If anything, I was a threat.
When we stepped inside, Isaac interlaced his fingers through mine and held my hand tight. Walking through the foyer, it was like going down a dark tunnel where at the end I would meet my doom. I heard voices in the den like a wave of whispers. The fireplace crackled from afar and the sound of footsteps in the upstairs rooms all shuffled to the same section of the house at once. I noticed right away when I stood at the den entrance that people were above me at the top of the stairs, watching.
There were more faces in the den than I ever witnessed previously. So many people. So many...werewolves. I squeezed Isaac’s hand so tightly I thought I could crush it, if that weren’t completely absurd.
“Hello,” said some random girl carrying a tray lined artistically with crackers and cheese. She held it out to me with such a bright smile. “Cheese cracker? I made them for you.”
Mentally, I was scratching my head. I turned my eyes slightly to see Isaac on my right. He just smiled.
The last thing my body could handle right now was food, but this was one of those times where courtesy is an uncomfortable necessity.
“Thank you.”
I held the cracker in my hand. A hundred silent faces were staring back at me. I then ate the cracker because that cracker felt like the line between acceptance and something much worse. I resented Isaac a little for not saving me, but just a little.
At least it wasn’t a full course meal.
“Come with me,” Isaac said, pulling me along.
As we came upon the couch, those sitting on it moved immediately and with Isaac’s guide, I took the center cushion.
Why is everyone staring at me like that? I thought.
If something didn’t happen soon to shift the nerve-racking atmosphere in this place, I was going to die of anxiety.
Just then, Daisy Mayfair waltzed through the crowd and sat next to me; her long curly, blond hair fixed neatly over her shoulders. Nathan followed and stood in front of me.
“I could never be sure if you were there that night,” Nathan said about the Georgia incident. “Sorry you had to see that.”
“I have one question about that night,” I said, looking up at him.
“Shoot.”
“How was it you were nak*d before you shifted?”
Mild laughter erupted throughout the room.
“Nathan can’t keep his clothes on,” Isaac said jokingly.
Daisy chuckled and added, “He walks around nak*d a lot. You’ll see him from time to time, everything hanging in the breeze.”
The mortified look on my face caused the laughter to raise a level.
“Don’t listen to them,” Nathan said, plopping down on the other side of me. “Isaac’s just jealous and Daisy was born an English smartass, so she can’t help it.” He put his arm around me. “Really though, to answer your question, I had shifted once before you saw me. Had been running through the Appalachian’s all evening.”
He dropped the casual tone a notch and added, “It was a long night.”
“Of all the things she could be asking,” said Rachel from the crowd, “she chooses Nathan in the nude.”
I tensed immediately and my insides turned to stone.
“That should tell you all you need to know about her, Isaac,” she added.
Rachel glowered at me from across the room with that same devilish smirk she always seemed to wear. She would never like me. That shouldn’t have mattered, but it did. I wanted to feel welcome by everyone in the Mayfair house. Even one enemy would always make me feel as though I shouldn’t be here. But worse than anything, this was not a high school bully; Rachel was a werewolf and capable of much more than rumors and after school beatings.
Nathan stood from the couch. I could see the veins throbbing in the side of his neck. The whole room went from whispers and quiet laughter to disciplined silence.
“A wise decision,” he threatened, “would be to leave Adria alone. She outranks you, Rachel.”
I cringed. Nathan didn’t know how to let someone else’s enemy down lightly, that was for sure.
I outranked her? I couldn’t grasp that in my mind at all.
Rachel lowered her head obediently to Nathan. “Forgive my disrespect.” She raised her dark eyes and I could see them boring into mine; her posture giving Nathan one thing and her gaze giving me another.
Isaac stood in front of Nathan. “This is my problem, brother,” he said, “and I’ll deal with it accordingly.”
They spoke so different when speaking to each other, so proper. I felt like I went back in time about two hundred years.
Isaac guided me to stand. He looked out then at everyone. “Adria is my girl,” he announced and I felt my insides melt, “and she will be treated as you would treat me, by all of you.”
“But she isn’t one of us,” argued Rachel, pushing the emphasized word forcibly through her teeth. “And Trajan will not allow it. You know this, Isaac.”
As much as she was defiant, Rachel was still maintaining a great amount of respect for Isaac.
But I didn’t like where this was going.
“Trajan is my father, not yours,” Isaac said, “and I know more about what he will and will not allow than you do.”
“Is that right?” Rachel stepped up and let a fraction of her respect turn to boldness. “You think because Zia screwed up and Turned her boy-toy, Sebastian, and got away with it, that you can do the same?” She grinned and looked at me once. “Besides, she’s a female and you know what that means.”
Everything about Rachel’s last statement worried me a great deal. The cold bitterness in her face was haunting.
