FAWC 1: Comfort Zone

He straightened when the man led his woman out onto the porch of the house. The growl that escaped him was pure rage as he watched the man hold her. They didn't react to the howls in the distance, but even he had to admit they had gotten farther away now.

The day wore on as he sat and watched as the couple on the porch got even more comfortable, and he couldn't help his growls as he watched them have sex on the swing. He felt himself grow hard as he watched the woman who would be his mate ride the human male, but he had to satisfy himself with his hand and waste his seed on the ground while the human got the benefit of touching her. Further proof of his gut instinct being right about her was that he stayed in his human form when he came, something that only happened when he thought of her as he touched himself.

Just before nightfall the two lovers went back inside and the dim light of the downstairs bedroom shone from the other side of the house. He knew that if he went around to the window he would see them together again, but he saved himself the unnecessary rage and went for a run through the woods.

It wasn't long before he found the source of the howls and screams from earlier. A woman lay ravaged and very much dead on a rock beside a creek. The smell of her blood almost made him ignore the sounds of humans trampling through the woods around him. There was a flash of light and a bunch of yelling before he could get back to the woods where he sat and watched the humans try to discern what had happened to the girl. He knew what had happened, but it wouldn't happen to his woman.

* * * *

"The police have said that the woman was dead at the scene, and there was evidence of sexual abuse that occurred before death. Back to you, Steve."

Jenna reached out with a shaking hand to turn the TV off. She wouldn't have even been watching it if she hadn't seen the news banner on her browser. The rumble of Dax's Mustang jarred her back into the real world and she walked to open the door for him as he carried in the groceries.

He hadn't made it two steps past the door when he saw the look on her face, "What happened?"

"The girl that died," her voice sounded distant and muffled. "I just wrote a death scene last night. The way they describe it on the news sounds a lot like what I wrote."

He set the bags on the floor and guided her back to the couch. Her hands were shaking as she pulled her hair out of her face before wrapping them around her stomach to try to hide it from him. He saw it, "Shit. Jenna, your story is not coming true. Werewolves do not exist. A girl was found dead in the woods and your mind is making connections that aren't there."

"They said she died of blood loss from wounds on her inner thighs," her breath was coming in gasps. "The news program said she was sexually assaulted before she died. That's exactly what happened in the death scene I wrote last night. She was found on a rock by a creek."

"Breathe, Jenna, or you're going to make yourself pass out," he took a couple slow, deep breaths and motioned for her to copy him. "Your story is not coming true. There isn't someone stalking the house. That young woman was killed by some sick psycho. Werewolves do not exist."

She nodded and tried to calm her breathing, but the images that she had seen racing through her mind the night before came flooding back with the commentary from the news playing in the background. She couldn't shake the feeling that what she was writing was coming true in the world around her. Dax stayed with her on the couch until she was breathing easier, then he got up to put the groceries away. When he finished, he helped her get into bed and lay down with her to make sure she would fall asleep just fine.

Once Jenna had been asleep for an hour or so, Dax got up to check the news reports and read the part of the story that had scared her so badly. After he had read all he could find on the woman that had been found dead, even he couldn't help but see the similarities between the story Jenna had written and the horrible scene that had been uncovered not three miles from her home.

* * * *

The man had left the house for two hours, and Jarrod had missed his opportunity. He had been seen when he had gone to see what the other one had done to his prey, and he had spent hours trying to lose the trackers. In the meantime, the human male had apparently found time to go shopping. When he had returned, something had happened that made him enter the house and leave the groceries near the door. Jarrod could only think that the news of the dead woman had spread and spooked his mate.

He no longer thought of Jenna as the woman, or the human female, she was now just his mate. It was her destiny, and his. But he had missed what would probably be his only opportunity to reach her for another week, and he was kicking himself for it. The changes were coming more frequently and that meant he was getting ready to mate. His body would only be able to hold off the change if he was with his true mate and not just any female. If he didn't mate before the new moon, he would go into a rage like the other one had.

Being seen in broad daylight was a risk he would just have to take to see her, and he ran across the field behind the house to the window of the downstairs bedroom. He saw her lying on the bed, but the man was not with her. Still, he couldn't risk going in to get her if the other male was nearby. He would just have to stay in his hiding spot until the moment came to make his move, and try not to give in to his own curiosity when the other one got carried away.

* * * *

"I feel as though I'm being watched, Dax," she said as she paced the loft. "They gave me the extension, so maybe I should just start another story and try to get this one out of my head. It's ugly. You've read what I've written so far, but you don't know how ugly it is because you can't see it."

