"Sure," I said almost absently and continued to eat. We needed to talk yes, but somehow I didn't really want to. Dale made me feel weird... It wasn't sexual, I was sure of that. I just wanted him near me. I just... I growled in frustration and earned myself a cuff over the head from Dale. I stared at him in disbelief.

"We do not growl at people, love." He grinned at me and stole a piece of bacon.

"Sure." I grinned at him. "Where did you leave your horses anyway Buffalo Bill?" I nodded at his hat with undisguised amusement.

"Ay, lef’ thuh hoss in the West,” he said in an exaggerated cowboy accent and lowered his hat slightly. It made me laugh… Oh, the simple ridiculousness of the situation. I was sitting at the police station with a werewolf cowboy eating stewed beef and bacon. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Simon sitting at his desk watching me. I cleared my throat and stopped laughing. I realized I practically had not laughed since the Demon attack. God, I really needed to find out his name… I couldn't continue to call him that, and the other names the Beast inside me came up with were even worse.

"Please don't tell me you actually own horses." I turned back to Dale, determined to let Simon out of my head for a moment. The ravine between us hurt too much…

"I have three, two stallions and a mare," he said casually and stole another piece of meat. "I own a ranch in Texas, I usually raise horses and then sell them, but the three are just mine."

"Texas… Of course." I grinned at him and shook my head in amusement.

"I think you'd like them." Dale smiled and hooked his thumbs in the loops of his belt. "They're amazing animals and, surprisingly, they get used to predators quickly." He winked at me, and I couldn't suppress a laugh. It felt like years since I was this relaxed. Yet I knew this moment would not last long.

"I'll be right back," I told Simon when I had finished, then left the station with Dale right behind me.

"So… A werewolf cop." Dale sighed as we left the station and walked lazily around. "I haven't heard of that yet..."

"Says the werewolf cowboy." I frowned at him, wondering how to begin asking the questions nagging at me. "Dale..." I started with the most important question that came to mind. "Do you know him? The one who bit me?”

"Unfortunately, yes," Dale admitted with a grim expression. All the muscles in my body tensed again, but I waited… Almost desperately as a small child, I waited for his next words in the hope that he was not going to say what I feared he would. "No, it’s not like that.” He shook his head. “Trust me, your Maker and me are far from friends."

"Maker? Don't tell me it's an official term…” I grimaced wearily.

"Yes, he has transformed you, and therefore he is your Maker, your Alpha, your…” he explained quietly so that passers-by could not hear us.

"My Lord, my God, my Father, my Leader," I finished softly for him. Dale gave me a worried look.

"What he did to you..." He grabbed me by the arm and stopped us. "It’s terrible... Going through all this alone… It used to be our most sacred rule that the Maker never leaves his Descendant." His gaze was so full of sympathy that I almost cried. Almost. However, my face remained a perfectly neutral mask on the outside. At least I hoped so... "I would never wish anyone to go through all this alone... Your Maker is a monstrous Beast." I jumped a little over his last word.

"Don't call him that..." I shook my head. "Don't call him a Beast... Doesn't he have a name?"

"Lazar Reulle Bête de Lune," he said something in French, a language I didn't quite understand.

"Come again?" I shook my head.

"His name is Lazar Reulle Bête de Lune," he repeated, grinning in disgust. "Lazar Ruelle the Beast of the Moon translated literally."

"Are you kidding me?” A French werewolf named Beast of the Moon? "That can't be his real name."

"As far as I know it is." He shrugged and continued walking. "No one has been stupid enough to question it in front of him."

"So there are more of us?" Us… I didn't like it and I could hardly say it. But why? There was no doubt that I was a Demon, a killer, a predator, a Beast.

A weird look full of sadness passed in his eyes. "Yes, there are more of us, but not many. Not anymore."

“Not anymore?” I asked curiously.

“There used to be thousands of us but as humanity progressed we became a dying breed,” he said. “It is actually incredibly rare to find a newly transformed wolf. Nowadays the last few of our kind are hiding away, trying to live out the rest of our days in peace.” He sighed. “Well everyone apart from Lazar.”

"So how did you find me?" I asked. “You said you live in Texas… That’s like the other side of the US.”

He looked down his cheeks heating up with embarrassment. "I was actually near here on a sort of a holiday and I heard the Forest calling to me. It led me to you,” he whispered after a moment, so softly I could barely hear him. "I felt your loneliness and frustration. I couldn’t ignore it." He looked at me and his hazel eyes seemed to take on an amber hue. "We are children of the Forest Andrew, we belong to Nature as inevitably as a century-old oak. Unfortunately, wolves like Lazar never understood this… And so they hate both the Forest and others of our kind. And you are his Descendant. You will carry his mark forever, but that doesn't mean you have to end up like him. The Forest welcomes you, Andrew, it wants you in its embrace, like a grieving mother longing for her child. It wants to protect you from Lazar, all you have to do is resist his call for blood. ”

"I couldn't resist," I admitted quietly, clenching my jaw against the guilt in my chest. "Oh, God I killed so many people…"

"I know. But it's not too late. You're not him. You're not a monster.” Dale squeezed my shoulder encouragingly. I smiled weakly at him. If only he knew how wrong he was… It was late… It was already too late when I got my first taste of human blood. I became a monster then and there was no turning back.

"I want to kill him, Dale. I'll find him and end his hellish existence, even if it's the last thing I do," I said and let the hatred replace the guilt. Yes, a warm hatred that aroused a desire in me that I had never known before. The desire to end one's life at all costs.

"Then I'll help you with that…" Dale gave me a smile of a predator and together we headed back to the station. This time in pleasant silence, both imagining sinking our fangs into the warm flesh of the White Demon…