Dance of the Moons

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

            Kaelyn slammed her hand down on the table.  “It’s just frustrating,” she snapped.  She had been in a bad mood all week.  Earlier I didn’t press her on it, because I could tell she didn’t want to talk, but today I had made the mistake of asking her what was wrong.  She had spent the past hour complaining to me.

            “He has not right to tell me where I can and cannot go!  If I want to go to the other side of the country, I can.  If I want to go to Mongolia, or Brazil, or Laos, I should be able to!  I do not have to stick around here just because he can’t leave.”

            I nodded my head slowly.  She had repeated herself many times by this point, but I could tell she wanted to rant some more.  The traffic in the café was slow; it was the end of the day, and we would be closing in a few minutes. I didn’t mind so much that she was ranting.  Listening to her troubles kept my mind off mine.

            “So Aaron’s dad said he can’t go to college farther than 150 miles away and now Aaron says I can’t either?  I don’t think so!  It’s like pack law, or something, and you can only go a certain distance away from the pack depending on what the alpha says.  But whatever!  I’m not even part of the pack!  I can go however far away I want!”

            “Maybe he’s just afraid of missing you?” I told her, trying to placate her.  When Kaelyn worked up a storm it was often difficult to calm her down.  Wrong move on my part—this only seemed to make her angrier.

            “Miss me?” She nearly screamed at me.  I looked at the few customers in the café and a few had glanced our way at her outburst. “I’m expected to give up my dreams because he might miss me?  I’m going to miss him too and you don’t see me trying to tell him what to do with his life!”  She shook her head and took a few deep breaths. “No, it’s not about him missing me.  It’s about Aaron treating me like I’m part of the pack.  He’s been trying to get me to go to all the pack meetings.  But I’m not part of the pack.”  She hit her hand on the counter at every word.

            I heard the door open and three customers walk in and up to the counter.  Glad for the momentary break I turned and smiled.  They ordered and I sent them on their way.  By the time I turned back to Kaelyn she had calmed down a bit.

            “Have you talked to him about this?”  I asked, sure she had.

            Kaelyn shrugged. “He doesn’t really listen.  I don’t think he gets that I don’t want to be a member of the pack.” She rubbed her hand down her face. “I just want to be able to make my own decisions, you know?  And he…doesn’t get that.”

            “Werewolves are raised following orders, not making their own decisions.”

            She signed.  “I know.  It’s just frustrating,” she finished quietly.

            “Why don’t you go home?  We’re closing in twenty minutes anyway.  I can close up without you.”

            “No,” she replied quietly, “I can’t do that.  I’ve left you alone too many times already for closing.”

            I frowned.  “You haven’t left early for two weeks, and you’ve worked most days.  You can afford to leave early.”

            She looked at me and smiled. “Thanks, Leila.”

            “Welcome,” I replied.

            Twenty minutes later I ushered out our last customer and changed the OPEN sign to say CLOSED.  I wiped my hand over a table and muttered a spell to clean it.  The day’s worth of grime and crumbs slid off the table and landed in a small cube on the floor.  I couldn’t make anything appear or disappear, but I could pull it off the table.  This made cleaning much easier, because all I had to do was go around and pick up the small cubes to clean all the tables.