"Why did you take me?"My heart pounded, watching the guy in the back with laser focus as his body continued to change. The van was still flying down the road, but a car crash was the least of my worries considering I'd been taken by werewolves.

I'd have loved to deny it, but I heard the animal growl in Veggie Guy's voice when he grabbed me. And now, I was watching him turn slowly and painfully from animal to human.

"You're his mate. When a wolf finds his mate, he goes wolf and hunts until she's his," Seatbelt Guy explained quickly. "Staying with him will buy you more time."

That second part was kidnapper bullshit, for sure.

"Why would staying with a 'hunting' werewolf ever buy me more time?"

"Because he's going to be stuck in his wolf form until he's either changed you into one of us or killed you. You're the she-wolf he wants, and he won't back down until you're his. He'll try to get you to offer yourself first, to ask him to change you but there's no telling how long he'll wait, and then he's going to bite you. Werewolf venom changes the strong and kills the weak."

Well, if it killed the weak, I was in trouble. I hadn't exercised in months.

Wait, no.

It had been an entire year.

The last time I'd attempted to visit the gym was the day before classes started my freshman year, and I was currently a few weeks into my sophomore year.

"Staying with him will prolong his hunting, giving me more time before he starts biting?" I checked, still 100% planning on running as soon as I had the chance.

"Yes. It will make him feel like he's winning," Seatbelt Guy confirmed.

The van took another turn, harder and faster. My head smashed into the window, and a savage snarl broke out from Veggie Guy, who now looked almost entirely like Veggie Wolf.

"Shit! Sorry." Seatbelt Guy held a hand out toward the wolf in the back of the van. "Trying to keep her safe and get her away from the humans isn't easy, Jesse."

Veggie Wolf twisted his already-freaky face and made a menacing sound.

"We'll be back soon," another guy in the back with Jesse (AKA Mate-Guy-slash-Veggie-Wolf) snapped at him.

But being back soon was good.

It was good for me at least, because it meant that their place wasn't insanely far from mine. Which gave me at least a tiny sliver of a chance at escape.

The van turned sharply, and I slammed against the seatbelt hard enough to bruise my chest. The sudden pain made me scream. My honey-colored ponytail smacked me and Seatbelt Guy in the face as the van's tires squealed, and the floor started to sort of vibrate beneath us.

Crap. We were on a dirt road.

That was not a good thing as far as my chance of escape went. Dirt roads and I were not well acquainted.

Hell, nature and I wasn't well acquainted.

"Faster!" someone behind me yelled.

Faster? Were they completely out of their minds?

"She's got to stop screaming or he's going to kill one of us," another guy snarled from somewhere in the van.

I screamed again, this time in hopes that he really would kill someone to give me a chance to get the hell away from them.

"Brakes, now," another guy barked.

The driver slammed on the brakes, no question asked. The van squealed and swerved as it skidded to a stop. There were five other guys in there with me six if you counted Jesse's newly-furry ass so half the group must’ve stayed at the sandwich shop.

All five of the non-furries bailed the second the van stopped. The doors opened and closed in record time, leaving me trapped with a wolf.

I shoved on the seatbelt, pressing and pulling and tugging, but the damn thing was stuck.

A hairy monster jumped over the seat, landing beside me on the bench. I opened my mouth to scream again.

Before I got the sound out, the monster okay, maybe it was a wolf shoved his head toward mine and legitimately climbed on my lap.

"You're not a dog," I yelled at it.

It licked my face.

"Not a dog," I repeated, my voice faltering a little.

It barked.

"Not a... What am I doing? I'm losing my damn mind. Get off me!" I shoved his furry body. I'd expected a werewolf to be gigantic, but he wasn't. He was only a little bigger than my mom's German Shephard, Gallifrey.

I wiggled and jiggled the seatbelt while the wolf watched me.

When I decided that wasn't going to work, I huffed and leaned back against the seat I'd been trapped in.

The wolf gave me a look, almost like it was asking, "Are you done?"

I gestured toward the seatbelt, still scared out of my mind but growing angrier by the minute. "Don't just sit there, dammit. Help me!"

The wolf slashed his claws at the seatbelt. They sliced right through, and the seatbelt flew up toward the spinning mechanism.

The claw slash reminded me of what the guy had said about the wolf.

He was hunting me, and wouldn't stop until he'd bitten me.

And changed me into one of them.

"Stay back," I warned, scooting out of the seat and toward the door.

The wolf surprised me by listening.

Moving at snail speed, I slowly lifted my hand behind me, to the door's handle. When he made no move to attack, I pulled. The door clicked as it opened, and my body tensed, waiting for him to make a move.

He didn't.

