The Blue-eyed Wolf In The Woods novel Chapter 2

His head was cocked to the side, as if questioning me.

Asking what I'm doing here? What do I want? Who am I?

His outline was fairly visible in the snow covered forest. His black and grey coat stood out from the white wonderland. I don't know how I missed it before.

I wondered if he were the reason I had been feeling restless all night. Has he been out here the whole night? How did I even sense him?

I brushed my anxious thoughts away and focused on him and his wild beauty.

He looked like a young wolf, but how could I gauge how old he was when I was just a kid, and knew nothing about wolves?

But when I noticed him this afternoon he seemed slightly smaller than most of the wolves, maybe that's how I guessed.

He continued to stare at me as if he were analyzing me, looking straight through me to uncover all of my secrets.

We stayed like this, staring, looking, watching each other for the remainder of the night.

At some point he had laid his head on his paws that were stretched out and crossed in front of him, while I eventually drifted into a sleep full of icy clear blue eyes surrounded by midnight black fur.

Just spending one night with him would ingraine his face into my memory forever. I could never forget the way his eyes searched mine for hours.

But this was just the first night that we spent like this, with thousands more to come. Thousands more to remember.

I woke with a start from our first night at dawn, right before the sun broke through the dark winter night sky, to his mournful howl.

3,425

So that was the first of many nights we spent watching each other.

Last night was the 3,425 night.

I tried not to miss a night, if I did I felt empty and sad. But there were family vacations, and sleepovers that I couldn't miss, and sometimes really bad weather conditions. And then there were the summers; although fairly short here in NY, but not short enough, he would physically dissapear. Although I couldn't see him, I could always feel him, watching me every night, waiting.

Every night was spent like this, falling asleep together, but truly worlds apart. Watching the stars, watching the moon, watching each other, for 10 years.

No matter where I was. No matter where he was.

I spent my childhood watching the woods behind my house. Studying the pack that made my backyard their home. I watched them live, hunt, grow and die. They never got too close, always staying right behind the tree line that set the grounds for where my backyard ended and the woods began. I watched him. He grew to become the largest of his pack, and the most beautiful and majestic creature I ever laid eyes on. I could tell he rose to the top of the ranks in his wolf pack because other wolves would bow their heads near him and even from afar I could tell he was respected.

My wolf became the Alpha.

I was proud of him, he grew to become strong and powerful and he obviously proved it to his pack.

■■■

But I was tired. Tired of being obsessed with a life Iwasn't part of, and could never be. I was tired of people thinking I was crazy. Tired of real human boys thinking I was crazy. It was like obsessing over a T.V. show or movie and wanting to be part of it. But it wasn't reality.

I wanted to be normal. Well, not normal perhaps, but I wanted people other than my two best friends to want to talk to me.

I wanted to feel wanted...

To feel accepted...

"Krystal," I heard my mom lightly tap on my bedroom door. "Krystal, honey, I'm just about finished making dinner, you should really eat something before you go out tonight."

I rolled my eyes at them and eventually agreed on getting it or I'd never hear the end of it.

***

Then my eyes landed on the pendant that was hanging from my neck on a black leather cord.

It's been hanging there for almost 5 years.

***

1,820

It was a cold winter. Colder than our first.

I knew he was starving.

I was watching him wither away this winter, because there was no food to be found.

I was 14. It was out 6th year together.

Watching him starve was breaking my heart. I couldn't take it anymore.

Late one night instead of going upstairs to the attic for our nightly ritual, I went downstairs to the basement to look through our second freezer.

We rarely ate the stuff in here, and no one would notice if a few steaks went missing.