CHAPTER TEN
house of wolves

WHEN THEY RETURN TO THE LAHOTES' PLACE in the evening, Violet can't shake the relief settling over her shoulders that the sleepover is still in effect. After the events of today, the idea of going back to an empty house and dealing with her hyperactive imagination or hallucinations of moving shadows growing teeth and red eyes alone soured her gut.

Kit had invited the other boys over, and Violet was a little more than interested in pressing them for questions about werewolves. Sage couldn't care less who joined, though the disgruntled sound in the back of her throat when Jared seemed to steal ounces of Kit's attention from her friends at a time indicated that it wasn't the outcome of their little adventure that she favoured.

Since Kit had fended off the vampire, however, it was only fair she had free reign over the rest of the day. Plus, it was the sensible call for the pack to stick together tonight; considering Violet was a marked target, a loose end, and Sage had been inadvertently caught in the crossfire, whatever line of defence presented itself to them, they would accept without complaint. While the girls changed out of their hiking attire and swapped it for fresh clothes, the boys set up camp in the backyard. A fire pit filled with chopped wood for a potential bonfire had been set aside to a corner, and lawn chairs were arranged in a semi-circle, as though they were expecting to spectate the girls' shenanigans. Snacks piled high at their feet, and Sage dipped out of filming duties to pilfer from a bowl of Doritos every now and then.

While the three girls took their skateboards to ramps and rails in Kit's backyard, the boys watched. By the time Violet was satisfied with her nose-slides enough for Sage to begin filming, sweat glistened on her forehead, and her hair was plastered to her temples. Leaning against a ramp, she waited out Kit's turn at completing a line of tricks that Sage was artfully recording on her video camera. Tipping her head back, Violet let out a deep exhale into the sunless sky, but she couldn't breathe the tension out of her shoulders.

Monsters were real. She'd always known it. Perhaps not immediately, but she hadn't been foolish enough to dismiss cold evidence that night in the parking lot four years ago. Stranger than the feeling that she no longer had to fight for someone to believe her while she clung to seams of memory in hopes that they'd see what she could see, was that she wasn't afraid. Angry, unsatisfied, unnerved—all of those, she felt without a doubt. But she hadn't come back to Forks to cower at the moment of truth. Korchaks didn't submit. Korchaks didn't hide from their adversaries. She would show her father she had the spine and grip on her clinical sanity that he thought she'd been lacking all these years.

Somewhere along getting lost in her thought patterns, Violet's gaze had drifted to Paul. Sandwiched between Embry and Quil, their quick, light banter trapped him in place. But he'd been ignoring their conversations, and made no attempt to contribute. Instead, he met her icy gaze with an indecipherable look.

Ever since he'd shown up in the woods to herd them back to Sam's house, Violet had been planning on cornering him and choking the answers she'd been chasing after from him when push came to shove. Circumstance forced her to wait. Wait for a quieter pocket in time where they could lay out their olive branches and map her burning questions to his answers.

With great restraint, Violet waited. She threw herself into skating so she didn't have to torture herself with the pressing questions that wouldn't have their answers yet. Falling and getting back up, falling and trying again, falling and swearing colourfully and kicking her board like a dog that won't do her bidding. The friction of concrete against her jeans rips skin off her kneecaps. Yes, she thinks, good. The pain keeps her mind sharp, keeps her from thinking of much else.

At seven, the sun began to set, and the evening breeze seemed to strip Violet's skin off her bones. Already her jeans had begun to soak up the blood on her skinned knees from a fall she'd taken earlier, bright red spots that sent flares of panic shooting through her veins. Paranoia iced her blood. Vampires could smell blood. What if that woman came back for them? What if Violet had led her to them without meaning to? How much danger has she already put them in?

She huddled close to Kit, feeding off the natural warmth wicking off her body. Someone lit the bonfire, and they'd begun toasting marshmallows over the flickering flames that threw dancing shadows over their faces. Opting to play observer, Violet remained silent, abstaining from the conversation that switched between topics of debate at rapid-fire speed. With how easy-going Kit's pack was, the girls integrated into the rowdy dynamic easily. From time to time, the group split. Embry, Quil and Sage had taken up debating the best soccer teams while Kit and Jared whispered private jokes at each other.

