Dylan
"What do you mean?" There was too many things that have happened within the last few hours and I really didn't understand how it had gone from a completely normal day to one of the strangest days of my entire life.
Lecia just sat there looking at me like she was waiting for an explanation, but also like she was a little afraid of what I might say. Being asked questions that were almost impossible to answer wasn't new to me but this one really threw me.
I sat across from her in my big desk chair that either Vit or Noel had been sitting in, right now I couldn't care less which one it had been. Rae seemed like she was on edge, but she wasn't telling me anything.
"Um, I'm a little lost, can you please tell me what you mean?"
Lecia pulled her legs up and crossed them under her thighs, leaned forward with her elbows on the table and just starred at me. I felt like an oddity on display in a circus. She seemed to be trying to pull the answers out of my brain or something.
Every so often I could see that there was a slight glaze over her eyes and I wondered if she was speaking to Brea. After a minute she squinted at me as if she was trying to see something deeper than surface level.
After a few minutes she finally asked, "you have no idea do you?"
What could I even say, I literally had no idea what she wanted to hear from me. "Rae, what is she talking about, do you know?" I asked Rae, but wouldn't respond to me.
"Dylan, you're not from this pack."
"Yeah, tell me something I don't know," Why would she say that to me? Did she think that I didn't know that no one welcomed me in this pack? I have never been welcomed here, not by anyone.
There was no holding back the tears this time. I had no idea what the f*ck was going on, but at this point I was just completely beyond words. I had nothing left. All the emotions from today just caught up with me.
Crumpling both inside and out, there were nothing left to hold me up any longer. It came on to sudden for Rae to do anything for me, and I heard rather than saw Lecia come around the table.
Warm strong arms embraced me and tried to hold me up while Rae filled my mind with words of encouragement, but they were both too late. I fell into oblivion and let everything completely consume me.
-
Bright light met me when I opened my eyes and it took me a minute to figure out where I was. The smell of bacon filled the air and as I stretched my neck to turn to see who was cooking it, I barely kept myself from falling off the couch.
Wrapped in the blanket from my bed, I carefully untangled myself so that I could sit up properly. I couldn't remember how I ended up sleeping here. Moving around wasn't easy. My muscles were sore and my head was throbbing.
The smell of bacon was both overwhelming, and oddly soothing at the same time. Still trying to maneuver myself around the couch and get my bearings, I realized that I had no idea who was the bacon.
Rae was speaking to me, but with the pressure in my head it was hard for me to focus on her words. "Dy, you are home and Lecia is here with you. Are you okay?"
Am I okay?
I had to think about that for a minute. I was still a little sleepy, but other than the soreness and a headache, I seemed okay. Rae seemed off, but glad that I was awake apparently.
Just as I had finally untangled myself and was about to get up, Lecia walked over and handed me a big mug of what smelled like coffee.
Grabbing the mug out of her hand, I thanked her as I pulled it close to my face to inspect. I love coffee, but I like it with equal parts cream and sugar to coffee.
The contents were a swirling caramel color and there was a hint of coconut coming from the steam. I sighed longingly as I took a deep breath and soaked in the wonderful scent.
"Morning," Lecia said tentatively as she sat on the opposite end of the couch from me. She held a mug in her hands and curled her legs up underneath her.
Recalling how she had done something similar last night on the chair made me smile. Lecia reminded me more of a cat than a wolf, but I kept that to myself.
About to thank her, she put up a hand to stop me from speaking. "Before you say anything. I need to say something to you."
"Okay?"
"I'm so sorry," she spit out. "I am so sorry for what happened yesterday! I didn't mean to upset you, or make you angry, or hurt your feelings. I think that my mind was just going so fast that I didn't think about what I was saying and how I was saying it."
Well, why I appreciated the apology, I hadn't even fully woken up yet, but as she continued to speak the memories from the previous day filled my head again.
So much had happened in such a short amount of time and I honestly haven't really processed any of it. The fact that Lecia was still here meant so much to me.
I still wasn't sure when I had fallen asleep, but knowing that she stayed with me was both comforting and a little intimidating. Never having a friend before made this really hard for me to try to navigate.
Books and movies were my only sources of information for this situation, but for the life of me I couldn't remember one scenario that would help me out here. So, winging this was my only option.
Lecia was gripping her mug with both hands and staring at it's contents as if she was waiting for it to do something. I was trying to remember what was the last thing that happened before I ended up passing out, but my mind couldn't recall it.
