“Yeah, they’re like the best pair I’ve ever owned.” They fit my petite curves better than the rest of the jeans in my closet. I’m rubbing it in a little, but Lizzie knows I’m only teasing. Stretching a little in them, I turn to check out my backside. My curves are on the larger side, but I love it. I’ve got wide hips and small breasts, whereas Lizzie’s got a full-on hourglass figure.
“When’d you get them?”
“Got ‘em on sale last week. Should’ve stayed with me at the mall rather than taking off.” I click my tongue at her and smile. She left me hanging when she went to go run an errand for our boss. His lazy ass does that kind of thing constantly. We basically run the bookstore ourselves.
She pouts and asks, “Did they have any more?”
I purse my lips and shake my head. These were the only pair on the clearance rack. If Lizzie and I wore the same size in jeans, I’d share them. But we don’t. So she’s shit out of luck. “Sorry, babe.”
“Damn.”
“We’ll have to keep a lookout for more.” I nod my head.
“We should look online too.”
Her eyes shine brightly at the suggestion. “Hell yeah, payday is Friday,” she replies in a singsong voice, swaying her head as she does. It makes the dangling earrings she’s wearing chime softly. They’re rose gold with moonstones. I gave them to her on her eighteenth birthday. Lizzie’s allergic to silver, so I made sure to get pure rose gold. They cost a little more, but it was worth every penny to see the look on her face when she opened the gift box. She owns a lot of earrings, but she always seems to wear that specific pair.
The smile grows on my face until I realize I need to ask her the inevitable and it vanishes completely at the thought. “Are you almost ready?” She looks like she is but knowing her, she could spend another hour doing her makeup. I bet she could spend all day in here if I didn’t remind her of the time. Her makeup looks perfect already to me, though, with her flawless cat-eye look and pink lipstick to match her dress. “And do you have a jacket?” I add comically, as if I’m her mother.
“Yeah and yeah,” she says, rolling her eyes with the smile staying in place, “but we still have time to kill, right?”
I check my phone, which is sitting on the bathroom counter. Our small-town college, Shadow Falls, is only ten minutes away and we have forty minutes before we absolutely need to take off.
Nerves tingle down my arm and my throat tightens. There’s not a trace of either when I answer her. “A little bit, yeah.” I can guess exactly what it is that she wants. “Coffee run?”
“Yes!” she exclaims to the ceiling with dramatic flair. She’s got a serious caffeine addiction. Shaking my head, I smile back at her and grab my phone. I could go for a chocolate chip cookie while we’re there anyway. Something to calm my stomach.
“Let’s go … like now … so we’re not late then.” I browse through our joint closet, which is crammed full of clothing, for only a split second before picking out my favorite clutch. Taking a moment to admire the pastel plaid print and soft tan leather, I drop in my phone, wallet, and cherry red lip gloss.
“You wearing the pink stilettos?” she asks as if she doesn’t already know the answer.
With another smack of my lips, I tell her, “Duh.” I wear them almost every day. They’re neutral enough that they complement most of my wardrobe but they have a little more pep than nude heels. The dark red soles give them an extra bit of sex appeal, which I love. The additional two inches they grant me doesn’t hurt either. It makes me feel like today isn’t anything but ordinary and I’m going to kick ass … just like every other day.
Nothing at all to worry about.
“Unless you need them?” I say, offering them up.
“Nope, it would be too much pink.” We’re both a size six so at least we can share shoes, even if we can’t share clothes. Lizzie has heels in nearly every style and color. She’s a girl who likes variety. It’s the one thing she really spends money on.
“I swear you never wear any of the others,” she says teasingly.
“I like these,” I say with a shrug, picking up my pale pink beauties. They make me feel in control and sexy. Why wouldn’t I wear them every chance I get?
People say you can grow to hate your best friend when you live together but I can’t see that ever happening to us. She’s the yin to my yang, the peanut butter to my jelly. More than that, we were both grateful to get out of the shitholes where we grew up. The cherry on top is that we truly love and respect one another.
Always have. Always will.
I first met Lizzie in middle school, only a year after my mom had passed. We were both quiet loners and didn’t really bond at first—not with each other, and definitely not with anyone else.
Summertime was when we actually started talking to each other. I approached her first, although I was deathly afraid of being rejected. It was worth the risk because I was more than tired of being so lonely. We were the only girls wearing long sleeves and jeans in the hot weather. That wasn’t my first clue, but it was what I needed to sit by her at lunch. I finally gathered the courage to ask her about it, knowing I would be exposing my truth too. Her bruises were from her third set of foster parents and mine were from my father, who was always drugged up, drunk, or just plain angry.
She didn’t tell me why she’d begged to leave the previous two foster homes. All I knew was that she was content to remain with the third even though they hit her for no reason. I asked her why she stayed, and she said it was the best she would get. Even as a twelve-year-old I had an idea of what she’d been through and I wasn’t okay with any of it being true.