Wait a second... I thought, Turn me? No...I had never thought about that. In fact, that was definitely something I didn’t want to think about.
Suddenly, Rachel and the few girls with her all turned around as if something had come up behind them. Everyone began staring toward the darkness of the hallway that led toward the kitchen and under the stairs.
Rachel jumped backward quickly and clung to the ceiling behind me by her hands and feet. Her eyes went coal black; her teeth grew into fangs, her nails into claws. I gasped.
Then I saw a man’s face, though shrouded by darkness I knew it was a man. The outline of his body stood tall and enormous against the wall. His eyes flickered when they grazed the limited light from the den. I shuddered. The hair on my arms rose. I couldn’t help but stand from the couch, both from fear and out of respect, which seemed necessary.
Rachel jumped down from the ceiling and left without a word. Many others followed, all of them shuffling through different exits, those at the top of the stairs thinned out to about two. I had not noticed, too preoccupied by those who were leaving, but the man in the shadow was also gone when I looked back.
“Who was that?” I whispered to Isaac.
I knew it was Trajan, Isaac’s father, but I had to ask anyway and I was right.
“My father is the leader,” Isaac began, “the Alpha Male. No one here, not even Rachel, is foolish enough to defy him.”
Nathan pulled the coffee table forward with one hand and sat on it in front of us. “He’ll be going back to Serbia soon,” he said, “and most of us won’t be going with him. So, there’s a lot of uncertainty when it comes to who’ll be in charge.”
“Nathan is next in line,” said Isaac. “He’ll be Alpha when our father is gone.”
“If I decide not to go with him that is,” said Nathan.
Daisy jumped in, “That’s where most of the uncertainty lies.” She was looking at me.
I was having a hard time trying to absorb all this information.
“Serbia?” I said.
“He was born in Serbia, in the Balkan Mountains,” said Isaac. “He never liked the States. And his men are in the Balkans.”
“So he’s just going to leave you?”
“No, if we wanted to go,” Isaac said, “we could go, but I’ve already decided where I’d rather be.”
He pecked me softly on the lips. I heard the childish giggling of girls in the background. I had never experienced this before, being someone so important, someone cared for by a person everyone else wanted. I think I understood then why popularity was such an addiction.
“This is a lot for me to take in,” I said. Just as I began to ask more about Trajan, Zia walked into the den hand in hand with Sebastian Reeves. I was beginning to see how much of a crash course I was getting in all of this. I hadn’t even gotten started in my ‘werewolf lessons’ for the day when I had to start deciphering news of unexpected couples and how I was going to break that news to my only non-werewolf friend, Harry.
I shot straight toward Sebastian.
“You!” I said, pointing at him. “What happened to you? You disappeared; everybody thinks you’re dead. How could you do something like that?”
Sebastian embraced me in a hug, which surprised me. He hardly ever spoke to me before.
“Sorry, Adria,” he said, “but I had no choice.”
Zia stepped up. “It was my fault,” she said. “Sebastian and I kind of hit it off when I first moved here—met at The Cove one night. We were...ummm...,” she couldn’t get the words out. I knew what she was getting at, but I wasn’t about to save her from having to say it aloud.
“We were making out one night and things got a little out of hand, if you know what I mean, and I lost control.”
I was having a hard time picturing it. My mind couldn’t wrap itself around Zia shifting into a werewolf and biting Sebastian. Wondering how that worked exactly was suddenly a curiosity digging harshly into my brain.
I just looked at her, waiting for her to go on.
“I hope you’re not mad,” she said, tilting her white-blond head repentantly, just enough to make me cave.
“Mad?” I had to think about that for a moment; it wasn’t the information I needed or had expected from her. “No, no tell me how it happened. I don’t understand; is it like in the movies, or what? Do you get really angry or lustful and then shift? Can you not control it? What about the full moon thing? That doesn’t seem to apply with you, either.” I thought about the barn then. Did I see the moon last night? I thought I saw it, but I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember if it was full.
Zia laughed. “Calm down, girl,” she said. “No, it’s not quite like it is in the movies.”
“Nothing ever is,” Nathan added.
“And they always butcher the books,” said Daisy.
Isaac jumped in, “First of all, the experienced ones, the older ones, can control the Change for the most part.”
I needed to sit down for this, so I went back to the couch.
“Anger and lust,” Isaac continued, “are the two most dangerous emotions and can even make an Elder lose it every once in a while. But fledgling werewolves, like Zia and Sebastian, have little control at all.”
“So, you turned into a werewolf and bit him?” I said to Zia, still unclear.
“No,” she said, “I was in my mediate form. I scratched Sebastian and infected him. If I would’ve bitten him in full-fledged form, he wouldn’t be as pretty as he is now.” Zia glanced over at Sebastian flirtatiously. It was weird seeing either of them act that way, especially with each other.