SERA'S POV
I had always believed that the worst thing a husband could hide from his wife was having an affair with another woman.Little did I know that, I was wrong.Standing in the middle of my bedroom at two in the morning, I stared down at the shredded remains of Marcus's favorite flannel shirt and wondered how fourteen months of marriage could turn into a single, horrifying question.
What had I married? or is it whom had I married? I was torn into confusion.
At that moment I felt hurt like I've never felt before. Still in thoughts, I leaned against the polished bar counter, resting my elbows on its smooth surface as my fingertips slowly traced the intricate carvings along the edge. The wood was beautifully crafted, every curve and detail so carefully shaped that I found myself admiring it longer than I intended.
I ran my palm over the glossy finish, feeling the cool smoothness beneath my skin before letting out a quiet sigh. If only my husband could be crafted with the same care—smooth around the edges, steady in the places that mattered, and without all those sharp, hidden secrets waiting to cut me when I least expected them.
My fingers trembled as I lifted the torn fabric closer to the moonlight spilling through the curtains.
The shirt had been ripped almost completely apart. It wasn't just torn. It looked as though something with enormous strength had clawed through it.And then there was the hair.A single, coarse strand of gray fur clung to the fabric. I could not understand why a strand of hair could make me dive into a pool of mixed feelings.I knew immediately that it wasn't human.My heart pounded against my ribs, as if trying to escape the pain and hurt this great discovery did to me.
I was still trapped in the maze of my thoughts when I heard the kitchen door creak open behind me.
My fingers stopped tracing the smooth edge of the bar counter, and I slowly pulled my hand back, letting it fall against my thigh. For a moment, I didn't turn around. I just stood there, staring at the untouched glass in front of me, trying to decide whether I was angry enough to walk away or foolish enough to stay. Then I heard his footsteps crossing the kitchen floor, slow and familiar, and my heart gave an irritating little flutter that I immediately wished it hadn't. I straightened, rubbed my palms nervously against the sides of my jeans, and finally turned around. Marcus stood in the doorway, watching me with those familiar brown eyes that I now knew could turn frighteningly gold. I swallowed hard, forcing myself to meet his gaze even as every conflicting thought in my head seemed to scream at me at once.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.His chest rose and fell rapidly, as though he had been running. His dark hair was disheveled, his shirt half buttoned.
I muttered the courage to speak,"How long?" I asked, with a smile creeping on my face 'a bitter one' .Marcus's expression changed.Fear,real, unmistakable fear."Sera", he called carefully like the name was fragile"How long, Marcus?",I asked again impatient and half screaming.He took one careful step toward me.I immediately stepped back. "don't" I muttered under my breath, though there was still that part of that yearns for him.His face crumbled.
That hurt more than I expected. Why are feelings betraying me too.Marcus had always been the one person I could never imagine being afraid of. He was my husband. My best friend. The man who held me when I cried, who remembered how I liked my coffee, who kissed my forehead every morning before leaving for work.But suddenly, I was looking at him and wondering if I had ever truly known him.
The shirt was still in my hands when he said it."Put the shirt down," he whispered, and there was something in his voice I had never heard before , not the confident baritone that filled every room he walked into, but something smaller. Something frightened.
I laughed. It came out bitter, jagged, nothing like the sound I usually made when Marcus tried to charm his way out of trouble. My fingers curled tighter around the ruined fabric, the claw marks rough beneath my thumb.
"That's all you have to say?" I asked, my voice shaking with everything I was trying to hold back."Sera, please." He took a step toward me, his hands lifting slightly, like he wanted to reach for me and didn't trust himself to."Fourteen months, Marcus." I threw the words like they were the only weapon I had left.
"We've been married for fourteen months.
"His jaw tightened. I watched the muscle jump beneath his skin, watched him war with himself in real time."I know," he said quietly."Fourteen months of you disappearing whenever the moon was full." My voice climbed, cracking under its own weight. "Fourteen months of excuses. Hiking trips. Headaches. Migraines."
"I never wanted to lie to you." He said so low, that it almost sounded like a whisper
"You lied every single month!" The scream tore out of me before I could stop it, and I hated how much it hurt to say."I was trying to protect you!" His voice rose to match mine, desperate now, his composure fraying at the edges.
"From what?" I asked with my eyes wide open filled with curiosity.
He stopped. Everything about him went still ,his breath, his hands, the restless energy that always seemed to hum just beneath his skin.I stared at him, my chest heaving."From what, Marcus?"His silence was its own confession, thick and suffocating, filling the space between us until I could hardly breathe through it.My eyes burned, tears spilling hot down my cheeks."Tell me," I said, almost pleading."Sera.."
"Tell me what you are!" I screamed it, my whole body trembling with the force of it.His shoulders dropped. Something in him seemed to give way, some final wall crumbling all at once.Slowly ,so slowly it felt like watching a man walk toward his own execution, he reached behind himself and shut the kitchen door. The click of the latch was the loudest sound I had ever heard.He turned back to face me, and when he spoke, his voice was low and raw, stripped of every ounce of performance I had come to expect from him."I am a werewolf.
"The room seemed to stop breathing along with me.
I stood frozen, searching his face for the joke, the trick, anything that would make this make sense.
But there was nothing there except fear and truth, tangled together in the dark of his eyes.Some quiet, buried part of me had already known. I think I had known for months, in the way you know a storm is coming before the sky ever turns. But hearing him say it out loud made it real in a way suspicion never could.The strange noises from the woods behind our house, low and guttural, that I always pretended not to hear.
