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Calla

The sound of moaning woke me up.

I blinked in the darkness of the guest bedroom, my heart already racing before my brain could catch up. The bedside clock read 10:30 PM, its red numbers glowing like warning signs.

Something was wrong. Really wrong.

The fine hairs on my arms stood straight up, a feeling like electricity crawling across my skin. I'd never felt anything like it before, this strange tingling awareness that made my stomach clench.

Blake had said he'd be working late tonight. That's why I was sleeping in the guest room. "Don't wait up, Calla. Important meetings," he'd said, not even looking at me as he straightened his senator's pin on his tailored suit.

The moaning grew louder.

I slipped from the bed, my bare feet silent against the plush carpet of our mansion. The hallway stretched before me, shadows dancing along the walls from the moonlight streaming through tall windows.

The sounds led me to our bedroom, mine and Blake's. The door was cracked open, a sliver of dim light spilling into the hallway.

"Yes, right there," Blake's voice groaned. "Take what you need."

My stomach dropped. Five years of marriage, and I should have known better. But nothing prepared me for what I saw when I pushed the door open.

Blake, my husband, Senator Blake Hart, was sprawled naked on our bed. His eyes were closed, face twisted in pleasure, body gleaming with sweat. But it wasn't another woman riding him that made my blood freeze.

It was the fangs.

The red-haired woman straddling him wasn't having sex with my husband. She was feeding on him, actual fangs buried deep in his neck, blood smeared across her pale face as she drank from him like he was nothing but a juice box.

I must have gasped because her head snapped up, blood dripping from her chin. Her eyes locked with mine, pupils expanding until they swallowed the iris in black.

"Blake?" My voice came out small, confused.

The woman hissed, actually hissed at me, her body moving with inhuman speed as she launched herself from the bed.

"Who is this?" she snarled, nostrils flaring as she stalked toward me.

Blake sat up slowly, seemingly unconcerned about the two puncture wounds on his neck that were already... closing? "Raven, don't. That's just my wife."

Just his wife.

The woman, Raven, reached for my arm, but something strange happened when her fingers brushed my skin. A flash of heat sparked between us, and she jerked back like she'd been shocked.

"What the hell?" She stared at her hand, then at me with narrowing eyes. "What is she?"

Blake finally looked alarmed. "What do you mean? She's human. Just human."

Raven sniffed the air, actually sniffed, like an animal. "No. There's something..." She lunged at me again, missing my clothes by inches.

I didn't think this time, I ran. My body moved before my mind could even process what I'd just seen. Fangs. Blood. My husband's betrayal seemed almost secondary to the impossible creature that was now chasing me down the hallway of my own home.

"Blake, control your pet!" Raven's voice echoed behind me. "I don't want blood all over your fancy house!"

"Raven, stop!" Blake called out. "Let me handle this!"

I flew down the grand staircase, nearly tripping on the last step. The security team would be at their posts, they could help me. But as I rounded the corner to the main entrance, I froze.

The guard, James, who'd wished me happy birthday just last week, had his back to me. But something was wrong with how he was standing. Too still. When he turned, his eyes were vacant, a thin line of blood trickling from his nose.

"Stop her," Raven commanded from the top of the stairs, and James moved toward me with jerky steps.

"James, it's me, Calla!" I backed away as he advanced.

"He can't hear you," Blake said, appearing behind Raven, hastily wrapped in a robe. "Just come back upstairs, Calla. We need to talk about what you saw."

James lunged for me. In the struggle, something in me snapped, a burst of strength I didn't know I had. I shoved him hard, and he flew backward, crashing into the marble table in the foyer. The crack of his skull against the edge was sickening.

Blood pooled beneath his head. He stayed still and didn't move.

"Oh my god," I whispered, staring at my hands. What had I done?

"Interesting," Raven murmured, descending the stairs with inhuman grace. "Very interesting."

A sudden, crippling pain doubled me over, like someone had punched straight through my gut. I gasped, clutching my stomach as fire seemed to spread through my veins.

Raven approached, sniffing the air around me. Her eyes widened. "Impossible," she whispered. "A werewolf? At your age, just turning?" She grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at her. "Who are your parents, girl?"

Werewolf? The word made no sense, yet something deep inside me responded to it, a twisting, turning thing trying to claw its way out.

"Blake!" I cried out, confused and terrified.

My husband stood on the stairs, watching with clinical detachment. "Bring her back up, Raven. The Order will want to know about this development."

The betrayal in those words gave me the surge of adrenaline I needed. I twisted free of Raven's grip while she was distracted, her confusion giving me precious seconds. I bolted for the servants' entrance at the back of the house.

"Let her go," I heard Blake say as I ran. "She won't get far. Not like this."

The cool night air hit my face as I burst outside, the manicured lawns of our estate stretching before me. The pain in my stomach was getting worse, but I pushed through it, running for the small staff parking lot where my old Camry sat, the car Blake had wanted me to get rid of years ago.

"A senator's wife should drive better," he'd said. Tonight, I was grateful for my stubbornness.

The key was where I always kept it, in the magnetic box under the wheel well. My hands shook so badly I could barely get it into the ignition.

As the engine roared to life, I caught movement in my rearview mirror, Raven, standing at the edge of the driveway, watching me with predatory stillness. She wasn't chasing. Why wasn't she chasing?

I didn't wait to find out. I gunned the engine and tore down the driveway, crashing through the decorative gate at the end.

Highway signs blurred as I drove west, putting as much distance as I could between myself and whatever nightmare I'd just witnessed. My mind raced faster than the car.

Fangs. Blood. Werewolf.

None of it made sense, yet the pain twisting through my body felt terribly real. I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles went white, trying to focus on the road as another wave of agony washed over me.

At a truck stop bathroom an hour later, I cut the tracking chip out of my designer watch with shaking hands, watching it circle the drain. My phone went into the toilet of the next stall. Blake had given me both, expensive gifts that were really just leashes.

Back on the highway, the pain was getting harder to ignore. My vision blurred at the edges, and sounds were becoming... strange. The rumble of passing trucks was deafening, while I could suddenly hear conversations from cars I passed.

A green sign appeared in my headlights:

WELCOME TO RAVENRIDGE.

Something about the name called to me. I took the exit without thinking, following a winding road that led to what looked like a small town nestled in a valley.

My car began to sputter just as the town came into view. The dashboard lights flickered, then died completely. The engine followed suit, leaving me coasting to a stop at the side of the road, still a mile from town.

"No, no, no," I muttered, turning the key uselessly. "Not now."

I looked at the dark road ahead and the town lights in the distance. I had no choice.

The moment I stepped out of the car, something shifted in the air around me. It felt like walking through water, an invisible barrier that pressed against my skin for a heart-stopping moment before letting me pass.

Each step toward Ravenridge became harder than the last. The pain that had been building all night suddenly exploded through me like wildfire. I dropped to my knees on the rough asphalt, a scream tearing from my throat as I felt something moving under my skin.

It felt like my bones were breaking, reshaping themselves. My vision swam, colors bleeding into each other as tears streamed down my face.

"Help," I whispered, though there was no one to hear.

The last thing I saw before darkness claimed me was the harsh glare of motorcycle headlights cutting through the night, bearing down on where I lay collapsed in the middle of the road.

And then nothing.