Chapter 8 – Nick’s explanation

Aniya got up with a jump. “That bloody idiot! What is he doing here? Quick, tell the reception to hide him in their room before my father sees him, or he will be dead meat! Go get him for me and tell him to hide his face as much as possible! Bring that knucklehead to my new office! Quick, Anna! Don’t you stand there looking at me like that!”

Anna immediately gave Aniya’s message to the reception and ran out of the room. Meredith Lion noticed how Aniya looked flustered and that she was once again tapping her chest and taking deep, slow breaths. “Is something wrong, Miss Aniya? You look nervous.”

“Yes... Just someone I wasn’t expecting to meet today, especially because my father will probably kill him on sight! I am sorry, Miss Meredith, but I need to excuse myself. You know the way out, correct?”

Aniya left without even waiting for an answer, leaving Meredith to mumble alone, “Interesting... It seems Miss Aniya is like any other young woman in the face of someone she likes.”

Meredith Lion left the meeting room with a slight smile, just in time to see Anya entering her office and closing the door with a bang, visibly worried.
...

When Anna arrived with Nick Kerrish following her with a cap saying ‘Security’ buried in his head, Aniya was in the middle of her office, walking back and forth, biting her fingernails. The moment she laid her eyes on the green-eyed smiling man, she stopped walking and spoke while staring at him, “Anna, close the blinds, lock the door on your way out, and kill anyone that tries to enter, please.”

The nervous assistant did as Aniya said and exited her room after one last glance at that gorgeous man.

Aniya approached him slowly, completely mesmerised and unable to stop her feet. Nick also approached her, and they touched their hands halfway. A faint glow surrounded them for a few seconds, and Aniya spoke, making a tremendous effort to even open her mouth. “I saw you last night in my back garden, Nick... What was that? What are you?”

“We need to sit down, Aniya. This is difficult to explain. You don’t need to fear me during the day, but the full moon and the two nights after it every month always give me trouble.”

As they were walking while holding hands towards Aniya’s desk, she suddenly felt a strong squeeze on her hand. She looked to her right and saw Nick with his eyes closed hard, sniffing the air and covering his mouth with his other hand to muffle a scream while his fingernails were piercing his flesh near his lips, making him bleed.

Aniya immediately put her other hand on his cheek and asked, “What’s the matter, Nick? You are scaring me! Speak to me, tell me!”

As he was trembling all over and his body was crouching in pain, Aniya crouched as well, and her voice spoke in a strange tone that she couldn’t believe was hers. “Breath, Nick, breath. Don’t worry about anything else, just concentrate on me.”

Nick’s trembling slowed down, and he half opened his eyes. He spoke in a low voice, trying not to scream, “Something is wrong... a smell... I know this smell... it’s painful, Aniya... I feel my entire body on fire... I just want to scream... and tear my flesh apart to stop the pain...”

Aniya looked around, trying to find what could cause that reaction. Then she saw it. On the left side of her new desk, there was a blue flower mixed among the others in a vase. She told Nick to hold on in a low voice, then ran to the desk, grabbed the entire vase, water and all, and threw it in the garbage bin, closing the lid. She then ran to the window and opened it, returning to Nick’s side and holding his hands again. “This was my father’s office. I think I know what happened. You will feel better in no time. Just breathe and focus on me.”

Nick slowly nodded while staring at her, and after two deep breaths, he looked at his fingers that were covered in blood. To Aniya’s surprise, she saw the scratches he made near his lips slowly closing, and not even a scar was left behind. “Your wounds... they are healing...”

“Yes, one of the few good things about my condition. Stupid compensation for everything else. Let’s sit. I will explain everything to you.”

Aniya walked with him towards her desk again, and sat in front of him, always holding his hand. Nick took one slow deep breath and started, “I suffer from a rare blood mutation, and you probably saw me change last night, considering I woke up covered in blood and I saw you in that window, looking at me. I am sorry if I scared you, but I don’t even know how I got there or why I was covered in blood. I probably changed again, because I only remember waking up this morning in a forest near your house with a bunch of dead rabbits partially eaten next to me.”

My father told me that one horse had been killed... have you ever killed and eaten anyone?"

