Chapter 1.2

We lived about a ten-minute walk away from the flower shop, so I always walked to and from work. Amy hated when I walked home in the winter when it got dark early. She always worried I would be mugged in an alleyway, even though we were in a pretty safe little college town and there were only about two alleys in the entire town.

It was a cold night, winter still trying desperately to hold on to New England for just a little longer before spring broke through. The cold was numbing my nose and nipping at my cheeks as we walked at a brisk pace, with our hands deep in our pockets, neither of us wanting to be in the cold longer than we had to.

I could see our small apartment building up ahead, the porch light glowing invitingly. It was a two-story Victorian-style house that had been turned into three apartments decades ago. Amy and I lived on the second floor. Below us was Sarah, a near-goth-type Sophomore who lived with her boyfriend Jason who was a bartender and musician at the college bar down the street. The basement apartment was occupied by our landlady Joan, who was a quiet, forty-something woman who worked in the accounting department at the college and mostly kept to herself. As off-campus apartments went, it was a good one. I was going to miss it when I moved to who-knows where after graduation.

A frown creased my lips as I thought about after graduation. All my friends, even Amy, had plans for what was next once we were done with school. Amy was hoping to she would be offered a full-time position at the clinic she was interning at, other classmates and friends were lining up interviews or internships or planning to move back home.

I still hadn’t figured out what I was going to do after graduation and I didn’t want to think about it at that moment. That was a worry for another day.

I shook my head a little to clear my mind of the looming decisions about my future. As I did, a flash of something caught my eye off to the left. I turned, peering into the edge of the woods across the street, slowing my steps.

“Cam?” Amy said from a few paces in front of me, realizing I had stopped walking. “What are you looking at?” She took a few steps, returning to my side and turning to look in the direction I was staring.

“I… I don’t know. I thought I saw something…” I trailed off. I was cold and had no reason to keep standing there, staring into the darkening woods, but something was keeping my attention.

Amy put her hand around my elbow, “Come on, it’s cold,” she said, gently pulling me towards home.

I dragged my eyes away from the woods, forcing myself to turn and keep walking, telling myself I was imagining things. Then I saw it again, but clearer this time. There was a definite flash of movement in the woods, a light reflecting off something.

“There! Did you see that?” I asked Amy, pointing where I had seen the flash.

“See what? There is nothing there,” she said, still pulling me towards the apartment.

I dug my heels in, stopping again, my eyes trained on the area of the woods where I had seen movement.

“Cam,” Amy said seriously. "It’s probably an animal that is going to maul us if we get to close. Let’s go!” she pulled my arm with a sharp jerk that pulled me out of my thoughts.

“You’re right, sorry,” I muttered, walking arm-in-arm with her to the porch. I couldn’t help but feel like someone, or something, was watching me from the woods.

Amy stood in the dark of her bedroom window, staring out at the area of woods where Cam thought she had seen something. She hadn’t admitted it to Cam, but she thought there was something in the woods too. She wasn’t in a hurry to go see what it was with Cam by her side.

Amy hadn’t seen the movement Cam did, but Amy could hear the faint rustle of leaves and crack of tiny branches, as if someone was trying to carefully move their weight. She also had smelled something in the woods; something unhuman and different. Something she couldn’t identify.

Cam hadn’t been able to hear or smell what Amy did, because Cam was just a human. She didn’t have the super-human hearing and scent that Amy did as a werewolf.

Amy hadn’t wanted to investigate the woods while Cam was there; she had no idea that werewolves and other supernatural beings existed, let alone that her best friend was one. It would have put Cam at risk of harm or learning Amy’s secret if Amy had brought her into the woods to investigate.

Amy pulled the curtains closed with a snap and forced herself to move away from the window. She didn’t know what had been in those woods, and had no reason to think it was hostile, but her instincts told her something wasn’t quite right. The little hairs on the back of Amy’s neck hadn’t relaxed yet, even though she and Cam had been inside for hours. She considered calling her boyfriend, Ryder, who was also a werewolf, and mentioning it to him. Ryder and the pack Alpha, Grimm, had been tracking something unknown in the area that had been getting too close to the pack’s land. After some internal debate, Amy decided she would mention it to Ryder tomorrow. There was no sense in worrying him this late. It was probably nothing after all.

She flopped herself onto the bed, pulled the blankets up to her ears and tried to force herself to ignore the odd feeling she had and go to sleep.