Chapter 6

-Chase-

After I stepped out of my home and closed the front door, I stopped. I stared at the street in front of me, blinking a few times to make sure I was actually awake. I wasn’t new to ending up in weird situations in my life, but I had to admit, I had rarely been as confused as I was now. I was dying to know what had happened to Dante. I could smell the drama, so I couldn’t just let him leave without knowing what happened.

And on top of that, he wished his wife was dead.

I started climbing down the stairs, trying to contain my urge to call Zane. For one, I promised Dante I wouldn’t tell anyone about him, and two, my friends often gave me a hard time for being unable to say no to guys – especially ex-boyfriends – whenever they needed something, and I didn’t need a new lecture. It wasn’t even true! What happened with Brett last night was just a big, drunken mistake, and Dante was bleeding, so how could I say no to him?

Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any disgruntled customers waiting around when I stepped inside the store. I quickly told the shop to bring the tea selection back and hide the magical merchandise, before rushing to get ready to open the doors. I had a few missed calls on the work phone, so after finally unlocking the door and putting up the We’re Open! sign outside, I dealt with them.

The day was torture. Business was slow as always, so I spent the majority of the day trying to figure out what happened to Dante while drying herbs and mixing powders in the backroom. Eru had climbed on top of our tallest bookcase and glared at me in disapproval every time I came into her view. She wasn’t exactly a good company that day, but I understood her. There was a werewolf in her home, so obviously she was mad at me. I had the feeling she’d stay in the shop for as long as Dante was staying at my place. However long that would be.

There was one thing that bothered me the most. Why me? Why did he come to me of all people; a guy he was briefly dating several years ago? I mean, I guess it made sense if he knew the truth about my little shop, and that I was able to help with his wounds, but he also said he had nowhere else to go. Why couldn’t he go to his family or friends for help?

Just before I was supposed to close the shop, I prepared the powder for a new potion for Dante, making sure it tasted better this time. It wasn’t much of an improvement, but I tried my best. After I turned off the lights, I called for Eru, but she was still staring daggers at me, so I let her be – she had a small hatch at the back, leading outside in the garden, so she was able to come home anytime she wanted.

“I’m sorry – he needs our help,” I told her, but she turned her head away. I rolled my eyes and left the shop.

The grocery store was only five minutes away, but it was raining again, so I had to run. I did feel guilty now for stealing money from Dante back when we were dating, so I bought a lot of good, pricy food for him. I was going nuts trying to remember what kind of food he liked before I realized that the guy probably didn’t give a damn about what it tasted like at the moment.

Why on earth was he so thin? That question came to me when I was picking apples. I took one and stopped to stare at it as I started connecting the dots. He wished his wife was dead. He was starved. He was scared. He was shot. It all screamed abuse…

I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling bad all of a sudden. I spent the entire day at work trying to guess what was going on, dying to hear all about the drama he’s been through when in reality it wasn’t drama. Trauma was the correct word here, and all I cared about was hearing his story.

The weather was clearly turning worse as I stepped out of the store with two big bags of food. I tried to run through the pouring rain as fast as I could, but I was soaked by the time I got back home. I hurried inside with a relieved sigh, and closed the door quietly, stopping to listen to the sounds of my big apartment. The spacious entrance hall was quiet, and I turned my gaze to the second floor. The door to my guest room was open, but I couldn’t see any light coming through the gap.

I left the bags by the kitchen door, before I climbed up to the second floor, and sneaked closer to Dante’s room. He was fast asleep, so I was careful not to wake him up when I walked to the bed. I slowly unwrapped the bandage on his arm, and to my disappointment, the wound hadn’t changed at all. If it didn’t start healing soon, it would require stitches… Why was he not healing? That didn’t make any sense! This wound should be gone already! I had never heard of a werewolf who couldn’t heal.

I treated the wound carefully, and stopped to stare at Dante’s face once I was done. I still couldn’t believe it was the same guy… Did his wife do this?

I had so many questions, but I knew I’d have to wait for the answers.

*****

That night, I found an interesting article while browsing the news. All I really had to do was type in Dante Gray, and I found what I was looking for right away.