When the firelight dwindled and burnt to embers glowering back at them, a thousand incandescent eyes in a pile of ash, so had most of the conversation and all of the food. By the end of the night, Sage had roped Jared, Embry, and Jacob—the boy who'd been with Bella that day on the road—into a political coup with an agenda Violet couldn't be bothered to keep up with.

When the sky darkened into an abyss of black, veiled too thickly by clouds to see stars, they moved to the living room where someone had dug up enough blankets to survive a blizzard, and piled them on the couch. Air mattresses had been set up, pushed against the couch to form one giant bed, and the coffee table had been moved out of the way, so the entire area was just bedding. When Violet and Sage went upstairs to change out of their sweat-soaked clothes into pajamas, Paul put a movie in. By the time the two girls came back, the werewolves had already arranged themselves on the couch and the air mattresses comfortably, swaddled in blankets, leaving enough space in the centre—where Sage and Violet would have a wolf on every side—for them to occupy. Despite the safety precautions they'd obviously schemed and the bandages secured around the bloodied scrapes on her knees and elbows, Violet couldn't ease the paranoia clinging to her like a second skin. What if the wolves weren't enough?

"Sage, come sit with me!" Embry said, patting the vacant spot between himself and Jacob earnestly. Amusement curving her lips, Sage scoffed, but clambered over Kit and Jared to flop into the empty space.

That left Violet with the spot between Paul and Kit on one of the air mattresses. She picked a blue throw pillow off the couch and folded herself into the space, trying not to touch Paul. Heat radiated into her space, emanating from both werewolves on either side. Somehow the engulfing warmth made her all the more self-conscious. Tugging the sleeves of her sweater down to her knuckles, silently commanding them to stay in a flash of anxiety twisting her guts, should the sleeves somehow ride up past her slashed-up wrists and put her scars and shame on full display. There would be no coming back from that kind of exposure.

"Stop tryna slide, dude," Jared snickered, leaning against Kit, who muffled a snort behind her hand. "She doesn't swing your way."

The sound of indignation Embry made wasn't human. "She's a cool chick, you panini head," he sniffs, throwing an arm around Sage's shoulders, narrowing his eyes at Jared, "we're still planning on overthrowing the government here, alright? You be very careful who you make fun of from now on."

"You guys are such morons," Jacob said, guffawing. Quil whacks him over the head with a cushion. Shock sparks in Jacob's dark eyes as he gapes at Quil in mock outrage. Without wasting a second, he grabs another cushion and slams it into Quil's face.

"Pillow fight!" Embry roars, and everyone scrambles to untangle themselves from their blankets to snatch a pillow off the couch. Choosing to abstain from the pandemonium, Violet puts her hands up in mock surrender. Paul does the same, viciously cussing Jacob out when he gets pegged in the face by a cushion anyway. A growl thundered from his chest as he bared his teeth. Jacob backed off instantly, smirking.

Scooting backwards to the edge of the furthest air mattress to avoid getting trampled, Violet allows the slightest of smiles to ghost her lips as she watches the wolves and her friends declare war against each other, lunging and tackling and fighting dirty, wielding cushions like sledgehammers and shields. Sage lets out a shrill scream as Jacob flings his cushion at her, only to have Jared dive dramatically in the way, taking the impact of the cushion to the chest. Quil lets out a plaintive whine of exaggerated agony when Kit swings her cushion into his face a little harder than necessary. Kit gasps, rushing to cradle Quil's face in her hands and apologising profusely. Paul laughs as his sister succumbs to her own weakness of being more empathetic than others deserve, leaving an opening for Embry to knock her down and attempt to smother her with his cushion. Ducking behind the nearest body, Sage uses Jacob as a meat shield when Quil lunges at her. Quil ends up bowling Jacob over on the couch instead. Sage's cackle cuts through the air, siphoning through the sounds of the movie.

Colours from the TV they were currently ignoring flit across the room. An explosion on the screen sets the white walls of the living room ablaze with a gaudy orange, throwing shadows made by monsters across the floor and into the gaunt hollows of their faces. A sudden surge of blue flooding the screen drenches their skin in an ocean, and for a second, Violet can't differentiate between who's who in the chaos of laughter and shrieking and rapid-fire banter. Sitting on the sidelines, she feels Paul's heavy stare boring into her cheek. Feels him watching her as they sit out of the ongoing battle, children in god-like bodies playing childish games with a war god's vehemence. Out of periphery, she watches him back.

