Enter the Shadows

~ Penny looked up from her hot chocolate, frowning at the sheets of rain cascading on the other side of the window. It was only one in the afternoon but it looked like late evening. The dark clouds, which blotted out most of the light, and bringing with it heavy rains, left Chaise Point district wet and bleak. The rain made everything cumbersome. Penny never seemed to have an umbrella on hand when it started raining. On top of that, she was always getting caught in the rain. She sat there drenched and miserable, nursing her hot chocolate, which had already gone cold.

She’d taken the initiative to go to work on her day off and get some extra work done. Normally, she would have been alone in the office on a Saturday. Penny was probably the only one who didn’t have family or friends to be with instead of camping out at her office on a weekend. She’d walked halfway to work when the rain started to fall. It hadn’t even been cloudy. Well, maybe it was a little cloudy, but not the kind of cloudy that heralded this caliber of a storm. 

She could have been comfortable at home, staring at the ceiling or reading a book. Instead, she was stuck in a diner, where she’d been forced to take shelter from the rain, and her hot chocolate was cold sludge. She looked down at it and frowned. The cup wasn’t even half empty.

The place was packed - presumably from people eager to get out of the rain. Between the chatter around her and the thunderstorm outside, she could scarcely hear her thoughts. She longed to be back in the quiet of her little apartment. Penny had been alone for most of her life and found that she was just fine with that. It was people she didn’t know how to deal with.

Across from her sat a gothic-looking chick, her black hair streaked with blue and red. Head down, the girl tapped away at her phone screen, her fingers never pausing. Penny could only wonder what the girl was texting about. The only sound the girl made was the occasional snort, which Penny thought might be the sound of amusement. Her phone, sitting dormant in her pocket, never rang unless it was about work. She was fine with that too.

Penny thought that if she was anyone else, she would have started a conversation with the girl. Just a casual one. Commenting on the sucky weather, the overcrowding of the diner, but that wasn’t Penny. She wasn’t anti-social; she was, as she labeled it, socially inept. She could blend in easily with the wallpaper, a superpower she used to avoid small talk at company functions. Some people tried to make her feel weird about her lack of social skills, but she couldn’t even muster up the energy to do that much. Sulking, her face buried down in her mug, she didn’t notice that she was being watched.

Lochlan had walked into the diner at random. Wandering through the city, as he did every so often, he’d happened to end up here. And so had, by the looks of it, half of the people who lived in Chaise Point. He was about to step back out into the rain when he saw her. It was like a jolt to his system. A thousand volts bursting, coursing through him at lightning speed. He had to catch his breath. It was like nothing he had ever felt before.

It wasn’t just that the bright white of her aura stood out in stark contrast to the shades of red, gray, and black around her; no, it was much deeper than that. Primal. His wolf responded, lunging to the surface, poised to pounce on her. He looked away, ducking his head as he felt his mouth growing full with teeth. His body expanded; his clothes became tight. Lochlan had spent years training so that he could restrain himself, and it took everything he had to stop himself from changing right there in the crowded diner. He was feeling wild, a primal urge riding him. It was sudden, and it was brutal.

A waitress bumped into him, and he caught her by the elbow, steadying her before she went face-first with her tray. Lochlan half expected her to scream and pull away, but she gave him a wide smile instead. He had halted the change. Barely. After that brief exchange, he went back to staring at the woman. He saw another head, of which only a bit of jet-black hair was visible, peeking out from the opposite side of the booth. Was it a man? Was she with someone? 

Lochlan knew that his reaction was irrational, but he couldn’t shake it. He was starting to go slightly stir crazy, and it was all because of her. Taking a quick scan of the diner, he made sure that he was the only one reacting to her this way. That there weren’t any other non-humans present. He was the only one.

A spot at the counter freed up, and he went and sat there. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop himself from stealing glances at the woman. The waitress from earlier approached him.

“Can I take your order?” She offered her most flirtatious smile as she waited for his reply.

“Coffee—black.” He barely looked at her other than to politely acknowledge her presence.

She followed the direction of his gaze. The waitress pouted as she went off to get his coffee. When she came back, he was still staring at the woman. “You should go over there and talk to her instead of being all creepy stalker about it.”

“Yea.” Lochlan didn’t budge from his seat. Forget his reaction; there was a much more pressing matter to address. What she was was an issue.

Long ago, he had been in her position. It was only a matter of time before she was spotted by a scout for either side or by both sides. Pure hearts, like her, had become rare. Their sightings grew decades apart. His kind—werewolves—were segregated and scattered, save for one particular faction. That faction consisted of the deadliest, most ruthless, and most feared of all the werewolves, in large part because of their alpha, Sven. The man was a beast like no other. He was a lunatic. Lochlan knew the cliff notes like everyone else. Sven was relentless, with no regard for anyone but himself or anything but power. He got what he wanted by instilling fear. He would want her.

Lochlan watched Penny shuffle her cup between her hands. Her hair, a mass of auburn, flowed over her shoulder, still wet. He ran his hand through his wet hair, feeling on edge.

“Go to her already,” the waitress said, rolling her eyes.

Lochlan turned around to look at the waitress standing on the other side of the counter, coffee pot in hand. She gestured with her head for him to approach the woman before walking off to refill another customer’s mug. He hadn’t touched his.

