THE AWAKENING

Memories from her childhood floated through her mental theater, plucked from the past and pasted together in a jumble of thoughts, sounds and feelings as she sank under a black blanket of total lethargy.

The sharp bite of pain as the skin split beneath the rusty saw blade. Blood welling from a small finger. Crimson spilling in a beautiful trickle from a nasty wound. Her adoptive mother’s fretting and worrying as the wound streamed red.

“I told you not to play by that dirty old thing,” her mother had admonished, rushing to put Cassandra’s wounded finger under the faucet.

The cool water soothed the angry cut, washing away the blood, staining in the porcelain sink a light pink before swirling down the drain. “You could’ve cut your finger clean off!”

Cassandra had remained silent, more fascinated by the blood than the pain of her cut or her mother’s muttering about tetanus and blood poisoning.

Without thinking, Cassandra popped her finger into her mouth just as her mother went to grab a bandage.

“Cassi!” her mother had cried, appalled. “What are you doing?”

“I wanted to know what blood tasted like,” Cassandra had answered.

Her mother’s mouth tightened in a disgusted moue. “Well, that’s disturbing. Don’t do that. Little girls don’t need to be wondering about such things. Do you hear me?” she chastised as she quickly bandaged Cassandra’s finger.

Cassandra had nodded, sufficiently convinced that she ought to never do such a thing again but deep down…Cassandra had been afraid to admit that she’d liked the taste of the blood.

The copper tang had thrilled her senses, as if lighting her insides and creating a pervasive hunger for more.

From that point forward, Cassandra had always preferred her meat rare and slightly bloody. Her friends had always shuddered and called her a carnivore. If only they knew…

Of course, now it made sense. If anything about her new life could make sense, that is.

How would her life have been different if she’d been raised with full knowledge of her heritage? What if her biological parents had been able to raise her within Clan Janus?

Would she have gone to college?

high IQ wasn’t exactly helping her out at the moment but she supposed being as dumb as a rock wouldn’t have helped much either. Too many questions

“You are awake.”

eyes opened reluctantly to find Jandin watching her

side to help. She graced him with a brief grateful smile and took a good look around her

“Two days.”

slept that long in my life.

picked up his unique body odor and it smelled delicious, like chocolate and steak; rain and green grass

yet, now that she wasn’t Phasing, she wasn’t wildly attracted to him. It was as if

can’t be

experience with these sorts of things but wasn’t she supposed

thoughts. “We took some losses that night. As much as I hate that blood-sucker Cristophe, taking you away from the heat of battle may have been the best course of

and his clan found us

shame in what happened. The Phase is a powerful force in a female’s body,

grumbled, rocking her head to the side to crack her neck. The crackle of bones felt good but only briefly so as her stomach growled like a beast trapped under her skin. She clutched her belly with embarrassment but Jandin simply chuckled as he rose from her

sustenance,” he said, smiling when she grimaced at his word choices. “Too much?” he asked and she nodded. “Okay,

food and

food of the Gods.

No sense in making it worse with fancy meal requests.

On either side.

stubborn. Hardest head of all the pups, our mother used to say. He will come around. He’s trying to do

call him The Prick any longer, though at this point

to get through this epically screwed up

cannot speak for my brother but as long as I breathe, you will not be harmed in this house by anyone in Clan Janus. I make this vow to