Three Sexy Wolves and I

Chapter 4- Ten Months Later

Ten Months Later

Amelia swayed to the hard beat of the music playing on repeat in her earbuds, falling into the familiar, seductive trance that always came when she found the perfect song to match whatever weapon on which she was working.

This one was about playing with fire, about dancing with your demons and feeling at home in your nightmares, even as they haunted you. It made her think of s*x with a dangerous, ocean-blue-eyed stranger and sweat-slicked bodies moving together in the darkness.

Amelia let those fantasies fuel her as she drew in the faint light of the moon shining through the single, high window, her pencil a blur across the page, bringing to life the image of a twisted dagger.

Her eyes felt gritty and her body longed for sleep, but this wasn’t the first time a dream about a new weapon design had awoken her in the middle of the night, and it wouldn’t be the last. She knew from experience she wouldn’t be able to get any rest until she had at least drawn the image from her mind, so she ignored the discomfort.

The silver lining to being alone was there was no one to bother her when she worked odd hours. The downside was there was no warm body waiting for her to come back to bed, and no one care if she exhausted herself on a new project.

No one to bring me a robe either, she thought with a shiver.

Cool air whispered across her exposed skin from the vent in the ceiling as she meticulously drew every detail of the incredibly complex design. The soft silk of her lingerie glided across her bare thighs, tickling her as she shifted position to lean farther over the sketchbook.

To an outsider looking in, she was sure she made a strange picture: a curvy, yet delicate-looking, young woman in a black silk and lace teddy sitting in a room full of power tools and instruments of death.

Thankfully, her closest neighbor was over a mile away, and no one knew where she lived, so there were no outsiders to catch a glimpse of her—one of the selling points of the rustic farmhouse when she bought it a couple of years ago. That it came with twenty-five acres of land was another, but the room in which she sat decided it.

The nondescript space looked more like an archaic dungeon than the ‘addition’ it was touted as, but what would have deterred most buyers had been a selling point for her. The moment she saw it, she knew it’d make the perfect workshop, complete with concrete floors and sheet metal walls. It was love at first sight, and she’d soon turned it into a refuge.

Even after years and years, the rest of her house was still littered in boxes waiting to be unpacked, but this space was immaculate, a safe haven away from the world into which she rarely allowed herself to venture.

Adorning the walls, weapons in various shapes and sizes glinted and glittered, the sharp blades catching the moonlight in an array of dazzling color, the custom-ordered metal from which they were made appearing as though it were crafted from thousands of tiny stars. Each one told a story, another sleepless night that bore its creation.

These weapons were for her own private stash, while the ones encapsulated in the stacks of boxes by the door were for the clients who funded her small business.

Straightening, she absently twirled a lock of her platinum blonde hair around her finger as she studied the flowing lines of the design she’d drawn.

It was the most complex weapon she’d ever attempted and was going to be hell to take. The twisted blade wasn’t one piece, as it appeared in the first sketch, but three that fit together seamlessly. A turn of the hilt would separate the large dagger into individual throwing knives, each perfectly weighted and balanced.

Glancing from the second sketch back to the first, Amelia frowned. When apart, the design etched into the metal was abstract, but when the three pieces came together, the image of a deadly snake formed, slithering around the hilt and up the blade.

Huh. That’s unexpected.

Lifting her head, she scanned the weapons decorating the walls. She knew each one better than the delicate white tattoos inked into her skin, and still, she looked to see if any boasted an animal in the design.

None did.

All of them had images carved into them, but they were nonsensical symbols—strange, meaningless things she didn’t understand, yet, couldn't resist engraving into every creation.

Dropping her gaze back to the sketchbook in front of her, she tapped her pencil against the edge of the paper.

You’re different, aren’t you, handsome?

There was something almost intimate about this piece, something… captivating.

She knew without question the serpent was just as important as the shape of the blade itself. It would be incomplete without every last sculpted feature. Wrong. Useless.

Her lips curved in anticipation of the challenge, her fingers already twitching to start shaping metal. Knowing she was too tired to work safely, she resisted the urge to jump up and get started and, instead, traced her fingers over the finished design.

The moment she skimmed across the snake’s head, the power she kept such a tight hold on burst out of her, pulsing in waves with enough force to rattle the walls and window.

Shocked, she doubled over and squeezed her eyes shut as a low, ragged moan slipped from her lips, audible even over the pounding music in her earbuds. The erotic image of the blue-eyed stranger became more vivid as molten need set her alight. A werewolf, or a lycan, she supposed. He was.

The flood of power felt like one hundred hands stroking her all at once, overwhelming her with a nearly forgotten pleasure. Panting, her entire body shaking, she tried to stop the flood and pull the electric waves of power back into herself.

Minutes that felt like hours passed as she worked to reverse the torrent, until finally, she assumed control once more, coiling the power deep within her chest and trapping it in the confines of a tight fist.

“What the f**k… ” she gasped, wiping away the sweat gliding down her temples before pulling the earbuds out and tossing them onto her workbench.

Nothing but silence greeted her as she caught her breath and looked around for an explanation she knew she wouldn’t find.

Amelia wasn’t… normal. She was a damn fae for a reason. Alone, a rogue with no family to call her own. That was what she wanted to believe.

There was a force inside her—power like a bottomless ocean just waiting to rise up and drown her.

She’d been normal, once. A regular kid with regular worries: keeping her grades up to stay on the honor roll. Volleyball practice. Fretting about not having the nice, name-brand things her friends had.

But, those days were long gone. Her worries now were much more grave.

She began to notice small differences the day she turned sixteen. Her grandmother was the first to show signs that something had changed. She’d thought they were just being extra attentive, at first. Even when their attention turned to fixation, and that fixation turned to obsession, she’d tried to ignore the signs, to find logical reasons for their strange behavior.

When her grandmother took her out of school and stopped letting her leave the house, denial turned to alarm. But, it wasn’t until her step-father began sneaking into her room at night to watch her sleep that she became truly frightened.

It got progressively worse until one night, when her step-father snuck into her room, it wasn’t to watch her sleep.

She ran away that night and never looked back. She’d been on her own ever since. And, still, she hadn’t understood. Amelia had thought they were sick or maybe possessed. It took almost a year of living on the streets to realize they weren’t the problem.

She was.

Amelia couldn’t explain the well of power inside herself, nor did she understand why she had it or where it came from. What she did know was everyone she spent too much time around changed.

People were drawn to her like moths to a flame, and the longer she was in their presence, the deeper their infatuation grew.

That magnetism was only the first power to emerge and, unfortunately, it was only the beginning of the changes to come.