Paul's face is carefully blank. Violet doesn't try to read him.

Onscreen, a red car tears across a highway, and crimson slashes across the room for a fleeting second. Violet's gut churns. In the red light, the room looks too soaked in blood. She straightens her spine. Surrounded by werewolves who can fend off one vampire, she is safe as life. She tells herself this. It beats in her head, a mantra that grows more and more convincing.

—YOU CANNOT AFFORD TO FALL FOR FALSE SECURITY—

Violet turns to face Paul to hide her immediate flinch—a little too sharply, a little too abruptly, but she composes her features before he can catch on. In the splash of pink hues spilling from the screen, Paul's gaze doesn't waver. There's definitely something soft in his features, once wired with skin-deep irritability that would normally set his explosive temper off with just an ill-timed look, now replaced by a foreign expression so indecipherable her lips twist into a sneer. A sneer she reserves for things she doesn't understand.

Violet tolerates the staring another minute before she says, "Stop."

Paul lifts a brow. "I didn't do anything."

Violet's deadpan look incites a small smirk from Paul. "Didn't your mother teach you that staring is rude?"

"My mother's hardly got time for me or my manners while she's working overnight shifts at the hospital to fix the wreckage in our finances while my father's gone AWOL," Paul says, sarcasm dripping from his tongue. Her wry antipathy doesn't wipe the look off his face. "Sorry if my people skills aren't spectacular."

Violet digs a finger into Paul's cheek, not hard enough to really hurt, but enough to turn his face away. "Stop looking at me like that."

Paul curls a hand around her finger. "Like what?" A hint of challenge illuminates his tone.

Violet shrugs, pulling her hand back. Paul holds fast, forcing her to answer. The callouses on his fingers dig into her skin. Violet lets out an explosive sigh. "You tell me."

Paul's smirk falters, but he doesn't drop her hand. "I'm sorry," he murmurs, toying with her fingers, "for the shit I said on the beach about not believing you. I did, really, I did believe you, and I still do. I just didn't want to risk our pack's secret. I thought by refuting your story, you'd be discouraged from your search for answers."

"Terrible idea, really," Violet drawls, relishing the warmth seeping into her palm as he traces idle patterns into her hand. For a stupidly selfish moment, she considers letting it stay there. Let her hand stay on his knee as he draws stars and circles into her palm with his finger. Let her sleeve slip upward, upward, upward. Let him find her scars. Just as long as the warmth stays. "One way or another, I get what I want. And now I want to make this bloodsucker pay."

"Yeah, I figured."

Panic stabs her in the chest when his thumb brushes the hem of her sleeve. Heart pounding, she snatches her hand back. Paul flicks her a questioning look.

With a cool smile, she waves him off. "Look, you're forgiven. Just... stop being weird."

Rolling his eyes, Paul shoves her shoulder hard enough for her to topple over sideways. "I was being sincere. My mother taught me that, at least. What'd yours teach you? To attack boys with your smartmouth? At least say please if you're asking."

Violet snorts. "I don't ask."

Paul hits her in the face with a cushion and she goes down, shrieking in outrage.

☾

THERE'S NO DENYING THE BRUISES on her conscience, the way Violet has to grind her heel atop the terror that sneaks up on her when the ice fortress around her heart lowers its walls and she's stripped bare of her defences. Some nights she's gripped by this unrelenting paranoia that plunges her head-first into the water-filled bucket of purgatory, too terrified to wonder if it's the villain's fingers or her own blades that snuck it's way through her ribcage and gave her scars that were hers to atone.

Same goes for the darkness that pulls her by the hair at night and pushes her mouth into her pillow to teach her to appreciate breathing. Is this what you wanted? What do you know about being alive when so much of you is dead?

Until the iron voice steps in, roaring for her to turn on the light and pick up her switchblade and do what she does best: —BEAT IT— Years and years and Violet still hasn't figured out why that iron voice lurks in her subliminal consciousness, a tiger flexing its claws against an uncomfortable cage one size too small. It's an afflicted cocktail of the demons that'd plagued her since Luka's closed-casket funeral, the grief she'd sharpened into knife-point anger, primal instinct, laser-like task-focus, and her father's lessons in power and manipulation. Tormenting her, helping her, fanning the flames forging her blade-like fury. Friend or foe? She's postulated that question before, when it'd first come. Know thy enemy, her father always said. So she asks: Where did you come from?

