Zia shrugs it off and sits against the windowsill.

“Is Nataša still downstairs?” Isaac says, carefully rolling the bag into his fist.

“She was wrapping stuff up when we got here,” Zia says and then looks over at me. “Is it true?”

“Is what true?” I say.

Zia folds one arm against her stomach and rests the other elbow in her hand. She puts the tip of her fingernail between her teeth, but doesn’t actually chew on it. She grins at me. “We also heard that you showed a little more personality than Nataša is used to.”

“It’s no big deal,” Isaac says, hoping to drop the subject it seems.

“I-I don’t know what came over me,” I say, feeling really stupid about it now. “She just made me mad and…I honestly don’t know what made me say anything. Felt exhilarating though, I gotta admit.”

“I’m surprised that woman didn’t have you for lunch,” Sebastian says from behind.

“To tell you the truth,” I say, “I am too.”

I turn to Isaac now, just as he’s walking away from me and back toward the bed. “What did Nataša mean by my ‘handicap’?”

Isaac places the black bag beside the bed on the nightstand and then looks at me. “That you’re human,” he says. “And maybe because you’re with me—she can find a lot of reasons to put you beneath her, I’m sure.”

I guess being human really does have its advantages around this place.

Zia moves from the window and walks over to Sebastian. “Welp!” she says to Isaac and me, “we need to go—meeting up with Harry and Daisy to see a movie.”

“Sure you don’t want to come?” Sebastian says as he moves toward the door with Zia.

“No, we’re good,” Isaac says.

“Yeah, we sort of have plans,” I say, glancing over at Isaac next to me.

“Oh?” Zia says, deciding suddenly against leaving just yet because maybe I’m going to tell her something ‘juicy’.

I laugh quietly, shaking my head. “Zia, go see your movie,” I say and shoo her away with both hands sweeping the air in front of me.

She giggles and drags Sebastian out the door with her, letting it shut behind him.

“She’s crazy sometimes,” I say.

Isaac agrees, smiling.

“So,” I say, looking at him and to the black velvet bag on the nightstand, “what’s in that bag of yours that you seem to love more than me?” I grin over at him.

Isaac’s smile softens and the way he’s looking at me makes me feel warm and excitedly curious. He takes the little black bag into his hand again and walks over to me.

“Hold out your hand,” he says, now cupping the bag in the cradle of his palm. He loosens the drawstring to widen the opening.

“Isaac, you didn’t buy—” I try to say, reluctantly holding out my hand anyway.

“Don’t,” he says and then places his free hand underneath mine.

I don’t want to argue about this, or put up a wall. I can’t bring myself to tear this moment away from him because that look in his beautiful bright blue eyes is devastating to me. This is important to him. It’s not a purse or a five-dollar cup of soda at the movie theatre. And so I just smile warmly back at him and let him have his way.

Isaac tilts the bag over and a glistening silver necklace with two pendants falls softly into the palm of my hand. It’s cool and delicate against my skin. I know I’m blushing. I look down at it for a moment before taking the chain clasp between my fingers and holding it up to see the necklace fully, letting the pendants rest against the back of my other fingers. One pendant is a sterling silver spiral and next to it another dangles made of some kind of elegant white stone encased at the top by tiny silver wires.

“It’s called a moonstone,” he says, taking it from me and undoing the clasp.

“I love it,” I say, staring at the detail with admiration and then up at Isaac, waiting for me to let him put it on. I’m beaming. Absolutely beaming.

I turn around slowly and feel Isaac’s hand brush against the back of my neck as he moves the ponytail over my shoulder. The chain drapes around my neck, the pendants lying softly just below the hollow at the base of my throat. I reach up and graze my fingertips down the chain and then hold the moonstone in them, looking down at it. “I really do love it,” I say again because I do and I want him to believe me one hundred percent. His lips gently touch the back of my neck. “I had it specially made,” he says and I turn around to face him again. He takes up the spiral pendant and lets it rest on the pad of his thumb. With his other hand he points to the center. “This represents the time we first met.” His finger moves round and round from the center of the spiral outward. “And each of these points,” he continues, stopping at equally spaced hollowed-out dots that line the middle of the spiral, “they represent profound moments in our relationship.”

How can he be real? I try to grasp every word he says, and I do, but I’m overwhelmed by how much he means to me and how someone like him can be real, someone so poetic and so beautiful in every way, yet so beastly and dangerous and deadly.

It’s extraordinary to me.

I feel like no matter how much time passes, that he’ll always be extraordinary.

His finger stops at the first hollow dot. “This was when you saw me for who I really am.” He moves to the second hollow dot. “And here is when you met my father.”

When Isaac’s finger comes to the third hollow dot, he stops.

