CHAPTER 3

CYRUS

Staring at the dark, deserted road in front of me, I shoved my phone into my pocket. The conversation, although it had ended more than a minute ago, still wouldn't stop tormenting me.

I had just gotten off the phone with my brother, Marcus, and up until today, I never thought it would be so agonising to hear the sound of my brother's voice. I hadn't been expecting to hear from him at all. At least, not for two weeks or more.

It was foolish of me to think that running away would give me more time. Obviously, it didn't. I had only made things worse, by making the search for me twice more rampant, and possibly endangering my entire clan.

One miscalculated step, one little slip and one short conversation I shouldn't have heard. That was all it took.

This was simply an issue of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But it isn't simple anymore, is it?

If only I hadn't walked in at that moment. If only I had stayed back and rescheduled my meeting with him. If only I had acted like I didn't hear anything. But due to the amount of shock I had felt on hearing something I didn't think I'd ever hear in my entire life, my shield had slipped and he had been able to hear the sound of my racing heart.

Now, I was the one running for my life.

I knew it was inevitable. I watched it happen right in front of me. Saw the moment when he realized that I had heard every single thing and then the moment of clarity when he knew that he had only one option.

To kill me.

Letting me go after what I had heard wasn't an option.

So I had done the only one thing that I could. I ran. Fighting him wasn't an option, not with the numerous people he had guarding him. Besides the community wouldn't take it lightly when they heard that I had tried to fight him. The alpha.

I shrugged my shoulders, trying to loosen out the knots in them and pulled my car door open, sliding in. I pulled off the side of the road and sped off, leaving dust in my wake.

My plan had been to go to the nearest town, camp there and buy time for a while, before hopefully coming up with a plan. But now that plan was shot to hell after the phone call I just had.

Marcus said information just reached him that the alpha already had some of his guards tailing my ass. I guess I should be happy that he had sent them after me, personally and hadn't gone after my brother or anyone from my clan. All responsibilities were on my brother's shoulders now, with me being on the run but I still wasn't at peace knowing that the alpha could send people after him or anyone else, just to get me to come back.

Smoking a rabbit out of a hole. It was a tactic we adopted. I was used to it. Pretty familiar with it, actually. I just wasn't used to it happening to me or anyone I cared about.

My instincts, which had been lying dormant ever since I left the community, suddenly flared to life. I immediately grew at alert, my eyes narrowing as they sharpened, to allow me see better in the darkness.

One of the lykae features that came in handy was our ability to see 10x better than the average human. And right now, I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.

Just some pretty basic houses, but they were still far from me. I was just reaching the outskirts of a town now and given how late it was, I decided to check into a hotel here for the night. I could pull an all-night drive, but I needed to stay here and plot. All I had to do was cover my scent.

The sign on a bar door caught my eye. Jury's Bar. I looked away and made to drive past but something about it stopped me. My instinct was screaming at me to go in there.

What was happening in there?

Whenever my instincts told me to do something, I never, ever refused to do it. It was the same with all lykaes. The Instinct was like a guide. It directed lykaes in knowing what was right was wrong and anytime danger was near, it alerted the lykaes and told them to run before harm could meet them. Most of the time, if one meant harm to a lykae, the instinct would tell them to be wary around such person and to not trust them.

The Instincts were born with a lykae. A natural born lykae. Turned lykaes were rare, due to how difficult and dangerous the turning process was for lykaes, but they existed nonetheless. Turned lykaes didn't have the Instinct.

When I was much younger, I used to ignore the Instinct sometimes. One time when I saw a really pretty witch and had wanted to take things further with her, then she ended up trying to feed me to her huge cat. Had it not been for my brother that knew my whereabouts, I would have ended up as cat food.

And another time when my Instincts had told me to intervene in a harmless—or so I had thought—bout in a gathering back at the community. I had assumed it was just good old ribbing. The lykae were known for their somewhat violent nature. They sometimes organised fighting rounds with prizes for the winners but it was mainly to release pent up energy. So I thought that was what had been happening that day and when my Instincts had warned me to stop the fight before it went any further, I had ignored it.

To cut the long story short, a man from my clan ended up dying. I had learned my lesson.

With that memory in mind, I pulled over and decided to check out the bar.

Something strange definitely had to be going on. Else my Instinct wouldn't have alerted me.

Parking my car in the driveway already filled with cars, I got out and slammed the door shut. Then locked it just to make sure. I looked around before going in, if I could catch anything, but no one seemed to be outside.

I pushed the bar door open, and was instantly greeted by the stench of beer. Another good thing about the lykae was our ability to blend in with the humans. It was an advantage we had over the vampires and I wasn't just talking about physical appearance, although we were extraordinarily tall—it was our ability to drink and eat.

Vampires couldn't eat, although some of the very old ones could drink. Witches could eat and drink, demons could too but another fraction of the lore that couldn't consume anything, were the Valkyries. They fed off lighting.

There were weirder things.

I ventured onto a corner of the bar that was pretty much shrouded in darkness so that I could observe everyone without bringing any unnecessary attention to myself.

After five minutes of standing idly in the corner, nothing seemed to be going on. I stood some extra five minutes just to make sure and then when nothing happened still, I decided to leave.

Just as I was about to leave, my Instincts screamed at me to remain and as my head turned, something—no, someone—stopped me in my tracks.

I froze.

There were a couple people milling around the bar and that was pretty normal, but that wasn't what had caught my attention. It was a woman. I assumed she was a bartender.

Beautiful couldn't even begin to describe her. No, that would be an insult. She was so beautiful, it almost pained me to look at her, but I still couldn't look away. Not even if my life depended on it, it seemed.

She was blonde, that I could tell and her hair seemed to be braided in two. She was pouring a drink into a customer's cup and almost as if she could feel my eyes on her, she looked right at me and our eyes locked.

Fuck.

She had brown coloured eyes. A lovely shade of brown that made me want to move closer just so I could stare into them.

Her heart rate sped up. She was attracted to me. That wasn't unusual but at the same time, I felt relieved to know.

Her heart sped up even more and when I dropped my eyes, I saw that she had over filled the customer's glass and ended up flooding the bar top. I knew it was all my fault and I probably should have felt smug knowing that her reaction to me had caused her to lose track of what she was doing, but I didn't. I felt remorse for her.

She dropped her head to the bar top after she had cleaned it up and apologized to the customer.

I felt a driving urge to go to her. I fought it.

I fought it for as long as I could until her eyes met mine again, about five minutes later after she had lifted her head. And this time, I couldn't fight it anymore.

I made my way to the bar.

She was drop-dead gorgeous, but she was also human.

The knowledge still didn't stop me from going to her.

One more thing I forgot to add about the Instinct was that it alerted a lykae whenever they met their mate.

This woman, however, definitely wasn't mine.

That I knew.