Lupo

Chapter Ten: Cat and Mouse

Here it is! (I know it's awfully late!) This chapter turned out to be much longer than I'd intended so i've split it into two parts... 

Song: Hotel California by The Eagles

(C)Copyright SJCLewis 2017

*Not Edited* (It took soooooo long to write. By the time I was done I just cba anymore. Sorry :( )

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Darcie hadn't meant to fall asleep.

Immediately after closing the bedroom door in Bash's face she had locked it and set about examining all possible escape routes. There were none. All the windows were locked and, even so, they were two storeys above the ground. Sneaking back out the front door was not an option (she wouldn't have been surprised if Bash was lurking somewhere downstairs, waiting for her to reappear) and her phone had died some time ago. Admitting defeat, she had thrown herself onto the bed in a fit of anguish and had sobbed loudly into the expensive looking feather throw. After a while, exhaustion must have consumed her; The next thing she knew: she was cold and the room was dark.

Her cheeks felt sticky and her mouth tasted fowl. She gargled with water at the sink in the en suite bathroom, and washed and dried her face. She stared at herself for a moment in the mirror, listening to the silence, and noting that she felt much less sick than she had before, though she looked infinitely and impossibly more unkempt. Her skin was pale and blotchy, and there were dark shadows beneath her red-rimmed eyes. The hair framing her face clung to her neck in greasy tendrils, and the rest was matted together in a wild mess of tangles atop her head.

Looking good, girl.

She snorted in self derision, gripping the sink as the events of the past 24 hours began to trickle tauntingly back into the forefront of her mind. Her thoughts spun, and spun over again; the club, Tito, bones cracking, flesh straining and numerous pairs of violet eyes; Leala's, Maya's and Bash's... His face flashed across her consciousness and, as if on cue, a stabbing pain assaulted her chest. With a gasp, Darcie curled in on herself as the convulsion ebbed, gripping the sink harder still as she fought to rid her head of his image. It was with a grunt of pain and frustration that she realised -all too quickly- she was powerless to stop the onslaught of her own recollection.

Bash's voice seemed to echo in her ears. Lycan. Mates. Claim.

Her legs began to shake and she squeezed her eyes shut against the increasingly familiar wave of fear and hopelessness bearing down on her.

You are mine, and I am yours. I'm sorry but that's just the way it is now.

Fuck.

Her eyes burned with tears beneath their lids. She let them gather there, unshed, until her temples began to ache, and then dashed them angrily away with the back of her hand.

Fucking hell.

The pain in her chest subsiding somewhat, Darcie released her grip on the sink and peered shakily back up at her reflection again. She had never seen such a sorry sight. She grimaced and, with a final groan of bitter anguish, she snapped off the light.

The bedroom was partially illuminated by the light from the window. Peering out of it, she scanned the dark fringe of trees beyond the front yard, which were thrown into sharp relief by the electric floodlights on either side of the front porch. Beyond that, the driveway -the one which lead to the main road - was only just discernible in amongst the blackness of the forest. Darcie fixed her gaze upon the point at which the gravel vanished between the trees and bit down hard upon her lip in attempt to stay the panic she could feel rising afresh. The hopelessness of her situation was exacerbated by the fact that -not only was she on her own in the house with a monster- but that the house itself was further away from civilisation than she'd first acknowledged. She couldn't even see the main road beyond the trees, and above them: the black landscape rose and stretched away until it met a circuit board of twinkling lights; the lights of some small, distant town she supposed.