Enthralled - 9. Chapter 9

Tuesday mornings in the Cooper household of found-family chaos usually began with a profound lack of grace. Today was no different.

The high school parking lot was bathed in the harsh, unforgiving light of a suburban morning. Andy leaned against the rusted passenger-side door of the 1972 Impala, looking like he had just stepped out of a brooding black-and-white French film, if that film had been shot next to a row of dented Honda Civics. He was wearing his vintage leather jacket, his dark eyes hidden behind a pair of expensive sunglasses, projecting an aura of ancient, untouchable cool.

This aesthetic was immediately ruined by Marty, who was sitting heavily on the short brick retaining wall next to the car, aggressively unwrapping a McDonald’s Big Mac at 7:45 AM.

"Breakfast of champions, Edwina," Marty grunted, taking a massive, terrifying bite that accounted for nearly half the burger. He chewed thoughtfully, reached into a greasy paper bag, and pulled out a large black coffee. He held it out to Andy. "Here. Got you the bean water. Figured you needed it this early in the morning."

"I do not consume 'bean water,' Martin," Andy said, though he took the cup anyway, letting the heat of the cardboard warm his perpetually cold hands. "And eating a pound of processed beef before first period is a recipe for cardiovascular collapse."

"I’m a werewolf, bro," Marty said through a mouthful of lettuce. "My cholesterol is perfect. My resting heart rate is like, forty. I’m a biological marvel."

Andy fought down a wave of his own hunger, swallowing against its pull. He was in control, he would find the time to feed, he had a week until it became a problem.

“You’re getting hungry,” Marty sniffed the air. “I can smell it on you. You gonna be ok bro?”

“I’m fine, I can control it.” Andy glanced at Marty and the two shared a knowing look, both knowing that it was a countdown timer to something bad.

“You Vampires, I should drag you hunting again, I promise I won’t laugh at you sucking off a raccoon!”

“I don’t suck off racoons!”

“You suck off Moo-Juice, I’ve watched you. And he’s a human racoon.”

Before Andy could formulate a suitably devastating, aristocratic insult regarding Marty’s table manners, the distinctive, rhythmic clatter of urethane wheels on asphalt cut through the morning air.

Lucas rolled into the parking lot on his battered skateboard. He did not look like a biological marvel. He looked like a deeply irritated teenager who had just lost a fight with a rosebush. His oversized, vintage Ghostbusters t-shirt was askew, and he was favoring his left leg, kicking off the ground with a noticeable, painful wince.

He kicked the board up into his hands and hobbled toward the Impala, his face a mask of hyper-verbal outrage.

"I am filing a police report," Lucas announced, throwing his skateboard into the open trunk of the Impala. "I am calling animal control. I am writing a strongly worded letter to the homeowner's association. And then I am going to find the owner of that stupid, overgrown, mutant golden retriever and I am going to aggressively critique their landscaping!"

"What happened to you, Moo-Juice?" Linebacker Dave asked, materializing from between two parked cars with Buzz-Cut right behind him.

"I got attacked!" Lucas threw his hands up, pointing an accusatory finger at his left calf. His favorite pair of distressed denim jeans were now genuinely distressed, ripped open at the calf, the fabric stained with a blossoming patch of dark crimson. "I was just skating down Elm Street, minding my own business, listening to a podcast about unsolved mysteries, and this massive dog just launches out of the bushes and absolutely chomps me!"

Buzz-Cut cracked his knuckles, a wide, predatory grin spreading across his face. "Say the word, Moo-Juice. We’ll go bark back. We’ll go kick that dog’s ass right now. Nobody bites the pack mascot."

"Seriously," Dave agreed, chest bumping Buzz-Cut. "We’ll turn that retriever into a slipper."

"Let me see," Marty said, hopping down from the brick wall. He still had half a Big Mac in his hand, looking completely unfazed. He knelt on the asphalt next to Lucas. "Roll up the pant leg. Let the alpha assess the collateral damage."

