A Touch of Lunacy

I stood in the room feeling awkward and useless before I walked to the door leading deeper into Donovan's suite. I was almost to the door when I realized how stupid all of this was. He'd rescued me from the crazy psycho bitch but he wasn't much better. He turned me into a werewolf, even if I hadn't actually turned into a wolf just yet. He had tried to make me his mate without ever asking me what I thought. Well, here's what I thought. Like hell if I'm going to turn compliant just because Jennifer wants me to act like an alpha in the pack and like hell if I'm going to get all romantic just because he saved me from a situation he had created. I turned on my heel and marched out, bumping into Joe. He looked a little embarrassed.

"Uh... I wanted to ask you out on a date," he asked. He wouldn't look in my face. He seemed to have found a very interesting spot on the wall.

"Are you allowed to date your alpha's mate,"I asked, crossing my arms across my chest. He glanced at me from the corner of his eyes. There was a moment of silence before he asked, "Have you slept with Donovan?" I rolled my eyes and slumped against the wall.

"No, but no one else really seems to care about that. Since I got here, all anyone has done is make me feel like I have no choice."

"They're desperate." Joe ran his fingers through his hair and decided the floor was a more interesting thing to stare at than the wall.

"And now its my responsibility simply because some nut job tried to rape me and ended up turning me into a freak?" I pushed away from the wall and started back to my room. I certainly didn't want Donovan to hear me calling him a nut job if he opened the door.

"I understand that you're upset and you have the right to be." Joe said, following me into my room. I flopped onto one of the chairs in the sitting area and wondered how I could have done things differently, if there was anyway to have done anything differently since I had ended up here. My life seemed to be a rollercoaster and there wasn't any sign that it was slowing down to stop any time soon.Joe sat down next to me, running his hands through his hair. "Do you think I'm a freak," Joe asked. I looked at him, surprised.

"No. Why?"

"You can admit it if you think we're freaks. I suppose they never covered werewolves in you high school biology class."

"Yeah. Someone goofed when they were writing out the curriculum."

"Katherine, this may be weird for you, but this is just a part of reality that most people don't know about. Most people don't want to know about."

"Does the government know about you?"

"Yes, they help out sometimes with keeping our secret. In exchange, we are pretty much at their beck and call, the government's dogs." I ignored the anger in the last bit. It really didn't have anything to do with me.

"If this is all square with the government, why do i have to be dead to my family?"

"They don't know about our females. We worry for them. We've heard stories from other packs about the experiments the government did on them. We don't want them do anything to the females here."

"I can understand them wanting to know how this works. It's weird. If I were a member of government, I would not be happy about super powered beasts with all the higher functions of a human running around. That just spells dangerous. Look what happened to me."

"You kicked Donovan's ass."

"Yet, I'm still here, cursed to be a freak."

Joe huffed and looked down the corridor. I sighed, knowing I was being rude. My patience about this whole thing was running thin. Joe hadn't done anything to me. He'd tried to help me. He'd given me good advice. But it still felt like this was being forced on me. He would never have been a dating option in my mind if any of this hadn't happened.

"Do you want to go on a date? There a nice restaurant outside of our territory."

"No. I don't want to go on a date. I want to be petulant and angry. You're trying to distract me from that."

"You want to be petulant?"

I stood up and walked away, thinking to hell with those brothers. They were both needy in their own way; Donovan in the crazy obvious way, Joe in a subtle way. How else could you explain his desire to date me after insulting him continuously? There had to be a therapist or something that we could hire to straighten out everybody's problems.

I was halfway to my room before I realized I really didn't want to be cooped up. This whole place was suffocating me. I wanted nothing more than to just go out for a run, but I was wary about those nightwalkers. This pack needed therapy, but those guys needed to be locked up in a mental asylum. I made my way down to the gym, happily not meeting a single person on the way.

I tried not to be disappointed when I saw there was already someone in the gym. Daniel was running on a treadmill. His feet were a blur. They had to have rigged that treadmill. No way the manufacturer designed the machine to go that fast. Daniel and his mother, Jennifer, were my favorite people here. I was happy that if my angry solitary workout was not going to happen, at least it was because of Daniel being here. I frowned a little to myself, trying to figure out if that made any sense. I suppose my fondness of him had something to do with it. I shrugged and called out hello to Daniel.

He grinned as he jumped off the treadmill and ran over to me. I could see the challenge in his eyes. I easily flipped him onto his back when he tried to tackle me. He lay on the ground, dazed for a moment. He grinned up at me and gave me a thumbs up.

"I'm going to be a little sad the day I manage to tackle you."

"Well, good thing that isn't going to happen. I was wondering where you've been. Do you spend all your free time on that treadmill?"

"It's the only thing I'm really good at so I want to work at it, you know? I'm good at it, but I could be unbelievably spectacular at it. You know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean. I need to get rid of some stress. I was going to hit a punching bag. Is there any around here?"

"No. We end up breaking any punching bags. If you want, we can go to town and pick one up. My mom wanted to go into town for awhile now. We can all go, maybe catch a movie."

I was about to say yes when I thought about Joe. Was it fair to him to say yes after I just turned him down like that? Eh. This wasn't a date. Daniel was just a kid and Jennifer was going to be there. Ugh... Maybe I could invite Joe along. I told Daniel I'd be happy to go and if he could see if Joe would want to go. Daniel's eyes lit up at Joe's name and he sprinted off. I sank down on one of the sparring mats and wondered what I was doing.