The wolf just sat there, watching.

"I am so confused," I mumbled.

But when he still didn't attack me, I slowly opened the door.

"No sudden movements," I said softly, partly to myself and partly to the wolf, because it seemed like he was listening to me. If he was, I would take advantage of it.

I lowered one foot out of the door, poking around with the toe of my old red Converse until my foot met the dirt.

The wolf stayed where he was, watching me silently.

I slowly straightened, my hands landing on the faded fabric of the seat as I carefully lowered my second foot to the dirt.

"What's she doing?" someone whispered. One of the non-furry guys from the van, I assumed.

"I think she's trying to escape," another said, with some amusement.

"He hasn't tried to stop her yet," a third pointed out.

"He doesn't want her scared of him," a fourth responded.

Dammit, if they kept talking, all the football-player-shaped werewolves were going to be the death of me.

I took a step backward, then paused.

The wolf didn't budge.

Another step.

Pause.

No movement from Veggie Wolf.

I continued to move away from the van step by step, never taking my eyes off him.

Though I wasn't sure exactly which direction my dorm was, we hadn't gone far on the dirt road when the guys pulled the van over. If I ran beside it, I hoped I could get back to the real road and possibly make my way back into town.

And from there, get home.

My tiny dorm room sounded like heaven.

Right when I started to think the wolf was going to let me go, he jumped out of the van in one smooth, powerful movement.

Another scream welled in my throat.

Instead of letting it free, I sprinted down the dirt road.

The wolf caught me in less than three seconds, but he didn't tackle me or anything. He simply ran beside me.

It was so dark that I had a hard time staying on the road. But the sides of the road were sort of raised, so as long as I stuck to one of the raised edges, I knew I could make it.

I didn't stop. It was dark, so I could barely see a thing. My lungs burned, sweat poured off me, and I panted like I was the wild animal instead of him as we ran.

The wolf was nearly silent, remaining steadily beside me even as my jogging slowed to walking. My legs shook like Jell-O as I wheezed, trying hard to keep going.

When I couldn't go any further, I plopped my hands onto my knees and bent over, sucking in deep lungfuls of air. I was only wearing a sandwich shop t-shirt and a pair of high-waisted cotton shorts with my Converse, so I wasn't exactly dressed for exercise.

"Damn...you...wolf..." I wheezed.

He licked the back of my knee.

I let out a truly hideous screech, kicking and flailing at him. He easily sidestepped my half-hearted attempts to wound him, so I turned to threats instead. "Don't lick me if you want to survive.”

I paused, gulping down air.

When I could breathe, I added, "I am not one of those people who touches every dog they see. Your germs are not welcome on this body." I gestured to all of me.

He gave a pathetic whine.

"I don't care what you think I am to you, werewolf. I know you were Veggie Guy, and I am not amused by any of this. I'm going home." I wiggled my finger at him like a crazy person. "So just sit there while I catch my breath, or go back to wherever the hell you and the rest of your not-football team came from."

The wolf snorted, but he sat.

I bent back over, hands on my knees once again. I was still traveling alongside the dirt road, and though it felt like I’d been running forever, I would’ve walked for an entire week if it meant getting away from the werewolves and back to my dorm.

But it wasn’t going to take an entire week. The paved road couldn't have been much further.

"Alright, Tea. You've got this. Just a little further, and you're home free," I lied to myself as I started jogging down the road again. The wolf made a weird sound, and I glanced at him. "What are you laughing at?"

He didn't answer.

Because he was a wolf.

Although, cartoon-style talking animals wouldn't be that crazy compared to what I'd just discovered existed.

"You are truly infuriating," I told him, shaking my head as I kept running. "I'm not going to be what you want. Your mate or whatever. That's not me. I've got dreams, goals, and plans. I'm not going to be the housewife who sits at home and pops out a baby every year. I have school, and I have stuff to do, and things to accomplish. So just walk away. Go home." My voice raised as my rant continued.

The wolf ignored my lecture, his gaze on the forest in front of me.

I huffed but kept running. It wasn't like I had another option. The kidnappers and their van were way behind me, and probably heading in the opposite direction. After all, I was going back to my college town, and they'd been driving down the dirt road toward wherever they'd planned to take me.

Though it was suspicious that they hadn’t come after me.

Were they just going to leave me with the wolf?

According to them, he was hunting me. And that was terrifying.

But shouldn't hunting be more violent than just running with me and refusing to leave?

I didn't know. And without the rest of the kidnappers, I had no one to ask.

Glancing at the wolf, it occurred to me that he hadn't had anything to do with the abduction. I mean, he'd been there, but he wasn't one of the guys who grabbed me. Jesse had started going wolf after meeting me, and the other guys grabbed us both.

