THIS IS NOT OVER YET

**Dominic’s story**

“I marked her! I fucking marked her!” My nerves were about to snap. Even Declan and his jokes couldn’t keep me under wraps.
I could see he understood and was a little shocked by the news, especially since he already knew this was what I wanted. But he probably didn’t understand the reason for my anger.
“You marked her... okay? And isn’t that supposed to be a good thing? Something you were supposed to do?” he looked even more confused, rubbing his barely grown beard.
The way he looked at things was the obvious way, but from my perspective, I fucked those things up. I narrowed my eyes and felt them catch fire. “Okay, I take it that not everything went smoothly...” Declan continued, but in a more cautious tone.
“Everything went so wrong, Declan!” I snapped, slamming my fist into the table, watching the coffee cups shake. Already, a few curious eyes had turned to us.
“Calm down or you’ll attract attention and you don’t want that. Take a deep breath and tell me all about it.”
I took Declan’s advice, and it was only after a good few minutes that I got my thoughts in order to be able to recount perhaps one of the worst mistakes of my life. “I hate this wolf inside me sometimes, man. He does things that aren’t right and pushes away people he should keep close” I started a little more calmly but not enough to have a steady tone. “Sometimes I wish my father had let me die and not turned me.”
“Hey, Dominic, don’t talk nonsense. Your father did what he thought best. More than that, put yourself in his place. Would you have let your son die?” Maybe at this point Declan was the rational one.
“I know what you mean, but that’s how I feel sometimes. Now I understand why my mother always resisted. I miss her so much...”
“Is it that bad what happened?” insisted Declan, seeing that I didn’t have the courage to talk. I had to face my fears, after all.
“It’s not that I marked Rebecca, it’s how I marked her. We had a terrible fight,” I said with a heavy heart. Declan’s face suddenly tensed.
“What do you mean, you had a fight? Why?” It was hard for me to reproduce what had happened, but Declan was my best friend and I needed him around.
“If you had joined me at the premiere of my film, you would have agreed with me. At some point, while talking to fellow actors, I realized Rebecca was gone. I thought maybe she’d gone out for a breath of air and I went looking for her. I looked everywhere and found her in a hidden place in the company of that jerk Logan,” I snorted, looking for comprehension.
“Logan? You mean the actor who seems to know Rebecca?”
“Exactly him. I haven’t liked the guy since their first date, but every time Rebecca tells me he’s a friend of hers.”
“But maybe he really is” Declan jumped to his defense, to my surprise.
“Come on, man! What kind of friend would he be if you’re meeting him secretly? And you insist on this thing so that I might believe you”
“Look, I really understand and I’m trying to put myself in your shoes, but even so, the way I imagine you marking her seems, without knowing it yet, violent... the way I know you...” It bothered me somehow the way Declan thought of me, but he was right.
“The argument escalated quickly and the next thing I knew, I was marking her a little more violently, just like you said. The next second, she felt really sick to the point where she passed out. After she recovered, she didn’t stick around to talk and left. Not before she told me to stop looking for her, and to get out of her life.”
“Let me tell you, my friend, you’ve really screwed up. I’m asking you now, how are you going to fix it? Or rather, does this have a fix?” The voice of my conscience, that was Declan.
“If my stupidity has no cure, then I’ll make one myself. But I can’t get over their image...” I said, trying not to lose myself in thought.
“You’ll have to face your jealousy, swallow your pride and talk to her, Dominic. Even if it seemed like I was defending her, she must have had her own reason for talking to that Logan. Did you hear what I said? She was talking!” He emphasized the last word so I could understand that they were doing nothing wrong.
And no matter how hard I tried to make myself feel better, I couldn’t. They were there, in my mind, twisting it.

**Rebecca’s story**

I still couldn’t believe Dominic could do something like that. And to me. The one he supposedly loved above all else.
I was still in denial and had called Sam. She was the only one who could listen to me and give me advice. Although I sensed what kind of advice, she was going to give me. But I desperately needed to vent.
By the time she knocked on my door, I’d had a shower and two coffees.
“My dear Becca! It’s a pleasure to see you again, except your voice on the phone didn’t sound like good news, did it?”
Her smile vanished when she saw I wasn’t in on the jokes.
“I’m trying to pick up my pieces, Sam...” I said in a muffled tone, sinking into the couch just as I set the coffees on the coffee table.
“And without telling me, I know it’s about Dominic”
“What else exciting is going on in my life, Sam, besides him?”
I couldn’t even speak and, in a very natural gesture, I reached for the scarf I had wrapped around my neck. Dominic’s wound had not yet healed. That was when her eyes widened in astonishment and she also rushed to me, removing the piece of fabric protecting my throat. I hesitated, but it was too late. Samantha was quicker.
“What in the name of Lord Almighty is that?”
I could feel the concern in her voice. She was still staring at the deep scar on my skin.
“That, my dear Sam, is Dominic’s lifetime mark on me.” I said, somehow disappointed that things had evolved the way they had.
“Is that supposed to be a good sign?” she asked me, puzzled, still looking at me. There were things Samantha didn’t know, and it was time she found out. She had to know and get used to the idea.
“Sam, I have a confession to make...” I began cautiously, but the fear of speaking said its last word and tears had already pierced my eyes, rolling down my cheeks. I still didn’t know how she would react.
“Becca, you are worrying me. What happened to you?”
“Do you believe in werewolves?” And my question came as blunt as it was shocking.
“What? Are you asking me if I believe in... werewolves? You mean those beasts from fairy tales?”
Her reaction was so natural. I looked at her, and I could see myself when Eve told me the truth.
“No, not those. The real ones”
The more I went into explanation, the bigger her eyes grew.
“Oh, girl, you mean wolves? Like the ones that attacked you and Tom. Well, there are quite a few of them in the woods, unfortunately, and we can’t be safe anymore...”
But I kept silent and stared at her. My tears stopped. “It’s not that what you wanted to tell me about?”
“No…” I replied in a muffled voice, still holding her gaze. “I know it seems hard to believe. I, too, have experienced the same feeling of denial and helplessness, but it turns out werewolves are real. And Dominic, the man I love, is one of them. And this mark on my neck is his mark, his way of claiming me.”
Several seconds of silence followed, while Samantha couldn’t take her eyes off me from the rather deep wound on my neck.
“Did you hear yourself, Becca?” she finally asked, leaning back on the couch.
“I wish I had something else to tell you. Something less severe, but yes, I do hear myself say it and I’m not crazy” I felt the need to emphasize that last part because sometimes I thought I would end up questioning so much that I wouldn’t know what was real and what was fiction from my life.
“Okay, let’s say I can understand, which seems so far beyond my comprehension. What about you guys now? I mean, can you really hang out with a... wolf?”
“I love him, Sam, but the way he claimed me makes me wonder seriously. The conversation between us does not end here. I have a lot more to tell you. Time is pressing me at the moment. And to think the night’s not over yet...”
“What do you mean?” Sam asked suddenly, getting defensive.
I glanced at my watch quickly and felt my breath catch.
“In less than an hour it’s Dominic’s movie premiere party, and I have to be there.”
“What???”