Dax had given up trying to argue with her. Telling her that he knew she wouldn't be able to leave it unfinished hadn't gotten through to her, so he settled on just trying to comfort her. "You have to tell me how ugly it is, Jenna. I can read the story all I want, but if you don't tell me what's in that beautiful mind of yours I can't know why this has you so freaked out."

"What did you tell me yesterday?" She asked, turning to look at him. "After I freaked out about the news broadcast, you said something and you were so convinced that it was right. It even almost convinced me, or at least enough for me to get some sleep. What was it that you said?"

"I told you that it wasn't real. Werewolves don't exist and the girl that died was killed by some psycho," he took her hands in his before he realized how much she was shaking. "Jesus, Jenna, you have to talk to me."

"This story isn't about werewolves. The girl that died in the story was on some strong hallucinogenic drugs when she died, which made her killed look like a monster to her. She saw a wolf-man when it was really just a man. The man that is stalking the house is just a man. I didn't take Jarrod-the-secondary-character and turn him into Jarrod-the-werewolf. He wasn't developed enough in the other story for you to see his flaws, but they're there. He's some psycho killer, and now he's stalking this house thinking the woman inside is his mate. He simply believes that he changes into a werewolf and that the moon affects him, but it's not what's really happening. I'm writing a psycho killer who has a partner that went off on his own to rape and kills some poor girl who got high at the wrong time."

Her movements were almost frantic now and he had to pull her into his arms before she accidentally hit him.

She continued, "And somehow, all of this is coming true in the real world. It may not be happening word for word like it is in the story, but it is happening. They're going to find out that the girl died from massive hemorrhaging caused by knife wounds to her very upper thighs. The sexual assault was so brutal that she lost blood from tearing causing her to die faster than if she had just bled out through her femoral artery. They're also going to find three different sets of footprints at the scene -- hers, and two different male prints. And I can't tell them any of this without getting locked up as either a suspect or a nutcase with a really vivid imagination."

She laid her head against his shoulder in an attempt to calm the shaking that had spread to her entire body. He wrapped his arms around her and ran his hands through her hair as he tried to calm her nerves as well. "It's not real, Jenna. I know you think it is, but it's not real."

"I wrote him coming up to my window yesterday afternoon after you got home," she said into his shirt. "I set up a camera to catch him, and there's a face in the window about fifteen minutes after you came up here to read the news articles."

"What?" He looked down at her as she backed away and sat at the computer. She brought up a picture file that was clearly a shot of the bedroom, and he watched as stills showed him getting into bed with Jenna and then getting up again. There were several shots of her sleeping in various positions, indicating that she had been restless, and then she stopped on a shot of a figure looking in at her through the window. It was blurry, but the features of a man with a scraggly beard could be made out. "You put a game camera up in the room?"

"I put a game camera up in the room and then wrote him coming to the window when you weren't there."

* * * *

She stretched away from the computer as she always did after a long session with the keyboard. Dax had come up a couple hours before to check on her, or maybe it had been more than a couple hours. He should be in bed right now, which would be just what she needed. She went to her closet and took off her clothes, putting them in the hamper before heading back downstairs to the room she had begun sharing with Dax.

His hand slid over her hip and he roused when it registered that she was naked. She smiled when he slid over to kiss her shoulder and pull her against him, but that wasn't what she wanted. Her hands moved to his chest and she pushed him onto his back as she leaned down to kiss him. He was awake then and his hands fumbled as sleep impaired his movements, but he managed to lift her over him enough to get ready for when she drove her hips down on him. He grunted as she slid over him and began to move.

She gyrated her hips, moaning as she took him deep inside her with rough movements of her hips and lower back. His hands slid up to her breasts, squeezing harder and harder as he came closer to the edge beneath her. Just as he began to moan, she leaned down to kiss him and run her hands through his hair while he grabbed her ass and held her still above him. With his hands on her ass he began to drill into her, crying out as he slammed deep into her one last time as he came.

With his cries still dying in the still night, Jenna reached under her pillow for the nine millimeter pistol she had stashed there just before mounting Dax. His eyes flew open when the safety released and she pressed the cold metal to the side of his head.

"How?"

"You were the only one that could have told him what I was writing," she said. "You were a good lay, whoever you are, but rest assured I will find out what you did with my friend Dax."

The man laughed as she slid off of him, careful to keep the gun pressed against his skull. "You think you have it all figured out, little girl? He will have you."

"No, he won't," the gun was loud in the tiny room, but she still heard the report of another weapon being fired somewhere behind the house. She left the man to cool on the bed as she walked out of the room to sit on the couch and turn on the news, where the cover of her newest book greeted her with the report that it was a best seller, and hopefully a prelude to a long horror series.