Lio and I called a truce temporarily so that we could sleep peacefully that night. Once he spooned me, it wasn’t long before I fell asleep. I started dreaming very vividly. I was sitting on a white-wicker chair in a room I’d never seen before. I was by a large bay window, the sun shining on me brightly. My hair was ridiculously long. It touched the floor where the bottom of my very elegant, silk, white dress pooled around my bare feet. I seemed to be looking at myself in a third person view this time. I was looking down at my stomach and rubbing it gently. I looked pregnant, at least seven months along. Suddenly Lio entered the room, smiling with adoration. He was wearing a white, long sleeved shirt with gray dress pants and was barefoot as well. He walked over to me and knelt down in front of me to rub my bulging stomach. The dream was steadily going in a good direction. Then, three small children that looked between the ages of three and five came running into the room but t

I tried going to sleep but I couldn’t. I looked over at my digital clock on the night stand and it read, ‘twelve forty-five a.m.’. I sighed and turned over on my back, staring up at the ceiling. After a while my eyes began to feel heavy and I slowly fell asleep. Two hours had passed before my sleep was interrupted by the phone ringing. I turned over on my side and picked up the phone from its receiver. “Hello?” I said, still half asleep. “Astraia wake up! Wake up now!” Naremi’s panic stricken voice shouted at me on the other end of the phone. I sat up in my bed and rubbed my eyes with my free hand. “Alright calm down Naremi, what’s wrong?” I asked. “Turn on the news! Hurry up!” She sounded so scared; I’d never heard her like this before. I started to feel around through my blankets for the TV remote and once I found it, I turned to the local news station. ‘BREAKING NEWS: MONSTERS DOWNTOWN?’ The headline read on the bottom of the screen. A video clip of a huge werele

Things didn’t start off as smooth as I’d hoped they would. Rollards slammed every wrong thing I had done in my face. It took everything in me not to jump across the table and slam his head against it one good time. I glanced over at Azzo from time to time when he spoke and I could tell that he was trying very hard to keep his cool. Rollards kept walking slow circles around the table as he spoke. “You had numerous occasions to be honest with me. Why didn’t you tell the truth? Something that dangerous living around so many innocent people…” He said. His voice held disappointment. “Lio isn’t a ‘something’, he’s ‘someone’ just like us. I didn’t come forward for obvious reasons, officer. The way he’s been treated so far is one of those reasons.” I said. “Do you understand how dangerous he is? A secret like this could have changed the outcome for him had you came forward in the beginning. Be grateful the entire city didn’t march down here to collect his head.” Rollards sa

Five long, grueling days had passed. I had been awake into the wee hours of the morning, too stressed out to sleep for the third night in a row. When I finally managed to fall asleep, someone woke me up. My shoulder was being shaken and my name being called over and over. I opened my eyes enough to see Naremi’s fire red hair in my face. “Wake up child, c’mon now!” She said, continuing to shake me. I rubbed my eyes and slowly sat up in the bed. “What? What is it?” I asked in a voice that sounded like I’d been in a desert without water for two days. “Baltasar is on the phone with Azzo right now. Don’t you want to know what’s going on?” She asked before standing up in front of me. “Of course I do.” “Then come on sunshine, let’s go.” Naremi said before heading back upstairs. I pulled the covers off of my lower body and headed upstairs a few minutes after her. Baltasar was sitting on the love seat in the living room still on the phone with Azzo. Enzo, Priam, and G

I stopped at home and picked up another change of clothes before heading back to Lio’s house. We both had keys to each other’s houses now; it seemed silly not to since we’d be getting married soon. We had discussed living together but when it came down to who was moving in with whom we hadn’t been able to come to an agreement. Lio doesn’t want to leave his house because he and the other wolves have the privacy and space they need. Besides, he had to be there to defend their territory so I understood his reasons. As for myself, I had grown up in my house. It was my grandparents’ house and they passed it down to my parents, and then of course the house became mine when I became of age and they moved out. I planned on raising a family of my own there as well. But that was when I had a normal life, things were very different now. I cut the engine and grabbed my suitcase from the passenger seat before I got out of the car. I didn’t feel like going all the way around to the other side.