Queen of Beasts: The Fallen Book One

The Trap

I ran most of the way back from work and ended up sweating like an absolute pig. Which is funny because pigs don't sweat. I wonder if Oliver knows that. I had a bit of a panic mode while taking a shower because I thought I had forgotten to lock the door, luckily there's a double bolt, so I made sure that it was secure. I ended up emptying my entire suitcase onto my spare bed just to try and find something decent to wear for tonight. Somehow I had completely forgotten that I had packed a pair of pleather pants, but that didn't mean I had much of a party top to go with them. I'm surprised to hear a knock on my door, and it opens before I respond.

"Hi, you decent?" Hendrik snorts,

"Well, if I wasn't too late now." I smile. "Are you all back already?"

"Technically, my brothers and I didn't go with everybody else. We went to a different area. But they wanted to catch up with the others, except I was kind of already buggered. So I decided to come home. What are you doing?"

"I got invited to a party tonight and the best I could find is these pants to wear with something nice, but I don't think I have anything good." He comes over to me and picks up the pants that I was pointing at.

"I mean, these are pretty decent. I'm sure you look great in them. What about pairing them with that top?" He points over towards one of my regular shirts, which is just a daggy button up checkered piece of clothing.

"What? That doesn't look right."

"No, no, watch this." He goes and picks up the shirt and gets me to put it on, on top of my singlet. Instead of buttoning everything up, he just wraps the middle in a bit of a knot. "If you just wear a decent bra without the singlet, I reckon you could pull that off. Although maybe you should switch to a pair of skinny jeans instead." I'm impressed, I hadn't actually thought of that.

"Wow, you're really good at this." He steps back as if I had just stepped on his tail.

"Oh yeah, well, we actually do have a sister back at home." That seems totally made up, but I'll bite.

"Cute how old is she?"

"Um, eight?"

"You're not sure how old she is?"

"You know, I'm just a brother like, I don't pay that much attention."

"And yet you pay attention to clothing a teenage girl should wear?"

"Well, of course I mean I look at girls a lot."

"I'm getting the feeling that you don't look at girls for the same reasons that your brothers do." He looks down at the floor and shoves his hands into his jean pockets, his hair flopping forward as if it was completely untamed. Just like the cat inside him, his hair is patched with different colors.

"Can you not tell anyone, please? It's a house full of guys. I don't want them to get the wrong idea." Every part of my body just wanted to reach out and hold him. So that's exactly what I do. Holding him tightly around the shoulders, I realized that he's actually a lot smaller than his brothers, even though they're supposed to be exactly the same. I can't imagine what a burden it must be to pretend to be like his brothers just to agree with them all the time.

"I will keep it a secret for as long as you do. I won't tell anyone. But I really think you should tell someone."

"Yeah, I've just told you."

"You're gonna feel really sad and alone when I'm gone though. Won't your brothers understand?"

"They probably would, but I'm a little bit scared."

"You say that so confidently and yet you're scared to tell them?"

"It's okay to be afraid of things sometimes that you don't understand the reason behind. I mean, you're afraid of vampires, and yet you're hanging around Oliver, but at the same time, you really don't want to. Is it really so different than me just behaving normally around my brothers?"