Grumbling about the price of denim and the necessity of tetanus shots, Lucas carefully pulled the torn fabric up to his knee.

The bite was ugly. It wasn't a standard, defensive nip from a frightened pet. It was a deep, jagged puncture wound, the skin torn and bruised an angry purple, shaped in a wide, undeniably massive jawline.

Marty stopped chewing.

The casual, bro-tier swagger vanished from the werewolf alpha’s face, evaporating so completely it was as if someone had thrown a switch. The half-eaten Big Mac slipped from his grip, hitting the asphalt with a wet thud. Marty stared at the wound, his amber eyes dilating slightly, his nostrils flaring as he took in the scent of the blood, the saliva, and the residual aura left on the teenager's skin.

"Oh, fuck," Marty whispered. His voice was completely devoid of its usual booming confidence. It was hollow. Cold.

The absolute, dead silence that followed was far more terrifying than any roar. Buzz-Cut and Dave stepped forward, looking down at the wound. The playful grins melted off their faces, replaced by a rigid, horrifying stillness. They exchanged a single, panicked look.

Andy, sensing the sudden shift in the atmospheric pressure, pulled his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose. "What? Is it deep? I have a first aid kit in the trunk."

He moved toward the back of the car, entirely missing the subtext. He was pulling out a pristine, mundane Johnson & Johnson plastic box, completely unaware that a few Band-Aids and some Neosporin were about to be spectacularly insufficient.

"What do you mean, 'oh fuck'?" Lucas asked, his voice suddenly pitching up an octave. The silence of the werewolves was profoundly unnatural. "Why is everyone looking at my leg like it's an unexploded landmine? Do I have rabies? Should I go to the ER?"

"A rival pack?" Buzz-Cut whispered to Marty, completely ignoring Lucas. "A lone wolf?"

"Maybe it's a territory violation," Dave muttered, his eyes scanning the tree line at the edge of the parking lot as if expecting an ambush. "Or a warning. You think they know about the vampire?"

Andy slammed the trunk shut, holding the plastic medical kit. He stopped, his ancient brain finally catching up to the whispered, frantic conversation. He looked from the werewolves to the wound on Lucas's leg.

"What do you mean?" Andy demanded, his baritone voice dropping into a dangerous, icy register.

Marty slowly stood up. He didn't look at Andy. He kept his eyes locked on Lucas’s leg, his massive chest rising and falling rapidly. "He’s bitten, Edwina."

"I can see that, Martin," Andy snapped, stepping forward, popping the plastic latch on the first aid kit. "That is why I retrieved the gauze."

"No," Marty said, his voice cracking slightly. He looked up, his amber eyes wide with a shattered, deeply vulnerable terror. "As in BITTEN bitten."

The plastic first aid kit slipped from Andy's fingers, clattering against the asphalt. Gauze pads and antiseptic wipes spilled out, scattering in the morning breeze.

Andy froze. "As in... capital 'B' Bitten?"

"This isn't allowed," Dave panicked, running his hands over his buzz-cut. "This ain't right. There are rules about this! He’s too small. He’s too scrawny to survive the change!"

The last shred of Lucas’s defensive humor finally snapped. The panic set in, a cold, suffocating wave of realization that something horrific was happening to his body and nobody was explaining it to him.

"What does that mean?" Lucas demanded, his breathing accelerating. He looked at Dave, his eyes wide. "What do you mean I'm too scrawny? Survive what change? Guys!"

Marty placed a heavy, trembling hand on Lucas’s shoulder. "Slow down, Lucas."

That was it. That was the kill shot.

Marty never called him Lucas. He was Moo-Juice. He was the mascot. Hearing his actual, government name out of the alpha’s mouth was the ultimate confirmation that the world was ending.

"Hospital?" Andy asked, his voice suddenly frantic. The ancient, collected Scourge of the Carpathians was gone, replaced by a terrified partner who was entirely out of his depth. He didn't know the rules of lycanthropy. He didn't know the cure. "I will compel the finest surgeons in the state. I will drain the blood bank. Tell me what to do!"

