Chapter Three
Rory had been right about things becoming more relaxed between him and Natalie. He wouldn’t say the two of them were becoming fast friends, but things definitely felt warmer than they had throughout their training. Natalie still read her goofy books and doodled in her notebook, but at dinner time, she kept him from feeling too lonely while they were out in the void. The two had talked about their hopes and dreams for the mission. And the second evening, they’d started discussing personal topics. They’d talked about anything and everything—favorite vacation spots, favorite meals, their siblings. He felt he’d gotten to know Natalie better in the two nights they’d been aboard their current home than in the years they’d worked in the same building together, directly across the hall.
He supposed that made sense, since they were virtually forced to be around one another. Their transportation was more spacious than anything in the past decade, with all of the bells and whistles the governments were equipping their ships with to keep up in the new space race. It was a time of technology and advancements after years of decline for the space program. Hell, it was a good time to be an astronaut.
Even so, with a two-man vessel, they shared a common room and a small kitchen. The two bedrooms were smaller than his bathroom back home and not comfortable for much more than sleep. It didn’t leave room for much personal space. He didn’t mind though. He was pleasantly surprised to find he was enjoying Natalie’s company. It had been too long since he’d sat down with a woman one-on-one and just … talked. Seemed no one wanted to do that nowadays. It was all about hitting the clubs and partying. While he enjoyed the occasional buzz—like his one from a few nights ago—he wasn’t much of a party guy. To be honest, he’d only been drinking to calm his nerves over going into space. He’d been all calm on the surface, and normally that was the case on the inside as well, but space travel was a big deal. He would admit to being more than a little antsy to get the mission underway.
“Are you still with me?”
Rory blinked when Natalie waved a hand in front of his face. Realizing he’d zoned out big time, he chuckled. “Sorry. What were you saying?”
“Oh, I was just saying how nice it is to have the undivided attention of someone without the distraction of cell phones, televisions, and video game systems,” she said with a playful smirk. “But alas, I forgot about the wandering mind.”
He grinned back, surprised by her witty sense of humor. Most women he knew would be seething had their dinner companion zoned out in the middle of them telling a story. “Seriously, I’m really sorry. I don’t know what happened there.”
She shrugged and sat back in her seat with an expression of contentment. “A wandering mind is a sign of intelligence, my grandmother always used to say.”
“Your grandmother is a smart woman.”
Natalie smirked and shook her head ever so slightly. “She also told me never to trust a man with dimples, said that meant they were hiding something.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, momentarily hiding his own as he grinned at the logic of an old woman. “Well, damn.”
“Yeah. Damn. And here I was just starting to think you were okay, too.”
Rory raised a brow at that. “Just okay?”
She tilted her head impishly. “Yeah. Just okay. We were almost up to mildly entertaining until I caught sight of those dimples. If it’s a deal breaker for Gram, it’s a deal breaker for me.”
He nodded with mock seriousness. “I completely understand.” He opened his mouth to say something else, but the sudden shift in Natalie’s mood did not go unnoticed. Her unexpected frown made him wary. In space, an abrupt mood change like that could mean a whole lot of things, many of them dangerous. “What is it?”
“Are you feeling all right?”
A frown of his own appeared. “Why do you—” And then suddenly pain like nothing he’d ever experienced slammed into him. It hit like a freight train, tearing through his body as if ripping him apart from the inside. He screamed. No amount of macho bravado could have kept the sound inside him. Hearing the sound of it in his own ears was chilling. He hadn’t known he could make a sound like that. “What … what’s … happening?”
He gave another howl of pain and doubled over, clutching his abdomen in agony. As he did, his arms lit with the sensation of fire. He almost would have thought they were on fire, but that would mean so many bad things for their mission. He lowered his gaze to his burning flesh and panic welled up inside of him at the sight of long, coarse hair sprouting from his arms. What the hell?
His eyes lifted to Natalie’s, and he knew they must be filled with pure, animalistic terror. “What is happening to me?”
****
Natalie would never forget the tortured scream that burst from Rory’s lips until the day she died. She’d never heard such pure, unfiltered anguish before. It had shaken her to her very core, sending a cold flash of panic down her spine.
She’d seen something wrong, something off about him moments before he buckled over in pain. His skin had suddenly gone ghostly white. He’d looked … wrong. Her insight hadn’t been enough to stop his pain though.
She was on her feet and moving around the table to him when she saw the hair forcing its way up from underneath his skin. “Oh, my God…”
He looked up at her, wild terror filling his eyes. “What? What do you know?”
It couldn’t be. It was impossible … yet the evidence was right in front of her. “I’ve read about this.” She raced into her bedroom. Snatching up her notebook, she hurried back over to Rory. She tried to ignore the fact that he was grinding his teeth against, what she figured was, unimaginable pain. If her theory was right, they had a whole lot more to worry about than what he was experiencing now. “There was a doctor,” she said as she flipped through the pages, looking for her notes. “Dr. Winston …. Remington, I think. He believed that lycanthropy was a…” She waved a hand in the air, looking for the right words. “A genetic trait. Something passed down to us by our ancestors.”