He had been with them, though. So he wasn't innocent, and I couldn't trust him.

Especially while he was furry.

A furry werewolf.

Dammit, that was a lot to wrap my head around.

I wheezed at him as we jogged (well, as I jogged and he trotted), "You should choose someone else to be your mate. You and your kidnapper buddies are not my kind of guy, and I'm far from the easy, party-loving, sorority girl that guys like you are into."

My honey-blonde ponytail swayed behind me, reminding me why people sometimes assumed I was something other than the book-smart nerd I was.

The wolf ignored me again.

Tired of being ignored, I shut my mouth and just kept on running. I was slow, but still moving.

It felt like an eternity later when I heard a car's engine behind me.

Cursing, I practically threw myself into a bush off to the side of the dirt road. Branches cut me and scratched me, but if it was Jesse's friends, I couldn't afford to get caught.

Jesse or the wolf that had once been Jesse crouched beside me, his body hidden by the bush even though he wasn't inside the damn thing like I was.

Sure enough, the kidnapper's van passed us. They didn't even slow down.

When they were gone, the forest seemed even darker than it had before.

"I'm going to die out here," I mumbled to myself, as I slowly extricated my body from the bush. The wolf was licking me again, running his tongue over my cuts and scrapes. "Stop it, dammit. I don't know you." I shoved at his face.

He growled.

"Go find your wolfy friends and leave me to escape on my own." I tried to shoo him away. He barely budged. "Damn you." I sighed, then started walking down the dirt road.

I walked and walked, and walked. By the time the sun was rising, I was still walking.

When I finally saw a flicker of light ahead of me, I let out a whoop of excitement and picked up my pace.

Abduction averted.

It wasn't until I reached the edge of town that I realized I'd celebrated too soon.

The buildings were a completely different style than the new, modern builds of the college town I lived in.

I passed by a wind chime with at least fifty shells and bits of sea glass hanging from it. It looked homemade, which was odd considering we were surrounded by the forest and mountains, and nowhere near the beach. The wind chime hung over the porch of an old building covered in what looked like newly-painted, sky-blue siding. The building was small and old, but charming and looked well taken care of.

Stopping out in front of the porch, I looked at the wolf beside me.

"You knew I wasn't walking back toward my school," I said, my voice flat.

He batted his eyes at me. I think he was trying to look innocent, but he was a wolf. He could see better in the dark than I could.

Which meant that he'd played me.

The damn wolf had played me.

Abduction is not averted.

I looked back at the door, weighing my options.

I could knock and hope there was someone sympathetic inside, who could give me some water, and maybe some bandages to wrap my poor, sad feet in. Maybe they'd give me a ride back to my dorm, too.

Or... maybe the wolf would kill them.

Yeah, not worth the risk to those poor, probably-nice people.

I resolved to keep walking until I found a police station. Or maybe an animal shelter. One or another of those places would have a way to get rid of my wolfy stalker.

And hopefully, a ride home.

I kept walking. My shoes were soaked on the inside, and I hoped they’d been soaked by pus from broken blisters, or maybe sweat. The alternative was blood, and that idea made me want to puke. The shoes were at least six years old, but the worn-down soles and holes in them hadn't done a thing to help prevent blisters while I was walking.

My phone was back in my locker at the sandwich shop, so I had no idea exactly what time it was, but it had to be pretty early in the morning. Yet, the town was surprisingly active.

That was also the opposite of my college town. The university and its students didn't seem to fully wake up until noon, even though there were early classes offered too.

The further I walked into the city, the more I found it strange that no one commented on the wolf following me.

Seriously, who wouldn't be afraid of a wolf walking freely around town?

I guessed maybe he could pass for a dog, but he wasn't on a leash or anything.

We stopped at a gas station so I could ask for directions, and I walked up to a woman filling up her car with gas. I selected her thinking she looked like she wasn't a murderer and looked nice enough that she wouldn't be pissed by me distracting her from her task and asking where the police station was.

I forced a smile. "Hi, do you have a second?"

"Of course." She smiled back, glancing at Jesse. Like the others we'd passed, she didn't look alarmed to see him.

"Do you happen to know where the police station is?"

"Oh, you mean the main alpha's house? Sure, if you keep going down this street, you'll run into a logged mansion. The main alpha lives there, along with his pack."

Main alpha? What the hell?

"Are you a werewolf?" I asked bluntly.

It seemed like the only logical answer, given her weird acceptance of the wolf beside me and her strange answers to my questions. And yeah, there was no tact behind my words, but I was exhausted and in pain and confused.

