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“Don’t play around,” she warned. “Are you lying?”

“No, I’m not,” I said, conveying honesty in my tone. I took another sip of the hot chocolate. “There’s a whole freaking clan of them hiding in the mountains.”

Her eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets.

“That’s unbelievable,” she said. “Vampires are believed to be no longer around. I may be a beta, but I’m not stupid. I’ve seen a lot growing up on Howl’s Edge but not vampires. Tell me what happened to you.”

“I didn’t have my heat suppressants, so I went into heat,” I said, without going into detail about what happened. “Then a vampire helped me escape and dropped me off at the heat clinic.”

“Oh wow,” said Grandma. “Don’t ever tell a soul that you’ve seen vampires. And you need to cover up that bite mark tomorrow with makeup.”

“Why?”

“If anyone ever finds out you were involved with a vampire, the punishment is death,” said Grandma, fearfully. “Several years ago, way before any one of us was born, it is said that vampires would steal omegas and use them for their blood. If an omega willingly gave herself to a vampire, she was hanged for her crimes. There isn’t anything documented about those creatures, and saying the word ‘vampires’ out loud is trouble as it is.”

Oh, crap. I didn’t know how serious this was.

“I’ll be careful,” I said, sipping the hot chocolate. “And I definitely won’t tell a soul. It’s something I want to forget about forever.”

Then Grandma leaned forward in her chair, her eyes sparkling with curiosity.

“Tell me about them. What do they look like? How do they survive?”

And the rest of the evening passed with me telling her everything I could about their eating habits and how they lived. I was fearful of talking loudly, so we whispered in the living room through the night, like we were being watched.

Two Weeks Later

I was at my shop wiping down the counters with a feather duster. It was a quiet day today, with only a few customers shopping on a Monday. It was a great start to the week, and I was glad to see that nothing had gone awry with me being away. Grandma had handled things well, with the merchandise neatly put away.

As I worked, I tried not to think about what had happened to me and all the knotting I’d had within the past few days. It was time to forget about all that and concentrate on today. But for some reason, I would get lost in thought, constantly thinking about James and where he could be.

“Excuse me,” said a customer, and I looked up from the other side of the counter.

“How can I help you?” I asked.

“I have a couple of questions about a piece,” she said, walking towards a shelf. As I walked to follow her, a wave of nausea hit me, and I felt the bile rising to my mouth. I tapped Grandma on the shoulder, who was organizing the books.

“Can you please take care of that customer?” I said quickly. Then I rushed to the back of the shop to the bathroom, hurling into the toilet. I gasped for breath, vomiting some more.

Rinsing my mouth in the sink, I wondered if it was something I had eaten. I didn’t feel like I had a stomach bug since the nauseous feeling had passed. Splashing water on my face, I looked into the tiny cloudy mirror at my reflection. My face was blotchy, and strands of my hair were loose from my ponytail. I had been feeling more tired recently for no reason, but I attributed it to being taken by several males last month. More than I could count.

But this was worrying. Not enough to set off alarm bells, though.

Later, Grandma met me in the backroom while I sat on a chair, dizzy and feeling sick.

“You don’t look well,” said Grandma, feeling my forehead. “No fever.”

“I’ve been throwing up,” I said, closing my eyes to steady the motion sickness that went through me. She looked worried, sliding over her chair to sit beside me and rubbing my back.

“Take a pregnancy test,” she said.

My eyes snapped open in shock.

“There’s no way,” I said, placing a hand on my stomach. “The heat clinic uses protection.”

What if Markus’s dream came true, and a condomdidbreak along the way? But if it wasn’t the alphas…no, my mind couldn’t go there. I couldn’t be pregnant with a vampire’s child. Or my grandma was jumping to conclusions. There was no way in hell that I was pregnant.

“It’s good to be prepared,” said Grandma. “I’ve learned my lesson hiding everything from your mother. She never knew she was an omega, and I hid that fact for a long time until she went into heat. Tiana wasn’t prepared at all, and I cried many nights through my guilt. She would have had a choice of her alpha pack, but thankfully things turned out okay for her.”