6
The doors shut with varying thud s, and I press a hand to the window as the SUV peels away from the scene.
Celeste’s blood smears across the glass, distorting the rest of the island.
Painting it all scarlet until the ambulance and police car and my own father disappear from sight. Celeste vanishing with them.
Tears cloud my gaze, like poison against my vision.
I shut my eyes tight, sucking in a harsh breath.
My ribs bend with it— bend , not break or crack.
I swallow a whimper. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I also can’t bring myself to care.
Not about the pain or the heat boiling my veins or the sweat dripping from my forehead. I stroke the window again.
“It will get worse,” a man says on my left, his voice as coarse as sand and his pallid skin sparkling against a strange gray tunic. He too has glowing yellow eyes.
I startle. So maybe I am not completely alone.
Shifting away from the window, I nearly knock legs with him.
He sits with perfect posture on the leather seat beside me, wrinkles pulling at his skin, almost wispy in nature.
As if they’re a mere figment of imagination plastered over the strange reality of eternal youth.
He might be older, but he still appears young.
“The pain,” he clarifies with pursed lips. “Your transition will have begun already.”
The words mirror those the boy spoke, but I don’t understand them. “Transition?”
“To werewolf,” he says simply, as though discussing the weather.
“It begins with a bite—unless you’re a Born wolf.
” He strokes the edges of his sharpened nails.
“The bite determines the state of your transformation. A shallow bite, and it would reveal itself with a fever or perhaps mood swings. Eventually both would overcome you. Hunger would rot your brain, drain the rest of your senses, and you’d be certain to slaughter even your closest loved one.
Your father,” he says with a pointed nod.
“But you’ve been damaged. The transformation will break what hasn’t already broken, and then it will probably break you too. ”
I stare at him. He adjusts his window, pressing a button to slide down the glass and let the hot air ruffle his brown hair before leaning back against the headrest. His gilded eyes narrow as he addresses the rest of the car.
“There was no need for any violence tonight. Our queen will not tolerate such a wreck again.”
The driver in front of us immediately agrees, but his voice sounds muffled to my ears. There is something familiar in the words of the man beside me. Something that cuts deep.
Such a wreck. Violence. Your transition.
It begins with a bite.
Werewolf.
I brush a hand over my hip, finding a dozen holes in my flesh. I gag. “Y-you’re crazy. You’re all crazy.”
I’m hallucinating. This whole night has been a nightmare. Any minute now, and I’ll wake up to Celeste poking me with a cherry licorice in the middle of the movie theater. We’ll laugh, and she’ll drive us home, and I’ll never have to think about any of these horrors again.
“If you find us to be unhinged, what, pray tell, would you consider yourself?” The man glances at me, his eyes falling to my wounds. Two fangs grow from his mouth, long and sharp. Unnatural. Unbelievable.
I recoil from him.
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.
But I don’t.
I’m not sleeping.
I gasp, unable to sit still on the leather as those fangs reflect red and yellow traffic lights. It’s impossible. None of this should be real.
And yet—I know what I’ve seen tonight. Know how Celeste died and what killed her. Know what attacked me.
Werewolf.
Heat engulfs the pain, banishes it. Sweat drips from my brow, from my lips and my hands until I’m drowning in it.
“You will be transported to Castle Severi and locked inside a room for safety,” the man says.
“On the off chance you complete the transition, you will be brought before the queen and given the honor to complete the First Rite. Once the Oracle reads your future, we will find a place for you amongst one of the many packs in the queen’s American territories.
Should you die… well, I suppose that requires no further explanation. ”
Throat dry and scratchy, I say, “I need a hospital.”
The man glances at my open wounds before once again meeting my gaze. “You will not have one.”
I blink away the tears and sweat, clearing my vision for the first time since they shoved me in this car. I’ll find a hospital myself. Make Dad fix this somehow. This man is wrong. He’s lying .
I’m going to be fine.
