Enter the Shadows (1st Edition) [SAMPLE]

Purest Heart - 1 | i

Penny looked up from her hot chocolate, frowning at the sheets of rain cascading on the other side of the window. It was only one in the afternoon, but it looked like late evening. The dark clouds, which blotted out most of the light, and bringing with it heavy rains, left Chaise Point district wet and bleak. The rain made everything cumbersome. Penny never seemed to have an umbrella on hand when it starts raining. On top of that, she was always getting caught in the rain. She sat there drenched and miserable, nursing her hot chocolate, which had already gone cold.

She had taken the initiative to go into work on her day off and get some extra work done. Normally, she would have been alone in the office on a Saturday. Penny was probably the only one who did not have family or friends to be with instead of camping out in her office on a weekend. She had walked halfway to work when the rain started to fall. It had not even been cloudy. Well, maybe it was a little cloudy, but not the kind of cloudy that heralded this caliber of a storm. She could have been comfortable at home, staring at the ceiling or reading a book. Instead, she was stuck in a diner, the closest place she could find to get shelter from the rain, and her hot chocolate was cold sludge. She looked down at it and frowned. The cup was not even half-empty.

The place was full—presumably with people eager to get out of the rain. Between the chatter around her and the thunderstorm outside, she could scarcely hear her own thoughts. She longed to be back in the quiet of her little apartment. Penny had been alone for most of her life and found that she was just fine with that—people were what she had a problem dealing with.

Across from her sat a gothic-looking chick, her black hair streaked with blue and red. Head down, the girl tapped away at her phone screen, her fingers never pausing. Penny could only wonder what the girl was texting about the entire time. The only sound the girl made was the occasional snort, which Penny thought might be the sound of amusement. Her own phone, sitting dormant in her pocket, never rang unless it was about work. She was fine with that too.

Penny thought that if she were anyone else, she would have started a conversation with the girl. Just a casual one. Commenting on the sucky weather, the overcrowding of the diner, but that was not Penny. She was not unsociable; she was, as she labeled it, socially inept. She could blend in easily with the wallpaper, a super power she used to avoid small talk at company functions. Some people tried to make her feel weird about her lack of social skills, but she could not even muster up the energy to do that much. Sulking, her face buried down in her mug, she did not notice that someone was watching her.

Lochlan had walked into the diner at random. Wandering through the city, as he did every so often, he had happened to end up here. Along with, by the looks of it, half of the people who lived in Chaise Point. He was about to step back out into the rain when he saw her. It was like a jolt to his system. A thousand volts bursting, coursing through him at lightning speed. He had to catch his breath. It was like nothing he had ever felt before.

It was not just that the bright white of her aura stood out in stark contrast to the shades of red, gray and black around her; no, it was much deeper than that. Primal. His wolf responded, lunging to the surface, poised to pounce on her. He looked away, ducking his head as he felt his mouth growing full with teeth. His body expanded; his clothes became tight. Lochlan had spent years training so that he could restrain himself, and it took everything he had to stop himself from changing right there in the crowded diner. He was feeling wild, a primal urge riding him. It was sudden, and it was brutal.

A waitress bumped into him, and he caught her by the elbow, steadying her before she went face-first with her tray. Lochlan half expected her to scream and pull away, but she gave him a broad smile instead. He had halted the change. Barely. After that brief exchange, he went back to staring at the woman. He saw another head, of which only a bit of jet-black hair was visible, peeking out from the opposite side of the booth. Was it a man? Was she with someone? Lochlan knew that his reaction was irrational, but he could not shake it. He was starting to go slightly stir crazy, and it was all because of her. Taking a quick scan of the diner, he made sure that he was the only one reacting to her this way. That he was the only non-human present. He was the only one.