Beneath The Billionaire's Skin. This is a story about a young girl who met her future husband at her children's birthday party which turned into a nightmare when the tent of the gathering caught fire. The boy she was destined to marry saved her and carried her to the forest beyond the fire. Years later, Nena, the girl, still hasn't forgotten the wolf who turned into a boy, saved her. She took a course in Creative Arts to satisfy her curiosity about the shape shifting wolf. Nena's father urged her to take a marriage of convenience to have someone take care of the family business. After meeting him, she caught sight of his eyes and realized, this was the boy she met years ago during the fire. The boy was now a man who took care of their own steel business because his own brother was too lax to take of their family business. However, his brother was jealous that he married her because the brother was also in love with her. Nena was angry at the wolf/man insisting he manipulated the situation so that he could marry her and not to save her after all. She ran away with his brother but realized she was still in love with the wolf/man. The brother would not let her go and realized also that she had been kidnapped. The wolfman saved her from his brother and she gave him all of the pent-up feelings of love she wanted to give him when she was young until now that they were both grown up.
Chapter 1 Legacy of a Wolf
Up until then the only supernatural book on werewolves Nena could find was Running With the Wolves by Pinkola Estes. It was a good book but it was not exhaustive and she could not find other books that spoke of the phenomenon only as a fantasy and metaphor of the mighty woman beside her friend, a wolf.
Class today was a triumph of persuading her students that the werewolf or the man-wolf possibly could exist such as the mermaids of the sea or vampires who roamed the night as a man and by day could only sleep to avoid the light. The thought of the reality of such a creature excited her students who would probably go on to graduate and work in some McDonalds to pay for their student loans. Then the idea, the trust in the disbelief, would vanish in their memories unless they worked for a TV crew in search of badly edited horrific monsters in the underground tunnels of the state, where people actually lived under inhumane practices. Real people lived under such circumstances and so it was in opposition to the idea of magic. The magic would be forgotten in face of such reality.
The class was held in a room where the chairs were rounded about like the proscenium and they each had the chance to speak about their own research into the magical belief of a werewolf or a shape-shifter. Nena simply allowed them to talk their way through and graded their reports as deemed fit. The trick was to believe though she didn't force them to, those who believed were more vocal and excited about the idea of having ties to the animal world.
"I was asleep once, and then I saw this big, silver wolf outside my window. He was just walking down the street under the sharp lamp post lights. It was big, white and beautiful. Perhaps it was a woman, more of a woman than a man. Whoever thought werewolves were only men." A female student named Leslie broke through the barrier of not believing which got everyone talking into a debate.
"But don't you think a werewolf is much more handsome as a man than as a woman. Mermaids are more appropriate as women than as mermen. Leave him, the wolf, as a man. Its much sexier that way." Another girl called Ren argued for her own viewpoint.
"Have you ever seen one?" Nena asked her while tapping her pencil against her notepad, also jotting down notes about her students' observations and viewpoints.
"No." Ren replied "But I have a romantic idea of how he would look, smell or feel." Ren went on. "It's like finding one and knowing that a wolf breathes male charisma. I do, however, believe in a she-wolf just as much. But I could fall in love with a werewolf after he has changed into a man."
"I don't like the way you talk about werewolves. I'm keeping my idea of them the way I like it. Capable of shape-shifting into both man or woman, both strong and passionate." Nena realized what Leslie was trying to say. She meant for them to believe but only if they were also limited in the reality of their existence.
"Alright, I want all of you to do more research on shape-shifters. This time, not only wolves but witches, warlocks, wizards, mermaids and meremen as well. Then we'll talk then about how real they could get and that their existence is a reality we all have to accept and respect. I want you to think of them in terms of having been given the legacy of existing in our modern world, what their purpose for being nowadays thus leading us to ask, why they continue to exist."
The bell rang and the students pushed back their chairs and left the room.
Nena remained in the room to wait for her fellow teachers before going with them to the library. They both arrived at the same time. Macy was a strawberry blonde who constantly smelt of hairspray while Susy had her brunette hair in braids behind her. Nena was the heftier of the two. Also, she was chestnut brown with sunspots on her skin which she shyly tried to hide with long sleeved dresses. Her dark hair was held back by a headband and tied back with an elastic band. Nena was also the most shy of the two. She kept a secret. She was and always had been in love with a wolf. Only her two friends knew about this and out of pity or something they couldn't understand, they simply went along and believed in her childhood experience.
"Are we going to the library?" Macy asked chewing her gum.
"Yes, I can feel a book there somewhere waiting for us to open it up after hundreds of years in hiding from us." Said Susy. To this, Macy felt a prickly feeling on the skin of her arms."I have an idea. Why don't we look into the books on wolves this time, instead? I mean we've exhausted books in the fantasy section. Maybe if we think about it as real---."
"They are real, like I told you. I'm just afraid the story of these creatures are going to be dead, gone and buried." Nena told them with exasperation but not over her friends but to the idea of never meeting the werewolf who saved her from a fire that happened to her birthday party years ago, as a child. The tent went up in flames and a big, silver wolf saved her and brought her to a clearing within the forest.
" I know," Macy said and nudged Nena with her arm. "You told us already, so many times. I believe you. Now we have to find more books to read on it for our material assignment or some other people have gotten to us first and probably borrowed it. Maybe we can ask the librarian who borrowed the probable books that could have been borrowed and we can ask them to share the books with us. Or the books are still there and we should rush to the library and beat them to it."
"C'mon Macy, as though anyone would be that interested in those books. Maybe we could eat first?" Susy argued for the sake of her growling stomach.
"Nah, I think we should get the books first then go to the cafeteria." Nena explained.
"Oh, alright." Susy agreed which made Macy laugh, like a witch.