The Falcon Ridge Series Book 4: Art of a Girl

(Chapter song ‘I'm A Mess’ by Saph's Story)

SAMMY

“It was very insistent on showing me this. You have no idea what that was about?” He tilts his head as I look back down at the drawing.

I press my lips together. “No idea. I don’t know what it was thinking.” I sigh. “I wish I did.”

He puts it face down on the table. “I’m trying to find the answers, Sammy.”

“I know.” I meet his eyes. "When you touched me, you saved me, Bastian.”

He narrows his eyes. "What? Like an anchor or something?”

"I don't know." I cross my legs. "It felt like your touch has some sort of power over it. You were able to make it go away without a cold shower."

He crosses his legs, too and our knees are just barely touching. "Like a connection to you."

I turn my head. "You may be my lifeline between the outside world and the animal in me. It's like you can put the monster back in its place and it listens to you."

He chuckles. "Never thought of myself as a monster tamer, but alright."

I hold my open hand up between us. "Touch it."

He squints a bit with a smirk. “Alright.”

I watch as he raises his hand to my and our palms are held together. I feel the tingles, but nothing more.

I twist my lips. “This one, too.” I hold up my other palm.

He puts his other hand to mine and I close my eyes. In the dark, I search. I look for anything different. The tingles seem to grown and my crinkle my brow.

“Sammy?”

“Shush.” I don’t open my eyes as something seems to grow in the dark. “I see…”

I concentrate on a spot in the void and a pink starts to come toward me. I smile as I’m surrounded by pink lights.

“What do you see?”

“It’s beautiful.” I whisper as Bastian’s electric tingles start to appear like stars and they seem to dance and play with my pink lights. I can’t help but giggle as I look around the part of my mind that was black a moment ago. I try to touch the lights, but I can’t. They just continue to dance.

“This is amazing!” I laugh.

“What? Sammy?”

“The lights.” I open my eyes and lock with his. “Our lights.” I grin.

“Our lights?” He slightly smiles and cinches his brows.

I look down to my chest. “What’s that?” I felt it before it was heard.

“What?”

I grab his hand and put it to my chest in between my breasts. “That.” I look to him with wonderment in my eyes and a toothy grin on my lips.

His brows raise. “Oh my God.” He breathes. “It’s…purring?”

I laugh even more to the point I might actually cry. “They purr?”

He holds my cheeks. “When something’s really good. Yeah, they can.”

I hold my nose in a prayer pose as my eyes well. “Real contact.” I close my eyes and tears fall.

“Baby.” He grabs me and hugs me.

“You did that.” I hitch. “You did, Bastian.”

He pushes me back and wipes my tears as I sniff. “I didn’t do anything, baby doll. How could I?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know how, but you did something to make it happy. I’ve never been happy before.” I cover my eyes and break out in tears again as he holds me a little longer.

He quietly chuckles. “I’m glad you feel that way, but I’m sure you had a huge hand in it, Sammy. Don’t sell yourself short.” He lifts me up to his eyes. “You connected us in your mind. The lights came together because of you.” He smiles. “I think we have a real chance here.”

“Oh my God.” My eyes widen and I stand up. I pace around on top of the bed and try to work this out. He sits up and watches me walk back and forth, clumsily across the blanket. “You…You solved my problem.” I stop and squat down to him. “As long as I stick with you, I can be normal!” I grab his shoulders and shake him. “I can ditch therapy! I can go into crowded places! I can do all the stuff I was afraid of doing…”

"Now, hold on." Bastian gets off the bed and stands on the floor. He grabs my hands and gets me to focus on him. “Don’t get too excited. We don't know anything, yet. This may be a breakthrough, but it may not be. The animal inside you is unstable, Sammy. Your therapy needs to continue if it’s helping. I may not like Rennet, but you seem to like him as your doctor. I won’t encourage you to dump him because we made your wolf purr." He points to my nose and shuts me down.

"Bastian, for some reason it likes you. The one person in billions that could potentially have some way of controlling it and I’m his decorator." I laugh as I step off the bed and walk around him.

I point to his chest. "As long as you're not too far away, I can use you to put the beast back if it tries to escape." I bounce on my toes and smile.

He studies me for a minute. "Sammy, how much do you know about Shifters?" He crosses his arms.

"Um...not much. Just that you're born, you get your wolf at 13 and you get affected by the moon at 18. That's about it. I watched my brother grow up and get his wolf, but I wasn't involved in it." I answer as I sit on the bed.

He sat beside me. "Do you know what a rogue wolf is?"

I shake my head no.

He leans on his thighs. "Ok. You live in a wolf pack. Each and every one of us needs me and this pack in order to be healthy. A rogue is a wolf who doesn’t have or get pack interactions. It gets sick. A mental disease called Rogue Sickness. Understand?”

"Kind of." I admit.

