Chapter Seven
She saw, and there was no undoing it.
At least, he was mostly sure she saw. She'd taken off running like she'd seen him kill someone, like she'd been in danger herself, and he could smell the fear on her. The only explanations were either that she saw him shift or she was really worried about nudity. He tried to ignore how funny that would have been.
He needed to take this seriously.
All he could do now – all that he needed to do – was damage control.
Most people wouldn’t tell anyone if they saw a shifter. They'd be too terrified that they'd be judged for it. If they ever told anyone it would either be when they were beyond drunk or on their deathbed. They’d go to psychiatrists, feeling insane, and would describe it as a dream, even though in their heart they knew it was real. A secret they could tell nobody.
There were, of course, the exceptions to this.
Some people would call in to the local police or papers, which were usually run by shifters and then their stories would be quieted down by the pack. Technology had made it easier, allowing for message boards to erupt on the topic, or people to blog long descriptions of their encounters. It didn’t matter how hard they tried, the reaction would be the same. The people would be made out to be lunatics, even if they had been teachers, doctors, or other intelligent people.
Nobody ever believe them.
People didn’t want to believe that their world was wrong, that everything they thought they knew was a lie. It was like when you find out as a kid that Santa Claus is fake, a lie. But as an adult, it’s even more startling to find out wolfmen are real.
Still, he didn't want his first introduction to the pack to be that he was lazy and was spotted shifting by a human his second night in town. That was one of those things that would make a pack turn their backs on him quickly.
Anthony had grown up in a pretty modern pack, though.
His parents grew up in the pack, and their parents before them, and with every new generation, the pack grew in ideas. They no longer cared if the pack dated humans (marriage was an entirely different subject, though), and the pack was generally open to outsiders. They'd been trusting even when rumors broke out that Alphas of the proper bloodline in other packs had been getting slain. Murdered.
It had been a small pack, though.
Everyone knew everyone; the trust and ease and the feeling of family were so comfortable and natural that he was convinced until he was almost seven that all of the older pack members were actually his aunts and uncles, even though most weren't.
They wouldn't have cared if he'd been spotted.
Sure, they might have teased him for a bit – the slip up would be an embarrassing blunder, and teasing was a way to show affection – but they would have let it slide like water on wax.
Anthony had no read on this new pack, though.
No way to know how they'd react.
Anthony had gone into the Casino after her, trying to find her and talk to her. The only downside to her skimpy work uniform was that all of the other waitresses wore them, too, so spotting her proved difficult.
Sierra.
She said her name was Sierra.
He asked someone who looked like a supervisor or manager if he could speak to Sierra, said that it was important.
She gave him a weird look, and then vanished into a back room, only to come out a couple minutes later and say Sierra had already left, that she was sick. He knew that wasn't right; he could smell that the supervisor had been around her. He didn't say that, though. Instead, he nodded and headed out to his hotel room.
The guilt filled him like a pile of rocks, weighing him down into the room's sagging mattress until he wasn't sure if he was falling asleep or not. He needed to set this right.
Needed to fix the situation before anyone else found out.
Midnight started rolling closer, and something told him to go and look out his window.
He wasn't sure what the feeling was, this pulling at his heart and mind that said if he didn't do it he might regret it. He listened to this feeling, and when he looked out his window, there she was.
Her strawberry-blonde hair was down around her shoulders, crinkled in a line just below her ear from having been in a ponytail all day. She looked tired, stressed, and he could see her looking around the parking lot anxiously.
He could approach her then.
It would be easy.
Go up to her, talk to her while she's alone, and set things straight.
He didn't want to, though.
The idea of chasing after her while she was alone in a dark parking lot made him uncomfortable. He didn't want to scare her, didn't want to creep her out. He wanted to make her understand, yes, but he also found himself wanting her to like him.
The idea didn't make any sense.
He'd never had any interest in dating, especially not since he'd been found on his own. Definitely not a human in an area where he didn’t know the pack. Some packs would see it as being an absolute traitor to the blood of shifters, a complete act of sacrilege. Not a great first impression.
Still, as he watched her climb into her car and rush out of the parking lot, he felt his chest ache.
It wasn't just that she knew what he was.
It wasn't that she could get him turned down by the pack.
It was how horrible he felt when he saw pure terror in her eyes when she fled from him. The way she ran as though he was the worst beast she'd ever seen. He'd never felt this aching pain before. It was just a misunderstanding of a stranger, and yet he found himself feeling like it was more, like something worse had happened.
Laying down in his bed, feeling further from growing roots than he had that morning, Anthony started to wonder if he should just leave town and not even try.
What was the point, anyway?
He tried to fall asleep to this thought, but the idea of driving away from Sierra wracked him with a feeling he didn't want to inspect.
His dreams were of his pack again, though.
They were always of his pack.
Like a sore that you keep scratching the scab off, they were in his mind, and he couldn’t undo that. The dreams left him sweating in his sleep again, dying for a time when he wasn’t so alone.
Dying for guidance.