That night we had a sleepover at my house, not that my dad was home and not that her foster parents cared or knew where she was. It was nice to pretend it was a real playdate. To pretend like we had normal, loving parents who cared about us. I asked her why she’d left the last foster home, but she just shook her head and started to quietly cry. When I thought she was going to let up on the gentle tears that were falling down her face, I leaned in to hug her and she grabbed me fiercely, sobbing hysterically into my chest. Later that night she woke up screaming and I just held her until she fell back asleep. That was almost a decade ago.
Since then, we’ve been each other’s rock.
I grab my keys in the living room and get ready to lock the door to our place. While I wait for Lizzie to grab whatever the hell she’s getting, I smile at the sight of our secondhand sofa. Our apartment is finally starting to look like a home. We were able to get jobs at a bookstore after we turned sixteen and as soon as we could afford it, we moved in together. I shake my head, thinking about how we were constantly broke. Between the two of us, we finally had enough saved up just before high school graduation. It’s been about a year of us living together in our small one-bedroom studio. I’ve loved every single second. This is what family is supposed to feel like. Plus we have an amazing shoe collection.
Minutes and more minutes pass of Lizzie not getting her ass to the front door.
“We’re not going to be able to get coffee,” I yell down the hall, knowing the threat will get her attention.
She shrieks and runs into the room barefoot, shaking out her blond hair with a huge smile across her face as I laugh. That’s the thing I love most about Lizzie. She never lets anything get her down for too long; she refuses not to smile. Without that optimism and without her friendship, I don’t know how I would’ve survived.
She meets me at the front door with a pair of spiked black heels in hand. “Let’s do this shit.”
Grace
As we pull into the line at the drive-through for our favorite coffee shop, I can’t help but to feel anxious. So much so that my foot on the brake slips and the car jolts. “Shit, sorry.”
Lizzie only lets out a short laugh, the worry I feel slightly reflected in her expression.
“What if they take someone this year?” My nerves are getting the best of me now. My tried and true pink he
els aren’t making me feel a damn bit confident. After we pulled away from our apartment, I could feel my hands growing hot and numb. My breath is coming in shallow and short, and it’s starting to give me a headache. Deep, deliberate breathing isn’t helping to calm me down; I just can’t get rid of this uneasiness. I shake out my hands again and unsuccessfully try to swallow the spiked lump in my throat while Lizzie fidgets next to me.
Not much is known about shifters, not even the werewolves who initially offered us the treaty. The different species stay to themselves, each in their own little group. Intermingling generally ends with a bloodbath and no one wants that. A few books have been published, but they’ve been proven to be unreliable. A recent news report even said one of the bestsellers on supernatural beings was put out by a vampire as a joke and that it was full of lies. Just thinking of vampires makes my skin crawl. The nonhumans have their own politics and territories, and we have ours.
All of us keep to ourselves … except for days like these.
These are the shit days, but we don’t have much choice. We’re weaker. It’s as simple as that. Humans have come to rely on treaties for protection. After all, we don’t have their natural-born strength and our weapons don’t do a thing to hurt them. I’ve even read about towns that have pacts with vampires, while others have allied with witches. Not in our town, though. Our treaty only applies to the werewolves of Shadow Falls. The other species know it and stay far away. Which I suppose I should be grateful for. I think I would be, if it weren’t for the offering they demand.
Every year, Shadow Falls provides an “offering”—it’s so fucked up they call it that—for the werewolves. All the women in town between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one have to gather for the shifters and present themselves. It’s the law, so we have no choice. Once you’re offered, you can’t refuse if they choose you. You could leave rather than participate, but that would mean moving to a different town, leaving your family and forgoing the protection provided by the werewolves. My heart races just thinking about all the implications.
Refusing to participate in the rite or not providing an offering would lead to an end of the treaty. It’s happened before every few years in various other locales. The news is always quick to cover any protesters who no longer want their treaty. Normally, those who want protection take off as soon as the debates start because they don’t want to risk the fallout. Once a treaty is forfeited, all across the country people wait with bated breath to see the repercussions.
The werewolves never attack the towns that break their pacts. The shifters just leave them be. And when the other paranormal and vile creatures of the night show up at the vulnerable homes, there’s no one to help. Sometimes it’s only days after when people go missing, or worse. Other times it’s years. I’ve watched on the news as fathers cry, begging for their daughters to be returned to them. I’ve seen pictures of entire towns burned to the ground, supposedly for nothing more than a witch’s enjoyment. The attacks themselves are hardly ever captured but the resulting aftermath leaves enough evidence to determine what happened.
Vampires and witches are ruthless, taking without shame or apology. People say there are good ones and bad ones, just like every other species and race. But I’ve never seen or even heard of a good deed done by either vampires or witches. The only silver lining is that although they may wreak havoc, they don’t touch what belongs to werewolves. History has proven time and time again that werewolves will win that fight.
