The drumbeat was getting faster and faster. Practically right on top of one another.
The muscles on my spine tightened, and I knew that something bad was coming. And it wasn’t the wolf.
I’ve made a big mistake.
Without thinking, I got to my feet and took off for the river. If it was a choice between the wolf hunting me or the nameless sense ofdanger behind me, it was no choice at all. Give me the wolf any day.
Boom-boom.
Boom-boom.
As I neared the river bank, I jumped.
But I didn’t make it. The trees on my side of the river moaned and twisted, their branches threading together to block my way, grasping at me as I was tangled up in them.
Boom-boom.
I screamed, thrashing about wildly. Wood snapped. The wolf howled.
And I woke up as I hit the floor in a tangled heap of limbs and sheets, having fallen out of bed.
Jerked awake by the impact, I lay there for a moment, gasping for air, my lungs working triple overtime to provide me with the oxygen I so desperately needed.
“What the fuck was that all about?” I asked to the empty room, trying to decipher the meaning behind my wild dream.
The walls had no answers for me. Only silence.
That was preferable to the pounding of the drums, though, so I took it as a marginal victory. Tossing the sheets and comforter over my head and onto the bed, I got to my feet. It was still dark outside, the bedside clock telling me it was just after two in the morning.
I was just setting to the sheets when my neck tingled, and the hairs on my arms rose straight up. Immediately, I looked out the window. There was nothing to see, it was too dark. But I knew something was out there. Watching me.
Was it the wolf again? Or the forest lumberjack with the same eyes? I pinched my arm hard, but all I got was pain. So I wasn’t dreaming. This was real.
I walked to the window and opened it. “I know you’re out there,” I called to the silence of the night, very happy that nobody would hear me. “Watching me like some creep.”
There was no response, but the pinpricks up and down my neck weren’t fading. I wasn’t imaging it. This was real. Throwing on a thicker shirt, I made my way down the stairs and out onto the back porch. I stopped there. I was getting frustrated at the lack of response, but I wasn’t insane. No way would I enter the forest in the middle of the night.
I swung my gaze up and down the black outline of the trees, letting my gut tell me where to stop, and stare, and wait. After a minute, I crossed my arms impatiently.
It took another minute or so, but then, from right where I was looking, Lincoln stepped out of the darkness and eventually into the light from the house.
“Now who’s stalking who,” I called as he approached.
He ignored my jab, walking up to the base of the steps before gesturing for permission to come up onto the porch with me.
“Yeah, sure, why not,” I said with a shrug. “It’s not like it’s going to stop you from watching me.”
Lincoln ascended the stairs, his yellow and blue eyes locked on to me with unnerving intensity. He didn’t say a word, but his presence was electric, eliciting a tingling response from me that I tried my hardest to shut down but failed.
“Can you stop looking at me like that?”
He blinked those peculiar eyes of his and adjusted his shoulders, pulling the plain white T-shirt tightly across his upper body with the movement. I didn’t let myself take full noteof the way it hugged his chest or wrapped snugly around his biceps.
“How would you prefer I look at you, if not with my eyes?” he asked, his voice rumbling like a distant freight train.
“It’s not your eyes. It’s the look behind them. Like you’re constantly evaluating me and judging me,” I told him before adding sarcastically, “like you’re seeing if I’m ‘ready to believe,’ whatever the hell that means.”
Waking up from a nightmare on the floor really had left me in a foul mood, and now I was taking it out on Lincoln. He didn’t seem to care. His face didn’t show an ounce of irritation at my tone.
“Believe in what?” he asked in that same tone.
“I don’t know.” I crossed my arms. “That the animals here are crazy? That you’re not a weird stalker who is going to hurt me?”
His face went so still it could have been carved from marble. I’d hit a nerve.
“Do you think I’m going to hurt you?” he asked with heart-stopping intensity.
Something told me a great deal hinged on my response, and not to take it lightly.
“I don’t know,” I said after giving it real thought. “I have no idea if I can trust you because sometimes you look at me like I’m a threat, and your fingers clench into fists. I wonder what you intend to do with them.”
Lincoln looked down, noting the tightly clenched fist of his right hand. With a visible effort, he let his fingers drop.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, lifting his head, his eyes ablaze with color so intense I rocked backward under the weight of it.
“I believe that,” I said. I looked away and shoved the rising flutters in my stomach back down, burying them under the weight of all my unacknowledged emotions and trauma. Now wasnot the time for this. “But I also know that you, and everyone else in town for that matter, are holding things back from me. And it’s making me tired.”
“What do you mean?”
“You damn well know what I mean!” I shouted, my temper snatching the reins momentarily. “My grandmother knew, the neighbors do, half the people in this town seem to know something is up or different. I don’t even knowwhat it is all you people know, but it’s clear it’s something, and you’re all trying to pretend like you don’t. Then of course there’s all this curse of the woods and guardian stuff. It’s exhausting.”
“Not everything in the woods is a curse,” Lincoln ground out through a clenched jaw.
Was he angry with me for calling him out? That seemed awfully petty of him. It had to be something else.
“There you go again! Does anyone around here not talk in riddles?” I asked hotly, shoving his feelings aside. This wasn’t about him. He’d come to my house in the middle of the night. This was about me.
“Only those who understand,” came the reply.
I’d had enough.
“Leave,” I said, pointing past him. “Just walk back into the forest, and leave. I’ve had enough of this crap. I’m done. I am so done with it all. I’ve got enough other things to deal with. Your secrets just aren’t going to be one of them. So go away. Go back to your forest life. I don’t want you around.”
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