Nick wrinkled his lips in a worried expression. “I think not, but I am not really sure. I always lock myself in at the first full moon of every month. I am what you may call a pureblood Werewolf. That’s what people like me call our beasts. My mother had this, and my father, as well. Their parents were one as well. I changed for the first time when I was sixteen. Not my entire family has this, and the ones that have it hide it from the others. We are able to more or less smell the mutation in others. That’s why I know you are one of us as well. There is also something about you that my mother told me about. The bond that unites two soul mates with this mutation. Even if everything is impossible for you to believe, you can’t deny you feel the bond as well.”

Aniya bit her lower lip and asked, “If you always lock yourself, what happened last night? Why were you near my mansion?”

“There is a group that has been hunting and killing Werewolves for centuries. Their reasoning is that we shouldn’t spread this mutation to our children. What they don’t know is that a family with this mutation could have it for generations without even once having a Werewolf born. Then, because of a strange twist of fate, a child is born with it in full effect and that changes at sixteen. The only way for them to be sure the mutation didn’t spread would be to kill every person on this planet, because anyone can have this mutation dormant. They came for me last night when I was about to lock myself inside the room that I made for myself in my cellar. I had to flee because I knew what they were going to do.”

Aniya got up and went to the bin under her desk. She took one blue flower from there and sniffed it, saying, “I don’t feel any kind of pain or want to scream. Are you sure I am like you?”

Nick looked surprised as he was speaking, “I don’t understand how you can so leisurely sniff wolf’s bane like that or why you never changed.”

Aniya put the flower on top of her desk and slowly pushed it in Nick’s direction, which quickly covered his nose and frowned at her. She went around the table and held his right hand again, saying, “Look at me, focus on my voice, and slowly, let go of your nose and take a slow sniff. You need to get used to this because you have no idea how in danger you are. Focus on me, focus on our bond, as you called it, but don’t let a mere flower beat you.”

Nick eased the frown on his forehead and stared at her. After a few seconds, his breathing got slower and he let go of his nose. He frowned a bit but kept on looking at Aniya, noticing every bit of light on her skin, how her smile was so beautiful, and how her eyes, those beautiful blue eyes, were staring at him. Without Nick even noticing, Aniya placed the blue flower right under his nose. She spoke, and he almost jumped when he felt the flower caressing his upper lip. “That’s it. Focus on me. This pretty blue flower is just that. She can’t harm you or make you change into a beast.”

Nick explained, while still staring at her, “You really have no idea how dangerous this plant is for us, Aniya. Our bodies start to hurt, we scream, we lose all reason and just want to destroy and kill everyone around us. This flower is the principal weapon of that group, and they use it to test their suspects. They always win, because a Werewolf cannot resist the smell of this flower.”

“Even like that, here you are with one rubbing those pretty lips of yours. Do you want to destroy anything? Do you feel any pain?”

Nick blinked and looked down at the flower she was showing him. “I... feel a slight pain now, but it’s bearable. It’s more like an annoying tooth pain than the pain all over my body that I normally feel when I am near these flowers. It seems our bond has a strange effect of countering the influence of wolf’s bane. Who would have thought... My parents had a strong bond, but they couldn’t fight this flower when that group came after them when I was seventeen. I escaped capture, and I have been running ever since.”

Aniya felt tears accumulating in her eyes and spoke in a low voice after placing the blue flower over her desk, “I am sorry for everything you went through. I need to tell you something... After seeing you change last night, I screamed and fainted from shock. My parents took me to a secret cave under my father’s office and showed me our family heirloom, an old, thick book with our family history. They belong to the Hunters Society, and they kill Werewolves. I am supposed to join their organization, considering I now know the truth.”

Nick jolted and held her hands. “No... that can’t be true... you can’t be one of those murderers...”

Aniya said with a pained smile, “It seems I am and my path was already chosen for me even before I was born. I was trained from a young age in self-defence, shooting and swordplay, but apparently, only men do the fieldwork and women are merely administrative. I told my father I wanted to go to the field to learn more. If I am indeed a Werewolf, I want to know as much as possible about our common enemies before I change one day and get found out and killed for that. My father even showed me a file of the most recent suspects. Among them is one of my childhood friends. I warned my father that if he or any of his friends laid a finger on my friend, I would kill them all. I still don’t believe I am a Werewolf like you, but I surely can’t deny that we are linked. I just need you to trust me, because even becoming CEO of this company can benefit us. It will give me an enormous advantage in finding more Werewolves and keeping them away from the Hunter’s hands. But make no mistake, if any of those Werewolves kill a person, I will personally deliver them on a silver platter to the Hunters.”