Lennox Armstrong

He woke up to screaming.

And blood.

And screaming.

And more blood.

In confusion, Lennox took an unsure step forward to reach for his alarm clock. His hands, outstretched, searched for anything familiar in his bedroom. His bare toes uncurled in the soft tufts of dark carpet as he hesitantly moved forward. 

This happened often. Strings of his past wrapped around his sleep and choked his dreams into nightmares.

Sometimes, when he woke up in a feverish hurry, the screaming wouldn't stop. Sometimes, it ringed in his stinging ears, like a never-ending hymn always trapped inside his head.

Because he always remembered the fickleness of blood. How it would catch beneath his fingernails and how it always came with screaming.

Except, his sight came back.

Moonlight flooded his vision, and then, the shouting continued.

He wasn't in his queen-sized mattress, surrounded by all his creature comforts and knick-knacks. Instead, he stood naked in the middle of a forest.

Not The Forest. Because this wasn't his usual trail. This was somewhere unfamiliar and completely alien to the young man.

Around him, neat lines of trees showed off manicured foliage. In the air, besides the overwhelming stench of blood, a mismatch of scents intertwined and mixed. It stunk of sweat and fear and an overwhelming amount of old, drying blood.

And then there was the death. It hung in the air, dark and black and ugly, masking an empty staleness over the forest.

Something... no... someone was dead.

In a frantic rush of movements, Lennox snapped his head to the left and found himself staring at at a complete stranger, a terrified young woman. For a moment, she was nothing but a blur of short hair and pale, freckled skin.

Did I hurt you, too?

His thoughts ran wild as his eyes drank in the sight of her. Details hidden by the night's darkness materialized as he focused his attention completely on her.

The stranger was short and soft. Too soft for hands like his to touch. Her light hair was pulled into a low ponytail and hidden beneath a hat.

She was younger than him, he could tell by her wide, desperate expression. She didn't understand how to digest fear.

She was scared.

She was terrified.

Because of... because of me.

The thought hurt, but he recognized the scent as soon as his world turned right side up again.

The smell leaking off of her was heavy with sweat. The warm salty scent settled ice-cold underneath Lennox's nose. His self-disgust anxiously flipped in his stomach.

You caused that.

The thought echoed in his mind.

It was so familiar, the way she stared at him like a frightened child ready to beg for her life. It was too familiar.

This wasn't the first time Lennox witnessed the hopeless expression in a soft, helpless thing.

He dug his hands into the bareness of his thighs until his nails drew blood from his freckled skin. He had to get it together. He had to regain some kind of control over his body.

He had to remember what he did, why he was here, who he hurt.

Lennox forced himself to replay the questions over and over until he finally made a move to speak, to calm down the mysterious woman, to apologize for whatever he may have done in her presence.

"I--" his words broke in half as his feet collided and tripped over a boulder.

A body-sized boulder.

No, it wasn't a rock.

It was a stiff corpse, ripped apart and mangled at his feet. The woman stared into the distance with terrified eyes, her expression forever frozen in a begging scream. The fingers of her pale hands splayed wide, curled out and reaching, asking for salvation, asking for the pity of mercy, asking for anything.

Lennox wanted to scream, but his voice refused to work.

Instead, he just stared into the still face of the missing werewolf.

I knew she was dead.

Dread suddenly dawned on him and weighed down his broad shoulders.

Usually, Lennox loved to prove himself right. It was part of his complex.

He had to be right, and when he wasn't, he needed to learn more and do better and be better and find all the bad bits inside him and cut and tear and force them all out. Until he was good again, until every last little drop of big and bad drained from his system. Then he could rest.

But he didn't like being right, not now. Not when a member of Giles's pack lay dead beneath him, splayed out in a puddle of blood and doubtlessly murdered.

"Um," he swallowed before he continued to the woman.

She was quiet now.

He was clueless to when the screaming stopped, but it was gone. Only the natural hums of the forest echoed in his ears.

Instead, she stood mute. Her eyes bore down into his, not out of pride or stubbornness, but because she didn't know what else to do other than to stare and stay silent and absolutely still.

It was as if she were reacting to a wild animal. 

"Oh," Lennox whispered. Something finally clicked in his head. The blood and the body and the screaming. "Oh, no." She must have seen his shift.

He stepped away from the corpse and finally understood what he must look like, swallowed up by moonlight, stark naked and... and covered in blood.

His eyes widened as he took in the sight of his hands. Between his nails, deep in the crevices of fingers, and rubbed into the skin of his palms, dried blood stained every inch. Every part of him that could pull, or twist, or tear drowned in crimson.

Lennox's throat created a low, desperate growl, suddenly unable to properly process the revelations.

"I did this," he said to himself. Finally, the pull of blood tensed up his mouth.

God, it was in his teeth.

The woman took the opportunity to turn around. Suddenly, her legs exploded into motion.

She was fast for a human, and for a moment, Lennox watched her legs fly over loose foliage and drag through thicket bushes. The red of her hood illuminated in the forest, creating a stark contrast against the greenery surrounding her.

He imagined letting her get away.

What would happen if she called the police and cried wolf?

Would there be police officers poking at the body beneath his feet? Would she leave an anonymous tip and pray he didn't come looking for her? Would she change her name and move two states away as she tried to outrun what she witnessed?

Lennox couldn't let her do that. She couldn't do any of those things.

He needed to contain her, and quickly, before anyone else came across the unfortunate fate of the missing wolf.

There would be no escaping for the girl.

Author's Note
Here it be! I know it took forever, and for that i am sorry. Life has decided to swallow me whole once again.
I hope you guys enjoyed it. I feel like everything i write for this novel is shit. :-(