It was the headache that woke me, but when moving caused a sharp pain to shoot from my shoulder to my upper arm, I knew I had really done it to myself this time. I didn’t know where I was. Didn’t remember for the life of me what had happened last night. All I could say with any certainty was that I was alive and returning to the real world after one hell of a strange trip.

I knew it was daytime by the way the warmth of the sun rained down on me, but I wasn’t ready to open my eyes yet. The moment I did, I’d be greeted by rays of sunshine blaring the Hallelujah Chorus and only misery would follow from there. A hangover waited to greet me with open arms. There was no sense in rushing the inevitable.

Instead, I paused to take stock of my mental faculties.

My name was Charlotte Mary Walker, I remembered that much. I was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania to William and Susan Walker, two small town Catholics who served drinks from Monday thru Saturday and warmed pews every Sunday. Not that I faulted them for their religion. Hell, if it meant being rid of this migraine, I would have called out sweet Hosannas to the Almighty and ended my Agnosticism right then and there, but as that was as likely to happen as me remembering the night before, I held back the spiritual awakening and moved through the rest of my exercise.

I was an art student in Philadelphia when I wasn’t home on break. I loved the color black and hated when people called me ‘Char’. And even though I hadn’t had another nickname since parochial school, I remembered the nuns used to call me ‘good Charlotte’ because I was the girl who never acted up in class. I hadn’t been called that in years, though, as I’d been anything but good these days.

‘No… Wait a minute,’ I thought. Someone had called me that recently.

My eyes shot open the moment I remembered him.

Sure enough, the sun was there to greet me, but not as harshly as I thought it would. I still squinted, though, and tried to adjust my eyes to the light as I followed this fledgling thought down the rabbit hole. A picture of him emerged again, sepia-toned and distorted at first, but gaining clarity the longer I focused on it. I had met him last night, at my parents’ bar, while I was serving drinks to the locals.

A more-recent memory started to unfold, but thinking about it too hard threatened to bring my headache back in all its sound and fury. A soft moan passed through my lips and my brow wrinkled as something began to seem off about what I saw surrounding me. It took a moment, but suddenly I realized the reason why the sun wasn’t searing my retinas. A dense patch of woods surrounded me, with branches still clinging to the last leaves of autumn. My eyes narrowed in disbelief. This meant I’d fallen asleep outside.

‘What the hell happened last night?’

The next startling revelation came as a slight shift in position rustled the leaves beneath my body. Lying on my side, I was in the middle of a clearing with a brook babbling somewhere in the distance. Birds were chirping, a cool breeze blew past, and oh my God, I wasn’t wearing any clothing, which should have caused me to bolt upright and start a frantic search for my shirt and pants. A strange thought piggybacked the previous one, though, and I could only think I should be freezing.

That’s when I became aware of the body lying beside me, pressed against my back. The arm draped across my waist tightened its hold on me and a pair of lips brushed my shoulder with feather-light kisses. When his hand pressed against my stomach, I inhaled sharply, tensing despite myself. I could have turned to face him, but something told me those head-splitting memories would return if I did.

Regardless, he already knew I was awake.

“Bon matin, chérie,” he said, his kisses stopping so he could nuzzle my neck. His warm breath caused prickles to erupt on my skin and soothing voice rang familiar, but I was stuck for his actual name. Not to mention, I couldn’t remember how I’d wound up in the woods with him in the first place.

“What…” I began, but stopped when images made it past the invisible dam holding them back, regardless of how much it made my temples throb. I remembered our conversation in the bar and the drunk, dizzy feeling that had accompanied the entire discussion. Talking to him had been like tip-toeing on the edge of the otherworldly, an experience which led to a whirlwind kiss and an expedition through town when I left to find him. I remembered strange lights paving the way to the forest, breadcrumbs leading me straight to Corbyn Marchand.

Corbyn. That was his real name. He’d told me that after I’d followed a…

“Wolf,” I said out loud. What started as a trickle turned quickly into a deluge. I moved in just the right way to reignite the searing pain on my shoulder, which played strangely off the pictures in my head. The light of the full moon; the sensation of Corbyn’s body on top of mine. I remembered being a more-than-willing participant to one hell of a romp. The final picture splashed me with cold water, though, forcing me to bolt upright and inch away from the man lying beside me. He looked up at me, confused, his eyes widening when he caught sight of whatever panicked expression I shot back at him.

“Charlotte?” he asked, sliding cautiously toward me. “What is the ma…?”

