1 Chapter 1: Happy Birthday

I’ve had a lot of sh*tty birthdays before—you know, ones filled with rabid werewolves, psychotic vampires, vengeful witches, whatever. But my 21st was really shaping up to be a big b*tch.

I didn’t get any sleep the night before since I was up coddling this newly turned wolf named Emma. Sweet girl, but she’d tried to eat her brother—I mean seriously, just hauled off and tried to eat her twin. Or maybe she was just attacking him, but it was a pretty big bite. It was her first change and it just didn’t go great. So, instead of staying at home for the night, awkward and scared, she’d stayed with me. And kept me up all night.

As a result, I was sorta kinda late to class. To the final, whatever. I always forgot that the time you take your final is different from your class time. Mostly because this is idiotic and so I don’t commit it to memory. Luckily, I was only three minutes late. Not as luckily–since it was finals–everyone else was there on time. Even the a*sholes who had been late the whole semester. And yet I was the one who got mean mugged as soon as I walked in the back door. Quietly, I might add. I was absolutely silent. I know how to walk like that. I was a hunter. But th door, I had no specific over, and that b*tch sounded like my aunt’s cat.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to everyone. There was only a seat at the front of the room now, of course. The last place I liked to sit and definitely the last place I’d like to test. I always felt like the professor was watching me the whole time. Sure he pretended to be doing something on his laptop, his fuzzy gray hair slightly mussed, his glasses perched on his nose. But silently, from his desk, he was steadily calculating the number of questions I was getting wrong and how much of a slacker I was. I grabbed my test from his desk with another “sorry” and sat only fifteen feet away. Happy, happy birthday.

I chewed on the end of my pencil, and that was probably what I put the most work into on that entire final. It’s not like I didn’t like school and didn’t want to do well in it. Hell, it wasn’t even that I couldn’t be good at it. I could. Had been. It’s just that I happened to have missed…maybe four or five classes. Every one of them excused with a note, either from my Alpha or the police. And someone else’s notes just wasn’t the same as being in class. But I couldn’t avoid when an “adult” was having their first Change and they had no one else to sit with them that whole day. Or when a kid goes through the Change and their parent isn’t available to go wrangle them.

Oh, and God forbid one of our wolves lose it and attack someone, in their human form or wolf. While human, they could throw a Beetle. In their wolf form, they could eviscerate a tractor trailer. You could see how that would keep me away from a human genetics class (an ironic class to take, I know). And also how those things would get in the way of me studying.

My professor cleared his throat and I realized I had zoned out. I had been staring for far too long at nothing in particular. Those things also got in the way of me actually taking the same test they had kept me from studying for. I looked down at my paper and forced myself to concentrate. I hadn’t been doing very well at that. I made sure to fill in several pages of answers before sneaking a glance to see if my professor was still looking at me. No, he was pretending to be doing something on his laptop again. I glanced around the room. Everyone had their head bowed and were carefully selecting and penciling in answers. They were completely focused. It seemed so simple.

But all I could think about and focus on was why I didn’t know half the answers I should. I took a deep breath and just let it go. If I failed, I’d just have to take the class over. It wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened to someone. Though, my sister had never had to take a class over. Neither had I…up until now.

I finished sooner than I wanted to and I checked over the answers thoroughly. I’m pretty sure I bombed, but we’d see when the grades were in. Sometimes you surprise yourself and get a better grade than you think. But sometimes you don’t. You’d think that by the junior year of college, you’d have the whole thing down, but it doesn’t get easier since there wasn’t a method tried and true.

I could have sworn my day would get better after school, but why would it? Never bet yourself. You’ll almost always lose.

My phone vibrated with a call from Charles as soon as I got out of Southeast Asian Lit. Charles was my Alpha; the only person, man or woman, who I listened to. Well, the only person I wanted to listen to anyway. Most of the time.

“Amanda,” he said when I answered the phone. He was the only person beside my sister Lynn who was allowed to call me that. Everyone else called me Manny. Or was supposed to. I’m not sure how this started. My sister told me I demanded that people call me Manny from when I first started talking. I think she’s full of sh*t, but I’m absolutely adamant about the ban on the name “Amanda”. It was misleading. “Manny” was not. It worked better for me.

Often, the only punishment people got for messing up my name was one of the many scary faces I could make. Further infractions resulted in physical ramifications. I guess it all depended on the day, too. It was just better to avoid it. Not altogether logical, but I figured everyone had their things. That was mine.

“Mm,” I mumbled as an answer, straddling my bike. A black on black R6: a small, mean queen of the road. The leather of the seat was hot through my jeans, but I welcomed the familiar warmth. I squinted into the sun as I held the cell with my shoulder, sliding on my riding gloves.

“We’ve got a newb running around in Jacksonville, scaring locals.”

“Mm,” I offered again, encouraging more details.

Sometimes people thought Charles was my brother, or worse, my dad. He wasn’t really the kind of guy you want hovering over you in the family tree. 6’3”, black as night and had a nearly shaved head; he was graying at the temples. His chest was huge, and he was muscular, but not nastily veined out, you know? He was handsome, if you dug that older, dignified black man thing. I, myself, didn’t have a preference, but Charles was really more of an authority figure than anything else. Or as much of an authority figure as I could stand.

With my encouraging grunts, he described the scene he’d been alerted to: crazy man jumping over roofs, knocking over streetlights. The police had first been called about the incident. They called Charles, and Charles called me. Chain of command. Take note of where I am.

Normally, if you heard about something really weird on the news, a were-animal or vampire or some other odd little nightmare tended to be behind it. Humans just didn’t really want to admit to it. Acknowledge us, they did. Accept us…well, that’s a different story entirely. But I suppose that kept the prejudices down to a containable limit. Not that it was in any human’s best interest to attempt to take their prejudices out on something much bigger and much stronger than them.

“He was on Kerrington Road, the last I heard,” he finished.

“The last you heard,” I repeated, tucking my jeans into my boots, putting my blue Converse into my backpack.

“That’s what I said.”

“Does that mean he could be elsewhere?”

“Could be,” he replied cheerfully. I gritted my teeth, irritation sparking and mounting exponentially. It scared me. I was there in moments and with nothing to hit but a bike I refused to ever hurt. I tried to calm down, but I wasn’t even sure where to start. I’d always had a surly temper, but it was typically even and controlled. But even and controlled was out the window.

“So, I have to hunt whoever the hell this is down?”

“Is that a problem, Amanda?” he murmured.

I licked my teeth. I wanted to use them.

I wanted to use them on Charles.

“Amanda?” he asked again. “Is there a problem?”