—THROUGH A DOOR IN YOUR SOUL THAT YOU BUILT—

Friend or foe? she asks again, with great difficulty (speaking with the loaded gun in her head feels like dragging a razor across her gums) but her father didn't raise a weakling.

—DEPENDS: HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR REFLECTION?—

It doesn't entertain her pressing questions of its origin anymore. But it's still there, a presence that only grows heavier by the day. Sometime Violet wonders where it is when she's fever dreaming. Perhaps it leaves her to duke out her own demons. Perhaps its absence invites more darkness.

Tonight the nightmare is different.

Dirt explodes around the bare soles of her feet, smatters her ankles a speckled brown, and stains the shredded bottoms of her sweatpants. Like missiles, her footfalls pound the unsusceptible earth, kicking and spraying up bunches of loose soil onto the ground behind her. They burrow under her nails, into the crevices between her toes, imprinting themselves into her bloodied skin as she thunders through the woods. She can feel the tiny stings ripple from the multiplex of cuts on her legs, but the rest of her is numb — numb with the fear from the knowledge of what's about to happen if she even dared to hesitate even for a micro-fraction of a second. Burning muscles scorch the insides of her skin, chorusing pitiless cries with dismal shrieks as she darts past the looming trees and stumbles gracelessly through the underbrush.

Low-hanging branches scratch at her forearms, clawed fingers drawing blood, snatching at the seams of her sweater. The dense undergrowth provides little room for error. Roots snag her toes, tripping her up; ferns blossoming in clusters on the floor of the woods narrow the paths down into tight channels. There's an estranged roaring in her ears as she wills her legs to go faster. A wrangled sob lodges in her throat and she chokes on the helplessness.

Behind her head, her flaxen hair streams out, suspended like a wild, golden flag tarnished by mud and studded with snared twigs and small leaves. The canopy spiderwebs the garish sunlight onto her pallid skin as she darts past thick trunks, narrowly missing protruding bark. She flinches as shadows attack her face. She puts her hands out in front of her, batting uselessly at the things she can't touch, and avoiding whatever she can. The woman. The monster. Flashes of blood red eyes and white fangs cut across her vision. Flaming red hair in snatches of periphery. Wicked laughter echoing in her ears. The monster is bearing down on her, toying with her. Violet can feel her gaining ground, closing the gap between them. She can feel the warmth of her breaths pouring down her neck, pulverising her spine.

Above, a crow caws, and she hears the strong beating of its inky wings; feels the wind of its movements on her face.

Tears blur her vision — a hot, sticky film that clings to her eyes and streaks down her cheeks. She wipes them away hastily with the back of her hand, not once faltering in her steps even though she's blinded by the sweat streaming down her temples and stinging her eyes. Pounding, pounding, pounding. Her bones quake and her muscles ache, but she doesn't stop. Pounding, pounding, pounding. She's running on pure adrenaline, but she still feels like she's crawling through treacle. Fear freezes her veins, and she can feel her rampant heart hammering aggressively against her ribcage, a feral beast unbridled and ready to knock the walls of its confinement down.

She glances over her shoulder. The path she's stumbled down is empty, and yet, the heavy press of eyes in the forest burns into her skin. She's trapped. The moment she whips her head back to face forward, an icy hand closes around her throat in a deathlike grip. Cold sears into her skin, the hand—solid as marble, a set of manacles clamped over her neck—constricts, tight enough to block her airway. But it's the face that chokes the breath from her lungs in a strangled scream. Amused, the monster wearing a woman's face laughs, teeth glinting in the sunlight. Red eyes flickering hell and fire, a promise of blood and pain.

The monster lifts Violet off the ground as though she weighs nothing. Panic gripping at her spine, Violet scrabbles at the monster's hand, clawing desperately at her wrist, only to have her fingers glance off and her nails break and tear open on rock-hard skin. Her feet dangle inches off the ground.

  "Hello, little one," the monster purrs. The world tilts, a rug ripping out from under her feet. "You can't outrun me. Don't try."

Violet gasps. The monster grins. A flash of teeth. A reckoning. A glint of death.