The scratches down his back that he laughed off as gym accidents, as clumsy showers, as anything but what they were.The way he could hear a car turning onto our street minutes before its headlights ever swept across our window.The way he always knew the exact moment I was walking up the driveway, like some invisible thread connected us even through walls.
The full moons he disappeared for, every single time, without fail.
The locked door at the end of the hallway I was never once allowed to open.The bloodshot eyes he blamed on late nights, on stress, on anything human.The secrets. God, all the secrets, stacked one on top of the other until they built the whole architecture of our marriage.
My husband was a werewolf.
I swallowed hard, the lump in my throat threatening to choke me."Say something," he begged, his voice barely a whisper now, eyes pleading with mine in a way that made my chest ache despite everything.I looked away. I couldn't hold his gaze and stay standing at the same time.He moved closer, with slow, but deliberate steps, the way you'd approach something wild and unpredictable, something that might bolt. I felt the heat radiating off his body before he even reached me, felt the familiar scent of him wrap around me like it always did, cedar and rain and underneath it, something wilder I had never let myself name until tonight.
"I know you're angry," he said softly, close enough now that I could feel his breath against my temple.
"Angry?" My laugh broke halfway through. "I'm terrified."He froze instantly, like my fear had physically struck him, and I watched something in him crumble further.I finally lifted my eyes to his.They were filled with tears.That undid something in me. In fourteen months of marriage, I had never once seen Marcus cry. He was the man who lifted heavy furniture without breaking a sweat, who walked into rooms like he already owned the air in them, who laughed off pain like it was nothing. But now, standing in front of me with his whole secret laid bare, he looked like he might shatter.
"I didn't tell you because I was ashamed," he whispered, his voice trembling around the words."You're ashamed of being a werewolf?" I asked admist a sad chuckle"I'm ashamed that I was afraid to tell you."
His voice cracked clean down the middle.He closed the gap between us slowly, carefully, the way you'd approach a flame you weren't sure would burn you."Sera," he said, calling my name like it was something fragile, something that might break if he said it too roughly, "I was afraid that the moment you knew the truth, you'd stop looking at me the way you do."I tilted my head to the side, hurt blooming sharp and sudden in my chest.
"How do I look at you?"I asked after moments of silence"Like I'm human."A tear slid down my cheek, slow and hot."You are human." I said trying to pacify a storming sea"Not completely." He said it like a wound reopening, like something he'd been carrying alone in the dark for longer than I could imagine."Then what am I supposed to call you?"
"Marcus." He said it so plainly, so simply, that it landed harder than any explanation could have.
He reached for my hand then, his fingers brushing against mine first, testing, waiting to see if I would pull away. When I didn't, he wrapped his hand fully around mine, and I felt the tremor running through him, felt how badly he needed me to let him hold on.
"I am still Marcus, Sera," he whispered, his thumb tracing slow, absent circles over my knuckles. "I'm still the man who fell in love with you the first night we talked until four in the morning, when you fell asleep mid-sentence on the phone and I just listened to you breathe because I didn't want the night to end."
"I'm still the man who waits for you to fall asleep before he closes his eyes," he continued, his voice low and thick, "because I like watching the way your face softens right before you drift off. Because some nights I lie there just memorizing you, like I'm afraid I'll forget."He stepped closer, close enough now that I could feel the warmth of him bleeding into the cold that had settled over my skin, close enough that if I lifted my chin even an inch, our faces would nearly touch.
"I am still the man who memorized the sound of your laugh," he breathed, "because I was always afraid that one day, I wouldn't get to hear it anymore. That one day the world I come from would take that away from me too."
"Stop," I whispered, my voice breaking."Why?" He asked curious, looking at me like the answers were written on my face."Because you're making this harder" I replied."I know," he said, softer now, his forehead nearly resting against mine.
"I know, and I hate that I'm doing it. But I need you to hear it. All of it. Every piece of me you don't know yet."He lifted his other hand slowly, giving me every chance to step back, and when I didn't, his fingers grazed my jaw, tilting my face gently up toward his. His touch was warm, almost too warm, like his body ran hotter than any human's should."I love you," he whispered, the words brushing against my lips like a confession only meant for the two of us.
I closed my eyes.
"Don't say that." I said like I was pleading"I have to." He replied, with a soft tone like it was our wedding night"Marcus—" I called admist breath"I love you, Sera." His voice grew stronger, steadier, like saying it out loud was the only thing keeping him upright. "More than I have ever loved anything in my life. More than I knew I was even capable of loving someone. You didn't just become my wife fourteen months ago — you became the only thing that's ever made this life feel worth the danger of it."I opened my eyes.
He was crying freely now, and he made no move to hide it, no move to wipe it away. He just let me see him, fully, for maybe the first time since we'd met."I know I don't deserve your forgiveness yet," he said, his thumb still resting against my jaw. "I know I broke something tonight that might not be easy to fix. But please — don't leave me."
My heart twisted so violently I had to remind myself to breathe.
"Don't ask me to stay." I said reluctantly
"Then I'll beg." He replied brushing his fingers against my jawline and then kissing my neck to my collar bone before he went further I called."Marcus."though I was excited but stopped him "I'll beg every single day for the rest of my life if that's what it takes."Before I could stop him, he sank down onto his knees in front of me, right there on the hardwood floor of the kitchen, his hand still wrapped around mine like letting go might mean losing me forever.
