Page 8 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

Once she’s asleep, I secure her door, check all the locks and windows, and then head back up the stairs.

It’s dark outside, but from the second floor I can see lights around all the doors and the boards on the windows in that line of cottages out there.

For a moment, I’m sure I can hear the creaking of floorboards as they move around, like each cottage is a tattletale.

Up in my attic, under the eaves, I take a shower and find myself overly aware of how short my hair is.

I used to have long hair. When Augie and I were young, we were both pretty shaggy. We were also a gleaming bright blond, but I cut all mine off not long after my parents disappeared.

I’m sure there’s no emotional through line there.

These days it’s more gold than white-blond, and there’s some red in there too, and the only reason I’m even thinking about something so random now is because of all the hair on display, thanks to my new tenants.

Maybe Samuel would like me more if I had long, silky hair like Savi. Or Maddox’s wild waves that flow everywhere like they have a mind of their own. Or even that long, thick black hair stuck under Briar’s hat.

This is the girliest line of thought I’ve had in years.

I’m not sure I like it. The main reason to not have long hair, after all, is because it can be grabbed.

And Samuel thinks I’m an idiot.

Since I’m back to thinking about Samuel, I take that to bed with me. Not the idiot part. I glide over that, daydreaming about the way his hands wrapped around my elbows instead.

Though as I daydream off into sleep, he’s moving closer the way he did that one night, and this time, it isn’t rushed and quiet—

When I jolt awake sometime later, something’s wrong.

My head is pounding. My stomach is in a knot.

She is stirring! a voice that’s a lot creepier than my grandmother’s echoes inside my head. I feel something slick and upsetting move through me, and I think about a ruined face and claws where hands should be, rearing like a dead thing from a grave and lurching toward me—

But whatever that is, it’s not the issue. Not now. I glance at the clock and see that it’s three in the morning, which is not a time anything mortal and consumable needs to be up and about. It’s feeding time out there.

That’s when I hear the noise again, the one that must have woken me up.

I’m up and moving before I can process what’s happening, strapping on my weapons and taking to the stairs. It’s only when I reach the second floor that I realize what I’m hearing is a pounding sound.

Not any old pounding sound.

Someone is hammering something—maybe a fist, maybe a battering ram, it’s hard to tell—against the front door.

I have my guns in my hands as I go down to the first floor, not bothering to turn on any lights. It’s the middle of the night. People with good intentions don’t go out in the middle of the night, because too many nasty things only go out then.

I go down to the door, slide open the peephole, and stick the muzzle of my gun through it.

I peer out around it, and I can make out the dimensions of a man.

A very, very, very large man.

“If I were you, asshole,” comes a deep, rough growl of a voice, “I would rethink pointing that fucking gun in my face.”

I do rethink. I release the safety and chamber a round.

I see a faint movement in my peripheral vision and risk a glance to see Maddox coming across the yard.

Fast. I take a split second to note that she and I are not the same.

Because I sleep in my clothes. She apparently sleeps in tiny baby-doll pajamas like she doesn’t have a care in the world what might come busting through her windows or pounding at her door.

Or in this case, my door.

Must be nice, I think, but I turn my attention back to the stranger on my doorstep.

“You have three seconds to get the fuck away from my door,” I tell him. “And two of those seconds are gone.”

“It’s okay,” Maddox calls as she comes up beside the porch. “He’s my ... I knew he was going to show up. It’s fine. He’s not here to hurt anyone.”

“Don’t fucking count on it, you little shit,” comes that deep voice from the other side of the door. But he doesn’t look at her. He’s glaring at my gun.

I stare at Maddox as she comes up on the porch, putting herself well within this man’s reach. She stares back at me, and I swear there is something almost ... beseeching in her gaze. Or maybe it’s the middle of the night and this was the plan all along, to roust me out of bed.

I think of that terrible voice inside me. That ruined face. But I blink it away. And I don’t know why, if there was a slaughter planned, Maddox would roll up to it in those pajamas.

I pull the gun back inside. Maddox smiles gratefully.

I realize I’m holding my breath, because this does not, in fact, feel fine .

And then the huge man on my doorstep steps back. Just enough that I can see him beneath the porch light, and I freeze.

Because I know him, too.

Everyone knows him. Back in the day, they whispered about him because he was the leader of that biker gang. The outlaw element that hunkered down here in the hills, where they could do as they pleased and no one bothered them.

That was scary enough.

Tonight, though, it’s more obvious who and what he is.

Ty Ceridwen. Alpha wolf of the werewolf pack.

Here.

At my house.