One week later, Damian received a phone call.
"This is Haven Inn. Are you Damian Blackwood? A woman named Yara Vale is dead. Please come collect her ashes."
Damian tossed his phone onto the desk and leaned back in his chair, shutting his eyes.
'What kind of game is she playing now? Faking her own death? She really has outdone herself this time.'
Then he remembered the phone call from a week earlier.
Her voice had not sounded right. It had not been the hoarseness of a cold, but something deeper, a weakness that seemed to seep up from her bones. It reminded him of other werewolves he had watched die, the way their words came out short of breath, each syllable broken by a pause, as if the next breath might never come.
Something clutched at Damian's chest.
He drove over immediately.
It
