Marking Her Territory

Timed moved differently in different parts of Randall's life. When he was in school, the day went on endlessly. Each minute out in public felt like an eternity. Yet, when summer vacation came, he would play with his cousins and friends. That time seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. Time seemed to blur when he started to act. During his modeling years, he was in college and had to trudge through life. But when shooting, the days and weeks and months seemed to pass without rhyme or reason. In the blink of an eye, he would realize that three months has passed and while he could recall everything he had achieved in that period of time, the actual time seemed to slip away with little notice.

He had a lifespan longer than a normal human but it was not long enough that he should feel this disconnect with humanity as such. He had devoted his life to blending into society, but it seemed that everything about this Trina made him reconsider if he was really doing a good job at hiding his natural state.

That weekend, from the moment Trina Hudson ran out of the front door on Friday night, his life came to a screeching halt.

It took him several hours to think carefully about his behavior and how he must have looked to her.

Well, he had almost slipped once and called her to apologize, but he stopped himself, frustrated and ashamed about what he had been caught doing. It was angst of a comedic kind. If anyone else had been in the situation, he would have laughed at their face and told them to suck it up. But he was the one who had been spotted. After being careful for so many years… He forced himself back into his room and lay on the floor, trying to douse his embarrassment.

Physically he was fine after she had been gone for a while. Her scent around the house reduced and though it still bothered him, it was the least of his concerns at the moment. The girl changed everything for him. He finally realized how recklessly he had been living and he had been relying on the ignorance of people to protect his identity.

In his line of work, there was no room for error. An intruder in his home was unacceptable and even though Trina was not an intruder, the fact that she was observant and had encountered him in his wolf form before was more than concerning. It was alarming and suicidal to keep her around and wait for her to piece things together.

What happened if she got too close and he lost control and transformed in front of her? No amount of non-disclosure agreements could keep that information under the wraps.

When he managed to contain his overwhelmed emotions, he was convinced that he wouldn't make a rash decision. He moved quietly through the house.

First, he went to her desk and lowered himself into his chair, looking for something. Anything. Unlike his previous secretaries, Trina left no personal photos or trinkets on her desk. He opened the center drawer and pushed aside the pens and pencils. He found a receipt in the corner of the drawer. He picked it up and began reading.

Hiding from humans was easy when he knew their patterns. This was just a peek into hers.

It was a receipt from a restaurant.

She had ordered vegetarian fried rice with a side of spicy tofu. She had asked to remove garlic from her order and reduce the number of onions, too. She ordered a beetroot cake he had never heard of.

This made him narrow his eyes in concentration. She looked like a vegetarian who didn't like onions and garlic. The humorous part of him wondered if she was a vampire and then shook the thought away quickly.

He didn't understand humans who didn't eat meat. Meat was the love of his life.

He shut the drawer and reached for the notepad near the phone. The first page was full of her handwriting. Again, he remembered how everyone joked that doctors had to take classes to make their handwriting poor.

But he could still make out her handwriting, as bad as it was.

She had a lot of fruits on the list and vegetables. She had uncanny flavors of tea mentioned and then Q-tips, sanitizers, ropes, and rat poison.

Sounded like she was on the way to killing someone. But what kind of store kept rat poison and produce at the same time?

He shoved the list back to its original place, feeling even more confused than before about his assistant. He thought about what he did know. He had read her records and she was highly accomplished in her studies. She was also hardworking and loved farm animals. This made her more appropriate for the job than other applicants who seemed more interested in treating in trendy clinics. Even Lee had been impressed and thought she would do much better than the place she worked at.

And she was. She was excellent at her job. Her clarity in research and attention to detail had clued him in on a lot more problems than he had seen earlier.

This was all good but that had nothing to do with his current situation.

He spent the rest of the day wandering the house, retracing her steps. In the kitchen, she had used a glass and a mug from the cabinet. There was a teabag in the trashcan. As expected from a tea addict like her.

In the fridge, he found soy milk and some yogurt. Hers because it was labeled. Lee must have informed her that Randall ate everything in the fridge indiscriminate of whose it was. But it was in his nature to leave things alone when they were marked as someone else's territory.

It was part of the ancient nature of wolves.