“What you really are?” I asked, my hand still pressed to the wall. His reply had created more questions than it had answered. “You’re telling me you’re a…a…”

“I think you’re looking for the word werewolf,” said Tristan, disdain dripping from the syllables. “That’s what people have called us for centuries. At least, people who don’t believe in us or know anything of our kind. People who want to turn us into myths, to scare kids and make money off of horror movies.”

“You’re actually telling me that’s what you are?” In spite of what I’d witnessed, I couldn’t quite get my head around the words. I felt like I’d been thrown into a lake full of ice water. The shock was almost too much to take. “I mean, I know I saw what I saw, but I’m finding it really hard to swallow.”

To my surprise, Tristan turned and looked at Marcus, who was standing by the door now, staring at me with a concerned expression. “She doesn’t know about you, either, does she, Mr. Granville?” Tristan turned my way and nodded back towards my roommate. “Your friend here has been keeping secrets from you, too. Secrets that have put you in danger.”

“You’re one to talk,” Marcus hissed at him. “Maybe you should tell her about your past. Maybe she’d be interested to know that.”

“Silence, Lesser,” Tristan hissed, and if I didn’t know him better, I would have said that Marcus cowered, shrinking and submitting to the other man. It was the second time I’d heard that L-word used. It struck me as degrading. Yet Marcus didn’t react, didn’t retaliate. It was as though he’d expected it, like it was a title he was accustomed to. “Leave us,” Tristan added. “I want to talk to her alone.”

Without another word, Marcus grabbed his jacket and walked towards the door, like a trained animal.

“You’re sending him outside? But that…that thing’s out there,” I cried out.

“It’s fine,” Marcus said, his tone emotionless. “I’ll be safe. Craster has no interest in hurting me.” With that, he headed out into the hallway.

“That thing doesn’t really want to hurt anyone but me,” said Tristan as the door closed. “Marcus will be fine. Look, Ariana—why don’t you sit down and we can talk?”

Half of me wanted to tell him to fuck off and die, for everything he’d put me through. But the other half—the half that always won out—was too curious to actually kick him out. How could I possibly let such a creature walk out of my life without giving me some answers? If nothing was ever going to be the same again, I should at least understand why.

“Fine,” I said, moving over to the couch. I avoided letting myself get too close to him. It wasn’t that I was afraid; in fact some part of me trusted him more than I ever had before, now that I was beginning to understand his monumental secret. It was that I still wanted to punish him for his lack of faith in me.

When I’d sat down, he moved to stand by the window and fixed those eyes—the eyes that now reminded me of the animal that lived inside him—on my own.

“You want to know why I didn’t tell you,” he said. “Why I didn’t just come out with it when I had the chance.”

“Yes,” I said. “I want to know why you didn’t trust me.”

Tristan shifted his weight as though he wasn’t entirely comfortable in his skin right now. “Fine, then,” he said, “imagine this scenario. I met a beautiful woman in a bar a few nights ago. So captivating, so attractive to me that I didn’t even mind that she spilled an ice-cold drink all over me. She was nervous, afraid of me, for some reason she couldn’t quite define.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but quickly realized I had no defense against the accusation. He was right on all counts.

“I had a choice. Either keep my secret to myself, or tell her that I can change into a large wolf at the drop of a hat. Not just any old wolf, either. One who rules over all of New York, like an invisible watcher. One more powerful than any man in this city. A wolf capable of amassing an army at a moment’s notice. What do you think the beautiful woman would have done if I’d said those things?”

I wanted to tell him that I would have believed him. Trusted him. Opened my heart to him.

But it would all have been a lie.

“I would have said you were insane,” I confessed. “I would have walked away and never wanted to see you again. At the very least, I would have accused you of making a sick joke at my expense.”

“Of course. Even so, I was willing to open up to you, because I could feel the connection between us.” He made a low, throaty noise like a frustrated growl and turned towards the window, grabbing hold of the sill. “I wanted to tell you last night, but then all hell broke loose. My world is a dangerous place, and I realized that I’d pulled you too deep inside it by getting close to you.” He turned to face me again. “Do you know where I was last night?” he asked.

“All I know is that you weren’t with me. Were you…” I swallowed hard, only now beginning to learn to confront the truth. “Were you…I mean, was your wolf…”

“I had to deal with an enemy,” he said. “An enemy of Kara’s and my kind.”

A bolt of shock hit my system yet again. “Kara’s kind? You mean she’s like you?” A pang of guilt slammed me in the chest. No wonder she seemed so different, so strange and otherworldly. I’d judged her as though she was human when the truth was that she was in on the secret all along.

Tristan shook his head. “No, not quite like me,” he said. “She’s what’s called a Valkyrie.”

“A Valkyrie? Like the flying warrior women from myths?” Images of women on flying mounts raced through my head. A painting that I’d seen once, or a story read in a book.

“Not from myths, no. She’s quite real. As you know, having met her.”

My chest heated with the memory of seeing her last night, Tristan’s arms around her. “So what I saw,” I said, “You…she…”

“She lost someone very close to her last night. One of her sisters—another Valkyrie. The battle was difficult, and she fought valiantly.” Tristan looked away, but I could see the pain in his face, the tension in his neck. “Kara’s heart was broken for not being there to see her last breath.”

