Page 31 of Prince with a Chance of Darkness

We were different now.

My instincts were sharper. My senses were heightened. My nights were filled with an undeniable pull to patrol the streets, hunting things that most people would rather pretend didn’t exist.

Willa had changed even more. She had to lock herself away every full moon, forced to endure a transformation neither of us had seen coming. A wolf lived inside her now, a beast that clawed at the edges of her control. When it was out, it was downright deadly.

Oh, and when my emotions got the better of me, I tended to turn into black mist and place jump. If that wasn’t freaky enough, sometimes, at random—okay, not ransom—when I was deeply aroused, I had fangs.

Totally sucked.

Pun intended.

Willa had it worse. She got furry and turned into a wolf.

And no matter how much we wanted to pretend otherwise, keeping that secret was getting harder.

I should be sleeping still, trying to get in as much rest as possible before sunset. My days and nights were a hot mess, leaving me catching cat naps here and there throughout the day and running on empty at night.

Willa had been at me for years to take better care of myself. That was easier said than done. The night called to me. Yes, I could be out in the sun, but it’s something I wasn’t on the best of terms with since Romania four years ago. It drained my energy levels quickly, not to mention it gave me a hell of a sunburn if I was in it for too long. I did my best to plan all my college courses to fall in the morning or evening. A few times, I’d been stuck with a midday course and tried to take shadier walking routes to it.

Complaining wasn’t an option. Not when my sister was stuck needing to be chained or locked away once a month while she turned into a white wolf. The first time it had happened had been something of an eye-opener for the two of us. Thankfully, we’d heeded the warning from her letter and had taken precautions.

Sadly, those precautions hadn’t contained her in wolf form, but they had slowed her down enough for me to process what was happening and give chase when she broke free. I’d followed, guilt consuming me because I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was the reason she was like that. The reason she had to share her body with a wolf. My need to prove our worth as natural-born slayers had overridden my better judgment and played right into our psychotic aunt’s hands.

She’d known me well enough to set the trap for me to follow, and I’d fallen for it—hook, line and sinker. I’d also dragged my sister along for the ride, against her protests. My actions put us in the cave that night, and Willa’s condition was my reminder to never let it happen again—to never get so full of myself that I lose sight of what really matters.

I could have lost her that night. Helen and Lester could have succeeded in killing her, and I could have ended up having to live without her there—always by my side—come hell or high water.

She had never blamed me outright for what happened to us. She didn’t have to. I knew it was my fault. It was part of the reason why I tried so hard to find the perfect spot to contain her during her shifts.

This monthhadto be different.

Last month, I’d been positive that I’d found a spot that would hold her. That it would work to keep her contained enough to ride out the full moon, safely tucked away from the public. And that the chains I’d gotten would hold.

I’d been wrong.

She’d escaped.

I swear, her wolf could hire out as a magician for parties. It was that good of an escape artist. Willa didn’t even have opposable thumbs in wolf form yet managed to break out of every spot I’d found to date. I’d been trying to talk her into letting me set up a camcorder to record her overnight. That way, we could see how it was she was managing to break free.

The new spot will be different, I thought, thinking of the cave I was planning to scout one last time before nightfall, just to be sure it would hold her. It was a stroke of luck that I’d discovered it at all. It wasn’t easy to spot. It was deep in the woods that were off campus.

The only reason I’d been there was because someone had taken me to it. Of course, when Willa asked, which she would, I’d lie. She was already worried enough about how I lived my life. I didn’t need or want to hear her lecture me on the number of seemingly random hookups I had with guys.

Plus, the guy who had taken me to the cave so we could have some alone time wasn’t someone she’d be cool with me hooking up with at all. She’d be less than thrilled with the age gap with him being twice my age and she’d blow a gasket when she found out he was my chemistry professor.

I’d find a way to bend the truth so that Willa would accept it and not ask me anymore questions. If I thought what the professor and I had was serious, I’d entertain confiding in my sister but for now, I was just having fun with him—using him to handle my needs. He didn’t seem to mind too much. He was great in the sack (and on cave floors) and never questioned why I had to run off at all hours of the night. Heck, sometimes he was the one running off without warning.

The guy was totally obsessed with his research and he had multiple locks on his personal lab. At some point I was going to ask him what it was he was researching, but my focus was already split enough between final exams and demon hunting.

Plus, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what Henry was up to in the lab. If I found out and it was something not great, I didn’t want to feel obligated to do something about it. It’s why I liked to tell myself he was trying to cure cancer or something in there.

Our relationship, which didn’t have a label beyond, forbidden hooking up, didn’t include long heart-to-hearts or walks on the beach and crap. It was carnal and filled a gap we both apparently had and needed to satisfy. The few times he’d hinted at taking things to another level, like just seeing one another, and no one else, I’d found a way to change the subject.

So far, there had been only one time when the topic had come up that he’d seemed to take it badly—if you considered rocking my world on the cave floor as bad.

I didn’t. But I could have sworn his entire demeanor changed mid-kiss, becoming someone else entirely—agitated, more demanding and commanding. None of which was his normal. It might have had something to do with the medicine I saw him taking every so often. I wasn’t sure what it was for but he carried it around in tiny vials. Maybe he was diabetic or something.

I didn’t question it, and I didn’t judge. That was why what we had worked. I’d once had a wooden stake fall out of my hoodie pocket in front of him. He’d never once batted an eye or questioned why I’d be carrying a stake around campus with me. And on the rare occasions that he and I slept next to one another, he never pressed me for details about the nightmares I’d have—ones with Helen stabbing me in the cave.

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