The air is restless with silence. His eyes have strayed from mine, from the necklace and this spiral pendant of meaningful events, all of which have begun to play out in my mind as though they are happening all over again. For a long time he doesn’t say anything, but I can’t bear to interrupt what appears to be a crucial, reflective moment.

Finally, his eyes hold mine again and he says, “And this is when I almost lost you.”

My heart falls, but I still don’t say anything. I know he doesn’t want me to.

His finger moves to the fourth hollow dot.

“And this was March,” he says, his face replacing the sadness of hollow #3 with serenity. He leaves the description just like that: March, as though that one word speaks so many volumes all on its own and needs no other element to accompany it.

“Are you sure you like it?” he says, hoping I’m not just saying I do because I don’t want to hurt his feelings.

I let out a breath. “Yes,” I say harshly and with devotion. “I don’t like it, Isaac, I love it.”

“So then you’re not going to bite my head off for buying you something?” He’s grinning again and I want to shove him lightheartedly, but I don’t.

Isaac sometimes has a problem with letting an intimate moment survive that last few seconds that most intimate moments usually do. But he wouldn’t be Isaac if he didn’t go right back to being playful and that’s just fine by me.

“Not this time,” I finally say and reach up on my toes and kiss him again. “This time I’ll let you slide.”

10

A HEAVY RAIN THUNDERED through last night, leaving a thick swath of gray clouds in the expanse of sky that I see through my bedroom window. I crawl out of bed to get ready for school, but all I want to do is sleep in. The smell of rain lingers heavily on the air even with my window closed, and the sound of water filtering through the gutters around the roof is slow and steady as a drizzle comes and goes from the clouds that can’t make up their mind. A weak chill is in the air without the sun to warm the early summer morning, as if still trying to hold onto the cold spring with its last dying breath.

I walk over and raise my window to let in the breeze and the scent of rain, which has always made me feel calm and closer to nature.

I part my lips a little, feeling my dry tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, craving a shot of Listerine and toothpaste. And although the breeze drifting in through the window is reviving me some, I know that only freezing cold water splashed on my face from the bathroom sink will fully wake me up.

After washing up, I head downstairs to the smell of normalcy.

Breakfast tastes different this morning, probably because it’s not a bowl of cold cereal like it has been since Uncle Carl went into the hospital. Beverlee was up before the sun, running the coffee pot first before cooking a big breakfast of eggs and bacon and biscuits smothered in my favorite white gravy.

I’m stuffed long before my plate is clean.

Uncle Carl eats his breakfast in the den. I haven’t seen him anywhere else since he came home. He even slept there last night.

I hate to see him like this, but I never let the sympathy show on my face because I know that’ll only make it worse.

I kiss Uncle Carl on his temple before I head out the door where Isaac is waiting for me in the driveway. I notice a small break in the clouds where blue sky peeks through as I make my way toward the Jeep. And momentarily, my hand comes up to feel the contours of the moonstone necklace Isaac gave me yesterday, partly making sure that it’s there, the other part remembering the moment he gave it to me.

Life at school with Isaac has been fulfilling. For the first time in my life, I am the girl that other girls want to trade places with. I’m not Miss Popularity, thank God, but I’m no longer the Invisible Girl. And I have haters! You’re nothing without haters, right?

Isaac doesn’t really care for school much since he already graduated—he’s mainly here for me—but he likes going to school because he says it gets him out of the house. Now, the funny thing about this is that it’s not like Isaac doesn’t have more important things to be doing with his day, like consorting with his brothers about pack issues and Vargas issues and other issues like that. But like I said, Isaac has pretty much given up everything for me, including his position as Alpha. I don’t like it, but it is what it is and so far nothing I have tried to say to him has done much to change his mind.

We don’t have any classes together, but we see each other everywhere: in the halls, the gymnasium, the library and of course outside at lunch. He also admitted to me shortly after he started school that he decided on being a senior to give me some space. He may be almost twenty (next month, actually), but he could still pass for seventeen if he wanted to. A taller, more muscular seventeen-year-old, but nonetheless.

Also, Isaac’s youngest sisters, Phoebe and Camilla, started school at Hall-Dale last December. Phoebe and Camilla wanted to hang out with other humans and be in ‘human circles’, as they referred to it. Like most of the Mayfairs, even Isaac had been schooled privately by someone they called ‘the Governess’. She and others of her kind are teachers at private schools all over the world. And humans—teachers and students alike that attend these private schools—are oblivious to what really goes on behind the scenes, that the mysterious teacher in the room down the hall that associates with no one is an Elder werewolf, teaching a class of Pure Blood werewolves.

Isaac graduated at a private school in Upstate New York, but one might think he’s already spent eight years in college and holds several different degrees. He’s highly intelligent, but it’s not something he likes to flaunt. And he’s purposely failing a few classes so that he doesn’t have to pretend to graduate with the other seniors this year—wants to stay in school with me until I graduate next year.