Marked By the Wolf: Part 1 (Werewolf Shifter Romance) Read online

The next day came all too early. My alarm rang the time as seven and my eyes creaked open. I was still alive, or as alive as I ever felt at this hour in the morning. My fingers fumbled for the alarm and when I found it I slammed my hand down on the off button. The little machine crunched beneath my fist. I raised my head and blinked at the ruined alarm. It looked like I'd used a sledgehammer on it. Its round shape was now pancake.

  I sat up and glanced between my palm and the clock. My dainty little fingers waved back at me, innocent of the destruction they just caused. I shrugged and stood. A sudden lightheadedness swept over me and I steadied myself against the wall beside my bed. I felt like I'd lost a gallon of blood. That brought on a flurry of memories from last night that rushed into my frazzled brain.

  Stanley, the party, the wolf people, my wound, and my escape. They all mixed into a terrible cocktail of horror that forced me to sit back down on my bed. I clutched my head and shut my eyes hard to block out the images. I wanted it all to be a dream, some terrible nightmare of my stupidity for going with a stranger. My mind, and the patchwork of band-aids on my neck, told me otherwise.

  There was one definitive way to prove it hadn't been a dream. I stumbled to my bathroom and looked at the myself in the mirror. My face was pale and there were dark circles under my eyes. I tilted my head to one side and my eyes glanced over all those band-aids. I raised one trembling finger and yanked the whole thing off in one go. A few hairs went with the pull, but I didn't pay them any mind. What I was focused on was my skin. My perfectly healed skin.

  Gone were the two torn holes with their ragged edges. In their places was a pair of scars that looked like they'd been there for years. I reached up and touched the scars. They were as smooth as the rest of my skin, though there was a slight ache in my shoulder. I tapped my fingers against my shoulder not believing what I was seeing, but the scars remained. My mind couldn't grasp what had happened. First wounds, then the next day scars. This shouldn't be happening.

  I stumbled out of the bathroom and leaned against the door frame. From my vantage point I could see the large kitchen trash. Bloody clothes stared back at me. God damn it, it hadn't been a dream, but what the hell was with the wounds-turned-scars? How the hell did that happen?

  I needed to get to work. I needed to get away from my bathroom mirror, those bloody clothes, and anything else that reminded me of last night. Work would numb my brain and keep me from thinking about all this stuff that didn't make any sense.

  I hurried into my work clothes and was out the door in record time. The time was twenty minutes before I needed to leave, but I didn't care. I rushed outside, caught the first bus I could find, and breathed a sigh of relief when my apartment building disappeared from view around the first corner. I arrived at the office just as early and snuck into my cubicle.

  Not sneaky or early enough because Johnny stepped into my doorway a minute later. He looked me over and raised an eyebrow. "You look like something the cat dragged in," he complimented.

  "More like wolf," I muttered.

  "What was that?" he asked me.

  "I said I had a late night," I rephrased.

  "So late that you decided to come into work early?" he returned.

  I shrugged and slouched in my chair. "Didn't want to stay in my apartment alone," I told him.

  "So you heard about what happened last night?" he guessed.

  My heart skipped a beat. I whipped my head up and frowned at him. "No, what happened last night?"

  "It's on all the news stations, and in all the papers," he replied.

  I straightened and my frown turned to a glare. My voice was harsher than I meant it to sound, and more impatience. "I don't watch or read news, so just tell me what happened," I insisted.

  "It seems like some cult or something killed a bunch of people and were tossing them into the incinerator at the city trash facility. They were only found out because they were still tossing the bodies in when the security shifts changed and one of the new guys spotted the people on the cameras. He couldn't see their faces because they were all wearing wolf masks and they ran away when he told them to freeze. Ran real fast, too, like beasts, or so he's claiming," Johnny explained. "The cult guys left behind a few bodies, so police were called. They questioned the previous security shift, but nobody could tell how those people got in with as many bodies as they must have been tossing into the incinerator. They found a half dozen all chewed up and torn apart. Another few minutes and they would have gotten away with destroying the other ones. Must have been bad luck for them having the shifts change like that."

  It wasn't bad luck, it was me, or at least my escape. They'd probably been searching for me all night throughout the city and didn't have much time to dispose of the bodies. Maybe they were searching for me now so they could incinerator me, or worse.

  I shuddered. Suddenly I wasn't feeling so well. "Hey, you okay?" Johnny asked me. He grasped my shoulders, but I flinched and pushed him away.

  My instincts told me to run, to hide. That meant my apartment. I'd hide out there until I could figure out what to do. "I-I'm fine, I'm just not feeling well. I think I'll go home," I told him.