"Not a human hospital," Marty said grimly, his hand tightening protectively on Lucas's shoulder. "They won't know what they're looking at. They'll just give him antibiotics and send him home to turn."

"Turn?!" Lucas shrieked.

"There's a doc we use," Marty decided, looking at Andy with grim resolve. "Get him in the car."

---

Oak Creek Animal Hospital looked like the kind of place where you took a lethargic guinea pig, not a teenager undergoing a supernatural biological crisis.

The waiting room smelled overwhelmingly of bleach and wet fur. A poster on the wall warned against the dangers of feeding grapes to terriers. It was aggressively, offensively normal.

Andy paced the cheap linoleum floor like a caged panther, his leather jacket squeaking with every sharp turn. He was radiating a terrifying, suffocating aura of ancient menace, causing a woman holding a Pomeranian in the corner to inch nervously toward the exit.

Marty sat rigidly in a plastic chair meant for someone half his size, his knees by his ears, staring blankly at the floor.

"Dr. Billingsly will see you now," a bored receptionist called out, popping her chewing gum.

They hauled Lucas, who was currently in the middle of a continuous, hyper-verbal meltdown, into Examination Room B.

Dr. Brenda Billingsly walked in a moment later. She was fifty-two, wearing a pair of faded green scrubs covered in golden retriever hair, and holding a clipboard. She looked like she had been awake since 1998.

"Martin," Dr. Brenda sighed, looking over her reading glasses at the massive werewolf alpha. "I thought I told you not to bring your turf wars into my clinic before I've had my coffee."

"It's not a turf war, Doc," Marty whined, instantly shrinking into himself. The terrifying alpha of the local pack suddenly looked like a scolded puppy. "It’s Lucas. He got clipped by a stray."

Dr. Brenda’s tired eyes shifted to Lucas, who was shivering on the cold, stainless-steel examination table. She walked over, snapped on a pair of blue latex gloves, and gently examined the torn calf.

"It's a lycanthropic infection?" Andy demanded, looming over her shoulder, his fangs beginning to descend in a display of protective aggression. "Can you cure it? Do you require an elixir? A silver nitrate solution? I have access to immense wealth, I will pay whatever—"

Dr. Brenda didn't even turn around. She just reached back with her clipboard and lightly tapped Andy on the nose with it.

"Back up, Lestat," she said flatly, obviously no fan of Anne Rice. "Or I'm putting a Cone of Shame on you. Let me do my job."

Andy, utterly bewildered by the sheer audacity of the mortal woman, actually took a step back.

"Am I going to turn into a monster?" Lucas babbled, his hands gripping the edges of the metal table so hard his knuckles were white. "Am I going to start howling at the moon? Do I need to buy tear-away pants? Because I don't have the budget for a new wardrobe every month! And what about flea and tick medication? Do I use the topical drops or the chewables? Is the chewable beef-flavored? Because I’m a vegetarian on Tuesdays!"

Dr. Brenda grabbed a complimentary rawhide bone from a jar on the counter and shoved it into Lucas’s hands. "Hold this. Stop fidgeting." She took a swab of the wound and dropped it into a vial.

"Well?" Andy pressed, his anxiety vibrating through the small room.

Dr. Brenda sighed, stripping off her gloves and tossing them into a biohazard bin. "The wound is clean. No rabies. But as for the lycanthropy..." She shrugged with maddening casualness. "We're not going to know if it sets till the next full moon."

The air in the room seemed to freeze.

"What do you mean, 'if it sets'?" Andy hissed.

"Human biology is squishy," Brenda explained, picking up her coffee mug. "Sometimes the bite takes, sometimes the immune system fights it off like a bad case of the flu. It’s a waiting game."

She reached into a drawer, pushed aside a box of heartworm medication, and pulled out a brightly colored, trifold pamphlet. She handed it to Lucas.

The cover featured a cartoon drawing of a confused teenager looking down at a hairy, oversized paw. The title, printed in bright blue Comic Sans, read: So, You're Going Through Changes! A Teenager's Guide to the Pack.