“The son of the millionaire Harold Gray is missing,” I muttered as I hurried to click on the article.

I read through the article as fast as I could while all kinds of bad things were twisting inside my stomach. Dante went missing six months ago without a trace. No one knew what had happened to him, but everything pointed towards kidnapping. When the police checked his home, they found evidence of a struggle and a few drops of blood which turned out to be Dante’s. That was pretty much everything the old article said, so I continued searching for newer ones.

After an hour of reading through everything I could find, I let out a deep sigh, leaning back in my chair. I wasn’t sure what to think. The article I still had open included a short video of Lena Gray, Dante’s wife. In the clip, she was sitting behind a long table with mics and recorders all around her. She was crying and begging for the kidnappers to release her husband, or at least contact her or Dante’s parents. No ransom was ever demanded, and no one heard anything about him after he disappeared.

I let the video play again.

“Please, please! Whoever you are, please give him back to us – we can pay whatever you want, just please, I want my husband back!”

I paused the clip when Lena leaned over to grab a bottle of water. In my eyes, the expression on her face looked more like she was thinking, “This is so fucking annoying,” rather than “I’m crushed because I have no idea what happened to my beloved husband.” Her sorrow seemed a bit too clean, and her words a bit too rehearsed for my taste. I could’ve been imagining things, but Dante wished for her death, so…

His parents had made their own video where they begged for any information about their son, and I watched it carefully a few times. Dante said he had no one else to turn to, so was his family in on the kidnapping as well?

The picture was clearing up a bit, but I still didn’t get that many answers, and no matter how long I tried, I couldn’t find any other useful information about his case. Finally, I gave up and decided to wait for the moment when Dante would be ready to talk about what happened to him.

*****

Dante pretty much slept through the next two days. He was awake for a short time every now and then so he could eat and use the bathroom, and we didn’t have that many chances to talk. If we did, we were avoiding a lot of topics and basically talked about the bad weather, nothing else.

Although… the way Dante talked about the weather gave me the impression he hadn’t been outside after getting kidnapped. I didn’t tell him that I knew about it so it wouldn’t stress him out, but I observed him carefully every time he was awake. It was becoming clear to me that he’d been kept captive this whole time, which explained why he loved watching the rain.

What a sick and twisted person could do that to someone? On the third day after I returned home from work, I watched Dante in silence by the door as he stared out of the window. Even though the sun was still up, the clouds were so dark that the light in his room was dim, casting shadows on his once-handsome face. He just sat there without moving, looking through the window. I wasn’t sure if he heard me coming in.

I guess he did since he soon turned to look at me. “How was your day?” he asked, and I was happy to hear that his voice was gaining strength.

“Boring – people aren’t risking getting wet because of tea,” I told him, making my way to his bed. “How are you?”

He shrugged before looking away from me. I stayed at the end of his bed since I had already learned that he didn’t like having me too close. It could only mean that he was being abused – that explained why he was so scared when I found him in my shop. The potion I kept making him seemed to help, thankfully.

“Let’s see that wound,” I said quietly, and after he nodded shortly, I sat down next to him, peeling off the bandages. “Oh wow – it’s finally healing,” I told him in excitement after seeing the clear change.

“Really?” he asked, looking at it shortly. “That’s good…”

His tone wasn’t anywhere near as excited as mine, but I blamed my potion for that – its job was to keep him calm in all situations.

“It sure is. I think you’re gaining weight as well. You definitely look much healthier, so maybe that’s the reason why you weren’t healing until now,” I spoke.

“Probably,” he muttered, but he didn’t sound convinced. Like he already knew why he wasn’t healing but couldn’t talk about it yet.

“I’ll just clean that up real quick, and then you can go back to sleep,” I told him and got up, but before I had the time to go get my stuff, he touched my hand lightly.

“Thanks,” he said, trying to smile, but there was no joy in his eyes. “I’d probably be dead without you.”

Oh, God… I felt something when he smiled… something that would definitely get me into a lot of trouble again.

“No worries,” I smiled back at him.

I tried not to hurry out of the room, but once I was outside, I stopped to scold myself. No. Feelings. Bad Chase. My friends often gave me a hard time for falling for guys too quick.

