The Reluctant (5 page)

College for me, thanks to a rigorous
high school education, turned out to be easy and I excelled at most
things set before me. I had a scholarship that covered tuition and
a little extra, so I didn’t bother with a job—I truly was a spoiled
undergrad. Unfortunately, as those with leisure time are apt to do,
I had a great Achilles’ heel for English literature, which, because
I loved to read, I chose as a minor to supplement my M.B.A.
studies. Sometimes business majors overpopulate a campus with their
cynical ways of money grubbing and success strategies, but those
proficient in English, those who choose to be lumped into a
category that people claim will only have job opportunities as
teachers or professors, tend to be a more idealistic group. I found
comfort in them. Their musings on literature inspired me,
especially as a junior who might very well spend the rest of his
life worried about the intricacies of the stock market. Numbers are
harsh; literature is gentle. It helped me find balance.

Imagine my surprise then when I found
one of my professors gazing at me in a predatory manner one day.
She was the toughest I had that year, an attractive middle-aged
Hispanic beauty who taught Victorian lit and had a passion for
gothic novels as well. I was on the verge of failing due to my poor
skills at analysis. “I need to talk to you,” she told me during
class one day. “Come see me during my office hours. It’s about your
last paper.”

It wasn’t about my paper. That’s all I
can say without being vulgar. It was about my body. She wanted it,
refused to live without it, and being a weak boy who wanted an A in
a class that exceeded my academic talents, I gave in to her. I was
no virgin. I had been popular in high school and had my share of
girls. Don’t judge me, Emily. I know that you’ve had other men
before me. I can also say that I continued to see other girls while
sleeping with this professor. Obviously she wasn’t satisfied with
my attention to her though.

“You’re mine,” she snapped at me one
day. I had never seen her angry. “Don’t you forget that. That’s no
need for you to parade with those little sluts.”

I balked. “I belong to no one. The
last time I checked, I was a free man.”

“We’ll see about that,” she said. I
left her office not thinking much about it at the time. Ah, the
confidence of youth.

But then I worried. In fact, I worried
a lot in the upcoming weeks. What if she turned me over to the
dean? I would probably be thrown out of school for fraternizing
with a teacher. But that didn’t make any sense. She would implicate
herself as well, and most likely be fired. As one of the top
professors of English in the country, she would also lose all of
her carefully cultivated prestige. So I relaxed a little. When
grades posted, I had my A. Now that I look back, it wasn’t worth
it.

U.C.L.A. gives its students a break
between semesters, like most colleges who know that burnout can be
a problem. Since I had no family and my friends had all gone home,
I spent Christmas with my friend Brooke. Quick-witted and gorgeous,
she and I had an agreement that we weren’t involved emotionally,
but oh, how she helped me through those lonely holidays when I was
missing my mother. I think she liked me more than she admitted and
held out for a relationship with me at that time, but I will
forever remember her for that kindness of lying to me that our
actions were all no strings attached. We parted ways right before
New Year’s Eve, promising to hook up when classes resumed January.
She even extracted the promise of a real date from me. Soft towards
her because of her benevolence, I agreed. Definitely not my usual
standard operating procedure.

When I returned to my dorm, I had a
surprise awaiting me. Of course, there’s no genuine surprise in who
it was: my demanding professor. I’ll never know how she got into
the room. Probably the maintenance guy let her in. Who knows?
Anyway, I can’t even remember exactly what was said between us, but
she had been very calm. She simply told me that I was to see no
other woman, and she knew that I had been with Brooke over the
holidays and wasn’t happy about it. I attempted to reestablish that
I was a grown man who could see whoever I wanted to as long as the
woman consented. She pointed out that I could not be with Brooke if
she was dead. I laughed at her morbid words then, but I came to
find out that her threat was not idle.

The one thing I remember clearly is
her last question to me: “If you could trade your life for
Brooke’s, would you?”

I then asked her to leave my dorm room
without answering that question. She said nothing as she departed,
but ran her clear green eyes over me possessively. I remember
shivering my too-warm room. I slept without dreams that night, but
awoke to a nightmare the next day. New Year’s Eve ended the last
year of my human life, and I was powerless to struggle against such
Fate.

Emily

Waking up with the streaming sun on my
face from Will’s eastern-facing window, I felt the soporific effect
of his presence. He was definitely in the house again. My body
seemed to reach through the distance between us towards him; once
again, I wanted to rage at his body drugging mine, but the soft
swirling mood of sanguinity proved too appetizing. It made the
limbs of my body limber and my mind vulnerable, impressionable to
whatever Will wanted of me.

I yawned and stretched, reluctantly
sliding from the bed.

“Will?” I called, knowing he would
immediately answer.

“What baby?” he shouted from the
kitchen. Now I could smell the bacon. It made my mouth water and
stomach growl. I remembered that I hadn’t finished my spaghetti
last night. The running had not helped. Why was I not freaked out
about the wolves? Well, obviously Will’s tangent on pheromones had
been truth. Nothing else could have made me completely oblivious to
the stresses of everyday life or blunted the horror of the previous
night. Fear had no place in me, especially not when more primal
urges called.

“Was just wondering where you were,” I
said softly.

He didn’t answer that, probably, I
thought at the time, because he did not hear it. My mind wandered
while I went through perfunctory morning exercises. I may not have
been able to experience the strong adrenaline rush while recalling
the previous night, but I could still experience curiosity. The
green-eyed canine from last night played through my dreams,
rescuing me each time from monsters who wanted to eat me. Did
wolves have green eyes? Surely not…

After the trip to the bathroom (who
ever talks about going to the bathroom when recounting an event, I
always wondered?), I came into the kitchen. My plate was already
ready as usual.