"Listen, Lucas," Dr. Brenda said, her voice adopting the gentle, deeply patronizing tone of a middle school health teacher. "You're at an age where your body is going to start doing things you don't understand. You might experience sudden, aggressive mood swings. You might wake up in strange places with a taste for raw beef. You’ll probably notice some... unexpected hair growth."

"Unexpected hair growth," Lucas repeated, his voice faint, staring at the cartoon wolf paw.

"It’s completely natural," Brenda continued smoothly. "Your voice might drop. Your center of gravity will shift. If you start feeling the urge to chase the mailman, just take a deep breath and count to ten."

Lucas’s brain finally short-circuited. The armor of absurdity shattered.

"Andy," Lucas gasped, dropping the rawhide bone and grabbing the lapels of Andy's jacket. "Andy... hold me!"

"I am holding you," Andy said rigidly, his arms wrapping instantly around Lucas’s waist, looking completely horrified by the pamphlet pressed against his chest.

"I'm dying," Lucas babbled, burying his face in the leather. "My human life is over. I'm going to start shedding on the furniture! My mom just bought a new sectional, she’s going to murder me! Andy, if I get fleas, I'm going to sue! I’m going to sue a labrador... I can do that, right? Do you think Bartholomew has a law degree?"

"He is a gargoyle, Lucas," Andy tried to soothe, patting the boy's back with awkward stiffness. "He specializes in Gothic architecture and British science fiction."

"He wears a trench coat! He looks litigious!" Lucas shrieked. "Marty! Tell me this is a joke! Tell me I'm not going to have to start peeing on fire hydrants to establish my credit score!"

Marty looked up from the floor, his massive shoulders slumped, looking utterly heartbroken. "We'll teach you, Moo-Juice," he said mournfully. "I've got a whole list of the best hydrants. We'll get you through this."

"I don't want to know about the hydrants!" Lucas yelled into the leather jacket.

Dr. Brenda sighed, scribbling on her pad. "I'm prescribing a heavy-duty antibiotic, a rabies booster, and a topical cream for the itching. You boys can pay at the front desk. And Martin?"

Marty flinched. "Yes, Dr. Billingsly?"

"If he starts chewing on the drywall," Brenda said, taking a sip of her coffee, "give him a frozen Kong toy filled with peanut butter. It’ll keep him busy for hours."

---

The next three days were a masterclass in suffocating, Victorian-era medical coddling.

Andy had completely abandoned the Impala, the high school, and his brooding aesthetic to become a full-time, highly aggressive Florence Nightingale. He had transformed Lucas’s bedroom into a sterile quarantine zone, burying the teenager under no less than six heavy comforters.

And then, there was the soup.

Andy did not eat food. His entire understanding of human sustenance was based on vague, centuries-old observations and whatever he had gleaned from watching daytime television. To Andy, ailing humans required soup.

Lucas sat propped up against his pillows on a Friday afternoon, staring down at a ceramic bowl. It was bowl number fourteen. The liquid inside was a concerning, tepid grey, floating with unidentifiable, vaguely threatening lumps.

"Andy," Lucas whimpered, his face taking on a slightly greenish hue as the smell of boiled celery and despair hit his nose. "I love you. I really do. But if I eat one more spoonful of whatever this is, my body is going to reject it violently. And not because of the werewolf bite."

Andy was sitting rigidly in a folding chair next to the bed, holding a damp washcloth, and fighting down yet another wave of ravenous hunger. He looked incredibly stressed, the bags under his eyes prominent from days of hyper-vigilant observation. "You must ingest nutrients, Lucas. The body requires fuel to fight off the lycanthropic pathogen. Eat the broth."

"I feel fine, I swear," Lucas pleaded, pushing the bowl away and aggressively throwing off three of the heavy blankets. The air conditioning was blasting, but he felt uncomfortably, intensely warm. His skin was buzzing with a restless, frantic energy that made it impossible to sit still. "You can let me go outside. Or... or you can get into this bed with me."

