Blurb
Nothing in life is free—even life itself.
After a split-second decision that gave her a second chance at life, Timberlyn struggles to control her new instincts as her life spins out of control. Her newly awakened hunger takes over, and she has to decide if she made the right choice after all. She may have saved her life, but every day is a struggle not to lose herself. Cut off from her family and the wolves, she takes solace in her friendship with Svana and Viktor, despite their hatred for the Wolf boys. But will Alarick despise her when he finds out the truth?
When she returns for her third year at Ravenwood Academy, everything is different. Her friends. Her status. Her link with the wolves. Now bound to Jonathan Ravenwood, she must fight harder than ever to carve out her own path and fight for what’s right.
Prologue
“Timberlyn,” Viktor’s voice crooned above me.
I summoned all my strength and dragged up the hundred-pound weights that had been attached to my eyelashes. The effort would have left me out of breath, but breathing hard took more than I had in me.
Viktor’s thumb skimmed across my lower lip, then tugged down, gently parting my lips.
I wanted to speak, but producing a single word was too exhausting. I let my lids fall closed again. Once, I would have fought, but I no longer had the strength. I was sinking into the earth, my body so heavy I was sure it would simply collapse under its own weight.
“Do it,” a soft, familiar voice urged. “Before it’s too late.”
I heard him move. My eyelids fluttered open again as he lifted his wrist to his mouth. One needle sharp tooth sliced through his vein before he pulled back and held it over my mouth. I watched, immobile, as a bead of dark liquid gathered. Viktor tilted his wrist, and a thin stream of deep crimson fell between my parted lips before I closed my eyes and sank into darkness.
Chapter One
I was hungry.
That was the first thing that came when I woke. It wasn’t a normal hunger, one that would have let me sleep until morning. This was a nagging need, aching in roots of my teeth instead of my belly. I tried to sleep, but it wouldn’t relent. At last, I sat up and looked around at a vaguely familiar, dimly lit room filled with hospital beds just like the one I lay on. I remembered finding this room with Amy. I knew what it was for.
My head swam with dizziness and nausea, and I jumped up from the narrow hospital bed and ran to an open bathroom door. Fifteen minutes later, I’d emptied my stomach and my bowels at least half a dozen times, and I was so wrung out I thought I must’ve puked up my very insides. I stumbled back to the bed and fell facedown on it, ignoring the fact that I was in a room full of people strapped to beds and hooked up to machines. All of them but me.
I managed to sleep, but I didn’t know for how long. It seemed only minutes before I sat up with a start, gasping in pain as a pang darted into my canines like a dentist had touched a nerve with a metal pick—and without Novocain.
“You’re up early,” Svana said, smiling shyly at me.
“I am?” I blurted without thinking.
A second later, Viktor was on the other side of the bed, looking as impossibly beautiful as always—and a little guilty.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Well, you were dying,” Svana said. “Mr. Ravenwood got hold of you, and they basically drained you.”
“Right,” I said, wincing at a dart of pain in my temple. “Did I die?” I pressed the heel of my hand to my head and closed my eyes, remembering the school’s namesake saying my blood might give them magical powers or some bullshit.
“We weren’t sure if it was too late,” Viktor said, taking my free hand. “Usually, you have to have some of our blood first, before that happens.”
“Before what, exactly?” I asked.
“Before you—well, your heart stops.”
I swayed on the bed. Was I… Dead?
“Typically, when we evolve someone, there are certain steps we have to follow,” Svana said. “A human gets some of our blood, and it sits inside them, and nothing really happens, but it’s stored there.”
“Like a virus?”
She grimaced. “Later on, if you died, you’d need to have your own blood drained out for it to really work properly. Our advanced blood retains some kind of… Like a memory… Inside you. When you eat, it builds up to replace your human blood, replenishing just like yours would after you suffered blood loss.”
“But it’s not really my blood,” I said. “It’s more like a parasite.”
“No,” Viktor said. “It’s still you. There’s no outside being taking you over.”
I wanted to believe them, since they’d been vampires for a long time, but it sure as hell felt like there was something inside me. A ravenous beast, to be exact.
“So, I did die.”
“Your heart stopped,” Viktor admitted.
“Then why is it still beating?” I asked. It was pounding in my temples, in my throat, in my teeth. I could feel it.
“Well, see, usually that doesn’t happen,” Svana said. “But after Viktor gave you some of his blood, it apparently… Revived you.”
She and Viktor watched me as if waiting for my reaction.
“So I’m not dead,” I said in relief.
“No,” Viktor said softly. “You’re not dead.”
“But we think you changed partway,” Svana said. “Maybe it didn’t go exactly right because you were a wolf already. See, when this superior blood replaces yours, you become something more than human. Something better. But you already were something more than human.”
“Better how?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
“Stronger,” Viktor said. “Faster. Enhanced senses.”
“I already had all that,” I pointed out. “When I was a wolf.”
“Well, now you’re… something else,” Svana said.
Was I? If they drained all my wolf blood, was I still a wolf? If they fed me more of their blood, would I die and become a vampire? Was I already a vampire? I should feel different if I were so completely changed. If I were a vampire, I should be cold like them, with the same stillness in my chest. And if I was a vampire, shouldn’t I feel more dead?
Svana’s pretty nose wrinkled. “Also, we’re faster and stronger than wolves. And we’re not animals.”
“Speak for yourself,” I said. “I feel like I could eat an entire herd of deer right now.”
Viktor winced. “I’ll bring you more food.”
He disappeared from the room, only to return a minute later with a 44-ounce Styrofoam cup, the kind you could get at gas stations and fast-food restaurants.
“What’s this?” I asked, taking it from him. It was cold to the touch, but I could smell something irresistibly tantalizing rising from the red straw sticking out the top. I swallowed hard, my throat constricting with thirst.
“You know what it is,” Svana muttered, looking at the floor.
“Try not to think about it,” Viktor said. “Just drink.”
“It’s blood, isn’t it?” I asked, though I already knew. I wanted to be disgusted. Okay, I was disgusted, even knowing some of my best friends drank this all the time. I didn’t want to be rude and show it, but seriously. I wasn’t about to drink blood.