Chapter 25

Russel finally shook off the last remnants of the wolf, casting it off himself like a dog shaking off water. All those primal, instinctual urges to run through the forest and kill anything he came across were the hardest things to get rid of and were stubbornly refusing to be pushed away. In the end, he managed it but a part of him felt a longing to be free again. It was addictive, that state of being. So alluring and so easy. It would be simple to throw away all the burdens his humanity saddled him with and just give in to the wolf.

But he didn’t.

He’d seen firsthand what happened when a werewolf goes down that road. It wasn’t pretty. The carnage they left in their wake still haunted him at night. The worst part was not being able to do a damn thing to stop it. It’s the biggest reason why he never went over to the wolf 100% like he just did. Already, he could feel those cloying tendrils of addiction sinking into his mind, urging him to let go again.

It was Lola, standing there brazenly and defiantly against him, that managed to help him keep his head.

“I love you.”

She had really just said that, right? He knew she did but at the same time, a nagging bit of doubt kept pulsing in the back of his mind. After all, how could anybody love a monster like the one he’d just been.

The massive, twisted body of his werewolf form started to shrink as it returned to his normal, human one. His muzzle shrank back into his face. The rows of sharp fangs were pushed out of his mouth by regular teeth. His fur fell off in thick clumps to the ground. The length and musculature of his arms and legs returned to normal. His claws shrank until they were regular human fingernails again.

The tattered remains of his clothing slipped off his body once he was himself again and he stood in the moonlight, naked with only ghoul blood covering him. Then the relief of still being alive and not having Lola ripped into several gory pieces was swept away by a rising tide of anger. His eyes narrowed harshly and he felt heat rush to his face. He took a few steps toward her, practically spluttering. He was so angry.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” he screamed, gesturing wildly with his hands.

For her part, she didn’t say anything or give him any kind of answer. She remained there with no emotion on her face except some tears still glistening in her eyes and her lip quivering slightly from the overwhelming happiness and joy she felt at seeing him back to his old self again.

“You could have been killed a dozen times over, Lola.” He continued his ranting, needing to get the abundance of his own emotions out of him, like purging something toxic from his body. “I told you to run and yet you stayed. I wasn’t telling you to run out of fear that they would kill you. Don’t you understand that? I was afraid I would.”

Lola took in all his anger, and let him continue to rage out. She could tell he needed it badly and besides, with the overabundance of positive emotions welling up from inside her, she could take it. Hell, in certain lights and points of view, she knew she even deserved it. She had done a lot of stupid things in a very short amount of time. In fact, she was actually surprised she was still alive. A little anyway. Her instincts had done a lot of the talking and the walking during that whole ordeal. It may have been objectively stupid to listen to the ones telling her to go back and check on Russel and then stand up to his werewolf form as it charged directly at her but the results couldn’t be argued with.

She had stopped him.

And now he was himself again.

Was it all thanks to her? Probably not, but she knew she had a little bit of a helping hand.

“...can’t believe you,” Russel went on, continuing his tirade without needing air it seemed. “Do you have a death wish or something?”

He gestured at himself and the blood-splattered, gore-flecked state he was in.

“Look at me,” he said. “This blood could have been yours and trust me, Lola, I was close. A lot closer than you might think.”

She thought he might be close to being done with all his yelling. She didn’t want to interrupt him and didn’t want to cut him off if he still had some words left inside he needed to get out.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” he asked, the anger starting to dissolve from his face. His eyes softened dramatically and actually looked concerned now.

Did I overstep? Is she mad at me for the yelling? Was I being too hard on her?

He felt somewhat foolish now, standing there in the middle of the night on a rocky hilltop shouting at the woman he had just fought so hard to protect. He started feeling bad and thought maybe he had overstepped and took things too far. Of course, he wouldn’t have needed to feel any sort of way like that if she had just listened to him in the first place. She was fucking lucky when he was lost to the wolf, it had focused more on the ghouls and oni than her. The wolf had known the whole time she was there of course. He’d heard her heart beating. Smelled that vaguely floral scent mixed with the sharp, almost metallic, scent of fear. It had even spied her watching from her vantage point on numerous occasions.

It would have killed her without hesitation if the ghouls and oni hadn’t been so damn entertaining for it. He despised how that came across to him inside his own head. He cherished the rich and long history of his kingdom and being a werewolf but there were times when he thought it would have been much simpler of a life being just human.

Like Lola.

“Well?” he asked when he realized she hadn’t answered his previous question. There was still a sharp bite to his words but they had grown a lot softer now. “Do you?”

Lola didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. Words didn’t matter anymore. She took a step closer to him, then another. When she got close enough, she hurled herself at him and wrapped both arms around his neck.

Then she kissed him.

Deeply.

At first, he was so shocked, he didn’t respond back. Or rather, his body didn’t respond back. Her arms tightened around him but not in a painful way. It was decidedly pleasant. Comforting even. Then his body started to react to hers. He kissed her back, their lips pressing together in a dizzying sensation of pure bliss. He felt her tongue slide into his mouth and glide over his. He felt her body seem to mold itself perfectly to him, like she just fit with him.

His hands slid down her smooth, firm back and started to rip at the fabric of her shirt, looking for purchase. Once he had it, he ripped her shirt off, too impatient to mess with pulling the damn thing over her head. She gasped softly, her lips pulling away from him in that moment of ecstasy.

He turned her around so that the soft but firm cheeks of her ass grinded into him. He pulled off her shirt then, baring her breasts in the moonlight. He slid a hand upward and cupped one of them, feeling the hard roundness of her nipple against his palm. She moved and writhed with him, soft moans escaping from her every few seconds.

Russel couldn’t help but lose himself to yet another base impulse but this one, he realized with pleased contentment, was much stronger. And a hell of a lot more fun.

His head dipped down toward her neck and he kissed the skin there. After he pulled away, he licked her earlobe and whispered to her.

“I love you too.”