fine.
He's tried a few times to talk about it, rehash things, but always with a quiver in his voice that told me this was going to go nowhere good. So, I'd change the topic, find something nice to say. He always took the bait and let us continue on in this awkward limbo between friends and something else. I didn't try to kiss him again and he didn't give me any indication that he wanted me to kiss him, so I guess this is just where we're at.
At least I didn't have to remind him it was a full moon, that I was going into it with my teeth gritted.
He only said, "Most werewolves actually look forward to it. In Fel, it's meant to be fun. A social thing. Everyone's out. I mean, not me, of course. But everyone else."
But we weren't in Fel, and I was looking at a night of painfully contorting into a beast in a distant clearing in the woods north of campus. In December. There wasn't snow on the ground, but it didn't mean it wasn't cold.
It was the clearing Blackclaw had shown me on the last full moon. With that there was also the implied but not explicitly stated expectation that I would shift there and only there. A part of me resented the clearing for this reason alone. But also, where else was I going to do it?
That's how I ended up there tonight.
I could feel the wolf waking up under my skin. To some extent there was no fighting it. I could drink as much wolfsbane solution as I wanted and I would still end up a beast.