I collapse under his weight, one arm beneath me bracing against the attack and the other reaching out to grab him. My fingers manage to get a grip on the fur at his throat, and I hold my arm outstretched to keep him at bay. His front paws are planted firmly on my shoulders, and the force pushes me onto my back. He just stares me down, perfectly calm. The throb of my heartbeat pulses in my ears. A kind of numbness washes over my mind and body as I lie against the moist earth. I’m trapped. The thought of dying at the age of seventeen without having had the opportunity to make any sort of a mark on the world seems grossly unfair. The most disconcerting thing about this whole situation is, now that we’re up close and still, I can see him ― the man within the wolf. It isn’t just the eyes. There’s something about the angles of his face and the way he fills space with his presence. It makes me hopeful that I might be able to reason with him. His ears pivot backwards. I angle my head to look past him and catch sight of a shadowy figure entering the woods.
“Connor?”
My brain stammers before I can finally get out a few hoarse words. “Call him off, Amara.”
Her hand goes to the gold chain around the wolf’s neck, but instead of pulling him off me, she kneels by our side. It’s almost maddening how impossibly nonchalant she looks. Her hair is pulled back in a haphazard ponytail and she’s wearing a pair of jeans and a cream sweater. As Amara looks down at me, Arden lets out a long yawn. Like we’re boring him.
“We need to talk,” she says.
“No, we don’t.”
“I think it is very important that we do.”
“Why?”
There’s a long pause. “Because there has been a significant misunderstanding.”
Understatement of the year! “No, I think you were right, Amara. I think we should just forget I saw anything. We can do that, right? Just pretend? I swear, I won’t say a word to anyone.”
Even though my words come out in a desperate flow, a hopeful momentum builds in me as I wait for her response.
“I am afraid it is not quite that simple, Connor.”
My heart sinks. “I really wish you could believe it was.”
After a moment she pats Arden’s side, nodding at him. He casts me a look like a warning shot. It’s all he has to do to let me know that if I try to make a run for it, I’m toast. Then he lopes off, slumping at the base of a tree to lick the bloody wounds beneath the torn gauze. Our eyes don’t leave each other as I sit up.
“I do not know precisely what you saw, but―”
“No,” I interject firmly. “No, n-no, n-no. Do not try to explain away what I saw, Amara. I know what I saw. What I saw was Arden with bandages wrapped around his chest, wearing that chain with the ring on it. And then I saw the exact same thing. Only on your so-called dog.”
“What is it that you are proposing that you saw?”
“I’m not proposing anything, Amara,” I say defiantly. “I know what I saw.”
“And what was that?”
I throw up my arms in frustration. “Don’t play this game with me, Amara. You and I both know damn well that Arden is some kind of a werewolf.”
There, I said it out loud and I’m glad of it. The burden of this terrible secret weighed heavily on me. Now that it’s out in the open, I feel lighter. But when I see the look on her face, of horrified concern, it’s almost enough for me to take the words back.
YOU ARE READING
The Night Has Teeth (Book One) EXCERPTS ONLY
Werewolf#WATTYS2014 HQ LOVE AWARD! There's a darkness that lurks in the City of Light Seventeen-year-old Connor Lewis is chased by a memory. On his first day of kindergarten he bit a boy hard enough to scar the kid for life. Since then he's been a social ou...