Turning suddenly, I yank on the handle, but the door doesn’t open. I pull harder. Rougher. There has to be a way out of here. A way home . I pull and pull and—
And the plastic handle snaps off in my grasp. I stare at it. Stare at my trembling hands.
“Should you flee the car or the Wolf Queen’s Court, you will be immediately and swiftly terminated,” the driver—the boy who stole me—says. He glances back at me, tall enough that his head almost hits the roof. He raises a brow. “I will not tell you again. Calm down.”
Calm down?
The concept is laughable. Insulting. Understanding grows like roots in my spine, tethering me to the seat.
In slow motion—or maybe it’s all at once—I know.
In the depths of my soul, in the pit of my gut where the truth always lay.
I should’ve known the moment I watched the boy break my father’s baton.
These monsters killed Celeste.
My heart races. Faster than should be possible, I hurl the door handle at the boy, but it flies past his face and lodges itself in the windshield. The glass cracks, splinters in a crystallized web across the whole of the window. But he doesn’t even flinch. Only growls.
My chest heaves. I palm the leather of my seat, my nails cutting through to the stuffing beneath. They killed her. These monsters killed her .
“I don’t look forward to explaining how a Bitten damaged the prince’s car,” the man beside me says.
The driver nods once. “It’s going to be even more of a bitch to repair than it will be to explain.”
They glance at each other through the rearview mirror, sharing a humorous expression.
And I could rip those expressions from them. A red haze clouds the inside of the car. I hear their blood. Taste their heartbeats. It’s terrifying. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t know why I want to kill them, but I do. I do I do I do—
The man beside me wraps a hand around my wrist, his pale fingers tightening painfully around my bone until it threatens to snap. I buckle, nearly sliding to the floor. It takes everything in me to remain seated.
His yellow eyes sear into mine. “Enough,” he orders.
The red haze separates slowly, like clouds parting, and my thoughts flicker out one by one. I blink. Anger dissipates with each vacancy until I can breathe again. Numbly, I manage to ask, “What… what’s happening to me?” My voice comes out feeble. Broken.
“Your emotions are no longer your own. You are no longer your own.” Obsidian claws rip from his fingers and slice into my skin.
He pulls me forward, and finally I fall onto the floor, at his feet.
He leans over me with a smoldering glare.
“We have footholds in every country on this earth. Our nobility have infiltrated human monarchies and democracies alike. There is not a city or town you could run toward where we would not be able to find you, hunt you down, and eliminate you. Your life belongs to the Wolf Queen’s Court now, Vanessa Hart, and should you refuse to acquiesce to our every command, your doom is not the only that awaits.
You have a father. You have friends—presumably more than the one you lost. We will snuff them out like candles.
Do you understand? No matter what your instinct tells you, do not try to harm us again. ”
Pain returns tenfold, but nothing could hurt like the hole in my chest.
I clench my jaw and force myself up onto my knees. I will not bow, I will not bend, and I will not break. Not here. Not in front of them. My best friend is gone. She’s gone , and what else do I have to lose?
I spit blood at him. “Fuck you.”
The man releases me instantly. A victorious smile pinches my lips, albeit short-lived and unearned. There is nowhere for me to go. Nowhere I can run. Nothing left for me but death.
“Calix,” the man says as his claws retract into thick fingers. “The wolfsbane.”
The boy turns once more, his own gold eyes darkening. “That could ruin any potential for a successful transition, Lord Allard. She could—”
“ Enough. Hand me the wolfsbane.”
Without another word, he leans over and rifles through the glove compartment, pulling out what appears to be a gilded jewelry box.
He passes it to the man behind him, and the man— Lord Allard —opens the lid.
A syringe of lavender liquid rests on a bed of blue velvet.
I stare at it. It smells rotten, like acrid smoke and charred flesh. Goose bumps erupt on my arms. Bad.
This is very bad.
I slide away and press up against the door I somehow broke, but it’s no use.
Supernaturally quick and impossibly graceful, the man appears over me. He slams the syringe into my neck. Fire explodes beneath my skin, through my veins, and with a final scream from my lips, the world darkens.