Chapter Six

Y A N A

I don’t say anything. My body is numb and all I can do is sit there and shrink more and more. My luck is rotten to the core. First I blew my chances of making it, and now I got chased into an alley by a strange man whose advances I rejected.

I might just die tonight too.

He knocks on my window and laughs as I flinch. “You were so brave telling me to fuck off, and now you’re cowering in your car? Open the door so we can talk.”

“NO!” I yell at him. “I’ll call the police!”

“Do it,” he urges, and to my utter horror, he raises his hands, showing me that he’s holding a crowbar. “I’ll count to three.”

A scream escapes my mouth. I fumble for my phone but it falls under the seat. Tyler is swinging the crowbar in his hands, mimicking using it to break my window.

And the bad thing is, I know that he’ll do it, so I just crumple into a tight ball, closing my eyes and waiting for the worst.

But it doesn’t come.

The only thing I hear is the clang of the crowbar falling on the ground, and a loud grunt followed by an even louder thump. I hear sounds of struggles beside my car, then I feel everything rocking as something heavy gets tackled on the hood.

I open my eyes, still fumbling for my phone. But what I witness makes me forget about everything.

Slamming Tyler’s head on the hood of my car is another man in a suit. And he looks like. . . .

Mikhail.

And before I could even think about how and why he was here, his body expands right in front of me, sprouting fur and growing a snout and claws and sharp teeth, turning into a big monster that knocks Tyler unconscious.

Or maybe even dead.

A strong scream escapes my mouth, so loud and so shrill that even my own ears end up ringing loudly.

I blink repeatedly, trying to assess if the scene unfolding in front of me is real or not, if it’s a product of my unstable, upset mind or if it’s really Mikhail Sartori turning into a beast and tossing Tyler into the corner like he’s a ragdoll.

But no matter how much I blink, the image of the giant black dog monster is still right in front of me, breathing hard and causing my window to fog up.

“Help,” I want to scream, but no sound comes out of my mouth.

And my voice just vanishes more when I see the beast slowly advancing toward my car, sniffing the air as it does, as though it’s searching for its prey. . . .

Then the monster spots me from behind the window, its nose crinkling as it bares its razor-sharp teeth.

Fear, even greater than the thing I experienced from Tyler, courses through my body. I can feel it in my bones. There are no tears in my eyes this time, just shock. I can’t move. I can’t even breathe. All I can do is stare at the monster as my entire body gets wrapped in numbness, my heart beating so fast that I feel like an enormous throbbing organ.

The beast puts a paw on the hood of my car, and a wave of coldness envelops me.

Suddenly, my surroundings begin to turn black. My senses get duller and duller until they’re gone.

The last thing I feel is my body falling to the side, and just like that, everything disappears.

* * *

I wake up with a gasp.

My pulse is racing. Something inside my head is throbbing and I feel like my brain is being chopped in half. My skin is warm and cold at the same time, and I can feel my body sticking to my blanket. . . .

But wait.

I have a blanket?

The sudden realization makes me flinch. I rub my eyes and only then do I register where I am.

In my very own bedroom in our apartment.

Chills run down my spine. I’m not an idiot. I know that I passed out last night in my car because of that monster thing that somehow evolved from Mikhail. I know that I ended up there because I went for a drink and a dude named Tyler flat-out refused to leave me alone.

So how did I end up in my own apartment? Did someone take me here? Did my friends see and find out what I was up to?

A million questions are racing in my head. Then everything stops when I catch the biggest one.

What if . . . everything was a dream?

What if all the things that happened “yesterday” was nothing but an extra long, hyperrealistic dream that I had because I was scared?

Because nothing here indicates that yesterday was real.

I’m lying on my Hello Kitty sheets, with my pink curtains drawn and letting in the scorching morning light from outside. I’m wearing my fluffy pajamas, and I don’t see the clothes I wore yesterday lying anywhere near here. No evidence of papers, nothing. Maybe I’m still yet to go to the public conference.

Which means I still have a shot.

“Fuck yeah,” I whisper to myself, suddenly full of fire and fervor. I jump out of bed, head straight to my rack where my robe is, and snuggle into it. I basically kick open the door and I’m about to run down the stairs like a kid on Christmas when suddenly, I hear a voice coming from downstairs.

“. . . so happy you brought her home,” Lily is saying. “We were quite worried about her. The last time we talked, she told me she had a family dinner.”

“Maybe it went wrong, that’s why she got drunk,” Jason puts in, his voice full of concern. “You found her in an alley passed out in the driver’s seat, right, sir?”

“Please, don’t call me sir. Just call me Mikhail.”

Fucking hell.

I stand by the stairs, completely frozen in fear.

Everything is real. All of it. And with my friends downstairs is Mikhail. Again.

And I’m still not sure if he’s a monster or not.

Everything comes crashing back to me now, every painful detail. But I still don’t know if what I saw was real. I mean, men turning into dog monsters? What is this, Twilight? It looked so real, though. It felt so real. . . .

Unfortunately for me, there’s only one way to find out.

With shaking limbs, I take a deep breath and slowly make my way downstairs.

Sitting around the waiting area reserved for clients are Lily, Jason, and the CEO himself.

My friends both look up at me and smile. I notice that Mikhail is wearing his suit from yesterday, still pristine and crisp. On the table are takeout containers from Milo’s, a Michelin star restaurant not far from here.

Meanwhile, Mikhail is not looking at me. He’s leisurely drinking some coffee from my own personal mug.

Only when I arrive at the bottom of the stairs does he finally meet my eyes, and I shiver when I remember what those gray eyes looked like in the face of that monster

As though reading my mind, Mikhail smirks and raises his cup. “Finally. Come and join us. I’ve been looking forward to talking to you.”