“But what about the Praverian?” I say, letting every one of his words sink carefully into my mind. “I know you already told Nathan and Isaac, but I want you to tell me. How do you trap it?”

Harry shakes his head soberly. “It’s not going to be easy,” he says raising just his eyes. “I’ll explain it to you soon.” He flicks a small piece of rotted wood he had been rolling between his fingers out onto the floor.

“I don’t see why we can’t just line everybody up and force them to say it out loud,” I argue. “Seems like the easiest way to weed the traitor out.”

“Adria,” Harry says and I’ve never seen him so serious, “whoever it is, they’re powerful. They can crush your skull in on itself with a thought. When one of us goes Dark, it’s…,” he gazes off toward the tiny box window. I get the worst feeling from his demeanor, as though a long ago memory is raping his mind all over again. “…it’s like unleashing a demon—I don’t know how else to describe it.”

“I think telling me it can crush my skull in on itself by just thinking it, is pretty self-explanatory,” I say, but Harry is unaffected by the slight jest in my tone.

He stares back at me and I set all of my flippant emotions aside.

“Why doesn’t it just kill us then?” I say. “I don’t get why it’s even here, or why it seems to have targeted me in that friggin’ car wreck.”

“It might have everything to do with your destiny,” Harry says. “But at the same time, it could have nothing to do with you at all.” He shakes his head, his thick, dark eyebrows knotted pensively. “This one seems more vengeful than the few I’ve encountered in the past. There’s more to this one, Adria. I think it’s toying with all of you, but I don’t know why.”

“Well, that’s oh-so-comforting.”

Harry smiles now, looking more like the smartass human Harry I know and love.

“Just think if you didn’t have me to cover your butt,” he says. “Of course, it’s easy to cover a butt as small as yours—just sayin’.”

“If I could move my hands to throw something at you,” I say, “you’d so be packing a black eye with a bag of frozen peas.”

I hear Isaac’s footsteps descending the basement stairs. Tonight is the first night of the week approaching the next full moon and just like Sebastian used to do, I’m forced to spend most of my time down here surrounded by filthy wet walls and darkness with my arms and legs shackled to the stone. It feels every bit like an old dungeon from some time in the Middle Ages. At least, I think it does.

“Are you flirting with my girl again, Harry?” Isaac says with an air of humor as he appears in the room carrying a bowl of water and a handful of fresh hand towels.

“Hell naw,” Harry says getting to his feet. “I don’t know how you do it.” He winks at me and I stick my tongue out at him.

Isaac sits down on the floor next to me, placing the bowl of water beside him and the towels in his lap.

“What’s that for?” I say.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he says smiling warmly and reaching up to move my hair away from my face.

He turns to look at Harry. “So what’s the word? What do we have to prepare for?”

Harry looks at both of us calmly, but I see in his eyes the severity of his answer.

“War,” he says as if such a powerful word is so light on his tongue. He buries his hands in his pockets.

“Is there any way that we can stop it?” Isaac asks.

Harry looks only at me now and I get the feeling that he’s mourning me.

“The war has to happen,” Harry says, “And Adria will be the one to start it.”

30

ONLY TWO NIGHTS HAVE slipped by me, but not without weight and cruel, unforgiving pain. I won’t leave this cell. I can’t risk it. Hurting Aunt Bev or Uncle Carl; killing someone innocent.

I stay here in my prison, sweating profusely as the burning heat suffocates my body.

Isaac is here always, washing my face of dirt and tears and blood, leaving only ever to replenish the bowl of water and get clean towels, or to bring food and drink.

I’m only let out when I need to make a trip to the restroom.

I can’t see straight. The stone walls blur in and out of my vision. My eyes seem to stay coated by blackness.

31

IT’S BEEN FOUR DAYS now and it’s becoming harder and harder to contain myself. It feels like the moon is out there looking for me every night, searching underneath every recess, leaving nothing untouched by its light. And my God, its lure is so strong. It’s going to find me soon. It’s going to see me through that single box window surrounded by mold and water-damaged wood. But I know that it doesn’t have to touch me to Turn me. But when it does touch me, it provokes the transformation one hundred fold.

Isaac has been able to control his inner beast almost effortlessly, having gone through this hundreds upon hundreds of times.

And still he’s here, seeing me through it all, helping to soothe my mind.

Now I know how he felt the many times while around me during that week before each full moon. I know how hard it was for him to refrain from touching me, to lie next to my bare skin without taking me.

I don’t have the willpower that he had.

I’ve had him twice down here now. He’s let me out of my chains long enough to let me have my way with him…long enough to prove to me that he’s the Alpha.

This time though, my carnal emotions are too strong to let me out, to unlock my hands and legs from my shackles and risk me busting out into the night.

But he still gives me what I want….

32

TONIGHT’S THE FULL MOON.

The constant sound of rain dripping through the basement walls is so loud that I cover my ears. I can’t control my senses anymore. The dank, moist air and the stench of something dead in the walls makes me retch. I can even smell the blood on my wrists from trying to break free as I try to fight the beast and to tame it.

But Isaac is still here with me, wiping the blood from my hands and the sweat from my face.

Tonight he unshackles me so that I can transform with minimal damage to my wrists and ankles. He says he can keep me down here no matter what, that he’s strong enough to hold me here and I believe him.

He never leaves my side.

And I know that he never will.

Jessica Ann Redmerski was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on November 25, 1975. She lives in Arkansas with her three children and a Maltese.