The Biker’s Lycan Princess

[Scarlett] "I'm sorry, honey, but you know you're not allowed to attend parties." My mother was doing the thing where she talked through the door instead of just opening it. Well, I couldn't blame her, not with the door being locked and all. I was in the middle of my mascara, so I didn't respond immediately. I blinked at my reflection and kept going with a steady grip, because nothing was worth a smudge. "Scarlett." "I heard you, Mom." She didn't leave. She never left until we'd actually argued and reached some falsehood of settling things, where we both backed down just enough to breathe again. And most days, I didn't even feel like going through the motions of it. Today was one of those. Here's the thing about being the girl whose family moves every six months: you get very good at having the same argument in different cities, different houses, but the same conversation playing out on loop like a song you've heard so many times it stopped hitting the same way. I'd had this exact one in Portland. Twice. Before that, Savannah. And before that? Wherever the hell we were before Savannah, because honestly, I'd lost track somewhere around city number four. I'd repeated my senior year so many times I could probably stand at the front of a classroom and teach it myself. The embarrassing part wasn't even repeating it. The embarrassing part was that I was nineteen and still living like I was enrolled in some kind of juvenile protection program, no phone, freedom, or even a reasonable explanation. "We've talked about this," my mother continued through the door. She was right, we absolutely had. We'd talked about the parties I wasn't allowed to attend, the friends I'd made and then had to ghost because we were always leaving before anything real could form, the phone she refused to get me because apparently, that was where she drew the line on basic human necessities in the twenty-first century. "It feels like we're always running from something," I told her, dragging the mascara wand upward one more time. "Don't be silly." "I'm not being silly." I set the wand down and looked at the door like I could see through it. "Did you commit some terrible crime? Is someone actually coming after us, because at this point I'd genuinely rather know." "We're not running." She blurted it out faster than she probably meant to, which did absolutely nothing to reassure me. Then she caught herself, laughing a little to smooth it over. "If we actually were, we'd have changed our names, wouldn't we? So don't joke like that." I turned back to the mirror and said nothing. She took my silence as sulking. I uncapped my lipstick and drew it on slowly, the deep brown-red shade that made my chestnut hair stand out. This was the part of my routine I actually liked. Everything else in my life felt like constantly living under someone else's rules, but whenever I put on some red lipstick and decided to do something for myself—I was truly happy. "Is this about that biker?" she tried, and I could hear the pity threading through her voice, like I was some naive little girl making poor decisions. "Honey, he's a gangster." I almost dragged the lipstick clean across my cheek. "Drake," I replied, "is not a gangster." "He has tattoos and—" "Mom." "Scarlett, he is clearly much older than you, he rides a motorcycle, which is genuinely dangerous, and I just don't think—" "He's twenty-four," I cut in, softer than I intended. "And he actually listens when I talk. Which, in case you hadn't noticed, is not something I encounter a whole lot." She went quiet after that. I used the silence to pull open my desk drawer and retrieve the phone Drake had gotten me two weeks ago, the one currently living a secret life tucked between my old journals and a notebook I hadn't opened since Portland. The screen lit up when I touched it. >>Drake: Getting bored without you. You coming or not? I smiled at it the way you smile at something that's yours. But that was also the sad thing; he wasn't mine yet. I hadn't managed to muster up the courage to tell him how I felt, but that ended tonight. The part that hurt? Drake treated me like a little sister. >>Me: on my way. I tucked it into the waistband of my leather pants and half-listened as my mother shifted tactics on the other side of the door. "What if we did movie night tomorrow instead?" Her voice had gone soft in that specific way it did when she knew she was losing ground. "Just the two of us. I'll make it really nice like the good old days." Something in my chest pulled a little. It was the same offer she used to make when I was eight and upset about anything: a bad day at school, a friend I'd been forced to leave, or even when I got hurt. The gesture hadn't changed even though I had, and she hadn't quite noticed yet. "Sure," I called back. "I guess that doesn't sound too bad." "Yeah?" "Yeah, Mom. Goodnight." I heard her exhale slowly, the relief in it unmistakable. "Sweet dreams, honey," she returned, and then her footsteps crossed the hall, descended the stairs, and faded. I counted to fifteen, then crossed to the window, unlatched it, and pushed it open into the dark. The party she'd been apologizing for not letting me attend was tonight. I'd told her tomorrow on purpose, which wasn't my finest moment morally, but I'd made peace with it. Getting out was not as smoothly executed as I'd choreographed in my head. The latch caught on my leather pants as I swung my leg through, and I heard the seam split along the inner thigh with a sound that was way too loud for the quiet yard below. I mouthed a curse that would have horrified my mother, dropped to the ledge outside, then down to the ground, landing with all the grace of someone who had definitely not done this before. I smoothed my hair back, checked that the phone was still secure, and walked to the end of the street to flag down a cab. The driver didn't say anything when I got into the passenger's seat, which I didn't mind at first. The city moved past the windows in beautiful shades of light, and I was happy enough to sit with it. But somewhere past the third traffic light, I noticed that the silence wasn't the comfortable kind. He wasn't just quiet, he was absent. Eyes forward, hands loose on the wheel, jaw slack in a way that made something in the back of my neck prickle. He was staring at the road but not really seeing it. Something was wrong. "Hey," I ventured, leaning toward the partition. "You alright up there?" He didn't answer or blink. The truck came from the left, headlights swamping the windshield, horn tearing through the quiet, and the driver looked like he had no intention of dodging. My hands moved completely without my permission. I grabbed the wheel through the gap and wrenched it hard, and then there was nothing but noise: tires screeched as the cab collided against something immovable. It was definitely a wall. "Dammit..." I raised my head slowly. The airbag had deployed on the driver's side and he was buried in it, unmoving. I reached for my phone with shaking fingers, looked up through the fractured windshield to call for help, and that was when I saw the shape pinned under the front of the cab. There was a woman crushed between the car and the wall, her blood splattered across the disfigured hood. She wasn't moving... Huh? What had I done? The pain arrived before I could process what I was looking at, and it had nothing to do with the crash. It came from somewhere internal, from the shoulder down through the arm and back up into the spine, like my bones were being reorganized against my will. "Arghhh!" Bone began shifting against bone in a way that made my vision blur around the edges. I was horrified, unable to comprehend what was happening, but more than that—I wanted my mommy. I grabbed the headrest, trying to breathe through it until my spine arched of its own accord. My vision caught the rearview mirror because it was the only thing in my line of sight. But instead of brown eyes, I saw unfamiliar golden ones and fangs growing painfully out from my mouth. It was that moment that her mother's overprotectiveness finally made sense. We weren't running from something. We were running from me.