Chapter 14

Aria

This couldn’t be real. I had to be dreaming.

Lucas was not a dog, but… A boy?!

“No,” I murmured, grabbing my arm and pinching the skin as hard as I could over and over again. “No, no, I have to be dreaming…”

The little boy who was sitting up in bed, in the exact same spot as where the dog had just been, cocked his head to one side. “What’s wrong, Mommy? Why are you scared?”

“No, no, no,” I kept muttering. I kept pinching until my arm was sore, until my nails finally bit through the skin and little red beads of blood began to form on the surface.

This couldn’t be possible. Lucas was a dog. A husky/wolf mix. Not… Not a little boy.

But no matter how much I pinched myself, nothing happened. If I was dreaming, then I was deep asleep; maybe I had hit my head during the wolf attack and was in a coma somewhere in a hospital bed.

Or maybe I had died and this was some twisted version of the afterlife.

The only thing I could think of doing now was burying my face in my hands. “Wake up, wake up, wake up…”

Soft footsteps padded over to me on the tile floor. I felt a tiny finger tap my leg. “Mommy?”

Slowly, with trembling hands, I moved my fingers aside to see the little boy peering up at me with curiosity in his eyes. He was completely naked, golden skin almost glowing in the moonlight streaming in through the window.

“You… You… What are you?” I choked out.

The little boy just looked confused. “Don’t you know? I’m a werewolf!”

I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. My throat felt closed up.

Maybe I had really gone insane.

Suddenly, the door burst open. Darren appeared in the doorway, holding a bag of food from the cafeteria. He dropped it immediately upon seeing the scene before him.

“Oh, thank God,” I breathed, scrambling away from the little boy. “Darren, please tell me you’re seeing what I’m—”

“Lucas! You shifted!” Darren surged forward, shrugging off his jacket and quickly wrapping it around the little boy. The boy giggled as Darren pulled him close and hugged him tightly.

I leaned against the wall and slid to the floor, hugging my knees to my chest.

Shifted…?

As if suddenly remembering my presence, Darren jerked his head up, eyes darting to me and then to the door. I heard footsteps pounding in the hallway, and a moment later, a tall man with silver hair skidded into view.

“Alpha!” Liam—I recognized him as Darren’s assistant—hissed. He then sniffed the air and turned to me, and his eyes widened into saucers. Inhaling sharply, he stepped into the room and shut the door behind himself.

And locked it.

“Liam,” Darren said almost cautiously as he rose to his feet. “What are you…”

If I’d had the strength to scream when I saw the claws extend from Liam’s fingertips, I would have. But I was too frozen in fear and disbelief to move.

“We have to take care of her,” Liam growled, whirling to face me. “She knows about us now. It’ll only end in disaster.”

“No.” Darren grabbed Liam’s wrist and pulled him back. Liam obeyed, but his eyes remained fixed on me. I couldn’t rip my gaze away; his eyes were normally blue, but now… Now, they were glowing. “No one’s getting hurt, Liam.”

“H-Hurt?” I finally managed to squeak out. My eyes flicked to those claws again, which were still on prominent display at the ends of Liam’s fingertips.

Darren grit his teeth and stepped away from Liam. He came over and crouched in front of me, moving to grip my shoulders. Whimpering, I scooched away, but I could only go so far. He grabbed my face and forced me to look into those mismatched eyes of his.

“Breathe, Aria. Calm down and I’ll tell you what’s happening.”

“B-But…”

“Is Mommy okay?” the little boy asked, still wrapped up in Darren’s coat. I didn’t even dare to look at him.

Liam growled—growled—and moved over to the boy. He crouched, blocking me from view. “Lucas, she’s not your mommy. She’s a human.”

“No! She is my mommy!” Lucas replied angrily. Without warning, he pulled his foot back and kicked Liam directly in the shin. As he did, little fangs flashed in his mouth, and furry little ears poked out from amongst his chestnut locks.

I thought I might throw up. Darren forced me to look into his eyes again. “Breathe, Aria.”

“O-Ooow,” Liam groaned, hopping on one foot. “Damn, Darren. He’s just as feisty in his human form as his wolf form.”

Wolves.

Werewolves.

“How…?” I finally managed, pointing a shaking finger at Lucas. “How is this possible? Werewolves are just stories. Urban legends…”

Liam scoffed. “Where do you think those so-called ‘legends’ of yours came from, human?”

“Enough.” There was a warning in Darren’s voice, a sense of authority that caused both Liam and Lucas to go silent.

Alpha.

Darren slowly rose, smoothing down the front of his shirt. “It’s true,” he explained slowly, as if speaking to a child. “We are werewolves. And you just witnessed Lucas—my son—shift into his human form for the first time.”

My throat bobbed as I swallowed hard. The rational part of my brain still refused to believe that this was anything more than a dream, but somehow I knew that it was real. All of the stories were true—all of the myths, the legends, the fairytales, the books.

All of it.

Somehow.

Liam took a step forward. “She’ll tell others,” he said quietly to Darren. “You know what humans are like—what they’ve done to our kind. All it takes is one, and the next thing we know they’ll be hunting us with those guns of theirs. There’s a reason why we’ve worked so hard to keep ourselves hidden.”

A muscle in Darren’s jaw twitched. “I don’t want anyone to die.”

Die?!

Frowning, Liam pulled Darren aside. Neither of them spoke out loud, but something about their facial expressions shifting, the way they were staring at each other… Were they speaking telepathically or something?

While they were distracted, my eyes flicked to the door. I could make a run for it, I thought. The rental car was just outside; I could get away, anywhere, somewhere far away. Change my name and start a new life if I had to.

Slowly, I began to rise to my feet. Darren and Liam were too busy locked in whatever they were doing to notice, and Liam was twiddling his little toes together on the hospital bed, clearly in awe of his new body. None of them noticed me as I rose and began to inch over to the door.

Just a few more steps…

Blissfully, the lock slid open silently, and the door didn’t creak on its hinges.

And then I was moving. Running faster than I ever had.

The hospital walls blurred past as I ran, my hair coming loose from its braid, my feet slapping on the tiled floors. I heard shouts and footsteps behind me, but I didn’t stop. I pushed my legs faster, faster, faster until I was bursting out into the cold February night, and—

Fuck! My car keys!

In my haste, I’d forgotten them. There was no time to go back, so I’d have to leave the car, take off on foot… Hope that a kind driver would pick me up.

But before I could make it onto the road, I was cut off by a hulking silver form.

A wolf. An enormous one—its back even taller than my head. Glowing blue eyes and bared fangs.

Liam.

I was going to die. I was sure of it. I didn’t know why he was doing this, or how he was going to do it, but he was going to kill me.

Or so I thought. But in that moment, there was a blinding flash of light. It was so bright that it blinded me, sending me stumbling backwards with my arm held up to shield my eyes. Headlights? Lightning? No… Something else.

The next thing I knew, darkness had returned and warm arms were wrapped around me. I was unharmed.

Gasping, I looked up to see Darren holding me tightly, his chest heaving against mine, and Liam was groaning, sprawled out on the pavement—in his human form once more. I didn’t know what had happened, but there was still a faint aura of light emanating from…

From me. From my chest.

Darren’s eyes were wide as he gingerly tugged aside the fabric of my sweater to reveal the crescent-shaped mark that had appeared there a week ago.

It was glowing now, just like his eyes as they met mine.

“Mate,” he murmured reverently, his fingers coming up to brush my cheek. “You’re my mate.”