She bares her teeth. “Something’s sent him to do it, and I can only imagine that something is you.”
“Do what?” I ask, still not understanding what she could possibly mean. I’m still trying to wrap my head around what she’s saying.
Rory came back.
He was watching, waiting, protecting.
It suddenly clicks in my brain.
The howling.
It wasn’t made up. It wasn’t all in my head. I was hearing him.
I shake my head from side to side as if I can shake some sense into it. “What’s he supposed to be doing now, because of me?”
The one thing that remains certain in my mind, the one thing that remains steady, is the overwhelming sense of dread. And when Vivian opens her mouth next, I know why.
“Rory is racing toward Remus’ pack, hell-bent on destruction.”
No.
If he does that, Remus will kill him for sure. What would make Rory even think to do such a thing?
And then the events of last night flicker back into my memory, and I understand … and am overwrought with guilt.
I start to cry so hysterically that I can’t see the road and Vivian has to take the wheel with a loud swear.
“It was me,” I sob as I shake my head again. “I thought I hallucinated those yellow eyes in the forest. I thought there was a whole slew of wolf eyes glowing back at me, but if I really try to picture it now, there wasn’t. It must have been the mushrooms that made me see so many, but there was only one set of eyes wasn’t there? It was only Rory.”
“What are you talking about?” Vivian snaps. “You mean you saw him?”
“No, not exactly,” I manage through my own tears. I’m babbling now, talking out loud as the last two months start to settle into place. “All of the howling I’ve heard, and the feeling of being watched and followed in the woods; I didn’t imagine all of that. It was Rory the whole time. He was watching me, and he saw all of the messed up shit that I was doing. All of the pained howls, that was him.”
Despite Vivian’s urging me to go forward, I have to slow the car down to a halt.
I sit silent and still for a moment as I try to gather myself together.
“Well, like I said,” Vivian growls. “I knew it was you.”
“Last night I was at a bonfire in the woods with a guy from school. I ate some mushrooms and it made my mind go all weird. I thought I saw the boys there, and I thought I saw Rory with me. I was hallucinating and I didn’t know what I was doing, all I knew was how I was feeling.”
I finally turn to look at her. “I felt the bond, Vivian … the one that Lydia told me about; the one that the boys have with me.”
“That’s impossible,” Vivian says, suddenly. “Humans can’t feel the bond.”
I take one hand off the wheel and grab one of her hands, just to be sure for a moment that she’s really here. And she is. Her hands, though smaller and decidedly less hairy, are hot like the boys’. Like Rory. Like Marlowe. Like Kaleb.
“I felt it,” I say. “I’m sure of it.”
Vivian’s face looks shocked.
“I felt it and it killed me. But Rory … Rory must have seen …”
I choke up again. “He must have seen what I did. He must have thought I was lost. Well and truly lost.”
Vivian’s face contorts. “Look,” she says, grabbing my hand and placing it back on the steering wheel. She points one finger out in front of her, towards the winding stretch of road. “You don’t have to tell me what it is you did that made him freak the fuck out, but you do have to drive. Can you do that for me?”
I swallow hard, and nod.