“Don’t you dare!” I shouted back at him, lifting a hand to stop him. My chest rose and fell with frantic breaths as that last memory kept playing over and over again. Sure, the gentle look was in his eyes again and the beautiful man I became consumed with was the one peering back at me, but I could see it all now. Lucidly. And when I glanced at my shoulder, my stomach heaved at having it confirmed in all its gory detail. Deep cuts had barely scabbed over. Dried blood smeared from wounds which resembled bite marks.

He had screwed me into euphoria. Then, the sadistic son of a bitch had sunk his teeth into me.

I lurched backward, ignoring the sudden chill which collided with me once I was out of arm’s length. “I have no idea who the hell you are,” I said, “But…”

He reached for me again. “Ma chérie, please let me explain.”

“Don’t touch me!”

The outburst made Corbyn jump. Guilt overwhelmed his expression while he settled back onto the ground. I fought for a moment not to take pity on him, scrambling to my feet and collecting my clothing when determined not to care about his feelings. My body ached in protest. The landscape tipped for a moment, a dizzy spell threatening to knock me back onto my ass before I could make it five steps away. I took a deep breath and started to put on my underwear.

“Charlotte, where are you going?”

“I’m getting away from here.” After adjusting the waistband, I reached for my jeans next and fanned them out, continuing to talk while stumbling into each leg hole. “You’d better not follow me, either, or I swear I’ll find a rock to beat you with before you can get any other freaky ideas in your head.”

“I’m not sure what you mean…”

“What the hell do you call this? A love nip?” I pointed at my shoulder, my bra dangling from my hand. With an exasperated huff, I fumbled with the straps, wincing as one dug into the cuts and sent fresh jabs of pain shooting the length of my arm. Slowly, and gingerly, I reached behind my back to secure the clasps and turned away from Corbyn in search of my shirt. When I found it in a pile of leave, I picked it up and shook it out.

“Is this what you do?” I continued while sliding my head through the neck hole of my shirt. “Do you lure strange women out here and leave marks all over them? You must have a difficult time getting past the first date.”

“Non, ma petite, I’ve told you already about my life.”

“Right. Arranged marriages, if you were even telling the truth about that.”

“I was telling you the truth.” He sighed. “Charlotte, please stay. There’s a lot I need to explain to you.”

“Oh, no. No way. I’m going home.”

Corbyn stood, but only to begin dressing himself. I didn’t give a damn about it, either. My shirt was on and I had already started walking briskly away from the clearing. Snatching my boots from the ground as I walked past them, I grabbed my coat, too, and didn’t bother to put either on. Instead, I launched into a jog, heading in the direction of the creek I’d first heard when I woke.

My newfound stalker wasn’t so easily deterred, though. I heard the sound of leaves crunching and footsteps closing in on me. “Charlotte!” Corbyn yelled. “Please, stop. I promise, I won’t touch you. I need to talk to you, though.”

I shook my head, letting that suffice as an answer. Half-tripping in the process, I slid one book on while still walking and lost my balance when trying to put on the other. It slipped into place easily once I was sitting, but a quick glance over my shoulder revealed Corbyn had started toward me, his shirt hanging open and his eyes set on me. I scrambled to a stand, and began to run despite how much that worsened my dizzy spell.

“Charlotte!”

Clenching my eyes shut for a second, I blocked out the sound of his voice with another, more adamant, head shake before opening my eyes again. I side-stepped a tree, staring at the horizon while hearing the sound of the creek growing louder, the running water visible in the distance. Beyond a dense collection of trees and past another clearing lay my salvation and I thought to myself that if I could follow it to civilization, I could leave this whole mess behind me. The thought had me so focused, I didn’t think about where Corbyn had gotten to.

Which is why I yelped and slid onto my ass when he suddenly appeared in front of me.

His eyes continued entreating me. I could have sworn I saw a flicker of golden turn back into an amber brown when he paced closer to me. “Ma chérie, at least listen to me before you go running off,” he pled. “There’s something you need to know.”

“Nope,” I said. Regardless of how he had managed to race ahead of me, I spun around and ran in the opposite direction. I couldn’t tell if it was the dizziness or the sense of utter surreal surrounding me, but I felt like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, only now, I began to realize I had made it through the looking glass. ‘Nevermind that,’ I scolded myself. I wasn’t going to stick around for explanations. Whatever mystical crap he’d worked on me, I added, I wasn’t about to let him do that to me again.