Andy raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, reaching out to dab the damp cloth against Lucas's forehead. "You are convalescing."

"I’m really horny," Lucas blurted out, his leg bouncing rapidly under the remaining covers. He dragged both hands down his face, his hyper-verbal brain spiraling into a new avenue of panic. "Like, REALLY horny. Which, given it's me, isn't exactly unusual... I'm pretty much always horny. But now, it's like, it is all I can think about. My skin is on fire. What if it’s the wolf? What if the animal instincts are taking over my brain?"

"So... no change then?" Andy remarked dryly, setting the washcloth down on the nightstand.

"I'm serious!" Lucas groaned, throwing his arms up in exasperation. "What if I start humping your leg? Or the furniture? What if my mom walks in and I’m aggressively dry-humping the armchair?"

Andy crossed his arms, leaning back in the folding chair, a slow, devastating smirk playing on his pale lips. "So... no change then?"

"I am not that bad!" Lucas huffed, his cheeks burning a bright, furious red. He glared at his immortal boyfriend. The buzzing energy in his chest was suddenly overriding his panic about the bite, funneling entirely into an overwhelming need for contact. "Get in bed. Like, right now. And take off your pants. I command it!"

Andy blinked, a look of mild, aristocratic amusement washing over his face. "You command...?"

"NOW!"

The word cracked through the bedroom like a whip. It was loud, sharp, and possessed a startling, guttural edge that Lucas had never actually used before. It wasn't his usual frantic yapping; it was a bark of genuine authority.

Andy literally jumped, his 300-year-old predatory reflexes startling at the sheer volume and weight of the demand.

Lucas immediately slapped both hands over his mouth, his eyes going wide with absolute, unadulterated horror. He scrambled backward against the headboard, tangling himself in the sheets.

"Oh my god," Lucas mumbled through his fingers. "Oh no. I'm barking. I literally just barked at you. The pamphlets were right! I'm turning into a dog!"

Andy stared at the terrified teenager for a long moment. Then, his dark eyes softened, crinkling at the corners as a low, rumbling chuckle escaped his chest. The stress of the past few days seemed to melt off his shoulders. He stood up from the folding chair and smoothly reached for the heavy silver buckle of his leather belt.

"Barking orders is not quite the same thing as actual barking, Lucas," Andy said, his voice dropping into a smooth, vibrating baritone that made the fine hairs on Lucas’s arms stand up.

Andy kicked off his heavy boots and let his dark denim jeans drop to the floor. He stood there in his boxer briefs, his alabaster skin contrasting with the dark ink of his tattoos, looking like a sculpted marble statue brought to terrifying, beautiful life.

"And for the record," Andy murmured, stepping closer to the edge of the mattress, his dark eyes flashing with a sudden, intense heat, "I like it when you're assertive."

Lucas slowly lowered his hands from his mouth. His heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs, but the panic of the werewolf bite was instantly vaporized by the sight of Andy climbing onto the mattress.

"Shut up," Lucas commanded, his voice suddenly breathless. The manic, restless energy in his blood flared, entirely taking over. "Horny now... talk after... gotta... yep!"

Lucas didn't wait for a response. He launched himself across the mattress, shedding his oversized t-shirt in one fluid motion, and pounced on the Scourge of the Carpathians with all the grace and restraint of a starving animal.

Andy hit the pillows with a muffled laugh, but the laughter died in his throat the second Lucas’s mouth crashed against his.

It wasn't their usual kiss. There was a desperate, demanding heat to Lucas that was entirely new. The teenager’s hands were everywhere, gripping Andy’s shoulders, tangling in his perfectly pomaded hair, pushing the vampire flat against the mattress with a surprising surge of strength.

Andy let out a low, appreciative hum against Lucas’s lips, his cold hands wrapping tightly around the boy’s waist. Andy was an apex predator, a creature designed to hunt and dominate, but right now, he was perfectly content to surrender entirely to the frantic, overwhelming affection of his human anchor.

