Page 79 of Feral Werewolves
We all filed out of the room like proper little drones, and one of the men—justoneof them, and there wereso manyof us—led us into a room where there was a long table lined up with food. There were plates. A buffet.
We served ourselves.
We sat down on the floor and woodenly ate the food without looking at each other.
“Clementine!”
I looked up, startled, fear going through me. Who knew my name? Who said that?
A man came across the room and gestured for me to stand.
Noah.
He gave me a grim smile.
I stood up.
He gestured with his head for me to follow him.
I, for some stupid reason, gestured at my plate, which was down on the floor where I’d left it.
Noah bent over, swept it up, gave me another smile, thisone more reassuring, and then gestured again.
He walked. I followed.
We picked our way around the shell-shocked women on the floor in their ill-fitting clothes struggling to taste any of the food they were eating. The women barely even looked at us.
I felt my chest squeeze in a way that horrified me and I tamped it down.
It was like Noah had somehow burst into my fortress, let me out, and I couldn’t be out. I could not experience this reality, because if I did, I would shatter into a million pieces.
No, no, no.
In a blind panic, I shuttered myself again.
Noah said something to me, but I didn’t know what it was. I shook my head at him, shook it really fast.
He put a hand on my shoulder, his expression concerned.
I ripped away from his touch, practically baring my teeth at him.Do not try to make me feel. I cannot do that.
He pulled back with a quick nod, like he got it.
He set my plate down on a table. Had he asked me about the food?
Fuck it, I was not actually hungry.
It was silent after that.
He took me up the stairs in the house, and then we crossed into a place that was clearly one of the badly done additions to the place, the hallway a little crooked, the ceilings too low.
We went all the way to the end of it, and there was an open door, and a bedroom inside. There was a bed in there, covered in blankets and pillows. It was, wow, fuck,cozy.
We went in, and Noah shut the door.
A man was on the bed.
He had red hair and freckles and a big red beard, and he was enormous. Like, this man was so broad and so muscled that he was taking up too much space. He was sitting on the bed, not wearing a shirt, just a pair of boxer briefs, and he rubbed his face and looked up at Noah with this expression of bemusement.