“Oh my God,” I said, for the first time realizing the gravity of what had happened. “You left her at the house with me so she could protect me. She would normally have been with you. If I hadn’t been there…”

He didn’t reply at first. Only the slightest nod told me that I was right. “I couldn’t risk any harm coming to you,” he said after a time. “I couldn’t lose you, not like that. Not when you and I had come so close to….” He stopped talking for a moment, his hands balling into fists and releasing rapidly. “So yes, she stood on watch, looking over you. It was on my command that she was severed from her sister.”

I rose to my feet and walked over to him, and for once it was I who initiated our touch. I reached out and pulled him close, wrapping my arms around his neck. He held onto me, his hot torso pressing into mine, his arms locking tight around me. He seemed to need the contact as much as I did. “Tristan, I’m so sorry,” I said. “About Kara, about everything. I wish I’d known. Promise me that you’ll let me in from now on. Promise you’ll tell her that my heart aches for her.”

“I promise,” he whispered in my ear. “I promise that I’ll do everything I can to ease your transition into my world, Ariana. If you still want it. Because I do. I want you with me.”

“I want it,” I said without hesitation. Somehow, the initial shock had passed. He was no wolf, no monster. In my mind, he was just a man.

A very special man.

We pulled apart. I led him back over to the couch, and we both sat down silently.

“How did this happen?” I asked. “How did you become…?” I wasn’t sure if it was rude or horrible to ask the question.

“It happened a long time ago. I was marked by another man, one who attacked me. He wanted me to suffer for a foolish thing I’d done. I was thirty-three at the time.”

“Wait—you said this happened a long time ago,” I sputtered.

“Yes. Two centuries, in fact.”

My heart began to beat faster. It seemed that my capacity for shock wasn’t quite at an end, not yet. “I’m shitty at math, but I think you just told me you’re two-hundred and thirty-three?” I asked, my jaw dropping like it was made of lead.

He nodded.

“You’re a cradle robber, then,” I said.

Tristan let out the first laugh I’d heard out of him in what felt like decades. “Yes, I guess I am. I’m not so much into women over a hundred and fifty, so I figured you’d have to do.”

“Okay, well, I’m just going to have to let this sink in,” I said. “But there’s something else. That man who came here—what did he want with me?”

I could see Tristan’s jaw clench, something I was learning to associate with his protective instinct. “He wanted to hurt me,” he said. “By going after you.”

“Who was he? I mean, it sounds like he’s Marcus’s boss. I don’t get how he has anything to do with you.”

“He is your housemate’s boss, yes. But he also has a boss, and that boss, Krane…is my brother.”

“Holy shit. You have a brother?”

“I do,” he said, nodding.

I remembered that Marcus and the other man had mentioned the name when I’d first stumbled upon them. “Is he as old as you are?” I asked.

“A few years younger, but yes. He’s pretty ancient.”

“He’s a werewolf too?”

“We prefer shifter, actually. And yes, he is a shifter, but not a wolf.”

“There’s a story here,” I said. “I can tell.”

Tristan nodded again. “I won’t tell you everything just now. Suffice it to say that when he found out what I am—how powerful—he wanted me to change him. He wanted me to change the rest of our family, too, when he realized how long a shifter could live. A rift opened up between us that’s never sealed in all these years.”

“It sounds to me like you didn’t want to change him.”

“No. I refused. I knew the curse that it was to live inside my flesh. There’s more to it than simply moving back and forth between man and beast. Being a shifter is crippling, at least for a time. Painful in so many ways that I can’t begin to describe it. I could feel my humanity ripping itself away from me over the months and years. Cravings hit me, a desire to kill, to hurt those I loved. So I told Krane there was no way I would curse him in the same way.”

“But someone else did,” I said. “Someone else changed him.”

Tristan nodded. “When Krane couldn’t convince me to turn him, he went to a very powerful man named Drak. He convinced the man to do what I’d refused to do. Convinced him that he would fight for him, be an ally to his cause.”

“But you said your brother’s not a wolf shifter.”

“He’s not,” Tristan said, rolling his fingers into fists again. “He’s far more dangerous than a wolf. But he does have some wolf allies. He uses them for his own means. Shifters, that is, and Lessers.”

“That word—it’s what you called Marcus,” I said. “What does it mean?”

Tristan pressed his head into the back of the couch and stared up at the ceiling. “A Lesser is a person who has the blood of a shifter in him, but who can’t shift. A creature at the mercy of others. It would take a bonding with another shifter to change Marcus, to evolve him fully into what he’s meant to be. People like my brother use Lessers, with the promise that they’ll find them what they need, once they’ve proven their loyalty. They hold them as slaves in the meantime, force them to submit to their will.”

I swallowed hard, remembering that Marcus had defied his boss by shielding me. “But he’ll be in trouble,” I said. “He betrayed Craster to protect me.”

“He did,” Tristan replied, “and I should thank him for that. He may have saved your life, and he’ll be punished for it. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll distance himself from Craster.”

“He may need your help to do that,” I said.

“I’ll help in any way that I can.”