ETHAN
****Three Weeks Later****Today was the day.It has been months and months of craziness. Ever since Ms Granger sent me to give Tyler that gift, my life has turned upside down. I mean, I have met great people but I wouldn't have minded meeting them under different circumstances.But, at least, it was all going to end now. Pascelina, as crazy as that hag was, had somehow made us believe that it wasn't such a ridiculous idea to go against Acelia. There were thousands and thousands of werewolves who would go against Acelia today. Pascelina had got weapon spelled by a witch that worked with the werewolves. Even more impressive, the witch has tracked Acelia to be deep in a forest a few kilometres from her.If everything went well, Acelia would die tonight, and if we were lucky, we would take down Alex, if he was with her.Now, all we had to do was take our weapons and go after her.Damn. I couldn't imagine actually being free of Acelia and thTYLER “Man, just apologise,” said Johnny, crouching beside me on the porch. “Enid is a girl… they bitch all the time. It's their thing.”I took the cold beer from his hands. “I’m certain that's a sexist thing to say.”“All hail thee. All thine knowledge of equality and you still can't stay with a girl for more than a month.” He took the beer back from me. “Man, I don't know. You probably need therapy or some shit like that.”You know what was funny? While no one could notice, I was fucking boiling inside as Johnny said all this. No, I wasn't pissed off… I could take a joke. What infuriated me wasn't what Johnny said to me. Come on. We had been friends since we were kids. We did everything together. It wasn't that. What hurt me was that he was speaking the truth. Before I got with Enid, I dated Laurel. Before Laurel, I dated another girl who happened to be named Laurel too. Before the first Laurel, I had a thing with a girl called Windinya… and yes, that was her name. Before Windiya,
ADAAlex said he loved me last night. It wasn't the first time he said it but something about the way he said it last night hit differently. He looked into my eyes, his hands dug deep in his pocket, as he said the three words people seemed to find magical. “I love you,” he said last night. “I have never said this to anyone before. Look, I know people see me as a fuck boy or whatever, but I would like… I would hope that you see me differently. I love you and I'm not saying it for you to say it back. I just wanted you to know that I love you.”I didn't say anything to him. But, really, was there anything to say? I mean, I did fancy him. Love? Man, I don't know. Right now, we were at my parents' house. We came to stay for the weekend because they asked me to. Alex was a colleague at my workplace and we kinda had a thing for each other. We had worked together for almost a year before we started fucking and almost another year before it became official and not just a let's-fuck-in-my-apa
TYLERMy mother died while giving birth to me. The doctors managed to save me but my mother wasn't as fortunate. My grandparents told me that my parents had been super excited when my Mum took in. Grandma said it was all they ever spoke about. They even threw parties to celebrate their unborn child. Little did they know that my birth would end both of their lives. My Dad lived much longer. He kept his distance from me and never really communicated. After Mum died, I guess he gave up on life too. A part of me always knew that he hated me. He never said anything but I knew he blamed me for her death. To him the math was quite simple; I came into the world and the love of his life left. He died a week after my thirteenth birthday. From what I heard, he shot himself in the mouth with a silver bullet.Apart from my grandparents, Darrel was one of the people I looked up to when I was little. Darrel Walters was eighty-nine years old. Three years older than my grandfather, making Darrel the
ETHANThere was nothing quite as satisfying as reading a good book. As a kid, I would tell my friends this and they laughed at me. Most of the friends I kept didn't read much beyond comments and posts on social media. For me, books were everything. I guessed that was why I had this big goofy smile on my face as I stared at one kid's storybook my mother used to read to me when I was younger. My mother used to say I was very strong. She would say this with this big, bright smile on her face. I didn't believe her then— I mean, that's what parents do, right? But as the years went by, I came to learn that she was right after all. I was strong. My time in high school taught me that I was much stronger than I ever gave myself credit for. All these and more made schooling very difficult for me. Believe me when I tell you that my last year in high school wasn't anything to write home about. It was just one thing after the other. Just before I started high school, my father, who was a black m
ADA It has been a while since I had that awkward meeting with my parents. By ‘a while', I meant a few hours. As much as I wanted to believe that they had lost it, the look I remember seeing in their eyes told me they weren't joking. And that shook me to the core of my being. Right now, I was with Alex in the garden. Without any warning, he pushed me, his hands pinning mine against the wall. He brought my hands to feel his hardness and held them as I felt the tender pulsation. “Do you want it?” He asked but pushed his lips against mine before I could answer. I got him away from me with a gentle push. “We had sex just before I spoke with my parents. Remember?”“With you, I'm hardly ever not in the mood. Seeing you alone turns me on in ways words couldn't ever do justice in explaining, you know.” He pushed some strands of my hair back and placed them carefully behind my ear. “You are beautiful, Ada. I could sing it to you now if you want me to.”I poked his nose with my finger. “Wel
TYLER You know what? I understood why Grandma was scared. This was hella scary. Even though we had a plan that promised to make everything alright-ish, there was still this fear that everything could go wrong. There was still a possibility that everything would go sideways. I hated that feeling. Now it began to feel like air was too hard to draw in whenever I thought about the whole thing. I remembered those days in school when I had to act strong even though I was always scared that I would mess up and the world would know about werewolves and it would be my fault. Well, this felt like that all over again, only that it was worse now. “Damn it,” I muttered as I found my hands shaking as they laid on my thighs. “This has to work out well. It just has to.“Grandma was right to be scared. One moment, my biggest problem was my love life, the next moment; I was worrying about keeping the werewolf race alive. I couldn't rationalise staying calm when I knew that there were twenty Xirays o
ADA Yes. Here I was, walking, my hands locked in my Mum's, into the woods. This ‘forest’ wasn't far from the park my Mum used to take me to as a kid. Dad used to have us ‘camp’ here when I was little. The only difference was that then I used to be much more excited and less terrified. I guess you can say times have changed. “Why is Dad not here?” I asked Mum who had barely said anything since we met up. “I mean, if what you say is true, then he should be here, right?”She let out a sigh and stopped. “Baby, your father is a very tough man. He is as hard as a nail. You know this as much as I do. But that man cannot watch you go through pain. He just can't.”“Go through pain? Wait, wait, wait, Mum. Pain! Nobody said anything about pain.”“Darling, there's no other way.”“If my memory serves me… and, mind you, it does… what I remember you saying is that you were going to awaken my powers. You didn't say anything about pain or whatever.”Mum patted me on the shoulder. “Don't get all sca
ETHAN You know that feeling you get when you say something and then you're willing to sell your soul to just take it back? Yeah, that was all I felt at this moment. It was crazy because I said it and can't believe I did. I, a grown man, told a bunch of strangers that I thought I saw “a monster-looking fellow”. Yeah, I did that. First off, what the actual fuck does that mean? Secondly, why the hell was I telling this to strangers, or anybody for that matter?“You saw its true form?” The old man said, walking down the porch to meet me. “The rumours are true. It is said that a very, very tiny percentage of humans can see Xirays in their real form. This is quite incredible.”Trust me when I say this— I tried to look for the right words to say but nothing came up. Not only did I notice that they were looking at me like I was a lost cat, but the fact that the man was literally crazy and no one seemed fazed.“We are going to be seeing a lot of each other,” the old man said. “I’m counting on