33 | BREAKING THE RULES

To Darine’s credit, she didn’t run out of the house screaming like I thought she would. Most humans who have seen how monstrously huge Wolven are in our wolf forms can’t help their natural instincts of self preservation and bolt. Darine’s eyes, do, however, practically pop out of her skull and she just about falls off the stool.

“Holy shi-” She lets out a string of very colorful curses as she claps her hands over her mouth. I stay by the opposite wall where I had been before, remain in a half-sitting position. Like a trained dog would. Though as I sit there and the familiar form stretches over me tighter than a second skin, my Wolven senses snap into focus. I can smell Darine’s excitement, the slight fear at being confronted with an impossible reality, and - oddly enough - the fainest hints of Yuri’s pine and earth scent. “Uh, Scar, are you…” Suddenly Darine’s voice cuts through my calculating thoughts as I try to figure out why she would have Yuri’s scent on her if they aren’t together. “Smelling me?” She wrinkles her nose at me, as if the very idea of me scenting her is the thing that creeps her out. I roll my eyes and make a more pointed sniffing motion with my nose poised high in the air. She cringes a bit at that and waves her hands in front of me. “Change back!” I huff and shift back, part of me relaxing at how easy that was.

“You smell like Yuri.” I point out when I’ve shifted back, leaning against the wall once more. This time getting a little more comfortable by sitting on the ground. This next part is going to be hard. I feel myself naturally trying to throw her off the subject of seeing proof for my other side.

“We do have some classes together.” Darine tells me. But it’s not an answer…though, to be fair, I hadn’t asked a question. She does, however, avoid my gaze as I study her face.

“Hm.” I hum, noting the slight change in the hue of her peachy skin, reddening just a little. It’s really all the confirmation I need.

“And how about the other bit.” Darine changes the subject back on track, her sharp gaze shooting daggers at me. They’re nothing but curiosity and excitement, though. “You walk in the sun. And I know you sleep on a bed. And you like garlic.” She tells me, cataloging all the troupes I’d questioned Hale and Dr. Quinn about last year. “You…had claws that one time,” She notes hesitantly. I smirk at her, but feel the smile become a grimace as I nod.

“That’s…a long story. Just know that’s not something that should happen.” I confide in her, lowing my eyes from hers to the scar on her neck. My stomach’s back to twisting itself into guilty knots as I take a deep breath. “I’m new to the vamp thing. You could say the power in me was *activated* last year. That’s why I was out of school for a while - Well, one of the reasons.” I run a hand over my face and let out the breath.

“Your scars,” Darine prompts and I drop my hands to stare at her grim expression. “I saw them and then…one day they had just faded more. Now I can’t even really see them unless I really look.” Her words shock me.

The scars she’s referring to were the result of my crazy old grandmother’s kill order when I was ten. The wounds had healed, sure, but I was scarred so badly that I hadn’t even started wearing anything aside from turtlenecks and long pants until last year. When Hale had healed me with some of his vampire blood after a run in with my cousins. The more I started to change, the closer to my Blooming I’d gotten, the more the scars had faded. And now, like Darine says, they’re almost non-existent. Save for the one on my neck that Blue gave me, but that one’s low enough that it’s not always so visible when I wear my hair down. Even the thicker scars on my torso are so much lighter, still there in their slightly raised-silvery-tissue, but I can live with that.

“Another long story, but the change I went through when the vamp in me was activated more or less helped them heal.” I tell her softly and she nods somberly, her eyebrows knitting together as she processes that.

“Are you…would you ever tell me about it?” Darine asks me after a few seconds of heavy silence. I smile at her phrasing, half expecting her to demand I spill my life story here and now, but she’s not pushing me. She asked. She wants to know, but is respecting my privacy by not pushing immediately for answers.

“I’ll tell you what,” I sigh, stretching out a little as I make a devious little plan. “You let the vamp-proof thing slide for today and I will think about telling you. But I have to warn you, that’s a long, long story and I don’t know how much I can tell you just yet.” I admit, cringing a little at how thin the words sound. It’s the truth, sure, but I don’t think I should be launching into the story of my life when so much of it includes not only my mom, and Hale, but the Azures. People Darine knows and sees around town.

“Just answer me one thing,” Darine huffs, crossing her arms across her chest as her somber expression becomes slightly annoyed.

“Okay…” I allow hesitantly, waiting for her to spit it out.

“The eye thing. Is that normal in vampires?”

