Chapter 14

            Hearing my weekend alarm go off, I reached over to my bedside table and turned it off, then lay face down and tried to bury my head under my pillow without having to move my arms. The brightness from outside trailed in through my curtains and it was hurting my head a little to have the ambient light around me; however, knowing I wasn’t going to get back to sleep, I decided to get up again and take some tablets.

            As I shuffled through my drawers looking for the box, I heard tapping on my door; it was so faint that I wouldn’t have noticed it if I was still in bed.

            I answered with the door slightly open, and when I realised it was Baz I opened it fully to let him in (for some reason he had decided to come to me as a wolf).

            ‘Hey, Baz. I’m sorry if you heard me shouting earlier, or heard me stomping up the stairs. The guys put me in a mood,’ I explained as he hopped onto my bed and curled up, propping his head over his curled up front legs and watched me.

            Sitting down next to him, I leant forward and, with my elbows on my knees, put my head in my hands covering my face. His wet nose was cold against my skin as he tried to push one of my hands out of the way; I let him and rested my left cheek on my left hand so I could look at him. His eyes didn’t meet mine, and at first I thought he was staring at my breasts but then, after my eyes wandered round the room in an embarrassed manner, realised he was staring at my exposed skin where his necklace should be hanging.

            In response to his gesture, I lifted my free hand up and ran my fingers over the area he had just been observing. My eyes fell to look at his paws. ‘In my anger, with them, I broke the chain as I had hold of it during my rant at them.’

            In annoyance, as his ears showed, he hopped down off the bed and then changed to his human form. ‘Well, it’s a good thing that the chain can be replaced. Don’t you have any other necklaces?’ he asked and then scanned my room to look for my many jewellery boxes.

            ‘Yeh, somewhere. So you aren’t mad at me?’ I asked while standing and putting my arms around his waist from behind.

            ‘Mad? Why would I be mad? It’s just the chain. If you’d lost it or broke the pendant then maybe I’d be upset, but I wouldn’t get mad at you,’ he said while rummaging through my necklace drawer in my jewellery wardrobe (it was a miniature version of a full size one). ‘Hun, let me look for another chain for you and then you can hug me all you like.’ To that, I let go and fetched my necklace for him to change chains. After some serious concentration, he had managed to slip the new chain through the little hoop on the pendant and clasped the ends together, placing it back on my desk where it wouldn’t fall off. Walking over and sitting down, he joined me on the edge of the bed. ‘How’s your head now?’ he asked while stroking his thumb across my forehead.

            ‘Much better now. I was going to take some pills just as you knocked but now I don’t need them since I have you here,’ I said with a smile on the end.

            ‘I did wonder why you were stomping up the stairs. So when I got out of the shower, I went down and asked the guys what the hell had been going on. When they’d finished telling me, I stayed downstairs and sat and thought about how it all might seem to you. But now I’m here and you can tell me your end of the argument.’ And so I told him what had happened downstairs between me and the guys.

            ‘And then I came up here, realised I had broken the chain and then fell asleep until my afternoon alarm woke me up,’ I concluded my little story.

            All the time, he had sat there and listened, stroking and caressing me at the same time as I spoke; I didn’t mind it as it didn’t distract me from what I was saying. ‘Just ignore them. I think what’s happened is that they said it the wrong way and that’s how you took it. Don’t start ranting at me about it,’ he added at my opening mouth. ‘I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just saying that’s how I see it. But we are sort of a pack and we look out for each other; and since you’re mine, as my girlfriend, I think they just want to make sure neither of us get hurt.’

            When he’d finished talking, I slunk down backwards on my bed and thought about what he had just said. Ok, so maybe I overreacted a bit, I thought to myself. I mean, they were looking at me in a funny way. Maybe they were just jealous? I considered.

            Stood at the sidelines, I watched as the boys ran around playing football. Next to me stood Ashley and next to her, Sharlene. We watched, almost uninterested except for the fact that there were ten muscular, handsome men running around topless on the pitch in front of us. It was clear that Ashley had eyes for Charlie; he was the one her eyes followed round the pitch most. As for Sharlene, I wasn’t really sure who she fancied, if she did at all but I kept my thoughts to myself and continued to watch the match for another whole hour (werewolves could withstand more physical exercise than humans).

            Time went by and the sun was just starting to set below the horizon as the last goal was put in by Toby; they all walked over and pulled on their tops, jumpers and hoodies. I was now sat on the top of the bar that ran around the perimeter of the pitch. When Baz had reached me, I put my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck locking them in place with my hands and he (after wrapping his arms securely around me) picked me up and spun us round a few times while kissing me sweetly. Dropping me down slowly, he looked over to what everyone else was doing; I kept my eyes on his face and followed his eyes as they moved in their sockets.

