“Hmmm . . . hmmm . . .”Hunter listened to the soft noises Ash made as she burrowed against him. He kept his arms wrapped around her even as she fell asleep. Tomorrow she might wake up and change her mind, but tonight she was here and he was going to hold on to her for as long as he could.He felt her rubbing her face against his chest and he couldn’t help smiling to himself. She was so precious. It was so cute how cuddly she was in her sleep. And she was so warm too.He cradled her head in his hand and brushed the hair away from her face. She had such long, beautiful hair.As he stroked her hair, she kept making sleepy little noises, “Hmmm . . . hmmm . . .” He wondered if she was dreaming and if she were dreaming about him.He felt his heart grow heavy.He felt such a weight on his chest; it was like something heavy was on top of him.Ash’s hair prickled under his hand, and he felt her body grow heavier with each breath.She was shifting in her sleep.Ash began to stretch, arms and l

In the late afternoon, Fernan had Ash and Hunter running laps around the property.“I thought – this was – going – to – be – a vacation,” Ash whined haltingly, hands on her knees, after twenty minutes of jogging.“You’re not very athletic, are you?” Hunter said evenly. He jogged in place beside her, looking fresh and at ease. Twenty minutes was just a warmup for him.“---Oh, no. You couldn’t – tell?” Ash wheezed, sarcastically.“Get moving, children! This is an hour minimum and we’re not even halfway there yet!” Fernan shouted from twenty yards away.Hunter smiled and dashed away, closing the distance in seconds. Ash took a deep breath and let out her frustration with a loud exhale.Two hours later, Hunter and Fernan stood together in the shade of the old stable, waiting for Ash.“I think this was a bad idea, Fernan. She’s

The next few days revolved around training. There was an hour of running in the morning, an hour of weight training in the afternoon, and another hour of running in the early evening. The household staff had returned and there was a semblance of normal in the Estate. Apparently, none of the staff, with the sole exception of Fernan, knew that the Master of the house and his son were werewolves.“What would happen if anybody else knew?” Ash asked, early one morning.Hunter’s head was buried between her breasts and he looked up at her with a dazed expression in his eyes.“Huh?”Every morning before their daily run, the pair had taken to making out in the bedroom almost immediately after waking. It was very difficult for Hunter to keep away from Ash at night, but he abided by the most important rule and did not share Ash’s bed while she slept. Every morning at the crack of dawn, however, he would barge into the bedroom and

When I woke up that morning, I felt like the world was finally my oyster. For most of my life, I endured pain. When I was little, I suffered through the pain of rejection. I was already “too old” when I arrived at the Orphanage. Most couples wanted babies or toddlers: too young to know that they were abandoned, easily raised and molded, no need to tell them where they really came from until they were adults themselves. We were taught to appeal to the visitors. We were to stand in a line at the doorway to greet them and smile when they walked past. We were to stand in lines arranged according to height and sing a song about how sad it was to be a child alone in the world. The visitors were allowed to cry, but we were not. We were told to smile and play. We spoke only when spoken to. We were not to speak of our parents. The guests could say whatever they wanted to us. They could promise us new toys, good food, a new home, a new hope of belonging: we were supposed to smile and act shy.

Lavinia had a powerful aura about her. She was not a shifter, yet she was clearly the alpha female of the Guzman house.Madame Guzman was of average height, but she stood tall and walked tall. The hems of her flowy pants never creased at the bottoms. She never dragged her feet.Ash wasn’t sure if Lavinia was actually taller than her (she wasn’t) but the woman just seemed to stand over her, literally and figuratively.Lavinia spoke with authority and moved with a dancer’s grace. With her wavy black hair, curling softly about her shoulders, she looked regal: the rightful and noble queen of a castle. To Ash, even her name sounded fancy: Lavinia.And yet, Mrs. Guzman was also warm and motherly.“It’s not too tight, is it?” Lavinia asked.“No, ma’am,” Ash replied.Ash sat on the floor of Mrs. Guzman’s sitting room as the lady of the house braided her long dark hair. Mrs. Guzman herself had offered to do it. It had seemed so natural to sit at this woman’s feet and sink into the gentle grazi