Married To My Hated Stepbrother

One

Nora Connolly

            Werewolves.

            They were on the subway, watching her. Nora could see them from where she was sitting. It was impossible not to spot them. There was three of them. All of them six feet tall. One had short, blond hair and brown eyes. The one in the center had long, brown hair that went past his shoulders. And the one on the right side of him had short, red hair and freckles. All of them had yellow eyes.

            It was unusual to see them on the subway. Werewolves tended to live long lives which meant they usually had lots of money and lots of power. So why they were on a New York subway made Nora nervous.            

            She didn’t like the way that they were looking at her either. In particular, the one in the middle, who was looking at her like…

            Like he wanted to eat her alive.

            Nora was a human. She had no connection whatsoever to werewolves. There was no reason that they should be paying attention to her. She tried to focus on the podcast that she was listening to. Some true crime thing that she’d been obsessed with for a while. “…and they found the body in the woods….” a soothing, woman’s voice was narrating the hideous details of a necromancer who had been murdering people to bring them back from the dead.

            Maybe it was weird that she found listening to other people’s grisliest traumas comforting. But there was something about knowing that everyone went through things as bad as she had been through that made her feel a little bit saner.

            The werewolf in the center, the one that was eyeing her like he wanted to eat her for lunch, breakfast, and dinner started making his way slowly over to her. There was something vaguely familiar about him.

            For a long time, werewolves and other magical creatures had remained hidden. But with the internet, it was hard for them not to be exposed. Sightings of werewolves became common and eventually, werewolves and others like them---shifters was the preferred word of choice----started telling their stories.

            They weren’t the only ones either.

            There were Undead, vampires and ghosts. Fae. Anything that used to be a bedtime story was no longer that. They were real. They always had been. And the minute they came out into the world, they let people know exactly how much money and power they had. And the world responded the way they do to money and power. They became obsessed with them.

            As a whole, the groups were called Powerists. People who had powers that weren’t human. But their identities were so much more complicated than that. Still, werewolves tended to be an old-fashioned bunch. They liked werewolf because it reminded people of their power, however outdated the terminology might be.

            And that depended on how old they were. The young ones seemed to understand the changes happening and accept them. The old ones…well, there was a reason they had been around for so long. They stayed with the status quo and did what it took to survive. And sometimes, that meant not changing.

            As Nora eyed the werewolf coming towards her closely, a name came to her head. Roman Eliot.

            “…and there was blood, dripping from the knife.” She closed her eyes, and tried to focus again on the podcast that she was listening to. A shoulder bumped into hers. Strong, firm, and muscled. Roman Eliot was sitting next to her.

            He was known as The Werewolf Prince of New York. He’d been featured on FORBES top most powerful Powerists 25 under 25. And he was sitting with her, in a very, very small, New York subway.

            Had she done something wrong? Offended him in some way when she got on the train? She didn’t think so, but who knew? Nora liked to think she tried to be a good person and treated everyone with respect but that didn’t mean that she didn’t make mistakes sometimes.

            He nudged her, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Nora took that to mean she had to open her eyes, and so she did. She locked eyes with his golden ones. The ones that signified he was an Alpha, of one of the most powerful packs in New York. He smiled at her, showing his perfectly white, pointed teeth.

            An image flashed in her mind. It was a grey wolf, standing over her, licking its fangs. The one that had haunted her dreams since she was a child. The one that had killed her parents and left her an orphan at the age of fifteen.

            Roman gestured for her to take her earbuds out, so she did.

            “Um, hi,” she squeaked, “sorry, did I do something wrong?”

            He smiled. He was beautiful and menacing all at once when he smiled. He made her heart pound furiously against her chest. “No. Only, are you Nora Connolly?”

            She blinked. Lie, a voice in her head told her, lie your ass off. If a werewolf was asking your name, there was only two reasons. Either you had wronged them. Or you were their mate. Either way, you probably wanted to run.

            Because when you were mated to a werewolf, you became one of them. They “gifted” you their strength so that you were able to carry their children. And they could get inside your head. Know your every thought. Track your every move. There was no escaping.

            Most people who had mates called it romantic.

            But Nora, try as she might, didn’t think she could ever be with a werewolf. Because when she looked at them, all she remembered was the one that had torn her to shreds and left her alive to fend for herself. So, Nora did the only thing that seemed right at the time. She shook her head no.

            “Sorry,” she apologized, “I don’t know who that is.”

            The train pulled to a stop. The conductor said something over the radio. Nora wasn’t even sure it was her stop. All she could do was grab her things, smile, and get off the train as quickly as possible without looking back.