“I have some questions,” I said while
sitting down to eat. Will smiled brightly and poured a glass of
orange juice. It was all so normal after the events of last night,
how could I not feel its calming influence?

“And like I said before, I have some
things to tell you about myself,” he said quietly. “Maybe the two
will be of the same subject material.”

“Fair enough,” I responded. I forked
some eggs before they got cold and gross. “First things first:
Where did you go?”

“I had to get out of the house. I
didn’t want to hurt you.”

I frowned. “Were you mad at
me?”

“I promise, it wasn’t you.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I know. It’s
not me, it’s you? Right? Yes, most overused male line in
history.”

He grinned. “But it works so
well.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said sarcastically,
still eating. I was more skeptical of my next question, but Will
would not make fun of me. “Did I imagine the wolves last
night?”

“No.”

I waited for him to continue, but he
didn’t. Obviously I had to drag the information out of
him.

“Not even the one that broke into the
house?”

He cleared his throat and squirmed in
his chair like a small child. “That was Luka. He’s a little
temperamental, especially when you called him a dog. Not the
smartest idea you’ve ever had.”

“You keep wolves as pets?” My face had
to have betrayed my shock. “And you named one after your best
friend?”

“They’re not pets. The reason he has
the same name as my friend, is because he is my friend.”

I nearly choked on a slice of bacon.
“Bullshit.”

His face turned red. “I will never lie
to you, Emily. How else would I have known that you called Luka a
dog?”

“People don’t turn into wolves. That’s
stupid,” I said dismissively.

“Shows what you know about the world,”
he replied sarcastically. I hadn’t seen Will angry these last few
days, but he was coming close now. His outrage over my disbelief
had me wondering if maybe, just maybe, I could be wrong about this.
My mind was highly malleable at the moment, so I suppose I took a
leap of faith. I kept my voice level and without criticism as I
tried to wrap my mind around this horror movie idea.

“Wait, Will, are you seriously trying
to tell me that your friends turn into wolves after
dark?”

“And sometimes during the day,” he
said, regaining some of his calm. “But most of the time we are
walking, talking, prime examples of humanity.”

I had finished my breakfast now, but
still felt as if I choked. “We?” I asked, losing some of my earned
composure.

“You named me yourself last night,
Emily,” he pointed out. “You knew it was me from the very
beginning.”

I tripped over my words. “But, but I
was scared. My mind wasn’t right. You’re…no, you can’t be. It’s
impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible.”

“That means you’re like…” I stumbled
over my words, but charged forward anyway, “a werewolf?”

It sounded silly, even to me. I
realized just how juvenile the words were as I watched his face
move to twisted disdain.

The need to apologize overcame me with
brute force at that look. “I’m sorry, it’s just that…”

“I am not a dog-man with mange,” he
snarled.

“But you just said…”

“And you obviously do not know how to
listen. And I am wasting my time trying to teach you anything
yet.”

I jerked as if slapped. The silence
fell around us for a long moment. I do not recall my feelings at
the time, but I’m sure disbelief gained the forefront. I finally
decided to accept him at face value and move on. After all, there
are worse things in life: the murder in the park, for instance. Or
wolves who wanted to rip me apart in the shadowy woods—things like
that. It was he who broke the impasse, as if he sensed my hesitant
acceptance of him.

“I wasn’t always like this,” he
mumbled softly. “I was human like you once. I didn’t suffer. I
could be around normal people and not have to worry about how upset
I became over a political argument or what time of the month it
was.” His face dropped tremendously and his eyes would not meet
mine. “I could touch a woman without hurting her.”

I twisted my hands indecisively. “I’m
sorry, Will. I’m trying to understand. I have to ask though; why
were those wolves…your friends…why did they chase me?”

He sighed, meeting my eyes at last.
“Those are not my friends. They hang around my property the week
before the full moon. They are Lycanti—Changelings—who have lost
their mates for whatever reasons, some from death, some from
abandonment.” A long pause. “They want me.”

“For what?” I asked dumbly, mind still
reeling.

“As a mate,” he replied sadly. “I am
the son of a ranking Lycanthrope, and being mated to me provides
instant protection from the violence of the pack for past
transgressions. Most, not all, of those who hunt me killed their
mates and are rebels—loners—who will be killed if they ever return
to Mexico. Not the best personals ad. They seek sanctuary through
me. They want to go home.”

“And these, um, Lycanti, they’re mad
because you’re with me?”

“Yes. They think that there are enough
Lycanti females to choose from and want to kill you before your
Change.”

My eyes widened. “What change?” I
asked.

“Your induction as one of us, of
course,” he replied coolly, more confident in his words. “So I can
have you forever.”

I jumped up from my seat. “Woah, woah,
wait a minute. I don’t want to be one of those…those
things.”

He stood, towering over me. The smell
of breakfast and tension hung in the air heavily between us. I
wanted my mind to throw off the influence he had on me with the
same fluidity which my body utilized to spring from my
seat.

His face deepened into a frown. “You
have no choice. My body is already linked to yours. Can’t you feel
it?”

“You mean like how I know when you’re
around?”

“Yes. We’re destined to be with each
other.”

“I don’t believe in destiny,” I
argued. “I make my own decisions.”

“I feel like in time, you will decide
to be with me.”

“Not if I leave,” I said evenly. Even
as I said it and contemplated it, an ache shot through my body, as
if telling me that I could not leave this man without its
retaliation.