“It is for me.” I shrug and give her another apologetic smile. “Kind of part of the ‘dont-know-if-I’m-allowed-to-tell-you’ thing.” Explaining that the eye thing - the weird glowing-green thing - is not only something I’ve only recently started to think about, but actively try to to ignore, would be kind of hard at the moment.

“That’s…fine.” Darine sighs and her face becomes pensive. “You eat food like normal people though.” She suddenly points out, glancing at the fridge a few feet away from me with narrowed eyes.

“I do eat food, but I also drink blood.” I say slowly, watching her face go a little pale as I say it. But then she just nods and looks back at me. “It comes from donations.” I add, smiling a little as I note her rigid body relaxing a little. “I…generally try to stay away from drinking from the source.” I hedge, not admitting that the only time I’ve drank ‘from the source’ was with Blue. And that’s a whole thing I really don’t want to get into. “Think of it like me taking vitamin shakes - as supplements.” I tell her after another moment of heavy silence. “It helps me stay in control so I can be around - uh - humans.” I feel weird saying the term to a human. Darine narrows her eyes at me, frowning.

“That day…” Darine hesitates, not having to specify the day she means - of course we both know what she means. The day I screwed up and cut her. Made my poor friend bleed. “Were you…in control?” Her body’s gone tight again, and I know she’s replaying what happened in her own mind.

“I had been, yeah.” I nod, sitting back and clasping my hands together in my lap. “It’s just.” I let out a breath and close my eyes as I gather my thoughts, placing that whole day together. Well, the bits I remember. “Something you have to understand, I’m still trying to get used to my vamp side. I’m faster, stronger than before. Sometimes I forget not everyone’s like me.” I open my eyes at look at her with another apologetic smile. “I wasn’t paying attention and tripped. Then I was so busy righting myself that I hit you and…I freaked, lost it and cut you.” I summerize what I can, leaving out the second-by-second play of events in my head, and giving her the cliff notes version. “I should have just let myself fall,” I sigh and shake my head with a bemused smile.

“I’m fine, you know.” Darine tells me after another moment of silence. I look up at her and study the calmness of her stare. Her sharp all-seeing eyes see the guilt weighing on me. “Sure, you could have just gone down like a human, but you’re not. You shouldn’t beat yourself up because you were just being yourself.” She adds with a half-shrug. “Not like anyone died.” She chirps in a less serious tone. I roll my eyes at her.

“You almost did. Yuri was-” I shut up, wincing as I say it.

“I know.” Darine surprises me with her admission. “I remember him yelling at people. Not that I actually saw him or anything. It was kind of weird, like I could hear his voice in my ear, though I know he wasn’t even in the room when it happened. Not at first. He told me he tried to get to me.” She tells me, tightening the arms she’s wrapped around herself. “When I woke up in the hospital, he told me he was trying to get to me faster, but that you got there first. He tried to feed me some bullshit story about you giving me first aid and that I had only fainted.” Darine rolls her eyes. “That didn’t explain why they treated me by giving me IV fluids and packed red cells.” She grumbles.

“He’s a good guy,” I tell her with a half-smile. “Go easy on him. He was only giving you the story we fed him.” I kind of sort of lie. I know Hale would have made sure Yuri stuck to the excuse and probably worked some sort of Compulsion or something on some of the hospital staff.

“Hm.” Darine huffs, narrowing her eyes at me skeptically.

“And how are things between you two?” I prompt, knowing this line of questioning will only make her her uncomfortable - but hopefully through her ever-inquisitive mind off the possibility that Yuri is anything but human.

“Man, look at the time,” Darine hisses, pulling her phone out of her back pocket so fast, I’d think she wasn’t human if I didn’t already know the fact already. “Sorry, Scar, I’ve got a ton of homework to do.” She hops off the stool and walks over to me on her way to the front door. I chuckle and rise to my feet.

“Uh-huh.” I murmur and wrap my friend in a hug when she holds her arms out to me. “Be nice to him.” I tell her gently and she lets out a heavy sigh, giving me one last, tight squeeze before pulling away.

“You’re coming back soon right?” Darine asks me as she pauses by the front door. I smile at her.

“Yeah, I’ll be there tomorrow.” I confirm. “I had to…take care of some business this last week, but I’m done. For now.” I hedge and wince at how cryptic it all sounds. “I’ll be there.” I repeat again.

“Okay, well, you’d better be.” Darine warns, but her voice holds no real promise of anger or bitterness. Just a smidge of worry. We smile at each other and I wave as she makes her way back into her car and drives away. I wonder how I got so lucky as to have such a quirky and understanding human friend who cared so much about me. With a deep breath, I turn back into the house and start prepping my stuff for school tomorrow.