Maeve's head craned, and her emerald green eyes seemed to get tinged with sullen radiance.
It was apparent in that moment, that the subject Aaron had touched upon garnered no small amount of emotion from Maeve.
"My parents?" she asked in a soft voice, her confusion melting to become some dark mix of fear and fury. "What do you think you know about my parents?"
Aaron knew at once that his trump card was perhaps played a bit too early. His square face seemed to become squarer as it quickly caged in the unease he had been about to betray. He couldn't back down now. He couldn't feed Maeve everything there was to know right now, but he could get off some of the touchier stuff at least.
"The better question is would you want to know about your parents?" Aaron asked boldly. His satin grey eyes kept attempting to bore into Maeve's own pair. She didn't yield.
The girl didn't reply immediately.
She was already struggling with the fact that she was apparently a… werewolf, but now this bastard brought up her parents too? What did he know? How dare he mention them? It was already rough for Maeve to hear the devils she was forced to call foster father and foster mother speak evil about her real parents!
She seethed.
Aaron didn't miss that.
He spoke before she offloaded whatever venom she had been nurturing in her throat.
"Everything you want to know starts with your parents. What you've been experiencing for the past month, what we call the Howling – the bursts of rage, the inexplicable strength, odd cravings, unstable emotions – is connected to them. Now, I wouldn't dare say I knew your parents personally, or that I even know a lot about them, but the little I know can answer some of the questions you have."
Maeve's simmering rage mellowed down a peg.
How Aaron described exactly what she had been experiencing in the last month made her heart thrum fearfully.
He was spot-on.
But all of this was tied to her parents?
Maeve couldn't accept this. The desperate part of her yearned to agree, but the stubborn bit refused. The worst chunk of her found reason enough to drive these two men out of her apartment using her ego as a surfboard.
"You seem to know a lot about me, don't you? You've been stalking me, haven't you? Don't think I didn't pick up on that, fuckers. There's no way you'd know some of the stuff you just said if you hadn't been watching me. Now you use it to try and prove some twisted point like some righteous saviors who understand me. Please. Get the fuck out, perverts," she hissed.
The look on her beautiful face was dark. To someone with a twisted fetish, it might have looked like a work of art.
Aaron sighed helplessly, but he kept his eyes on Maeve.
He then stood up wordlessly and walked towards the door.
Maeve boiled from the inside. She had hoped to get off one last "Get out!" after Aaron pleaded for her to listen, but the man had simply walked away, just like she asked. That might have been a first.
Maeve didn't spare a glance towards the door. She heard the footsteps of the two men turn faint as they closed the door and left.
The tame, melancholic sounds of their departure enraged Maeve, for some reason.
She started panting and reached for the dresser by her bed. She opened every drawer frantically, looking for something, anything; a little butt, a little piece, fragments of the dried tobacco… anything.
But those douchebags had cleared it.
Maeve screamed furiously and ripped out the drawers one by one.
Her parents?
She wrenched the handle to one of the drawers off and flung it at the door.
A werewolf?
She jumped onto her bed and huddled against herself. She pulled on her hair and bit her lip so hard that it began to bleed.
And right then, everything hit her like a freight train. Everything she had decisively escaped from three months ago mixed in with the lies… or maybe truths Aaron had just casually told.
Maeve groaned.
For her whole life, she had lived with her foster parents. Even though she was sure they had raised her from a very tender age, so tender in fact that it would have only been proper to call them mom and dad as she grew, they insisted that she called them foster father and foster mother at home and away.
Those two people and their three children save for one, were the people Maeve loathed the most in this world.
At the same time, they were the people Maeve was the most powerless against.
It had taken her twenty-one years for her to finally hiss back where they hissed at her, to bark back where they barked at her.
Three months ago, she and her foster parents had had a big fight, and she had ended up moving out. She had gathered courage enough to scream back at them when they told her the world outside was a hell that she wouldn't live through.
They had been wrong, Maeve thought.
The freedom had tasted so damn good.
Maeve didn't have to live in the dusty attic anymore. She didn't have to do everyone's dirty laundry anymore – only God knew how demeaning it was to have to attend to the delicates of boys roughly her age. Freedom had allowed her privacy as well, which she had severely lacked, especially when considering two of her foster brothers' 'curiosity'. Their parents had enabled it.
Maeve hadn't needed to worry about whether or not she'd have a proper meal for the day, or the day after that. She hadn't needed to worry about growing scars and blisters from being smacked unjustly by the growing boys.
Once she walked out of that Godforsaken house and started living on her own with Bridget's help, Maeve had fed herself as much as she could, indulged all her senses all she wanted, and exposed herself to things she'd thought she'd only ever get to see on television. She even got to keep her pay from work.
Yet…
Maeve gnashed her teeth.
For two months, she thought she had bested the world, but not.
Now, there seemed to be a reason behind why her foster parents loathed her so much. But could it be?
Maeve feared it could be.
Perhaps Aaron could have told her EVERYTHING, but she didn't think she could have taken anything else from him.
No way.
In the end…
'I need to go see them,' Maeve thought, and the thought pinched at her. 'Fuck.'
It was the last thing she remembered before getting drowned by the ethereal seas of sleep.
*
...
...
Maeve woke up early. Too early.
The heaviness of her eyes told her she had slept way too late as well.
It was barely five o'clock when she decided to take a shower. It was a long one. All she did was think as the warm water traced the contours of her body. The shower was the one place in the small apartment that seemed limitless. Maeve often found herself forgetting how to leave once the shower ran, and her thoughts began.
'Werewolf…' she thought as she looked at herself. 'Stupid.'
Her fingers traced her bottom lip. She shook. She could have sworn she'd bitten it so hard it bled yesterday night, and yet there was no pain or irritation.
'No, no,' she told herself. 'If there's no pain, I probably dreamt it. I really wasn't all there yesterday.'
After the shower, Maeve had trouble finding what exactly to wear. The idiots from yesterday had rearranged everything.
However, their little exorcism of her apartment also made her realize that she had garbage taste in clothing. Everything in her wardrobe was dark and darker yet. It pissed Maeve off.
She hurried to control her emotions though. She didn't want to face her foster parents while riding a tide of fury. She could already imagine their sick glee at seeing her at their doorstep again.
It pissed Maeve off.
Her already slim appetite thinned. She left her apartment soon after re-slotting the drawers of her dresser and picking – with newfound self-consciousness – a dark blue top, bland black cargo pants, and black sneakers.
It was a mere fifteen to twenty-minute drive to her foster parents' house, but Maeve chose the nearly two-hour journey pedestrianizing would earn her.
Who would rush to meet a set of devils anyway, even when intending to make a deal?
---
[Author's Note]
There's a discord. Check the end of the synopsis.