Daniel was back in almost no time at all. He was positively happy about going into town with Daniel and me. I kept saying one thing and doing another. I told Donovan I wanted nothing to do with being his mate and then I was basically introduced to everyone as his mate. I told Joe I didn't want to go on a date and now I invited him on an outing, not exactly a date but I did invite him on something. A new beginning for me? This was just a mess. I didn't seem to have any convictions lately and it was going to hurt people.

Joe was grinning happily but was careful not to smirk. He saw the situation for what it was. I realized then that I didn't want to be with Donovan or Joe, but I didn't want to burn my bridges with Joe if it came down between me needing to choose between them. Hell, maybe if Donovan pulled something out of the old pack laws with the elders' help, I could hook up with Joe in a last ditch effort not to be chained to Donovan. It wasn't fair to Joe.

I didn't really notice the trip into town but I recognized most of the people there from the pack's estate. Some didn't live at the estate, but apparently they had jobs and lives away from the estate. I wondered if it's be possible to move out of the estate, but I didn't really have the money to buy property and everyone that I could possibly deal with living with already lived at the estate.

I couldn't decide how to deal with this. Sometimes I felt like I could make this work, but then I went back to being scared and frightened, completely unable to cope. I figured to pretend everything was normal for now. Just going to go buy a punching bag for a home gym. I couldn't think of anything more normal than that. I wasn't turning into some hideous monster freak and the people around me weren't monster freaks hiding in a human form. I glanced at Jennifer and Daniel. I didn't think of them as monster freaks. Never once. I had only though Daniel was fun and goofy, earnest to grow into man. Jennifer was only a kind woman, almost like an older sister to me.

We had bought a punching bag and were out of the store before I had really finished my train of thought., though I couldn't recall any money exchanging hands between anyone and the store owner. It seemed to me Joe had just pointed to what he wanted and the store owner said it would be sent to the estate. Perhaps there was some sort of billing method.

We stopped through a fast food burger joint and had a small picnic in the town's park, which was little more than a little grassy square in the middle of town with a few gazebos and trees. It felt nice to be away from the estate. Daniel and Jennifer chatted about nothing in particular. Joe didn't really talk about anything. It felt a little strained, like they were making a conscious effort to afford me some normalcy.

By the time we got back to the estate, I felt a little calmer. Jennifer and Daniel tried to convince me stay downstairs and talk with the others but I declined. I could see some protest in Jennifer's eyes which died with a glance from Joe. I sighed and excused myself. I was almost to my room when Joe caught up with me.

"Am I wrong to be hopeful about a date? Just you and me going out together. It would be really nice."

"Joe... No. I'm never going to date you. If I did that, I would just be using you as a shield to keep Donovan from me. I can't think of anything that I could do that would be worse than that. So, no. Just... no. Good night."

I left him in the hall and firmly shut the door behind me, making sure to lock it. I did not really care much at the moment for any guests. I was a few steps into the room when I caught Donovan's sent. He was sitting in a corner looking moody.

"What are you doing here?" I was suddenly afraid that he might have heard what I said about him earlier. The dimming light of sunset filtered in the room casting odd shadows across Donovan's face. Flashes of our unpleasant first meeting flitted through my mind. He'd improved drastically since then, but that's when he thought I would be his mate eventually. Did he hear Joe asking me out? Did he hear me calling him a nut job?

"Donovan, what are you doing here," I repeated slowly, careful to keep my voice calm.

"Well, at first it was to beg you not to date Joe, but then I saw you drive off with him."

"I did not drive off with him. Jennifer, Daniel, and I went with him into town." Great, he was going to be a crazy again.

"I was angry," he said slowly. "But, he would be more appealing, wouldn't he? I've been thinking about what might be fair from a human perspective. Here at the estate, we think so much with the duality of our wolf form that we just let our two selves meld without even realizing it. The wolf part of me screams that you are mine and that no one else can have you. It's been hard because the human part of me has been screaming in agony with the loss of my Melanie and wanting someone to take away the pain that... well. You know what happened. So I've been trying to think about this from a purely human perspective. You've never even turned into a wolf so that part isn't even truly a part of you. Everyone here either grew up with the duality in them or with it around them.

"So what is fair, from a purely human perspective?"

I relaxed slightly. I was still wary, but it seemed he was trying to make an effort for me. I mulled it over, trying to think of the best way to put it before sitting down across from him. I turned a lamp on to stop the shadows from playing across his face. He wasn't looking at me. His eyes were looking past me, to some place outside the window.

"Fair would be not being forced into this situation, to never have been made a werewolf. I think we are past that, though." He said nothing. I sighed and leaned back in the seat. This was a dead end in the conversation. He was trying and I gave him something that could not be done.

"Give me space. Tell the pack not to treat me as your mate. To just... give me time to figure this out. Too many things are being forced on me suddenly. I have to cope with being not human anymore, with the fact that I'm going to change into something else, with expectations from strangers that I don't fully understand, with a whole new everything. Instead of everything being all of a sudden, let me learn to be what I am now. Let me learn about the pack, become part of the pack. Then we can discuss the issue of me and you."

"You will always say you are unready for that last bit," Donovan muttered. I wondered if it was true. At this point, yes. At some future point? No, I couldn't see myself ever feeling lovey dovey with the creature that had viciously attacked me.

Donovan stood suddenly. "I will be gone from the estate. Joe will be in charge along with the elders. There is a summit of pack leaders that I will attend. My sanity will be in question so I might not return. If that's the case, that's one problem for you solved. Good night." He strode to the door, pausing a moment in a silence that begged for him to say something before unlocking it and leaving.

As I sat there, I wondered if he had been hoping that I would say something.