Rae was listening to everything, but oddly enough she was keeping quiet. Whatever reasons she had were really getting under my skin. Rae had been acting so weird lately and I wasn't sure why and she wasn't telling me much lately.
"Dylan, I made something to eat, would you like to have some breakfast with me. I would really like to talk to you if you'd allow it." Even though she was speaking to me, she was still starring at her coffee.
"Yeah, of course. I would love to. Eat, I mean. And talk. I would love to talk with you over breakfast."
Lecia seemed to light up. She finally looked up and the smile she wore lit up her face. I didn't know how many friends she had, but with a smile like that, I'm sure that people were just drawn to her.
The food she made looked amazing, Lecia ran to the kitchen while I got up carefully with my coffee. When I sat at the table she placed in front of me a plate with bacon, over easy eggs, and the fluffiest pancakes I have ever seen.
My stomach growled the second I saw the food, and I had a feeling that it was going to taste amazing.
Lecia jumped up on the seat across from me and when I looked around, I noticed that everything was clean. I didn't know what time it was, but Lecia must have woken up much earlier than me.
No one has ever shown me such kindness and I really didn't know how to handle this. Conversations were not my forte, but after everything she has done for me, the least I owed her was to try.
"This food looks amazing, thank you so much for cooking for me, both last night and right now. No one has ever done anything like that for me."
Heat flooded my face and I couldn't look up at her. She said that she wanted to talk, so now it's my turn to try and share a little bit of myself with her.
I dug into my food, but still didn't look over to her. The food was even better than I imagined, it was divine. Everything was cooked to perfection and I was lost in my joy when she spoke.
"Yesterday, my words came out wrong. I wanted to ask about you. Your past, your life, and your wolf. I would also like to talk about what happened last night. Would that be okay?"
Still unable to look at her, I swallowed the lump in my throat and tried to prepare myself for where this may lead. It was too late for me to try to get out of it at this point anyway.
Unable to answer her, I nodded and took a huge bite of one piece of bacon.
"What happened yesterday to make you lose control of your emotions?"
That question was a lot easier to answer, but as I thought about it, the worry of losing my job came flooding up again. I told her all about what happened and she just took it all in without commenting.
We were both quiet for a moment, and then she asked her next question.
"Why hasn't anyone seen your wolf, I mean, other than the two times that I have seen her now?"
That one was a bit harder to answer. Alpha Rowan had always told me that I needed to keep Rae a secret to protect us, but I wanted to be friends with Lecia and I didn't want to keep secrets from her.
"I was told that no one would accept her and that others would ask me to leave the pack if they saw that she was different."
Again, she listened intently, but didn't react to my words with anything but nods and small grunts. Explaining everything to her felt good. It was nice to share my secrets with someone who actually seemed to care.
Sitting quietly for another few moments again, I took the time to drink most of my coffee. I felt her staring at me so I looked up to catch her watching me.
"What happened to your parents Dylan?"
Unfortunately, I did know, but that felt a little too hard to talk about so I just told her the lie that everyone around the pack knows. "They were killed in the same battle right after I was born."
This time we both looked at each other and there was no pause in her questioning. "Why can I link with Rae, but not with you?"
I wished Rae could help me with this one because I honestly had no idea myself. "I don't know. I was told that we couldn't link with anyone because our bonds were broken."
"That's a lie, who told you that," she demanded a bit angrily.
Rae hadn't said anything the whole time we had been sitting her and I could feel a sense of tension from her, almost as if she was anxious.
"Dylan, when is your birthday?"
Well that wasn't too hard to answer, "December twenty first." Lecia's eyes widened a bit as she stared at me, but she didn't stop with her questions.
"What do you plan on doing after school? Will you stay here, in the pack I mean?'
Well, what else would I do, of course I would stay here. I mean, I would unless I was forced to leave. The fear of losing my job and my house rose up in my mind again, and I couldn't answer her.
"Dylan, do you know what happened last night?" This time she didn't wait for me to respond, she answered her own question.
"Someone snuck onto the pack lands. Patrols have been looking for them because that wasn't the first time that they have done it and it seems they have been doing it for some time."
Well this was news to me. It's not like anyone shared anything with me, I didn't have any friends or family to get information from.
"I think that the reason Alpha Rogan and the others came by is because who ever it is, they're coming to these lands to search for something. For you, and I think he knows it. That's why he is trying to keep you a secret from everyone. Including yourself."