The Bone Chapel

Consequences

"Were...were you calling me earlier?"

What a dumb question, I thought to myself. There's no way that voice was his.

Not that I could distinguish much from a whisper on the wind, but I could at least note the difference between Graham's rough, rattling timbre and the wispy, feminine voice that beckoned me — beckoned me to the bone chapel. I shuddered at the memory, forgetting that my every move was being scrutinized by a person that was arguably the town's most influential elder.

"I was," he answered, cocking his head to the side so the loose, sagging skin around his neck pinched and folded beneath his jawline, "but you seemed to be distracted by something. What might that have been?"

"I was lost."

He hummed to himself, taking a slight step forward, the twigs bending gently beneath his light weight.

"Whether full wolf or not, you should have heightened senses, including a nose capable of finding your way back home."

"Perhaps," I retorted with a bit more bite than I meant to. "However, it's useless if I don't have a home."

"Is Moonshade not your home?" He took another step forward without so much as a snap of a branch under his feet.

"No, it is not," I answered with conviction. I may not have known where I belonged, but I knew it wasn't there.

"And you think your home is out here? In the woods?" His careful trek forward stopped at a distance that wasn't close enough to be uncomfortable, but also too close to feel at ease. The proximity gave me a new perspective of the elusive elder. He stood at about my own height, though in decades past he likely stood a lot taller. Though age etched his ashen skin, laugh lines were few and far between. Frankly, he looked more like Hen's grandfather than father. He appeared to be in his eighties while she had to be in her mid to late thirties.

"I...I just went for a walk to clear my head." I couldn't understand the way my words stumbled, but something behind his smoky grey eyes had my body taut with tension.

"It is unbecoming of an Alpha's mate to lie to a clan elder." He straightened himself out, raising his height by only an inch, but still it felt like he towered over me. "You must learn diplomacy now. Honesty and respect will get you farther in this world." He offered a fatherly smile, but still his eyes bore into me.

"I am being honest. I needed to clear my head. Things have been a bit difficult for me lately, if you haven't heard."

"Oh, yes, I know." He chuckled, the sound a dry rasp. "Just as I know that the few occasions you have left your self-imprisonment have included walks by the tree line. Always edging yourself closer and closer."

"Yes," I responded with a shake of my head, "because there's no one to stare at me on the outskirts of town. I also haven't had great experiences within the woods, so I've been building up courage and..."

"Then why enter at all?" He shrugged his shoulders as if there wasn't a piercing accusation in his tone. "The woods are dangerous. It is our buffer from the outside world. Our protection only stretches so far. If you crossed the line, you would endanger yourself. You are an oddity ripe for investigation. Yet you think you can assimilate back into the human world, don't you?" He cocked his brow, and paused so I could appreciate his words. "You are not human. You are not welcome there."

"I'm not welcome here." I took a breath as my fists clenched. Something beneath my skin rippled and sizzled, sending waves of agitation up my spine. "And what do you know about me being human or not? Everett said that you don't know how to remove the mark."