The Bite (Book 1)

Original Edition - Chapter 5: Swimming

For the next few days, everything fell into a routine.

In the morning Levi and I would go on a run. Sometimes Derek would join us and hunt down some deer to drink from. The first time I watched him do it, I almost threw up, which was apparently was quite laughable for the two men.

In the evenings I would chop wood. I hated that damn woodpile. Every evening I would chop and Levi would pull up a chair with his cooler to watch. Mostly to pick at me, which I found became increasingly more difficult to remain neutral to. The beast was not just scratching anymore, it was clawing.

Sometimes at night I would wake up from a dream. A nightmare that would pull the beast so far forward that Derek had to sit with me in a cold shower to suppress it. It was becoming more intertwined with my own being, weaving itself into my own DNA and making it its own.

But I couldn't let it out, let her out.

I wasn't ready and I knew that it would kill me.

This morning Levi took me to a creek, wide and deep. We pulled out a small wooden boat, two oars, and started to glide down the glassy water. Levi opened up his small red cooler, his sidekick, and pulled out a can of beer. He took a long sip and set it down in front of him then looked back at me with a smirk.

"You swim girl?"

I nodded. My father had taught me on a family vacation to the lake one year. I remember being so scared. I couldn't touch the bottom and my father was just a fingertip out of reach.

He was patient with me, though. 'All you have to do is paddle Char, it's that easy baby girl.'

Soon I was practically swimming laps around him like I was a fish, like I had a tail of my own to paddle me to somewhere far far away.

I smiled and nodded. "Ya, I can swim."

Levi smirked and I immediately knew that I had answered wrong. His hands were around my waist, and in a flash, he was flinging me into the still water. The water was cold and felt like a hundred electric fingers crawling all over my skin.

I swam back to the surface and spat out water that somehow found its way into my mouth. "The hell was that for?"

Levi reached back and tossed me a thick brown twisted rope. "Time to start pulling Charlie girl."

"Are you kidding me?" I groaned out.

"Nope," he answered leisurely while leaning back in the boat and taking a long drink of his beer.

I let out a low growl of annoyance, low enough that I was sure he wouldn't hear me, before swimming over to the rope. I had no idea why I kept letting myself be subject to Levi's ridiculous 'training' methods. Maybe it was because I believed him and believed that he could truly help me. Maybe it was because I had no other choice, I mean, my only other choice was to run away and then I would surely die on the full moon. But there was something else. Something else nagging in the back of my mind, telling me to follow and trust. I couldn't pin point it or figure out what it was, but it kept me going even when Levi was being more of an asshole than usual, like today.

The only silver lining was that I had wore shorts and a tank that day, courtesy of Derek. According to him, my body temperature would start to rise, apparently, weres ran a body temperature higher than humans, so the elements would start to have less of an affect on me the closer I got to my shift.

Damn asshole! When I turn I am going to tear into to his old wrinkly rear!

Pulling the boat was no easy task. It took me a few strides to figure out how to hold the rope so I could both swim and pull at the same time. I settled on tying it around my waist so I could use all my limbs which earned me a pleased nod from Levi.