            ‘You look like you’re obsessed with me when you do that,’ he commented without looking straight at me; but then he eyed me with his dark smile that I always blushed at. ‘Are you ever going to take that off?’ he asked, and his eyes rolled down to stare at my necklace.

            Shaking my head, I replied. ‘Never, except at night as I don’t want to break it or strangle myself with it in the night. Oh, and also when I have a shower.’

            ‘I see. So have any of the girls asked you about it or said anything?’ he asked.

            I explained how Ash had noticed when we had hugged (we hadn’t seen each other in awhile) and that I told her only why he had got it me. I had decided to hold back on the whole row thing and the breaking the chain and stuff as we were all heading back to Sharlene’s place for some hanging out (apparently her parent’s had a massive house, though not quite a mansion).

            In my car, I had Baz, Charlie, Kevin and Ashley (who was sat, a little squashed, between Charlie and Kev). Derek and Toby were in one of the other two cars. Baz decided that it was best we didn’t have any music on since, according to him, I hadn’t driven with a full car before and I might get too distracted and have a small crash or bump. He cared too much sometimes, but that was one of the best parts about him.

            ‘Have any of you been to Sharlene’s before?’ Ashley asked to everyone, she could barely keep her excitement to herself.

            ‘Nope,’ we all replied in unison.

            ‘Her house, well parents’ house, is huge! Seriously there’s like about seven bedrooms, all with en suites and only three of them are used,’ she explained, with a rather high pitched tone.

            The air in the car become a little thicker; and looking in my rear view mirror, noticed how she and Charlie now looked at each other, their gazes seemed to portray a kind of hunger that I sometimes saw in Baz’s eyes whenever he wanted a certain kind of attention. Averting my stare back to the road ahead, I followed the car in front round a few more corners until it slowed down and pulled into a long driveway.

            I stopped and watched where Sharlene was parking and then parked up next to her leaving enough room for both our doors to be fully opened on their hinges without hitting the other’s.

            Bags unloaded and cars locked, most of us gawped at the size of Sharlene’s house (it was more like a mansion than we had been lead to believe) and then walked over the gravel path to the front door.

            Sharlene showed me and Ashley round the house, partly so we could chat without the boys listening in and partly so we knew which bedrooms were free; Sharlene convinced us that her parents wouldn’t mind us sharing rooms with our boyfriends, so long as we were quiet (and she said this with a weird tone of sexiness in her words).

            ‘Trust me, Sharlene; I won’t let anything happen while I’m in someone else’s house,’ was my answer to her assumptions.

            ‘Well, in case something does happen I’m just giving you the heads up,’ she commented back, to which she and Ashley started giggling. After about a whole second of thought, I giggled along too when I realised that that could be taken in two ways.

            ‘Are you three done with the house viewing?!’ one of the lads shouted up.

            We each leaned over the banister along the upstairs landing and looked down at the seven of them standing together in the large hallway (which was probably about the size of the kitchen in my house).

            Sharlene shouted down her reply. ‘Yes! We’ll meet you in the front room, Jamie. You can all scoot off to there, and don’t break anything!’ she added as they all wandered off together. ‘Uh, sometimes I feel like a need a collar and leash for him,’ Sharlene commented as she headed towards the stairs, running her hand along the banister as she went. Ashley and I eyed each other with pursed lips to stop ourselves from laughing too loudly. ‘Speaking of collars, Baz’s one on you is really pretty,’ Sharlene commented as she slowly made her way down the steps; Ash started to follow and so did I.

            ‘It’s not a collar, it’s a pendant. Although it has an engraving on the reverse,’ I explained.

            Ashley’s eyes lit up as she turned her head to look at me. ‘Oh, my God! You didn’t tell me that,’ she exclaimed.

‘Well, I didn’t remember that when I told you about it,’ I said with a shrug of my shoulders and holding my hands out as a sort of ward.

            ‘Ah. What does it say?’

            ‘Come here and I’ll show you.’ She stepped over and read out the words out loud with a pouted expression when she finished and puppy eyes (which I had never seen a female werewolf use before, it was very odd).

            ‘Cute, but can we please make our way downstairs now,’ Sharlene added, she was tapping her fingers on the stairwell’s banister waiting for us to catch up.

            ‘Yeh sorry,’ I apologised, tucking my necklace down my top as Ashley and I sprinted to the top and all the way down the flight of stairs.