LITMIR.BIZ

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also knew she didn’t really have a choice.

      Sure enough, she found herself pinned by a sharp golden gaze the instant she opened her eyes. Mia took a little solace that this Jenner looked about as uncertain of what to make of her as she was of him. They stared at one another for a long, drawn-out moment, and Mia again felt that strange warmth beginning to flood her. She was suddenly very aware of his large hands on her, the steady rise and fall of the chest she rested against as he cradled her. She could even feel the beat of his heart.

      It was, hands down, the oddest sensation she had ever experienced, which in her case was really saying something. It felt as though invisible threads were even now winding around them, binding them together in a way she couldn’t quite fathom. And she had no interest in breaking those new and fragile bonds, preferring instead to forget everything but the intriguing lines of the face bent over her own. She felt drugged, almost, but pleasantly so. His lashes, she noted with some pleasure, were inky black and incredibly long. Such beautiful eyes.

      Mia’s hand, which had been fisted against his chest, loosened, and she spread her fingers against the place where his heart beat steadily, thudding reassuringly against her palm. Her head filled with music, the way it always did when her blood called out, and was answered. Jenner’s song was wild and sweet, and for one breathless instant, Mia could hear her own singular melody twining with his, perfectly matched, creating something new and amazing. Her skin broke out in gooseflesh at its beauty…but it was short-lived. She heard Jenner’s startled intake of breath, watched the quick bob of his Adam’s apple at his throat. He looked quickly away, and as neatly as if it had been severed with a knife, the immediacy of their connection was broken. The song stopped short in the midst of a crescendo, locked back away.

      Those invisible bonds, however, remained, comforting her even though she didn’t know this man from Adam. For the moment, he was all she had.

      Mia found herself quickly set down, though Jenner’s hands lingered to support her. This time, despite an initial wobble, her footing was steady. Inside, she was anything but. A shiver rippled through her at the loss of Jenner’s heat, and the snap of a twig somewhere near her made her jerk. Every head turned sharply in the direction of the sound, at least reassuring her that she hadn’t imagined it. Without a word, two of the men dashed off into the trees with a speed and grace that surprised her. Quickly, fear bubbled back to the surface.

      Jeff was still out there. Maybe he’d come back to finish what he’d started. Maybe—

      “Don’t worry about them. They’re just being cautious,” Jenner said, pulling her back to the moment. He had obviously seen her watch the two men go. She looked at him, his eyes giving off a soft glow. Did he even realize it? she wondered. He seemed so calm. No sense of urgency. All things considered, Mia thought she would have preferred someone who acted at least a little like the crazed werewolf running around in the woods biting people might be a problem.

      “Sorry. I’m not used to being bitten by my dates, and then left to die. I guess it’s made me a little jumpy,” Mia said, finding her voice raspy from the bloodcurdling scream she’d sounded earlier. One dark brow winged up, and Mia wondered if he was surprised she wasn’t just falling apart.

      Probably she should fake it. But she didn’t know how. Tears had been outlawed for too long to ever really come naturally to her.

      “Point taken,” he said, his voice a resonant growl that scraped in an interesting sort of way against her ragged nerve endings. His eyes dropped to where she’d been wounded. “You seem to be healing up well, at least.”

      Mia just looked at him, aghast. Healing? No, not yet, not by a long shot. Magic was her gift, but she could bleed with the best of them. Hadn’t she proven that?

      “You’ve got to be joking,” she choked out. “I’ve been attacked! His name is Jeff Gaines, and he tried to kill me! What about all of this is holding you people up? I need the police, I need a doctor, and I need to get out…of…these…oh my God.” She happened to look at her ruined shoulder during her tirade, and what she saw shouldn’t have been, couldn’t have been possible. Beneath the bloody fabric, torn and bleeding skin had already knit together, leaving small scabs in most places. A few spots, she noted incredulously, had already healed completely.

      The pain, it seemed, was gone for a reason.

      And suddenly, falling apart seemed a much more doable option than it had only seconds ago.

      Mia’s mouth opened while she stared at Jenner, who was gazing steadily back at her. He looked like this was the most natural thing in the world. She tried to make words come out, but none came to her. Her heart began to pound, and all of her instincts were screaming at her to run.

      “She’s going to freak out,” a voice muttered somewhere behind her. “They always freak out.”

      “She is not going to freak out,” Jenner replied, but his eyes never left her, and his voice was low, as though he was speaking only to her. “You’re going to be fine. And you’re not going to lose it. Not if you want him to pay for what he did.”

      “But,” Mia said softly, trying desperately to keep it together. This couldn’t be. This wasn’t supposed to happen. “But…”

      “I can make him pay,” Jenner said, and something about the way he said it, the words themselves, steadied Mia in a way probably nothing else could have in that moment. “You have to trust me. What this Jeffrey did isn’t allowed among our kind any more than it is among yours. Less, in fact.”

      “Your kind,” Mia repeated in a whisper. “What is that?” Deep inside, she knew. But she still needed to hear the words. It had been so long since that day in her grandmother’s study, poring over fantastical pictures that sometimes moved and danced beneath her fingertips. Revelations to her young eyes that had been cut brutally short in the wake of the older woman’s fury at being disobeyed.

      At some point, she had stopped believing that these creatures were real, and started believing what she’d always been told. That she was alone in her strangeness.

      “This is where she freaks out,” Mia heard someone else murmur softly, and it so incensed her that anger finally overrode fear. There was nothing she hated more than being underestimated, condescended to. She snapped her head around to glare at each of the other men in turn, until they shifted uncomfortably and looked at the ground.

      “I am not going to freak out,” she said through gritted teeth before looking again at Jenner. Amusement flashed across his face, as striking as a bolt of lightning in a dark sky.

      “I can see that,” he said.

      “Then tell me what’s going on!” It came out as far more of a shout than she’d intended, but it was hard to regret it when she still had no information, and now a wound that seemed to be healing itself at incredible speed through some medical miracle.

      Jenner studied her for a moment longer, as though sizing her up, and then nodded.

      “Okay. You were bitten by a werewolf we think is a feral drifter. Unless you give us a hand, he stays loose, and you wind up just like him.” He tipped his head, studying her. “How’s that for starters?”

      It was true, then. These were all werewolves. Jeff, somehow, was a werewolf who’d managed to pass for as normal as could be and slipped easily past her defenses. Mia’s heart leaped in a mixture of joy and fear. She wasn’t the only human cursed with a little something more. These creatures were as real as she. She wanted to open her mouth and spill out everything, everything she knew about her own strange gifts. Maybe they would know what she truly was. Maybe they could help her.

      Or maybe they would use her the same way Jeff had wanted to. She couldn’t trust anyone. Not yet. And especially not when her problems had just been added to. Mia knew nothing about werewolves outside of movies and TV, and most of that was probably garbage. Being bitten by whatever a feral drifter was, however, didn’t sound good.

      So many

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