Prologue - Mia

My lungs felt like they were on fire… Running as if tomorrow would never happen… My heart was almost bursting while nothing in my old life mattered anymore, and my body ached as I ran for my life as fast as I could…

“… it is all a dream, it can't be real…” The voices in my head kept trying to deny what we were dealing with, and I wanted to believe them if our body weren't already dealing with all the struggles of that moment.

Werewolves, vampires, supernatural hunters, nothing about it sounded real to me. But, at the very same time, it was hard for me to reject the truth as said wolves and men with guns in their hands went after me as if I had a prize over my head.

The blood on my hands wasn't mine like the iron taste in my mouth, but what could I do about it? I could merely try to catch my breath while the tears continued to run down my face, and I had no idea of what was going on. No words seem to exist to explain it well, as I thought I could have listened to my mama’s old words.

“Stay away from old Joe, he is and has always been trouble. Nothing good comes from being around him.”

I was silly to assume she meant the man was just the town troublemaker, instead of something that they could not explain with logical words.

He has always been trouble… Yes, he has always been like this as far as anyone could remember from the old times as he had always been here as a Vampire.

Something hard to understand or believe to the point that it became natural for folks around to grow up and no longer comprehend which one was old… Him or our town… But again, they were all just silly jokes for us.

Yet, my heart froze when such foolishness and myths about him that I heard back at school proved to be more than real when I woke with a cold body on my feet. He was still breathing, but it was clear that his life was ending soon.

“What is wrong, child? Don’t you want to enjoy your dinner anymore?”

I wanted to scream so badly when I heard his voice talk to me, while I was still staring at the person who wasn't much younger than me, and my body shook in fear when I saw the other two bloody figures in his hands.

“He-hel-p-me.”

Raising her hand towards me, the female in his grasp begged me, and I recalled who they were then.

They were the group of college tourists staying at Mrs.Ellen’s Breakfast and Bed for the next four days.

She had asked Jay to be their guide in the local woods as they were planning to camp there for one night after leaving their stuff at her place.

I had met them the previous morning when I went with him there, so he could meet everyone and see if they needed to buy anything else for this little adventure of theirs.

… which just meant a fun and little scary night sleeping outside under the stars, something that most of us, who lived here, had done at least once in town….

So, why were they dying before me as if they had come straight out of a horror movie?

The mess my life became after I caught Jay, my husband-to-be, cheating on me in our shared apartment with no one else, but my older brother of all possible people, was horrible enough!

I knew our wedding wasn't going anywhere lately, especially with the cold eyes his parents were giving me.

His family never had an issue with us dating. However, the same couldn't be said about us tying the knot.

There was always some problem or difficulty informed to us by them, which caused us to move the date ahead to a far future, leaving me even more heartbroken, wondering if they knew about it…

… if they knew about both of them…

… I felt like a clown among the people I loved the most… But even so, none of this explained my desperate messy mess right now. I begged and asked God, what I had done wrong to have to deal with something like this while running away.

None of this could be real. None of this was humanly possible. None of this was something that could exist outside of books, movies, and series on TV.

Vampires and werewolves couldn't exist, much less the men hunting me, with big guns and scary looks on their faces. It all should be a joke, some kind of hidden camera show, but not something real in any possible way!

“AH! Ouch!”

Falling with my face on the ground, I knew I was done. I would never be faster than them.

They were already reaching out to me before it, so now? It was completely my death end, I had no way out besides accepting I was never going to see the sunlight again.

My feet hurt, and I could swear I had twisted it, afflicting my emotions even more as I heard their steps getting closer and closer.

The reddish-brown and blonde-furred wolf was the first one who showed up before me. Jay couldn't be a wolf… he couldn't be a werewolf… But, his strawberry blonde hair was exactly the same in his animal form that it was hard to deny.

Jaydan, Jay for me, was my little skinny nerd since… ever! With his thick glasses and all the other stereotypical stuff one could imagine about nerds, he was by far anything, but someone one would guess to be a werewolf…

A wave of sadness hit me with such a mere thought that I didn't want to think anymore about it, I just wanted it to be quick and end as painlessly as possible. I wanted this nightmare to end, so I could go back to my normal life.

I wanted that I would wake up and find it was just the weirdest dream I ever had in my whole life, nothing else…. Just a weird dream.

No, my boyfriend hadn't cheated on me with my brother. No, I hadn't been turned into a vampire by some old lunatic vampire who lived in our town. No, my boyfriend wasn’t a werewolf, and nothing of that existed.

… no… it was all a weirdest dream of mine… just a nightmare…

“Final words?” an unknown voice told me, reminding me how my wishes were far from being true, while he wasn’t interested at all in hearing my answer. “I beg you not.”

And before I could even find the courage to say a word, he replied in my place, putting a gun in my direction, like I wasn’t stuck there… without any way out with all of them around me.

But before the inevitable shot was done, someone got between them. Someone entirely unfamiliar to me stopped them from killing me, as he talked about me as if he were adopting a pet…

“I’ll take care of her.”

… He was another hunter. Someone I had truly never met before, but even so, he got between them, and before I could even understand well what was going on, he appeared to have become my mentor, protector… my master… in this new unfamiliar world.