Just before the monster's jaws close around her neck, Violet's eyes snap open as she jerks awake, slamming her elbow into someone's muscular chest.

The sudden movement makes the person to her left groan, but they don't wake. Mind scattering in a million directions, Violet blinks fiercely for a second, breathing hard, as the night's events come rushing back in staggered pieces. Hiking in the woods with Sage and Kit. The monster. Kit turning into a wolf. Sam Uley's house. The werewolves. The sleepover, the pillow fight, and finally falling asleep in a tangle of sheets and limbs and warm bodies feeling the safest she's ever been in a long time. Around her, the Lahotes' living room seethes in shadows, blurry as her eyes work to refocus.

A cool breeze flutters in through the windows, opened just a crack to let the frigid air in. Someone's light snoring permeates the silence of the night. The air mattresses groan and hiss with every slight shifting of weight. Everyone's still tangled up with each other. A pack of wolves and their two humans. Body heat burns against her back and her front, and a heavy weight pressing down over her waist. A stinging ache pulses over her wrists and forearms.

A pair of headlights slants through the windows as a car cruises past on the street outside, bathing the walls in a flash of white light, illuminating the makeshift bedding they'd put together last night. Moonlight cuts into the room, casting the lumpy figures in the huge bedding in a silver glow. When her vision finally adjusts, Violet freezes. Her nails are crusted with blood. Her stomach curdles. Sometime during the night her sleeves had fallen down her wrist, exposing her mutilated arm. Angry pink lines were raked down the pale skin, as though she'd been scratching at her old scars, the tally marks over her arms, like she'd wanted to reopen them. Blood seeped out of some of the more vicious cuts, dotting the sleeves of her shirt. Heart pounding in her ears, she pulls her sleeves over her knuckles.

They didn't see, she has to tell herself when the panic bubbles up into near hysteria and she has to choke back a sharp inhale. They didn't see. No one saw your lapses in sanity. No one knows about the person you become when you're alone behind closed doors, left to the twisted Labyrinth of your mind and the shards of your broken thoughts you cut yourself open on night by night, mark by mark, scar by scar. They didn't see. They don't know you are ruination, blood speckling the sink, x-acto razor blades grinning serrated teeth, the soft hiss of skin tearing apart, broken veins and mutilated everything, the quiet chaos falling apart alone, alone, alone, again and again and again. Until you put yourself back together so you can look your father in the eyes with the lies you tell yourself.

—QUIET—

But that's not the worst of all.

Behind Violet, Kit shifts, kicking off the blanket tangling up her long legs. After a frozen moment, Kit settles, and doesn't stir. Relief floods her bloodstream when Kit doesn't turn around. But the moment of reprieve passes just as quickly as it had come. Violet scowls at the boy curled up against her. Or, more specifically, at his chest, and his muscular arm, a deadweight thrown over her waist. When they'd fallen asleep, finally settling down after the pillow fight to finish watching the movie, Violet had been facing Kit, and Paul had been turned in the other direction. Somehow, they'd managed to move around so that they were essentially within close enough proximity to be considered incriminating.

  "You little shit," Violet hisses, struggling to pry his arm off her.

Stirring, Paul groans, "What the fuck." His voice is raspy, still in limbo between waking and asleep.

Irritation lances through her veins when he doesn't immediately move. "Get your arm off me."

  "Go away," Paul grunts, throwing his other arm over his eyes, but otherwise doesn't take his arm off. If possible, he moves in closer, pulling her into his warmth.

When his breathing evens out again, Violet's mouth falls open in indignation. Fuming, she glowers into the wall of his chest, regretting leaving her knives in her bag upstairs while detailing Paul's painful demise in her head. Every bone she will break, every stab to his face, brings a rush through her veins, but none quells the resentment burning away at her gut.

  "I hate you so goddamn much," Violet growls, a lethal edge in her tone, sharp enough to slice through bone. In a fit of childish vindication, she slams her fist against his chest, hard enough to knock a warning, but not hard enough to hurt, evidently. Paul doesn't even flinch, nor does he give any indication that he's felt her mini tantrum. But because his arm is shielding his face, because Violet is too caught up seething in her trapped state, she fails to notice the impish smile curving his lips.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
this chapter was super self-indulgent and i'm not sorry. unfortunately paul and violet are still very much a slowburn. :) it's gonna take awhile