But when I rolled down the window, who did I see standing there but the same man I’d seen sniffing me at the bar! He had a long, horsey face, tan skin and dark brown hair but I couldn’t see his eyes—they were hidden by a pair of intimidating mirrored aviator sunglasses.
Uh-oh…I had a bad feeling but even then, I didn’t run for it like I should have. I just stared at the man, waiting for him to ask for my license and registration. Instead, he leaned down, stuck his head in my window, and inhaled deeply.
“Um, excuse me officer but what’s this all about?” I asked, feeling a shiver of unease crawl down my spine. “Is there a problem?”
“Hell yeah, we got a problem, girly,” he sneered at me. “You got Were blood in you, don’t you?”
It felt like someone had replaced all the blood in my body with ice water.
“What did you say?” I demanded, staring up at him.
“I said, license and registration. What did you think I said?” he drawled.
Had I misheard him? Was I just nervous and jumpy because of all the sniffing? I tried to tell myself that maybe he just had a cold as I handed my license and registration out the window and waited while he perused them.
“Kira O’Shea,” he mused. “Now why does that name sound so familiar?”
“I have no idea,” I said blandly. “I used to go to school around here but you don’t look like anyone I know.”
“Oh, I just moved to town in the past coupla years,” he said, sounding almost friendly. “You know, after the takeover?”
“Er…okay,” I said uncertainly. I didn’t know anything about any “takeover,” nor did I want to. I just wanted to get the hell out of Wolverton and never come back again.
It was a wish that was going to go ungranted because the next thing I knew he was ordering me out of the car.
“What did I do?” I protested, as I carefully stepped out of the rented Honda. “I don’t understand what the problem is!”
He grabbed me and yanked me up against his body with my arms held behind my back in an iron grip. Then he leaned down and sniffed the side of my neck.
“The problem is, girly, you’ve got Were blood in you—you might even be an Omega—and yet you’re running away on the night of the Open Breeding!” he told me. His breath was hot against the side of my neck and smelled of stale beer and hot wings.
“Let me go!” I snarled, struggling as hard as I could. “You fucking asshole, I don’t believe in that Were bullshit!”
He made a tsking sound in my ear.
“Well that’s just a shame, girly, because I can tell by your smell that you belong here in Wolverton with us—especially tonight. And I bet my boss is gonna want to know all about you. He might even breed you himself!”
I had no idea who his boss was—presumably the Chief of Police? But I didn’t want to know, either. I only knew that I’d been caught in the same web of strange mythology that had trapped my father all his life and, in the end, had killed him.
“Let me go! Let me go!” I insisted, but it didn’t do any good. I had taken a few self defense courses but my captor seemed unnaturally—almost supernaturally strong. He didn’t even budge when I elbowed him in the stomach. He just grabbed me by the wrists, spun me around, and cuffed me before he loaded me into his squad car.
“You’re making a big mistake!” I told him as we drove off, leaving my abandoned rental car by the side of the road, the driver’s side door still hanging open. “I’m not part of this weird little town’s mythology!”
“Ain’t no ‘mythology’ to it—this here’s reality, girly,” my captor drawled. “You got Were blood—I can smell it. Which means you need to be bred so you don’t go into the Breeding Fever.”
I had heard those words before—someone close to me that I’d tried hard to forget had said them. But I had tried so hard to push the strange events surrounding them out of my mind that I hardly knew what they meant anymore.
“Breeding Fever?” I scoffed. “What does that even mean?”
“You know—it’s what happens to Were bitches when their Heat Cycle gets too high and they don’t get bred on the regular.” He met my eyes in the rearview mirror and smirked. “Like when your titties start filling up with nectar and you ain’t got no male to suck it out for you. And then your pussy gets all hot and swollen and your honey comes down which means you need to get knotted and bred.”
His words were bringing back so much I’d tried to forget that I had to struggle to keep my voice even when I answered.