“Basically, our wolves are literally just animals. They’re smarter than most, but they’re animals that still run on instinct and a lot of that is social. Cut a wolf off from that, and it has a mental break. The reason why we train from the age of 12 is because we need to be strong enough to contact and control the animal in us so that doesn’t happen. As much as we trust and use our wolves, we need to be in control 90 percent of the time because they’ll take over and control us. Which is generally what happens to a rogue wolf. But, there’s also needs to be a mutual agreed upon balance for that to work.”

“Ok. Now, you’ve lost me.” I arch a brow.

He smiles. “You need to be in control, but you still need to shift every once in a while to let the wolf out or it gets angry and rebellious.”

“Shifting? Still not really following. Dylan doesn’t shift all the time.” I give him a confused look.

He shakes his head. “It doesn’t need to be all the time. It depends on the needs of your wolf and you have to allow it to happen.” He leans to me and arches a brow.

“How do I allow that happen? I have no way to control it?” I scowl.

He holds up a hand. "It’s easy once you get the hang of it. Picture your mind as being two rooms and in between those rooms is a door. This door separates your mind from reality. Out here. When you’re in the room of reality, your wolf is in the room behind the door. That room is your mind. Some of us call it the cage.” He says as he holds up two fingers.

He turns more to me. “When you want to let your wolf out, you open the door and your wolf walks through. At the same time, you walk through the door into your mind. You just handed control to your wolf and shifted. She then can do what wolves do in the outside world.”

“But, I don’t even know how to recognize it, let alone show it some door. Besides, it’s too dangerous.” I fiddle with my fingers as Bastian rubs my back.

He holds my hand as he talks. “That’s because you weren’t treated like the rest of our pups were.”

“What do you mean?” I question.

“All our pups are taught that they have a wolf inside them. Every pup is given a councilor and prepared with the help of a pup trainer at 12. They’re shown how to deal with and connect with the wolf before they shift at 13. You and your family had no idea what was inside you because you presented really early in life. That never happens. As a result, for the last 20 years, your wolf has been trapped in that cage in your mind and I suspect it’s slowly going insane.” He informs.

I furrow my brow. “Ok, but that still doesn’t explain why it keeps trying to rip me apart.”

He presses his lips together and locks with my eyes. “Unfortunately, baby doll. You’re the closest target she has to unleash her anger out on. She blames you.”

I feel irritation build. “That’s not fair! How am I supposed to know how this all works? I’m human, for God’s sake.”

He lays his hand on my shoulder and calms me down. “I realize that. Our wolves are not aware of outside circumstances all the time. Especially when they’re blocked from them. Another thing I suspect. I believe the reason you two don’t know about each other is because that door is acting like a block in your mind. It’s locked tight. She manages to push it open every once in a while when you let your guard down, but most of the time, I think you’re keeping that door closed. It’s not intentional. You didn’t know anything about this.”

He adjusts himself on the bed. “Now, the good thing about all this is, I think I can still bring the two of you together using a team of trainers to correct you both.”

“Pup trainers?” I don’t remember Dylan’s. He never trained at home. So, I’m not so sure about this.

He nods. “I think it’s the best thing to do, but when it comes to your therapy, you may have to stop the hypnotherapy. Use Rennet to talk to and grab advice, but the trainers won’t be affective if your wolf is blocked.”

I raise a brow. “Wait. You think my wolf is causing the dreams?”

“I do.” He confirms. “I believe it’s projecting messed up, confusing images to you as a form of communication.”

I pause and absorb what he’s telling me. “Ok, so, what do I do?”

He rolls an eye to me as he flips his hair over his shoulder. “Don’t be mad, but last night, before I found you, I went to some trustworthy friends of mine. You remember Alpha Jackson?"

I nod cautiously.

“I didn't give your name or who you were, but I told them the story you told me." He admits.

I flop my hands in my lap with a whine. "Bastian. You promised not to tell anyone!"

"I know, sweetie. I know. But I needed information. Alexi Torrent is our best lead to what Torrent did to you and Luke's a trainer. I knew they could help and they have." He reaches to the floor and picks up his pants. He pulls out a piece of paper from his pocket. "I have 2 names here. Ones that can help. I know we didn't want any more people knowing, but I swear, Sam. You can trust them."

He hands the paper to me and I read the names. "Wren's a pretty name." I mumble.

He laughs. "Yes, it is and she's super nice. You'll love her."

"Ok." I sigh. "Bastian?"

"Yeah?" He tucks my hair behind my ear.

"I'm sorry again, for being so much trouble." I'm overcome with guilt as I see how much he's invested in me already.

He turns my head to his. "Don't. You have nothing to be sorry for. I just hope the one that did this to you is rotting in hell where he belongs."

I’m totally freaked that more people know my secret and I’m opening myself up to the beast, but I said I trusted Bastian and I’m going to.

I just hope this works.