It’s been nearly one hundred and sixty years since the violence and tragedy that brought about our arrangement with the shifters of Shadow Falls. According to what Lizzie and I were taught in school, vampires came in the night all that time ago and abducted humans to hold captive for their own pleasure, leaving disaster in their wake. At the time the town had no help, no treaty, no one to beg for mercy. Shadow Falls put up a fight as best they could, but it was useless. Families huddled together at night yet in the morning, someone would be gone without a trace. Or they were massacred. Either way, it was hopeless. The vampires would swoop in, drink their fill, and leave their victims to die. Back then, those sharp-fanged villains were careless. Rather than snatching their victims and hiding like they do today, they’d remain on their hunting grounds and flaunt their kills.
It was only a matter of time before the werewolves came. The thick scent of blood that coated the air might have initially attracted them to Shadow Falls but with so many vampires around, the town was ripe for their picking. Desperate and out of options, the mayor at the time begged the werewolves for help. The wolves agreed, but on one condition—Shadow Falls would have to offer their women to them willingly once a year—forever. He agreed without hesitation, knowing there was precedent in forming treaties with shifters, but stopping the slaughter was his priority. Within days the vampires fled, and the ones unlucky enough to get caught by the werewolves were devoured without mercy.
That year, one woman was taken by the shifters at the offering. Since then, the wolves have upheld their end of the bargain to protect the town, but they haven’t taken anyone else. Only that one woman at the first offering. She went without a word, without a fight. It’s said she went into a trance of sorts and no one ever heard from her again. That’s the story we’re told and taught, anyway. And that’s the reason we’re headed to the local college to “offer” ourselves.
This is our first year and we’ll have to attend for the next two as well. To put it mildly, I’m freaked the fuck out. I try to remind myself that the shifters haven’t taken anyone in a hundred and sixty years. Maybe this is nothing more than an outdated tradition. How the hell should I know? But knowing they haven’t taken anyone in over a century and a half only drops my fear down a notch, a very small notch.
The fact that I’ll be presented to them gives me mixed emotions, but the overriding feeling is complete and utter fear. I finally have a home and safety and a life that I cherish. I don’t want to leave. No one really knows what happens if they take you, but it’s not hard to guess. If you’re chosen, you don’t come back. The very idea throws me into full-on panic mode.
With her lips turned down and her gaze looking off to nowhere, I know Lizzie’s thinking the same things I am. My hand grips hers as fiercely as she held me that first night she cried in my arms, in my bedroom when we were only kids. “It’s going to be fine,” I reassure her, surprised my voice is even as the words come out.
A tight smile is my reward, followed by a shrug, then my Lizzie is back. “I’m fine, just … remembering.” It takes all my strength to simply nod, pulling ahead in the line for coffee.
Silence brings memories.
We came last year to watch, just to see what it would be like. It was Lizzie’s idea. She was far worse than she is now. Just being around the werewolves made her tremble.
We nearly left, but we had to know what to expect so we could prepare ourselves. About a hundred girls were lined up single file and in alphabetical order, then they crossed the stage. If I had seen a picture of it and didn’t know the context, I would have thought it was a graduation. A snort leaves me at the comparison. Unlike a graduation, the atmosphere was ominous and grim with no speeches or sense of joy. The werewolves came, the women walked in front of them, and then the shifters left. It was somber and perfunctory, almost like neither party wanted to be there. I know for a fact that was true on our end.
Even though the werewolves were mostly covered by their cloaks, it wasn’t hard to tell that they were pure muscle. Nothing but killing machines. I couldn’t see much from the other side of the stadium but Sherri, one of the cashiers at the bookstore, told me that they looked “scary as fuck,” as she so eloquently put it. She’s a senior in college now, so her last time to walk was last year. She told us she couldn’t be more grateful.
I wondered why all the women walked quickly and quietly with their heads bowed, but I guess that’s why. Not that I can blame them. If someone were staring at me like they wanted to rip my throat
out—again, Sherri’s phrase, not mine—I wouldn’t want to look them in the eye either. Especially knowing they could legally take me against my will.
So yes, head down and a fast pace.
“You okay?” Lizzie asks with a bravado I know is fake, but I love her anyway for trying to be strong for us both. Lizzie licks her lips and then pulls out a tube of gloss from her bag. She can barely look me in the eyes.
“Fine. We’re going to be just fine.” I pat her hand before pulling up to get our drinks and then taking off. Time to face the music, so to speak.
“Of course we are.” She smacks her lips after applying a thin, glittery coat of gloss but I notice how her hand trembles. “And then we’re going to whoop it up at Jake’s party.” I force a small smile for her and try to shake off my nervousness. If not for me, then for her. At least I’m concentrating on the party tonight instead of the offering. Arriving at the college a few minutes later, we park in the designated spots for “those participating in the offering.” I turn off the car and grab my stuff from the back seat, keeping my snide thoughts to myself.
“You think Mike’s going to be there?” she asks as she opens her door. I follow her lead and walk quickly with her to the stadium entrance, trying to figure out what she’s even asking. Right. Jake’s party. We only have a few minutes left to get in there for the offering. If you don’t make it, you’re forced to leave town. Supposedly. No one ever risks being kicked out of a protected area, so I don’t really know if that particular law would be enforced. Not that I have any intention of finding out firsthand.
Wounded Kiss (To Be Claimed Saga Book 1) Page 2