After returning to the town from what felt like a never-ending path, the professor exhaled in relief. If her invented machine had really sent her to the epoch of werewolves and vampires, and there were no refrigerators stocking up on the edibles like those in the present, she could get some sleep in the least to wake up with a fresh mind and process things. Her wound also needed time to be healed, some medication as well. They didn't have infirmaries in the fifteenth century. Had they had? Well, they sure had physicians. But who would treat her wound? A werewolf doctor? Who knew they would give her the right treatment? As for now, she would sleep and deal with the injury tomorrow morning.
When the girl had to limp across the jungle, little did she hope the man, she was following with the six feet distance apart, to be turning around at her hissing every time she jumped to lower ground and offered walking the professor in his arms. She called up Edric effortlessly picking her light body in his vigorous arms when she had been drunk some weeks ago and also high on weed yesterday. The man was certainly muscular than Edric but he didn't even spare her a glance upon hearing a relatively pleading, shaky voice asking him to put a momentary stop to their track and take some rest. Instead, he started taking longer strides, making his way through the woods, overlooking the aching moans of discomfort behind him.
He was already putting up with the girl while being on his two legs. She shouldn't have expected anything more. The only reason for bringing the girl back to the town was to assess the limits of her blatant lies. She was saved within the boundaries of the town. The alpha wasn't concerned about her safety. A vampire could take the girl all to his care. He only wanted to uncover her hidden purpose of coming to his land and lying about her origin.
"I--", following the alpha to the cabin the girl had been to before, she was about to step inside as he opened the door when his piercing gaze held her in her tracks.
"I want to sleep", the professor said, feeling uneasy under the stare of the man. No, that wasn't an undressing-someone-with-eyes type of gape. The man looked jumping at the throat of the girl any second. He was indeed not pleased with an intruder on his land, lying, on the top. But she wasn't lying. However, she was also not stating the entire truth. If the alpha was accusing her to be a human from some hunter tribe, a fair explanation was required from her side to make the situation clear. Rather, she chose to not open up about her real identity. Why? She didn't know what the werewolves were capable of doing and what would they do after discovering that the human was from not their time but future. Confronting them face to face, she only wished to have watched some werewolf series so she could have an idea how to react around them and respond to their statements.
"So?", the man standing before her asked. She was not thinking of him lulling her to sleep. Was she?
"Let me sleep", when she was walked by the two boys earlier, the alpha was already inside the house. Coming to the place back, he entered the same cabin, confirming the fact that the cabin was his. The doors of other cabins were shut which meant it was midnight or so. Similarly, there was no sound coming out from inside. She couldn't go door to door, knocking and asking if she could have shelter for a night. She would do that if she had no wish to take more breathes. Humans or werewolves, nobody liked to be wakened up from slumber.
"By no means I'm stopping you", the alpha replied with a plain, detached face.
"I have no place to go. Can I--I--," the lips pressed tightly together, the girl mustering up the courage to shoot the words in the air. From her earlier observation, there weren't many rooms in the cabin. A small passageway lead to the wide room where she saw the man. There was a large wooden slab positioned to the right of the room with a piece of cloth neatly folded on its top, another rectangular piece placed across the sheet but it appeared stuffed with something just like a feather pillow. The entire setting confirmed that it was a bed, approximately 3ft single bed for one person. A little round table was situated to the other side of the room. Apart from these two fittings, the cabin was vacant.
"C-an I stay at your place for t-onight?", up until tonight, Scarlett didn't know that asking for permission could be that tough task. She had always had everything she asked for. She would never have to ask for approval. Not that she would use other's things without their consent. If she needed something, she would ask, more like order, and have it. Well, those were very few times. Mostly, she would get the thing herself. Moreover, what could others have that the professor didn't? That was the root cause of having stutters in the request while standing at the door of a man, a werewolf man, she just met.
"No."
"But you're an alpha. It's your responsibility to look after people on your land", after the command of maintaining distance between the man and her feet, the girl had to cover the rest of the way in silence. Except for the buzzing, thrumming, and sometimes screeching owl sounds, the air was voiceless between them.
Scarlett took it as her time to process her conversation with the two boys that involved the man she was retracing the footsteps of. When she asked them where they were taking her, they said 'to our alpha'. She also called up them saying that they act on the command of their leader. It meant 'leader' and 'alpha' was the same person she had trusted to walk with. Generally, since an alpha represented a dominant personality in a particular sphere, based on all information she had gathered, the man was the ruler of the land and obeyed by his people.
"Exactly. My people are my responsibility and you aren't one of them but an interloper", the alpha was again quite taken back at what the girl said. She was a hunter and would have to be mindful of the depths of her words. It was nonsense, utterly lunatic of the hunter asking for a refuge from the alpha of a wolf pack. If hunters could get anything from the cold, ruthless alpha, it was death.
"Hey, look at me. Do I look harmful?", if there were hotels in the place the professor had traveled to, she wouldn't waste a second with the pea-sized brain. But would she have their currency to pay them? Well, she would spend time looking for a way to rent out a room than losing her brain cells while talking to the thickheaded man.
"In that human skin? Yes, you do", the man could jab her heart out of her chest before she exhaled the next breath. When she was an ordinary hunter for the alpha to be torn apart, there were children, infants in his pack, and to them, the hunter could be dangerous.
"Come on now. You are be---"
BANG!