(FREE TO READ) Bad Moon

chapter 27; guilty

Jaylin rolled a grain of rice along his tongue, but all he could taste was guilt. Lillabeth had worked all night on a fresh sushi feast, but he had no appetite to challenge her efforts. The chrysalis now swallowed up his entire arm, feeding all the way up to the bone of his shoulder.

It hurt, like Quentin said. It hurt worse than he expected. But it wasn't the pain that took Jaylin's eyes from his plate and left each grain of rice a bitter stone in his stomach. It was the video replaying in his head. Every laugh and every smile and every skip of the tape.

His muscles tightened and Jaylin clutched at the pain and gritted down on the grains between his teeth. Eating wouldn't help him this time. He wondered if it hurt like this for Anna and what it would feel like when his entire body was suffering to the change all at once.

He looked across the table, where Lisa clacked away on her laptop, taking sparse bites in between. Alex gestured along the touchscreen of his phone and Felix destroyed each roll on his plate, ripping out the raw fish and leaving the rest until Lillabeth, tired of seeing her creation slaughtered by the hands of a temperamental meat eater, brought Felix his own special platter of freshly cooked salmon.

It was the first time they'd all eaten together, but no one had really said a word. He wondered if Quentin was the one that held the conversations, or maybe it was always like this. Maybe it had been this way since Anna died.

"Jaylin, are you feeling alright?" Lisa asked from above the flat rims of her reading glasses. "You look pale."

Jaylin stared at the colors on his plate, the pinks and greens and reds all intermingled, and gave them a shove away. Before he could come up with an excuse for why he hadn't really worked down a single bite, the front doors pushed open with a gust of October wind and Quentin stepped in, clad in simple jeans and a black t-shirt with a duffel bag strapped over his shoulder.

A man tailed in behind him—the one who looked like Tyler. Bailey, Jaylin recalled. Jaylin couldn't gather much from the night they'd last spoken; he remembered the pills and the water. The hazy orange glow from a dank old gas station on the way back. Nothing else.

"Thought I smelled a rat," Felix grunted, popping a chunk of salmon in his mouth. "What's he doing here?"

Bailey's dark eyes sawed through to room with a sharp edge of disinterest. "Better a rat than—"

Quentin cut him off, "I invited him here. Do you have a problem with that, Felix?"

Felix turned back to his food, grunting like a churlish old man and waving his hand in the air, as if to say fine, get lost.

Jaylin expected to see a smile from Quentin, a smirk, a glance in his direction. Anything. But there was no connection in Quentin's eyes. He didn't even look in Jaylin's general direction.

Quentin tossed his duffel bag aside and made for the staircase with Bailey at his heels. "Someone go harvest the Jasmine and Pennyroyal," he called, just as he disappeared around the bend of the hall.

Jaylin didn't realize he was on his feet, ready to make for the garden. Not until Felix had a hand around his wrist.

"He means the maids, kid." There was a slight smile twisted on Felix's face as he lured Jaylin back into his chair. "Ye'll get used to that."

Jaylin stared down at his hand, and the patchy scabby patterns on his obsidian flesh. "Get used to what, exactly?"

"Rushing to his beck and call."

"I didn't even realize."

"Aye." Felix stabbed a bit of salmon with his fork, lifting the meaty chunk to his mouth, bones and all. "He's yer alpha. It's reflexive."