“Earth to Jonathan, are you still with me?” Kellan asked with a smirk.

Jonathan cleared his throat. “Apologies, I was considering settling down.”

“And what did you come up with?”

Jonathan grinned. “For the right woman, yes. I would.”

ChapterSeventeen

Willa

“I’m telling you,this spot is perfect,” stressed Mina as we entered a dank, dimly lit cave about two miles from Grimm Cove College’s campus. The smell of mildew and mold was nearly overpowering, and I had to wonder how many potential lung diseases we were exposing ourselves to.

My guess, a lot.

“Itbetterbe awesome since all I want is a cup of coffee, and instead, you dragged me here,” I said, feeling as drained as I probably looked.

“And I told you I’d make you some back at the house,” Mina quipped.

I offered her a droll look. “The last time you were in charge of making coffee, there were enough grounds in it to count as soup.”

She flashed a smile. “Then use a spoon to consume it.”

I made a gagging motion.

“Drama queen,” she retorted.

“You couldn’t make me a cup anyway. The coffee machine is broken,” I said. “Oddly, I’m happy about that. But I need a caffeine fix.”

She rolled her eyes. “Willa, the coffee shops around campus are open all night this week for finals. Relax. Has anyone ever told you that you’re kind of picky and demanding? Not to mention, you’re addicted to caffeine. Isn’t it supposed to be bad foryou?”

I knew what she was hinting at. The fact that the ordeal we’d endured in Romania four years prior had changed us both drastically. Not just our mental and emotional states. Those would probably never recover fully from Helen’s attempt to sacrifice us to a demon, only to be killed herself.

No. The damage from that fateful night was far, far worse.

Neither of us had any real memories of what happened when we were free from the cave and in the hands of the Weird Sisters and Naked-Guy. We also weren’t entirely sure what had happened to Helen and Lester. Our best guess was that they were dead. That Dragos had killed them.

I had no remorse for Helen’s death whatsoever.

Knowing that she’d had a hand in our parents’ deaths and that she’d tried to kill us not once but twice in our lifetimes had broken whatever sliver of me had cared about her.

Everything had been a whirlwind after Romania. One minute I’d been just outside of the cave, hearing voices in my head while pain overtook me, and the next, crazy visions that made no sense at the time had filled my mind. Beyond that, my next memory was waking up in a hotel room in Mill Hollow, South Carolina, which was just outside of the town of Grimm Cove.

Mina had been in the queen bed next to mine, still asleep when I’d come to. Our suitcases from our trip to Romania were there with us, along with additional boxes of clothing and personal items from our family home in Toledo, Ohio. Even stranger, there was a small box of keepsake photos as well as our passports, birth certificates, and so on, along with wads of cash that had been secured with rubber bands.

There had been a large bouquet of white roses with a card that warned us against going home. That while our aunt was no longer a threat, she’d made more than her fair share of enemies. That it was best that we attend college and keep a low profile.

The card hadn’t been signed, and no one else had been with us. There had been a handwritten letter for each of us, within our suitcases, telling us what to expect in the coming weeks and months.

At first, we assumed it was a joke.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t.

Mina’s letter warned of increased aggression and predatory instincts that might kick in. Plus, it told her to be mindful of her emotions, or she’d regret it. When she’d flipped out and turned into black mist, only to reappear on the other side of the hotel room, we understood exactly what that warning had been about.

So when my letter warned that once a month, around the time of the full moon, I’d need to be locked away for everyone’s safety, we didn’t tempt fate. We locked me up. It helped that I’d seen it in the vision I’d gotten the night of the attack. I was a wolf-shifter now.

On top of being attacked by our aunt, her boyfriend, and a crazy demon, getting turned into a werewolf, and waking up in another country, we’d realized that several weeks had passed since the incident in Romania. When we woke up in the hotel room, we tried but failed to remember anything that happened during those missing weeks.