Until I shed my human skin like one would a Halloween costume and morphed into a wolf that was the size of a small Honda.
I knew what people saw when they viewed my transformation. A black wolf with dark eyes and huge teeth.
I made my way to the river and leaned over to drink my fill.
Only, when I saw my own reflection, I did a double take.
My fur.
It was not black.
It was blood red.
My eyes black.
And as if seeing a stranger for the first time, my wolf-self smiled with a secret.
Dread threatened to overtake me.
I was not in control of myself.
I tried to stop smiling.
I told myself to look away.
I lost.
SERENITY
I didn’t think anything of it when Mason didn’t return right away.
But after five hours, I started to get worried.
It didn’t help that it was getting dark, and I was in a strange house all by myself. A house where I wasn’t sure I could stay hidden and or protected from whatever had tried to kill me the other night.
The more I thought about it the more I pulled the blanket closer to my body, tempted to throw it over my head as if it could make me invisible.
The clock struck ten, nearly sending me off the couch in a fit of fear. I was a vampire, for crying out loud.
I could hold my own.
I just didn’t want to have to.
And I wasn’t exactly in the best practice to do anything outside of throwing a few punches and running. Besides, I’d had one cup of blood that was quickly leaving my system.
“Stop being ridiculous,” I said to myself literally as the doorbell rang and then the door opened.
I froze as the scent of burnt wood invaded my nostrils only to be replaced by what smelled like campfires and summers spent on the lake.
“Mason,” the deep voice called, and then I was staring into the deepest blue eyes I’d ever seen in my entire life and trying not to panic over the fact that the strange man looked like a successful male
model with a lucrative underwear campaign. “Oh, hello.” He smiled.
I frowned.
He looked away and grinned as if he knew the effect he had on people and then tried again with the smiling at me. “I’m Timber. And you are?”
“Serenity,” I said, lamely staring at his outstretched hand.