“Demi? Ready?” Sage’s singsong voice called into the apartment.
I peeked out of my room and gave her a shy smile. “Ready.”
She grinned when she saw me. “Your wolf is fast. You’re going to give the boys a run for their money tonight.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
We stepped out into the hallway and she leaned into me. “Sawyer, Walsh, and Quan hold the record for fastest run in wolf form. It’s kind of an untold thing that every full moon run is actually a race.”
A race?
Okay, no pressure.
“Well, I don’t want to race anyone.” I laughed nervously.
“You should. Some of these boys need their egos knocked down a little. Including my cousin.”
I grinned. “Alright, see you tonight, then.”
She nodded and stepped back into line with Walsh behind me, back on guard duty.
Now that I’d shifted, I was feeling confident that Sawyer’s plan tonight would totally work. I would stay in my apartment while he took my wolf on a run with the pack. Maybe this freak creature that I was didn’t need to be a bad thing. Maybe I could have the best of both worlds…
Later that night,when Sawyer knocked on the door a little earlier than planned, I was nervous but ready. I’d just been adjusting the aperture setting on my camera to practice shooting products.
Opening the door, I grinned at him. “Hey.”
His face was stock still, no emotion. “Hey.” He was hiding something behind his back.
Flowers? No. Not with that face.
“Everything okay?” I hedged, my eyes going to Walsh in the hallway.
You rat!Probably told him I almost shifted in public today.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
I stepped aside, letting him fully into the apartment.
“Look, I know today wasn’t ideal but—”
“But you almost showed everyone what you are,” he growled as I shut the door behind him.
I frowned, suddenly getting pissed. “What am I, Sawyer? Because I can’t seem to figure it out seeing as though all of the books are missing from the library and you won’t tell me what the fuck is going on!”
He sighed, pulling a torn book page from behind his back and handing it to me. “I remember reading it when I was twelve. It scared the shit out of me. Gave me nightmares for weeks.”
I grabbed the torn paper with a shaky hand, stroking the image stamped on the upper half of the page. It was a girl on her knees, screaming up at the moon while a wolf crawled out of her chest.
“I think this is what you are,” Sawyer said, and reached up to stroke my cheek. “If anyone were to find out about this … about you…”
I grasped the page and started to read.
The Cursed One is a creature born of the werewolf race, who goes through a trauma so severe it causes a soul splice.
The soul spliceis a process that happens to a werewolf creature when they go through a disturbance so horrifying in human form, that their wolf splits from their soul, standing outside the human’s body so that they don’t have to experience or remember it.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I swallowed a sob and kept reading. My rape. My soul split so that I didn’t have to experience the full extent of that night.
