DEA"What!" The word left my mouth as an expression and not a question. Why? Because my brother had said the most absurd thing to me that my mind couldn't possibly conjure. No one was home. I had come from work and found Sam waiting for me. He said he needed to talk to me. I hadn't expected this conversation to take such a turn. My weekend went great—bar the hiccup of almost dying and finding out vampires existed. But the revelations just kept coming. An onslaught of information that didn't just pertain to this new fantasy world but also me. I raised my hands and began signing aggressively as I paced the length of the lounge, "You're trying to tell me that I might turn into a fluffy, gigantic wolf with enormous fangs. Will I crave raw meat if I do?"Why was that the first question out of the platoon I had which rolled off my tongue?Sam chuffed—almost like a dog—and shook out his hair which had grown a little too long for him before saying in his distorted voice, "No. Not really. Y

DEAHis hands. They were searing hot and all over me, branding my flesh through my clothes. He kissed me like he couldn't get enough of my taste. His soft lips moved against mine—a stark contrast to the prickly feeling of his mustache and beard scraping against my skin. Victor pressed himself against me, pulling me in until not a sliver of oxygen could pass through us. It was hot, and heated, teeth clashing, and tongues twisting. A mix of passion and lust and pleasure and something else I couldn't quite put my finger on. Something tugged at my heart and, as my eyes fluttered shut, I saw a literal thread glowing, burning in a white blinding light. I pulled away from Victor, inhaling a sharp breath as I did so. My lungs rejoiced as I fed them the oxygen they were screaming for but I was so consumed by Victor, that I ignored them. "What the hell was that?" My words were fast and frantic as I searched Victor's face for the answers. His sharp features were cast in a shadow due to the

DEAErica blinked at me as if I had sprouted another head from my shoulder. She reached out, fingers almost grazing the mark which sat where my shoulder met my neck, before yanking her hand back as if the mark could bite her. Strangely enough, Victor's bite had healed overnight. What was left behind was a black stain on my skin of a wolf with a ring around it. How a bite healed into such a beautiful design, I didn't understand. The area was still a little red and tender but otherwise, I didn't feel any pain compared to the all-consuming pain which resulted in me losing consciousness last night. "It's gorgeous," Erica whispered as her eyes bounced from one person to the next in the institute's cafeteria, "very eye-catching. Are you sure that came from a bite?" I understood the skepticism perfectly. I stood for half an hour in front of the bathroom mirror when Victor and I got back to the apartment. Every curve and detail was analyzed by my less-than-perfect eye-sight as I prodded th

DEA I was exhausted. Between work and my nightly routine with Victor, I had little to no sleep most nights. Fatigue ate away at my concentration as I glared at the screen of my laptop, then at the whiteboard with multiple equations scrawled on it in blue and green ink. I was working on another paper, this time disproving a theory of a fellow scientist from an institute in the state of New York. His paper was ludicrous. None of the experimental physicists could prove his theory and to me, his math was just not mathing. I was working on this paper with one of my colleagues from the experimental physics department at the institute. Not only was I planning to disprove his theory, I was planning to correct it and conduct an experiment to prove my theory. If this worked well, the institute would be in line for yet another grant in the next few months. It was a lot. The late hours, the continuous research, and the math that had to be perfect and precise. But, I loved every second of it. It

DEA I scanned the message Saint had sent once more, feeling my stomach bottom as a pit of venomous rage began to take root there. It felt as if lava coursed through my veins, sending a torrent of angry flames burning down my limbs as red clouded my vision. Could it have been Jason?Was I overreacting?Was Victor in danger?Why would Jason even do something as horrible as this? Certainly not because of me. If he used wolfsbane and/or silver on Victor, how did he know to do that? Had he discovered Victor's biggest secret? "What happened?" Erica questioned as my brother came barreling into the building with another guy on his flank. "We need to find Jason. If we find Jason, we can find Victor," I informed, hoping with all my will that Saint was wrong about Jason but knowing somewhere deep down that she had to be right. There was no one else in the building that would hurt him. Erica and I swiped our key cards and retrieved visitor passes from the reception desk for my brother and th