Only, he had already raced in front of me again. I came to an abrupt stop when I saw him strolling toward me with a hand extended. My chest burned, lungs gasping for breath, and while I hadn’t realized how hard I’d started to run, I struggled against realizing the pounding in my chest wasn’t just because of physical exertion. “How did you do that?” I asked.

“That is what I need to talk to you about,” he said. While he inched closer, I walked backward, keeping my eyes locked on him lest he figure out some way to sneak up behind me. He held out a hand to me. “Ma petite, if I need to chase you around, I will, but you need to listen to me.”

“Why? So you can play one of your tricks on me again.” I grabbed for a thin branch, breaking it from its tree and holding it out like a weapon. “I bet you hypnotized me somehow.”

Corbyn furrowed his brow. “What makes you think that?”

“Everything feels fuzzy. I don’t know how, but you’re messing with my brain.”

“I promise, I’m doing nothing like that.”

“Then explain last night to me.”

He looked genuinely confused. “What about last night?”

“How did you get me out here? What’s with the weird lighting on your face and how are you running ahead of me?” Before he could answer, I stopped, thrusting the branch in front of me and narrowing my eyes at him. “Did you drug me?”

“No. No, never. Charlotte.” He stopped walking, the look on his face turning serious with a frown creeping across his lips. Taking one, last step closer, he leaned his weight on a tree and this time, the way his demeanor sank was enough to get me to lower the branch and listen. Corbyn folded his arms across his bare chest. “Mon amour, I have special abilities, but I can’t hypnotize people and I would never take away your free will. If I could, I would stop you from running away, even if I had to let you go after I explained myself.”

I stared at him for a tense moment, cursing at myself for believing him, no matter how crazy he sounded. Besides, I told myself, if the man had the ability to run ahead of me like that, he’d probably be more apt to pin me down if he had ulterior motives. “Alright, then tell me what happened,” I said, my stomach tying in knots, anticipating whatever he was about to say.

Corbyn pointed in the direction of the creek. “Sit with me?” he asked. “Please?” When he chanced a step closer, I inched away again, but when he retreated, I relaxed. His eyes flicked to the branch, which only made me grip onto it tighter. Once he’d resigned himself to the fact that he hadn’t earned my trust back, he frowned again and walked toward where I’d been headed in the first place.

I followed, making absolutely certain to keep a healthy distance between us. This meant an occasional tree or two separating us along the way. At first, we spent our walk in silence, until Corbyn bent his head, studying the ground as he spoke. “You said last night that you didn’t know what you believed, so I won’t ask if you accept the existence of the supernatural. I’ll tell you what I am and let you make your own conclusions.” He stole a glance at me. “I belong to something called the wolfen. We’re able to exist in both human and wolf form, though your people usually call us werewolves or lycanthropes.”

I nodded, but didn’t respond otherwise. Corbyn paused in favor of waiting until we’d arrived at the creek, situating himself on a large rock by the water and draping the coat he hadn’t bothered to put on across his lap. Sitting down on a different boulder much further away, I shook away a sudden wave of nausea, trying to let the world right itself again before I said anything. Something was wrong. I knew this, and yet, I couldn’t put my finger on what.

When I glanced back at Corbyn, I discovered him eyeing me with a lot of concern. He decided not to pursue it, though. “I’ll spare you the long stories,” he said. “We have histories and myths, but I can tell you more about them later, if you decide you want to hear them. For now, last evening…” He trailed off, seemingly to think, before speaking again. “What you’ve been experiencing is something I’ve felt for the last decade, ma petite. Something outside of us has been pulling us together and last night, fate finally pulled us together.”

“That’s a lot of mystical bullshit,” I countered.

“If it is, then deny you’ve felt it.”

Opening my mouth to do that, I remembered lights and magic, and that sense of being whisked away into the unknown the night beforehand. As much as it made me sick to relive the experience of making love to him, I thought about how wild and uninhibited I’d been and knew something else had been to blame for it. Regardless of how much I’d wanted it.

When I failed to respond, Corbyn continued. “I wasn’t lying about the arranged marriage, Charlotte. I ran away before the wedding and came here to hide. That I found you on the same night I was supposed to be married isn’t coincidence. I’ve tried to tell my people I wasn’t meant for her, but they wouldn’t listen?”

“Why?” I asked, in part out of genuine concern.

