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drinking and . . . carousing, and we didn t expect them back before the wee hours of morning.
Kelley Armstrong Ascension 47
Nick and I spent the evening hanging out, talking mostly him talking, mostly about girls.
He d snuck over a few copies of Playboy, and we went through those. I didn t really get it, but
I played along with his enthusiasm. When it came to sex, I was a late bloomer. I d begun filling
out and putting on some muscle heft, helped by the weight set that Jeremy had bought for my
fourteenth birthday. I d also shot up a few inches. In the past year or so, I d begun showing the
first signs that, while I might never be as tall as Jeremy or as muscular as Antonio, I wouldn t be
the runt of the litter forever.
In other areas of puberty, though, I lagged behind. My voice only cracked when I lost my
temper and shouted loudly enough to strain my vocal cords, and the only excess hair I had came
when I Changed. Sex and desire were things I understood only as hypothetical concepts. So,
although I felt no physical reaction on seeing the Playboy centerfolds, I seconded Nick s opinion
that they were hot and tried very hard to keep my attention off the articles, and on the
pictorials.
After eating everything that Jeremy left out for us, and sampling his brandy, we headed up
to my room to sleep. I waited until Nick drifted off, then slipped from bed, took my flashlight
and sat in the corner to read. With Jeremy gone, I was the man of the house, and I didn t feel
right falling asleep on the job. Anything could happen. And that night, something did.
When the clock downstairs struck midnight, a wolf s howl echoed the last few gongs. I
leapt up, dropping my book and flashlight, and opened my window. The howl came again, from
deep in our back woods. I knew that it was a mutt, not because I didn t recognize the voice, but
because it was a howl of challenge, the call of a wolf who has ventured onto another s territory
and dares him to do anything about it.
Kelley Armstrong Ascension 48
I knew I had to act fast. Jeremy and Antonio would be home any moment now. If they
heard the howl, our weekend would be ruined. Antonio would insist on handling it, Jeremy
would insist on defending his own territory, and any way that it ended, no one would be happy.
Better for me to take care of it first.
Two things told me I was relatively safe taking on this challenge alone. First, the wolf s cry
held a quaver that said he was getting on in years. Second, coming at midnight and howling in
the woods rather than appearing at our front door meant he wasn t all that sure he wanted anyone
to answer his challenge. This was an old wolf making his last stand, maybe ill or otherwise close
to death, hoping to die doing something he d never dared do in life take on a Pack wolf.
So I leapt out the window, raced into the forest and Changed. Then I tracked him and killed
him. It was, as I d suspected, not a difficult task, and not one that requires any further detail. I
killed him, I buried his body, and I went back to bed.
That winter, I killed my second mutt. This time, the mutt presented himself at our door, so I
couldn t intercede before Jeremy found out. As usual, Jeremy gave him until midnight to leave
town. The mutt only laughed and said he d be in the back forest, ready whenever Jeremy got up
the nerve to take him on. I knew he wouldn t leave. And I knew Jeremy would give him until
midnight. So, on pretense of working out, I went down to the basement, then climbed out a
window and zipped to the forest. I Changed, lured the mutt away from the place he d promised
to meet Jeremy, and killed him. This time wasn t nearly as easy as the last, but I managed it. I
stashed his body far from the assigned meeting place, and downwind so Jeremy wouldn t find it,
Kelley Armstrong Ascension 49
then hurried back to the house. Late that night, long after Jeremy had decided the mutt had fled,
I returned and buried the corpse.
Two mutts within six months was unusual. Normally, we saw an average of one per year.
A third one showed up just a few months after the second. This one, fortunately, did take
Jeremy s advice and left town. But that still meant three mutts in a year. Something was wrong.
Yet because Jeremy knew nothing of the first one, he thought we d only had two mutts in just
over a year, both of whom had left without a fight, so he saw no cause for alarm.
When I hit sixteen, puberty finally kicked in, bringing with it a problem far more complicated
than the killing of trespassing mutts. I began to feel the first tugs of sexual desire, and while
that s probably confusing for any kid, my situation only made it ten times worse. With no
females of my own species, my body fixed those desires on the nearest approximation it could
find human girls. And that might have been fine, had my wolf-brain not jumped in with
demands of its own. On the matter of sex, the wolf in me was clear: I needed to find not a
casual sexual partner but a life partner, a mate. I would accept a human mate, since it seemed I
had little choice in the matter, but it had to be someone I wanted to spend my life with. Yet there
were few humans I could envision spending an entire weekend with, let alone a lifetime. So here
I was stuck. I looked around, and saw no potential life partner, and the wolf in me would accept
nothing less.
That September was one of the worst times of my teen years.
Kelley Armstrong Ascension 50
I always arrived at school early so I could run a twenty laps around the track, wear off
excess energy before beginning my day. That was be my only chance to get some physical
activity in before I went home and worked out. I didn t take gym class. We were supposed to,
but Jeremy had managed to convince the school that my time was better spent where my obvious
assets lay in academics. With the help of a sympathetic teacher, who agreed that I needed to be
challenged academically, I was already on the fast-track to college, skipping any extra classes
like gym or art so I could graduate a year early.
That morning, the football field was flooded, so the team had to move their before-school
practice to the track field. I ignored them, but the disinterest wasn t mutual. After a few
minutes, I noticed the football coach watching me more than he was watching his team. When I
headed to the stands to grab my towel, he came over.
What s your name, son? he asked.
I wiped the towel over my face. Clayton.
You re a student here, aren t you? I know I ve seen you around.
I shrugged and kept drying off.
You took those hurdles pretty good. You on the track team?
I shook my head, grabbed a clean shirt from my bag, and peeled off my sweat-sodden one.
The coach s gaze slid over my upper body.
How much are you lifting? he asked.
Another shrug, and I yanked on my shirt.
Not very talkative, are you, son?
I hefted my bag. I gotta go.
Kelley Armstrong Ascension 51
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