Page 110 of Bitten By Desire
“Say it,” Titan said.
I took another step back as I stared at Otto. He’d transformed. Like a werewolf. But he wasn’t a wolf. Iremembered the huge cat Zoey and I had seen outside Callum’s creepy gothic mansion. On a night with a full moon just like tonight.
“Say it,” Titan said again. “You have to say it.”
“You’re werecats.” Which wasn’t a thing. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. But Otto growled again and prowled toward us. Bennett stepped in front of me and Otto bared his teeth again.
It looked like Otto was seconds away from lunging at Bennett and attacking him. And suddenly the cut on Bennett’s lip made so much sense. A huge cat’s claws would definitely leave a cut that deep. And the scar down Titan’s face. A werecat would have been able to do that too.
They weren’t vampires.
But if they were werecats…that meant paranormal creatures were real. That meant vampires existed too. And that Callum was one.Shit.
Otto didn’t seem at all interested in Titan. And I was wrong, he wasn’t staring at Bennett either. He was prowling towardme.
“The watch!” Bennett yelled.
Titan was about to toss it to him just as Otto leapt toward us.
I screamed at the top of my lungs as Bennett sprung forward. He shifted faster than Otto. But the scream of pain was the same. They met halfway through the air, but Otto had more momentum. Bennett fell on his back and Otto lifted his paw and scratched it down the front of Bennett’s chest.
“Bennett!” I screamed. I took a step forward, but Titan grabbed me around the waist.
“Don’t. Move,” he whispered. “Don’t make a sound. Don’t even breathe.”
I was pretty sure I wasn’t breathing anyway.
Bennett bit one of Otto’s front paws and Otto somehow ended up on his back. They were a blur of hairy limbs, claws, and deafening growls as they attacked each other in the middle of the ornate bank.
Titan’s hands fell from my waist. He lifted the pocket watch by the chain and stepped in front of me. He whistled and both werecats turned in his direction.
He let the chain sway back and forth.
Their eyes fell to the watch. Back and forth. Back and forth.
“Open their vaults,” Titan said. Ace put a code into the last vault behind the counter. It slowly sprung open. And then he moved to the third one. But I was distracted. Because I was staring at the walls inside the last vault. Unlike the vault I’d seen, the metal walls weren’t covered in artifacts. They were covered in dents and gashes.
Titan took a step closer to Bennett and Otto.
And I took a step back from all of it. It couldn’t be real. And yet…I was seeing it with my own eyes.
The two cats followed Titan behind the counter.
I hadn’t even seen Huxley walk up to me. But when he put his normal, human arm around my shoulders, I melted into him.
“We need the pocket watch, Emma,” Huxley said.
I stared at Ace as he slammed the vault door closed behind Otto. Bennett growled at the top of his lungs and swung at Titan.
But Titan dodged the claws and held the watch closer to Bennett’s face. I stared at Bennett’s vault. Thegashes in the metal walls were deeper. The dents larger. Because he was bigger than Otto. More menacing. More terrifying. More powerful.
“Because we can’t control when we change,” Huxley said. “And we can’t control what happens when we do. The watch is the only thing that helps us.”
They needed the watch to control each other when they turned. But Bennett wasn’t being controlled right now.
Bennett swiped his paw through the air, sending the watch flying.
“Shit, not again,” Huxley said.
