A Fox Among Wolves

Chapter Twelve

Link holds the door open for us as we all file into the house. Our schoolbooks are spread out across the living room, covering a majority of the carpet and all of the coffee table. Our final exams start tomorrow, and then we are graduating next Friday, a little over a week away.

"Okay, enough of the silence," Quinn says, pulling off the purple beanie he had been wearing. Running his fingers through his tousled black hair, he makes his way over to our couch and flops down in the middle. We trail behind him, pulling off our own coats and hats before sitting on the large sectional couch. There is just enough room for all of us to sit comfortably, and the angle of the couch allows all of us to see each other. "I want to know what happened with you the other day, Henley, and why the mayor has been acting so weird lately."

"Wait, what?" Lena says, looking over at me with a confused expression on her face. "What happened to you?"

Everyone turns their head towards me, waiting for me to answer Lena's question. I slouch into the couch and look at the empty stairs, trying to collect my thoughts. A hand runs through my hair, calming down my over imaginative brain. Fingers brush against my ears, and I know that it has to be Braeden running his fingers through my hair. He is one of the only hybrids who I would allow to touch my ears.

"It's okay, they'll believe you," Braeden says. Turning my head, I see the reassuring smile on his face, but it doesn't help me to form the words I have to say. I shake my head before returning my gaze to the stairs.

"Henley, come on," Quinn says, sliding off the couch and kneeling in front of me. He rests his hands on my knees, making me look away from the stairs and into his green eyes. "You can tell us."

"We've been friends since kindergarten, of course you can tell us," Lena says from beside me. I hadn't even noticed her moving from her spot next to Lottie. I look away from Quinn and lock my eyes onto Lena's concerned ones.

"Fine, fine," I mumble, sitting up from my slouch and pulling my feet off the ground before tucking them under my legs. Grabbing Quinn's hand, I pull him up onto the couch, sitting him in between me and Lena. We sit there for a couple of minutes, the only sound coming from the crickets chirping outside.

"Well?" Link says from the other side of the couch, an eyebrow raised in a questioning manner.

Braeden stands up and smacks him on the back of the head before returning to his vacated seat. Link just shrugs his shoulders, but as soon as his eyes meet Quinn's glare, the indifferent expression drops off his face. Well, it seems as if Link is terrified of making his mate upset. Good.

I take a deep breath before I tell them what I had seen two weeks ago. "When I was working at the medical clinic a couple weeks ago, I was in charge of filing all the current patients' records. Before I could go home, I had to take them down to the basement, where the records room is."

Looking up from my lap, I see that everyone is staring at me. Braeden pulls me against his side and wraps his arm around my waist, giving me a squeeze to continue.

"I had finished putting everything away and was about to go upstairs when I heard a really strange noise. There wasn't supposed to be anything down there, that was why I was so surprised when I heard it. It sounded like an animal in distress, so I went to investigate. That's when I saw it." The mangled face of the mutant I had seen in that room comes to the front of my thoughts, and no matter how hard I try to think of something else, the image won't leave my head.

"What was it?" Lena questions softly, leaning forward so that she can see around Quinn's body.

"It... It was like those beasts that attacked our neighborhood last week. It was in a locked room with minimal lighting, just enough that it was able to cast a shadow. It looked like it was crazy. But the thing that frightened me the most was how it looked like a hybrid but with more animal features than human."