She laughed. "Of course. Everyone in this town is a werewolf. Welcome to Moon Ridge, honey." She gave me a big smile, and I took a step back. When I stepped back, I bumped into Jesse, who licked my leg again.

"I've lost my freaking mind," I mumbled, hurrying back down the road the way I'd come. The woman filling her gas tank yelled something after me, but my brain was too fried to listen.

It had taken me all night to walk to the werewolf town, but maybe I could get back to my dorm by the time the sunset. If I just kept walking and ignored my dry mouth and aching feet, I could make it.

What was the alternative; getting eaten by a damn werewolf or turning into one?

I'd take some foot pain and hunger over that any day.

The wolf realized my intentions and stepped between me and the forest before I got back on the dirt road. He gave a low, threatening growl.

"Get out of my way," I threatened back. My body swayed a bit, and I flung my arms out to try to keep my balance. I managed to remain standing, luckily.

Taking a step to the side, I tried to pass the wolf. He just jumped in my way again.

"Dammit, wolf, move!" I yelled.

Laughter erupted behind me.

I spun around, having no idea what to do with my hands if I was going to have to try to fight my way to freedom. Was I supposed to fist them? Or pull them up close to my chest, maybe?

There they were: the not-football team. Of course, those assholes were the source of the laughter.

That was just my freakin’ luck.

In the light of day, it was easier to separate the not-football players from each other. Five men of various ethnicities, sizes, clothing styles, and haircuts. Separate from each other in every way I could see, but with one thing in common:

They were all werewolves.

"I wish I could order my wolf around like that." Seatbelt Guy grinned. Now that I wasn't panicking, I got a better look at him. His skin was dark, his hair cut close to his scalp on the sides of his face and head. Slim, artfully-styled locs fell to the middle of his forehead. He was the tallest of the group, but only by an inch or so. They were all tall, and all built like the damn football players I'd assumed they were.

"We all do," another guy agreed. He strode toward me, offering a hand. He was tan, with a mass amount of fluffy, dark brown hair and a smile that would've set most people at ease.

But it just made me more wary.

I didn't take his hand.

"You assholes kidnap me, leave me with a monster, and want me to shake your hands and trust you? Yeah, right." I glared at the lot of them. "Take me home."

"Sorry, we can't do that." Smiley Guy pulled his hand away and gestured to the wolf behind me. "You've got a better chance at surviving the mating bite if you spend the weeks leading up to it with Jesse, at his place. We'll keep you fed and safe, but being alive is more important than being home."

I laughed, and the sound came out sounding slightly maniacal. I needed sleep, painkillers, and freedom. "Bullshit. All of this is bullshit."

Jesse stepped up next to me and growled fiercely at the guys. Their expressions faltered a bit.

He lowered his nose to my shoe, a wolf's way of gesturing, I guess.

"Is your foot injured?" one of the guys asked. I was pretty sure he had been the getaway driver, though that didn't help much because I didn't know any of their names.

"No," I lied, not wanting them to have an excuse to grab me again.

Jesse growled again, and it sounded like he was disagreeing with me.

Damn, wolf.

"Grab her. Let's get her back to Jesse's place so she's got some time to rest," Smiley Guy instructed.

"No, don't"

Seatbelt Guy tossed me over his shoulder once again.

I kicked and yelled as the guys walked back to Main Street, then turned down another street, and then another. They chatted amongst themselves and Jesse trotted behind me as they went, as if they weren’t dragging me along like a freakin’ prisoner.

Eventually, my throat got too dry for yelling, and my body too tired for kicking. And then I just gave up. I was carried along, draped over Seatbelt Guy's shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and wondering what the hell I'd done so wrong to deserve being attacked and kidnapped by werewolves.

No one else in the town seemed to have a problem with my shouting for help or seemed to see it as a problem. I'd determined that werewolf towns were full of sick monsters who were completely okay with abducting innocent people… and probably murdering them, too.

The not-football team stopped in front of a row of townhouses and set me down, keeping a hand on my arm. In another situation, I would've thought the townhouses looked nice, maybe even cute. They were little two-story townhomes covered in siding, all of them painted differently with different accent colors and such, but all in the same shades of dove gray, dark green, and soft white.

They walked as a group to the house at the end of the row. It was mainly gray, with white as a secondary color and only hints of green. I liked the color combination the most on that one, not that I'd admit it out loud.

One of the guys typed the code into the garage door's keypad, and everyone headed into the house together. I eyed Jesse the wolf, who had started wagging his tail as we approached his space.

Wagging his freaking tail, after abducting me.

That wolf dude needed serious help.

Seatbelt Guy tossed me onto a dark blue loveseat, and said, "Welcome home, Teagan."