The Choosing

The Bitten

~The Bitten~

They were in the kitchen, Sophie sat at her usual place at the bench, elbows pressed into the granite. Thaddeus on the other hand was pacing through the kitchen, fingers drumming his thighs uncontrollably.

Sophie stared into her coffee mug silently. She couldn't get the image of Thaddeus out of her mind, Thaddeus as a beast. Lycanthrope, Ronan had corrected her. He had recoiled as if she'd slapped him when the word slipped from her mouth. So much of her world had clicked into place, it was much easier to see now that she had the whole picture.

"Please say something" Thaddeus growled, seemingly exasperated. Sophie glanced up, emerald eyes wide with surprise. "You haven't said a word to me since we got back."

Sophie opened her mouth to speak, before simply closing it again. There were a thousand different thoughts and questions running through her brain, she couldn't stop on one long enough to say it aloud. 

"I don't know what to say" she responded eventually, setting her mug down. 

"Is there anything you want to know?" Thaddeus asked, jumping at the opportunity to speak to her, to hear her voice. 

Sophie's brow furrowed as she tried to settle on just one question. There were so many to choose from. 

"Everyone calls me Luna" she murmured, more a statement than a question.

"Ah," Thaddeus leaned against the bench, directly opposite to Sophie. Sophie simply quirked an eyebrow. 

"It's a title, not a name."

"Like Alpha" she supplied the term she had heard used for Thaddeus. 

"Exactly and every Alpha, has a Luna. I'm in charge," Thaddeus' stormy eyes pierced hers "and so are you"

Sophie blinked, once, twice, three times. "What?" she stammered "I'm not a leader Thaddeus."

"You are," he smiled warmly, his eyes crinkling in the corners. Sophie's heart jumped in her chest, she had never seem him look at her this way. "I've saw you with those girls at The Choosing, I saw you with Mia and Brett, I saw you with little Sebastian." Sophie frowned in response "a leader isn't someone who uses power over people little one, it's someone who is kind to them."

Sophie frowned, she disagreed. Kindness didn't get things done, it let people take advantage. "So, you and I, we're in charge?"

"Yes little one," 

Sophie's forehead creased even further. She had never led anything and now she was expected to lead a group of people? She danced her fingertips over the rim of the mug, ever since The Choosing she had been thrown one curve ball after the after. 

"If all of your people get locked up, after they" Sophie paused trying to find the right word "after they turn, and they aren't let out until they have control." She paused again, fingers brushing against the bruise once again "why did he?" she trailed off, trying the shake the memory from her mind. 

Thaddeus reached out, curling his fingers around hers. "He wasn't one of us, not really."

Wasn't. That confirmed Sophie's suspicions, that man was dead and she was fairly certain it had been Thaddeus to carry out the sentence.

"We're born this way, it's in our DNA. It's in our nature, there's nothing we can do to change it." Thaddeus' grip on her tightened, a dark look crossing his face "that thing wasn't always that way, he would've been human once."

Sophie balked, he hadn't seemed remotely human, it was as if his body was the only thing human about him, a shell hiding a monster. 

"It happens when a human is bitten by someone in their lycanthrope form. Their DNA mutates until it is neither lycan nor human, the lycan DNA and human DNA fight each other inside the human, it drives them mad. He is the result of a volatile act, it is forbidden. It's law here, that if a human is bitten, they must be killed."