"Off," Lucas demanded breathlessly, tugging impatiently at the waistband of Andy’s boxer briefs. "Everything off. Now."

"Impatient little wolf," Andy teased, his voice husky, but he obliged, lifting his hips to let Lucas strip away the final barrier between them.

Lucas straddled Andy’s hips, his chest heaving, his flushed, feverish skin a stark contrast against Andy’s icy pallor. The heat radiating off the teenager was incredible, almost supernatural, burning through the lingering chill in Andy's dead veins.

Lucas leaned down, tracing an open-mouthed kiss down the line of Andy’s jaw, before biting down—hard—on the sensitive skin where the vampire's neck met his shoulder.

Andy let out a sharp gasp, his hands flying up to grip Lucas’s hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh. "Lucas..."

"Mine," Lucas mumbled against the skin, the word vibrating with a low, territorial hum that sent a shockwave of pure electricity straight to Andy's core.

Andy’s fangs instinctively dropped, grazing his lower lip, his own predatory nature rising to meet the challenge. He flipped their positions in a sudden, dizzying blur of motion, pinning Lucas securely to the mattress beneath him.

Lucas didn't panic. Instead, a wicked, triumphant grin spread across his face, his legs wrapping tightly around Andy's waist to pull him flush against him.

"Thought I commanded you to stay put, old man," Lucas teased, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

"I am notoriously bad at following orders," Andy whispered, his dark eyes blown wide with desire.

He leaned down, capturing Lucas’s lips again in a deep, bruising kiss. This time, he didn't hold back. He let the raw, consuming hunger take over, matching Lucas's frantic energy beat for beat. Their bodies slotted together perfectly, a clash of heat and ice, chaos and control, mortality and eternity.

As Andy pushed inside him, Lucas let out a sharp, shattered cry that echoed in the quiet bedroom, his hands gripping the sheets like a lifeline. Andy froze, his expression instantly contorting with concern, the ancient monster terrified of breaking something so fragile.

"Are you—" Andy started, his voice strained.

"Don't stop," Lucas hissed, his eyes squeezed shut, his hips thrusting upward to chase the friction. "I swear to god, Andy, if you stop right now, I will actually bite you."

A low, vibrating purr rumbled in Andy’s chest. He set a punishing, rhythmic pace, driving the panic and the fear of the last three days entirely out of Lucas's mind. The world narrowed down to the feeling of Andy’s cold skin under his hands, the searing heat building in his own core, and the ragged, desperate sounds they were both making.

Lucas was a chaotic, hyper-verbal mess of a teenager on the best of days, but in this, he was completely anchored. He felt the wild, electric buzzing in his blood reach a crescendo, his body tightening like a coiled spring.

He dug his fingernails into Andy’s back, pulling the vampire down for one last, desperate kiss as the sheer intensity of it shattered him. He spilled over the edge with a breathless, stuttering gasp, his body trembling violently against the mattress.

Andy followed a moment later, his entire frame shuddering as he buried his face in the crook of Lucas’s neck, letting out a soft, exhausted sigh.

For a long time, the only sound in the room was their ragged breathing, the heavy comforters kicked entirely off the bed and onto the floor.

Lucas lay tangled in Andy’s limbs, resting his head on the vampire's cool, motionless chest. The feverish heat in his skin had finally broken, leaving behind a deep, heavy exhaustion that felt completely, wonderfully normal.

He traced a lazy circle over one of Andy's tattoos.

"So," Lucas mumbled, his voice thick with sleep. "I guess if I am turning into a werewolf, at least I know the stamina is going to be top-tier."

Andy let out a soft laugh, pulling the boy closer, pressing a kiss to the top of his messy hair.

"Get some sleep, little wolf," Andy murmured, closing his eyes. "We have twenty-five days until the full moon. You are going to need your strength."

“Yeah, but…” Lucas’s eyes sparkled as he flipped Andy over onto his back and lined himself up. “We have a rule, I’m the top… so… I think you need to be put in your place.”

“Yes sir,” Andy grinned as Lucas set to work restoring the order of their universe,