Stonehaven was quiet as I crept downstairs to the living room. I grabbed a throw off the back of the sofa and settled on it in front of the fireplace. I added another log to the burning embers of the fire Nick had set earlier that evening. As the log caught fire, I stared into the flickering flames, and thought about all the changes my life had undergone recently.
Just a few short months ago, I had been living a relatively happy life with my human boyfriend, Philip McAdams, in Toronto. My career as a photographer was taking off, I was in a relationship with a wonderful man, and whenever I needed to make a connection with someone who really knew me, I had Logan close by to talk to.
Trouble was, I know now, it would never have lasted. As much as I like to pretend that I'm still human, I'm not. I stopped being human when another man I loved, betrayed my trust in him, and turned me into a monster.
I am a werewolf. A female werewolf. The only one in existence as far as my pack knows.
Clayton Danvers was the first man I ever really trusted. After the years of cruel abuse I suffered at the hands of various miscreants when I was a teenager, I never thought I would ever be able to love a man, let alone willingly allow him to lay hands on me. Clay changed all of that for me and I fell for him hard.
Three years ago, he took me home to Stonehaven to meet Jeremy, his adopted father, and our pack Alpha. The visit went horribly wrong, when Clay bit me, and I had spent the next several months learning how to adjust to living life as a werewolf.
I hated Clay for what he had done to me, and as soon as I could, I fled Stonehaven, vowing never to return again. I told myself that Jeremy, Clay, and my pack brothers didn't mean anything to me. For over a year, I had managed to live my life without any interference from the pack, until now.
I was all set to ignore Jeremy's commands to return to Bear Valley, until Philip happened to see one of his texts to 'come home'. Carefully, I fabricated a familial relationship between Jeremy and I. Philip, being extremely close to his mother and sisters, had urged me to go home and be of help to Jeremy in any way I could. Reluctantly, I agreed.
I came home to Stonehaven with the intention of doing whatever it was that Jeremy needed me to do, and then fleeing back to my life in Toronto. None of us could have foreseen the chain of events that followed. The mutts attacking us. Peter and Antonio dying. Philip learning the hard way that werewolves existed, and that I was one of them. Rachel disappearing, and us finding out that Malcolm Danvers was very much alive.
It was Jeremy's confession a few weeks earlier that was mind blowing. He told me that he had ordered Clay to kill me on the day we met three years ago. When we were coming up the drive to the house, he had been coming back from a run in the woods that surround Stonehaven. He had thought I had seen him in mid-change and knew I had to be eliminated in order to protect the pack.
Clay, unwilling to lose me forever, had gone against Jeremy's order, and bitten me instead. He had taken great risks to protect me. Jeremy's disapproval, the chance I wouldn't survive the transformation from human to werewolf, and the very real possibility I would hate him forever.
He was right about me hating him. I had said so many horrible things to him over the years. I had accused him of not being any better than all the other men who had betrayed and abused me over the course of my life. I had run away from him and found a replacement for him in Philip.
When all along, he had been keeping the words of his promise to me, on the day he proposed. He had promised to always put my needs and wants ahead of his own. He would always love and protect me, even if it meant giving his life for mine.
I didn't deserve him. I had always wanted someone to love me with their whole heart and soul, yet at the first sign of chinks in my gallant werewolf's armor, I had turned tail and run away.
Not anymore. I am done with running away. Stonehaven is my home and I belong here. The pack is my family and Clay is the man I love. From now on, until the time we are permanently parted from one another, I am going to prove to Clay that his love in me is justified.