And I hated to admit that they probably had a case this time.

I went to find new bandages, trying to push the small smile Dante gave me out of my head. As I grabbed the last bandage I had in my medicine cabinet, I heard the doorbell ring. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest when I turned to look out of my kitchen. I could see the front door, and someone standing behind it.

“Chase?“

“Oh, for fuck’s sake…” I muttered when I recognized Brett’s voice.

I put the bandage away and hurried to the door, giving a hasty look at Dante’s door, which was still wide open. Brett knocked on the door, calling for me again, so I opened it.

“Hey,” he smiled at me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, stepping in front of him so he couldn’t come in.

“You forgot this at my place,” he said, dangling my feather earring in front of me.

“Shit, I forgot all about it,” I muttered and took it from him. “Thanks, but you should’ve called me. I would’ve come to pick it up, so you didn’t need to come all this way.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, stepping closer to me while his smile grew cheesier. “I missed you,” he added with a low purr, and I probably would’ve fallen for it if I wasn’t worried about Dante.

“I’m actually quite busy right now, so would you mind if–”

I couldn’t finish my sentence. He swooped me in his arms and pressed his lips on mine quite hungrily, and during that one second when my mind was completely blank, he tried to move us inside.

“N-No!” I said harshly, pushing him back. “I’m busy.”

“Busy with what?” he chuckled, trying to kiss me again, but I dodged him and retreated inside.

“You should leave now,” I told him, trying to close the door, but he slammed his hand against it, preventing me from doing so.

“I thought we had fun?” he said, and all of a sudden, he was giving me bad vibes.

“You need to go now,” I told him angrily, trying to push the door shut, but he pushed it back. He was much stronger than me… “What are you doing? I told you to leave!”

“Don’t be like that,” he said, shoving the door so hard it made me step back. “Let’s just have a little fun! I know you want it too.”

“I’m not interested,” I hissed at him. “And if you don’t leave right now…!”

Brett looked somewhere up, completely ignoring me. I turned to look back and saw Dante by the railing, looking down at Brett in anger.

“Oh, busy?” Brett said, his tone turning to look at me. “So it’s true – you’re still just a fucking whore.”

“It’s none of your business!” I yelled at his face, and I was glad to see he was taken aback. “Just go already! And don’t show your face here again!”

“You listen, you little bitch,” Brett spoke to me, grabbing me by the arm, but that was all he could do.

“Keep your hands off him!” Dante growled at him, and he was already coming down the stairs. He looked somehow bigger than normally.

“You stay out of this!” Brett yelled at him, but by the time he got the words out, Dante had marched to him, grabbed him by the collar, and basically threw him out the door.

“You stay the fuck away from him, you hear me?!” Dante spoke with a low, angry voice and slammed the door shut.

“You should’ve stayed out of this,” I told him, as he leaned against the door with both hands, taking in deep breaths. “You’re not well. Come, I’ll take you back to your room.”

I placed my hand on his arm, but in a blink of an eye, he turned around and slapped my hand away.

“Dante?” I whispered when I saw his eyes.

They were black.

“No…” Dante groaned, wrapping arms around his thin torso. “Get back… I… I can’t…”

He was now definitely getting bigger. I stared at him with wide eyes as he fell down on his knees, moaning in pain.

“Dante?” I stepped back when his transformation started. He was growing dark fur, his limbs grew longer, and his facial features were turning distorted.

“Get… away…!” he pleaded, but his voice wasn’t his anymore. “I can’t… control it!”

I lost my voice. I lost my ability to think. I just stood there, watching as he turned into something straight out of nightmares. His fangs grew so long they went past his jaw, his eyes were big and flashing in anger. His ears grew long, much longer than wolves usually had. His mouth was big enough to bite my whole head off.

And when his transformation was complete, he got up on his hind legs, breathing heavily like he was in great pain. And then he turned to look at me.

“Dante?” I whispered one last time when he landed on his front legs, digging his massive claws into my hardwood floor, growling at me the entire time. I took a slow step back, trying to get to the kitchen door.

That was a mistake.

His whole, massive figure trembled in power when he launched at me, letting out a blood-chilling growl as he flew towards me, his claws ready to rip me open.