“Lycanthropy?” Rory asked incredulously. He banged a fist against the table in pain before continuing. “Like, as in werewolves and shit?”
“Yes!” She finally found the page and slapped a hand against her notes. “He believed that certain events could trigger the recessive gene. He was trying to prove it, but then the university where he worked caught wind of his research. They cut his funding and a few months later dismissed him from the school.”
“So he was a quack?” Rory’s fingers unclenched and he seemed to reflexively drag his now elongated nails along the tabletop against his own knowledge. When he looked down and saw the damage he’d done, he gave a soft gasp of alarm. He lifted his furry, clawed hand to his face with an expression of horror. “Can we please focus on something real instead of your fantasy world?”
Natalie stared at the long gouges left behind by his extended nails. How could he not see it? He was transforming before their very eyes. In the back of her mind—for future thought—she realized they would need to erase the footage from the cameras before they returned home. No one could see this. No one could know. Rory would never live in peace if anyone caught wind of this. Shaking her head at that thought, she pressed on, hoping to convince him before it was too late. “Think about it. Remington said a triggering event. In nearly every mythological study, lycanthropy was linked to lunar patterns. We are less than half a day out from the moon. It makes sense.”
“Shut up about the moon!” Rory slammed a fist down to the center of the table, and it cracked.
Natalie jumped with a little squeak at the sudden act of violence. Rory was the calmest man she’d ever met. He’d always been so relaxed and easygoing. This wasn’t him. He needed to see that. “This isn’t you.”
When he lifted predatory-filled golden eyes up to her, she took a frightened step back away from the table. If Rory lost control and the wolf won, there was a chance neither of them would make it back home alive. “He’s controlling you.”
“Who’s controlling me?” His voice was a low growl, his words gravelly and raw.
“Your wolf.” She took another cautious step back. “Don’t let him.”
“There is no wolf!” Rory was out of his chair in a flash. He shoved it away from him, and it hit the wall with a loud crack.
She watched as his thighs filled out, bulging and pushing against the fabric of his pants. His arms grew larger, filling with muscle and unrestrained power. He was half changed, stuck at a point between man and beast. “Stop.” She took another step away and felt her back hit the wall. She was trapped.
Rory advanced on her, menace rolling off of him in waves. She turned her head to the side when he bore down on her, his nostrils flaring as he took in her scent. No doubt she smelled of fear that did nothing but egg on his inner beast. “If you fully shift, you’ll kill us both.” Her voice came out in a breathless whisper. She knew showing fear would only amp up the beast, but there was no hiding her body’s reactions to him. “Get him under control.”
A fist slammed into the wall beside her head, and Rory glared down at her. “I don’t take orders from women.”
Now that was a phrase she’d been dealing with her entire adult life. There were a significant amount of men out there that didn’t like to see their female coworkers succeed in a profession dominated by the male gender. She’d been taking shit her entire career, so she wasn’t about to back down now.
She turned her head to face him, lifting her chin and locking her eyes on his. “Get him under control.”
The conviction and strength seemed to get through to him. He hesitated, and the eyes she was used to on a regular day struggled to the surface for just a moment. Then his lips pulled back in a snarl. “I said—”
“Get him under control!”
****
“Get him under control!”
The words repeated over and over again in his head as Rory fought for possession of his body. Get him under control. He was trying! Shit, he was trying. But he was having trouble coming to terms with who him was. Was he honestly supposed to believe there was a werewolf inside of him?
Rory didn’t want to believe it, but he could feel the beast’s presence in his soul. When he looked down at his arms, he could see the evidence coating his flesh. He could also feel an anger that wasn’t his bubbling to the surface as he slammed his fist once again into the wall beside Natalie’s head.
Internally, he cringed. But then another part of himself that he’d kept deeply buried reveled in the act. He was in charge here. He was the one with power, the dominant creature in the room. The world was his for the taking, all he had to do was let go.
He almost lost it. At those thoughts, Rory almost gave in to the pull deep inside of him that wanted nothing more than to be free. But then Natalie reached a hand up and slapped him soundly across the cheek.
He recoiled with a little snarl, but the determined look in her eyes halted him from retaliation. He kept his gaze trained on her eyes. He allowed her to talk him down without any words.
With shoulders rapidly rising and falling, with breaths coming out in ragged, sharp inhales, Rory slowly regained control of himself. Both of them remained completely silent as the process that had begun slowly reversed itself. The muscles that had bulged into view seemed to fold in on themselves, returning his biceps and thighs to their natural state. The hair retracted back into his arms, disappearing under his flesh as if it hadn’t even existed.
The energy remained though, as did the need to dominate. It was something so foreign to his laidback personality. The power zinged through him, and he shuddered. He needed to put it somewhere or the wolf was going to return. And this time, it would swallow him whole.
Without even thinking, he grabbed Natalie. His hand buried into the hair at the nape of her neck and he yanked her head back. Before he could stop himself, he lowered his mouth to hers.