Derek glared at his stepfather. “It’s not a show, dammit! It’s my life, and it’s hell not knowing what to expect! Do you have any idea what it’s like waiting for whatever the hell is going to happen?” He sprang to his feet, hands clenched at his sides. “I can feel it building inside me, waiting to explode.”
“Derek,” Logan said, “I didn’t mean—”
“What if it turns me into a beast I can’t control? Dammit, it’s hard enough to control what I am now!”
Mara laid her hand on his arm but he shook it off.
Moving to the fireplace, Derek braced his hands on the mantel, staring down at the ashes in the hearth.
“I’m afraid,” he admitted, his voice barely audible. “Afraid of what I might do to her in a moment of weakness.” He picked up the fireplace poker, his hands tightening around it until his knuckles were white with the strain. “Afraid I’ll lose control.”
“Derek, listen to me—”
“No!” He rounded on his mother. “You never should have brought her here!” The poker bent in his hands. “If I hurt her . . .”
“Derek,” Mara said quietly, “I think she’s the answer. You care for her. You’ve protected her. . . .”
“Sure, when I’m myself.” He shoved the poker into his mother’s hands. “I want you to lock me up tomorrow before dark.”
“You need to drink from her the night before the full moon.”
He wanted to refuse but his mother was right. Sheree’s blood satisfied him like nothing else. Perhaps if he drank from her before he turned into a werewolf, her blood would suppress the urge to kill.
Moving to the window, he stared out at the darkness. He breathed in and his nostrils filled with the scent of rain. A storm was coming. In the distance, a deer rested in a thicket, while an owl hunted the night for prey.
Prey. It was all around him. Outside, the deer stirred. Before he realized what he was doing, Derek was at the deer’s side, his fangs buried deep in the animal’s throat. The blood was thick and rich and hot and he drank it all, drank until he was sated with the taste and the smell.
When sanity returned, he rocked back on his heels, horrified by what he had done. He glanced at the moon, barely visible behind the gathering clouds. But he didn’t have to see it to know it was there. He could feel its pull on his preternatural senses, feel it calling to the beast lurking inside him.
If he was capable of this when the moon was not yet full, what would he do when its pull was at its strongest, and he at his most vulnerable?
Would animal blood be enough to satisfy him then?
Mara stood at the window, scarcely aware of Logan’s arm around her waist. She didn’t have to see what had happened to know what Derek had done. She had sensed his overpowering need to kill, the deer’s panic, her son’s remorse. Ever since he was a child, Derek had loved the deer, the squirrels, and the rabbits that roamed the countryside around her home in the Hollywood Hills. He had once nursed a wounded fawn back to life. He had occasionally fed on animals, but never any of the deer.
“He’ll be all right,” Logan said, his voice pitched above the noise of the sudden downpour and the thunder that accompanied it as the storm broke.
“Do you really believe that?” She leaned against him, grateful for his strength, his unwavering devotion. “Because I don’t.”
“Maybe it’s time to pay a call on those two old broads,” he suggested.
He ducked out of the way when she whirled around. But instead of hitting him, playfully or otherwise, as he expected, she threw her arms around him.
“Logan, I could kiss you!” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sheree knew a moment of disappointment when she woke alone in bed the following evening. She had hoped Derek would spend the day at her side; now, she wondered where he was.
There was an odd feeling to the house as she tiptoed down the hall, thinking she might spend some time in Derek’s bed, in Derek’s arms. There was only one more night until the full moon. She knew he was worried about what he might become, what he might do. Perhaps her presence would offer him some comfort.
But his room was empty.
She paused in front of the bedroom Mara and Logan shared but lacked the nerve to knock on their door.
In the kitchen, she tried to determine what was causing her uneasiness. And then she knew. She was feeling the same tension the vampires in the house were feeling.
Sitting at the table, nibbling on a slice of bread and jelly, she was struck by the realization that she was sharing a house with three vampires. And that no one knew where she was, or who she was with. And that her cell phone was dead, and even if it was working, she could be dead before help arrived, should she need it. It was a sobering thought.