“Because I’ve run away,” he said. “Because nobody believes me when I talk about the visions I’ve had of the future. Other reasons, that aren’t worth talking about.” Corbyn picked at a leaf that had adhered to his coat, the action making me think of times when I’d complained to a friend about my parental problems. “I’m their only son. Le Fils du Marchand. The heir of the leader of the wolfen people. The Marchand name is important. With it comes the burden to continue our line.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So, they picked your wife and you were stuck with their decision?”

“More or less. We’ve fought over this for some time, though, because their choices have been all wrong. Political posturing, at times. Like being a prince in Europe.” Corbyn’s eyes returned to me. “Like I said, though… I have visions of the future.”

Something about the way he said that made my stomach twist again. “What about it?”

Corbyn shifted his position to face me. “I can’t control when or how it comes upon me, but it’s what led me to run away. I saw a woman in my dreams ten years ago, when my parents last demanded I settle on a wife, of an outsider who I was supposed to marry. My parents would not acknowledge it because they hate outsiders, but I went to find her anyway.

“When I did not find her that first time, I returned and began to doubt even my own gifts. Still… J’ai pensé tout le temps à toi.” He didn’t bother to translate it, but I knew somehow it had to do with me by the way our eyes met. “And then, two months ago, when I allowed myself to be pulled into this betrothal, I had this vision again. It reminded me what I had been searching for, like the goddess was warning me not to make a terrible mistake.”

I swallowed hard and felt the dizziness resurface as my heart skipped a beat. “The woman in my dreams was you, good Charlotte Walker,” he said. “I’ve been chasing you for years and finally found you.”

“Well, if it helps any, I was in high school the last time you left. It’s no wonder you didn’t find me.” I shook my head, unable to believe how much I’d bought into his story. For as far-fetched as it was to think I might be talking to a wolfen prince, something about the magic of the night threatened to return again, the memory bringing back the throbbing in my head. I retreated and looked downward. “Nothing about this makes sense. How you know my name. Dreams and the strange feeling I had when I was first with you. And yet, you say you weren’t the one doing that to me.”

“I did nothing to you, ma chérie. I let the goddess speak and it looks like she revealed her magic to you. Like I said, I don’t have the ability to make you act outside of your will.” He paused. “Now, do you see why I asked about destiny?”

My eyes lifted to meet his again. “What do you mean?”

“Whatever led you was leading me. It’s brought us to the point we’re at right now.”

I sighed and moved my shoulder when it began to ache again. Whatever expression I had on my face, it brought the concerned expression to Corbyn’s face again, pairing it with what looked like an attempt to restrain himself from rushing to my side. “Are you alright?” he asked.

“It bothers me on and off. I’ve been feeling really dizzy, too.” I smiled, if only to set his mind at ease. “I know the sex was good and all, but did you have to bite me so hard?”

While I’d made the comment in good humor, Corbyn didn’t laugh and only looked more worried after I’d said it. He finally gave in and rose to his feet, walking to make up the distance between us. This time, I didn’t flinch away. “There’s something else I need to tell you, Charlotte,” he began. I shifted over on my seat to give him a place to settle and watched as he draped his coat on his lap again.

“You’re scaring me, Corbyn,” I said.

The confession caused him to flash a quick smile at me. If he’d been trying to comfort me, he failed. “Do you know what it’s like to wait so long for something, chérie? Knowing that it’s been woven into your future, but not knowing when or how you’ll find it?”

“No, I can’t say that I do.”

“I wanted so much to tell you everything last night. If I could have painted it in one, large picture I would’ve, but I didn’t think you would understand. Or even believe me.” He kept his eyes lifted to engage mine, though he looked to be fighting the urge to glance away. I thought he might have even looked chagrined. A newfound sense of dread crawled up my spine, making the dizziness worse.

Corbyn, on the other hand, took a deep breath and soldiered though. “When we take someone as our wife,” he explained, “After the ceremony, the husband bites his mate on the shoulder to stake his claim on her. This isn’t something we do lightly. Once two people are mated, only death can separate them, and if one of them isn’t wolfen kind, they will shortly become so.”

His eyes penetrated mine as my heart skipped a beat and my throat became dry. “By the next full moon, the change will be complete and you’ll become what I am, Charlotte. You’ll be wolfen, too.”

While the words only bounced off me at first – with shock acting as the barrier – the longer the thought processed, the more lightheaded I became. Another wave of throbbing pain shot from my shoulder as I brought my hand to my head, only serving to make matters worse. Before I knew it, the world went black and Corbyn reached for me to catch me in his arms.

My eyes rolled back just as the landscape began to spiral.

Within seconds, I was unconscious again.