Penny looked up as Lochlan came over to her booth. He leaned forward, whispering into the ear of the woman sitting across from her. For the first time since the girl had sat down, her fingers stopped their incessant tapping. The girl slid out of the booth without a word, and the man took her place. Suddenly, Penny started to feel self-conscious about how she looked - and she didn’t usually. She resisted the urge to fuss with her hair, which she knew would be frizzy. The drier it got, the crazier she was going to look.

Squirming, she swallowed the block in her throat, as she stared down into the cold sludge in her cup. She wasn’t sure why she still had it when she didn’t intend to drink the rest. She thought about ordering another one. It did look as if she was going to be there a while. The rain outside showed no signs of letting up.

Penny looked up intending to signal a waitress. Her eyes met his and held. All of her alarms went off. A silent wave of panic warned her she was treading dangerous ground. Try as she might, she couldn’t look away; fixated, she watched his eyes as they changed color. The green was slowly being swallowed up by a deep shade of pure gold. It sucked her in. Muddled her mind. Penny couldn’t think straight, couldn’t look away. If he hadn’t broken the connection, she was sure she would have stayed there the entire day just staring into his weirdly coloured eyes. Penny couldn’t explain the panic that had built in her chest. Or the warm feeling that had slid under her skin.

Lochlan heard her release her breath. It had taken everything inside of him to sever the connection—and they’d connected the moment their gazes had met. His insides trembled. A sense of satisfaction washed over him when he realized that he had not been the only one affected. Her heart was hammering in her chest, her breathing uneven. She fidgeted in her seat as if she was uncomfortable. Lochlan ordered a burger and a Coke when the waitress came over to them though he wasn’t sure how he was going to eat it. He felt... unsettled. His mouth was too full, his skin too tight. His wolf was too close to the surface.

He had to force the words out when he finally spoke, hoping they sounded more man than a wolf. “Hi, I’m Lochlan.”

Penny, not expecting him to engage her in conversation, stumbled over her tongue to respond. “I-I’m Penny.”

When he reached his hand out to her she reflexively dropped hers into her lap. It was a subconscious reaction but Penny knew it was rude.

“I’m sorry, I just—”

“No need to apologize. I understand.”

Her mind started to go off on a tangent. What did he understand? That she was weird? That something was seriously wrong with her? There had to be with the way she was acting. It wasn’t like this was the first time anyone had said hi to her. She kept her eyes on her no-longer-hot chocolate.

Lochlan smiled, and Penny’s heart stuttered before speeding up. He heard it and took some satisfaction in it. Her reaction heightened his. It meant that whatever was happening between them was mutual. His wolf was urging him to make his claim. Remembering his training, he suppressed the wolf. Thwarted, it snarled and spat at him. This wasn’t the time or place, he told himself. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her off.

“Doesn’t look like it’s going to stop raining anytime soon.”

Penny had started to gather her things as if she was about to leave. As wet as she was, he suspected she didn’t have an umbrella. With the temperature outside she was bound to catch a cold. She looked up as if she had forgotten it was raining. The urge to move, to get away from this man, had been so strong that she hadn’t realized when she had started to do so. One of his eyebrows was raised, and the slight lift of his mouth suggested that he was amused.

Sure, Penny, embarrass yourself in front of a stranger, she thought. Penny exhaled, trying to relax. She slumped back in the booth, the strap of her bag wrapped tightly around her wrist. The rain didn’t look as if it was going to be stopping anytime soon. Her brow creased in a frown.

Lochlan did what he’d been trying not to from the moment he sat down - he breathed her in. Immediately his wolf reacted, raging, slamming full force against his control. His audible release of breath caught Penny’s attention. She eyed him with concern; he looked like he was in pain. Lochlan felt as if his head was going to explode, his body trying to change against his will. His well-tempered restraint was failing him. At this moment, the animal in him was stronger than the man.

“Are you ok?” Penny asked, leaning forward. As she leaned closer her scent enveloped him. His head was down, one hand on the table in a tight fist while the other held onto the seat of the booth as if to anchor him. When Penny touched his hand, it was like touching an open flame. She winced, pulling it back and rubbing her palm over the front of her pants until the stinging sensation ebbed away.

He barely managed to make it out of the booth. He pushed people aside as he raced to the bathroom. Nothing short of chaos would break out if he changed in front of so many people. At this point, his wolf was out of control and people were bound to get hurt, albeit unintentionally. Lochlan couldn’t remember a time he had ever felt this way, not even on the night of his first full moon. His body was out of control.

Penny watched him, her eyes wide in shock. He looked like he was having some sort of panic attack. She made a move to go after him before she stopped herself. But what if he needed help? Penny couldn’t make up her mind, one force pushing her towards him and another, equally strong, pulling her away.

She was up with his bag on her shoulder, still trying to decide, when she noticed his side of the booth. Four long slashes exposed the inside of the seat cushion. Penny looked from the seat over to the bathroom and then back again. When she looked back in the direction of the bathroom a second time, she saw him. The pulling force won. Penny pushed a path through the cluster of people crammed into the diner. Out in the rain, she dashed for the train station, even though her office was a block closer. It made no sense going into work now. The chilly drops of rain chilled her right down to the bone.

Lochlan stood outside, steam rising from his body as the rain came down heavier. Lightning slashed across the sky, preceding a loud roll of thunder. His fists rested at his side as he watched her leave. As he watched her run away from him. His wolf, angry now, growled.