THE AWAKENING

Tieran remained silent for a long moment but she could feel the tension in the air between them as they lay sprawled naked and
spent. He turned slowly to regard her, his expression resigned, and perhaps a bit angry, as he gave her the answer she feared
the most.
“The Prophecy has been set in motion.”
Tears pricked Cassandra’s eyes and her hand strayed to her flat belly. She swallowed as the import of his statement hit her hard.
“Am I pregnant?” she whispered. “How can you possibly know? It’s too soon, isn’t it?”
“The point of a Phase is to create new life. It is almost certain that I’ve put a pup in your belly.”
Tieran rose on shaky limbs to grab his shirt and jerk it on. She trembled as she wavered on full-blown hysteria. She wasn’t ready
to be a mother, much less the mother of some Prophesied child!
“Tieran...” she pleaded, not knowing what she was asking exactly but he heard the fear and uncertainty in her voice. He
softened, albeit minutely, and his eyes returned to their striking shade of blue. “Tieran...I’m not ready for any of this...”
He buttoned his jeans slowly, almost methodically before meeting her gaze. “That makes two of us. But we weren’t given a
choice. I will send someone to help you bathe. I will bring food soon.”
“I’m not hungry,” she lied, fighting tears. “Just leave me alone. I need time to figure things out.”
“You will need food. The Phase raises your metabolism. And if you are carrying my child...you will eat, whether you want to or
not. There are other things to consider now that the Prophecy has begun.”
“I don’t want this!” she shouted, her voice shaking as she struggled to her feet, mindless of her nudity.
What did it matter now? There was nothing to hide from Tieran at this point.
“I want to leave. I want to go back to college. I want to forget that I ever met any of you people! I had a life. I had goals and
dreams. I wasn’t some mindless freakish slut who spoke in tongues and wanted to fuck anything with a dick!”
His eyes blazed, turning dark as he advanced, scooping her into the hard shelter of his arms before she could squeak a protest.
“Do you think that I wanted this?” He didn’t wait for an answer as he sneered softly. “You are not the only one being asked to
sacrifice something. You may have stumbled onto your heritage but I’ve been shouldering the weight of this clan since I turned

sixteen. It’s been ground into my head that I must sire the Prophesied child to save the world from the hands of Clan Barrachius!
So hear me when I say that just because I do not weep and wail, wringing my hands at the circumstance that I am not, in fact,
grieving for what has been taken from me in the name of some fucking Prophecy!”
He gave her a hard shake and then when she thought he might thrust her away from him as if she were diseased, he ground his
mouth against hers in a short, brutal kiss that spoke of anger, pain and burning desire.
He released her abruptly, his breath coming in short rasps as he glared. He held her stare for a long moment then as he
regained some semblance of control, he said in an icy tone, “Never presume again, Cassandra. Ever. Now, stay put. I will
return.”
Her breath hitched in her throat on a cry as he closed the door and as soon as he was gone, she fell back onto the bed with a
sob.
Why? Why was this happening? Cassandra curled into a fetal ball and cried for a good five minutes, soaking her pillow. When
the tears finally stopped, she wiped her nose and rinsed her face, still confused and angry but one question rose to the surface
with startling speed.
Who was the woman in Tieran’s thoughts? Cassandra shifted with discomfort, embarrassed at her own inadvertent trespass.
She hadn’t meant to pry. It wasn’t as if she had a handle on the things that she could do. Like she’d wanted to know that Tieran
had been thinking of someone else while he was inside of her?
She could be flippant and say, who cares? But deep down, she did care. She cared a lot — and she shouldn’t give two shakes of
a beaver’s tail what that jerk fantasized about in the private theater of his head because he clearly only fucked her because he
had to.
Mortification burned in her soul. She’d never begged for a man’s attention in her life and she didn’t feel like starting now.
Nothing had made sense since she’d been thrust into this nightmare of a new life so why should she expect anything would start
sliding into place now?
Her eyes welled again with more tears. She supposed she’d earned the right to bawl, right?
Hell yes.
So that’s what she did.

She’d never been close to her adopted parents, but at that moment, she desperately wanted to feel her mother’s arms around
her, clucking and cooing, smoothing her hair and promising that everything will be all right.
But it wasn’t going to be all right. Everything was fucked.
Her body churned with uncertainty and fear. If the point of the Phase was to impregnate the female, did that mean Ulster had
probably put his baby inside her, too? It’s not as if werewolf biology was covered in her Bio 101 class freshman year. She hadn’t
a clue how any of this worked and Tieran wasn’t in a real rush to help educate her.
She felt the heavy burden of his grief and confusion as if it were her own and frankly, she didn’t need to carry anyone else’s crap
because she had plenty of her own.
Tieran could fuck off with his problems if he was going to lash out at her for something she never asked for.
Would it kill him to be a little understanding of her situation? That she literally had no clue what this world was all about and she
could use some compassion?
No, of course not, because he was a self-absorbed dickhead who only cared about his pain.
Nothing about this situation was fair.
She could scream until her head popped off about how unfair this new life was and it wouldn’t change a thing. All she could do
was try to find a way to bear it the best way possible and hope for better days.
That shaky optimism that’d gotten her through tough times felt weaker than a wobbly table trying to withstand the weight of a
potato salad.
But it was all she had.