book 1: Chapter: 01


    All I could see was sex.


    Everywhere I turned, there were bodies shuddering. Limbs shifting. Mouths moaning


    I ran through a forest, panting, trying to escape the carnal phantoms around me, which seemed to be


    summoning me. Saying, join us.


    But the deeper into the woods I ran, the darker and more alive the forest became


    Some trees swayed like lovers. Others, with gnarled roots and spindly branches, looked like predators.


    Closing in on me. Chasing after me.


    Something out there in the dark was chasing me. Something inhuman.


    And now the mouths weren’t moaning. They were screaming Grotesque orgies everywhere turning


    violent. Bloody. Life-threatening.


    Any second now, the darkness was going to catch me.


    The sex was going to strangle me.


    As I felt a root snake its way around my leg, I tripped and fell down a gaping hole at the center of the


    forest. But it wasn’t a hole.


    It was a mouth. With sharp teeth and a ck tongue, licking its lips, about to swallow me whole.


    I tried to scream but I had no voice.


    I fell.


    Farther


    Deeper.


    Until I was one with the violent, sexual madnesspletely consumed.


    I blinked. What the hell was I drawing?


    Sitting by the riverbank, sketchbook in hand, I looked down, disbelieving, at my own work. I had drawn


    a most disturbing…and sexual vision


    That could mean only one thing: the Haze wasing But before I gave the haze or my drawing


    another thought, the sound of nearby giggling distracted me. I turned to see a group of girls,


    surrounding him.


    Aiden Norwood


    I’d never seen him here before. Not at the riverbank where I go to draw and clear my mind. You don’t


    find a lot of our kind hanging out around here.


    Why? I don’t know.


    Maybe it’s the calm when we’re always


    expected to be wild. Maybe it’s the water when every one of us burns with a fire within. Or maybe it’s


    just a spot I’ve only ever thought of as my own.


    A secret ce where I’m not one of the pack. Where I’m just me, Sienna Mercer, a neen-year-old


    red-headed self-taught artist. A seemingly normal girl.


    The Alpha walked toward the water, ignoring the gaggle of girls following him. He looked like he wanted


    to be left alone. It made me curious. It made me want to draw him.


    Sure, I knew it was a risk to draw the Alpha. But how could I resist? I began to outline him. Towering at


    six feet


    five, with disheveled jet ck hair and golden-green eyes that seemed to change color every time he


    turned his head, Aiden was the definition of mouth-watering,


    I was just beginning to work on those eyes when he turned his head and sniffed.


    I froze, mid-pen stroke. If he were to see me now, if he were to see what I was drawing…


    But then, to my relief, he looked back out at the water, bing lost again in some dark reverie. Even


    surrounded by others, the Alpha looked alone. So I drew him alone.


    A


    I’d always watched him from afar. I’d never been this close. But now I could see how his biceps bulged


    from his shirt, how his spine curved to amodate his transformation.


    How quickly he could shift, I imagined. Bent over, eyes searching like a feral animal’s, he seemed, in


    this instance, already halfway there.


    A man, yes. But even more so, a werewolf.


    His beauty reminded me that the Haze was fast approaching. It was the time of year when every


    werewolf from the age of sixteen and older goes mad with lust, the season where everyone—and I


    mean everyone–fucks like crazy.


    Once or twice a year, this unpredictable hunger, this physical need would infect all of us in the pack


    Those who didn’t have mates found a temporary partner instead and fooled around to their heart’s


    content.


    In other words, there was no one in the Pack older than sixteen who was a virgin.


    Looking at Aiden now, I wondered if the rumors swirling around him were true.


    If that was one of the reasons he was here, ignoring the girls, brooding by the riverbank.


    Some said it’d been months since Aiden had taken any women to bed, that he was distancing himself


    from everyone.


    Why? A secret mate? No, the Pack gossips would’ve sniffed her out by now.


    Then what was it? What was toe of our beloved Alpha if he had no partner when the Haze struck?


    It‘s none of your business, I chided myself. What did it matter to me who Aiden screwed?


    He was ten years older, and like most werewolves, only interested in someone his own age.


    To Aiden Norwood, the Alpha of the secondrgest pack in the United States, I didn’t exist. Putting


    aside my school-girl crush, I knew I was better off that way.


    Michelle, my best friend, was dead-set on finding me a fuck-buddy. She’d already paired up in


    advance, as wasmon among unmated wolves before the Haze.


    Trying to set me up with three of her brother’s friends, all who seemed perfectl decent and who’d been


    blunt that they thought me fit for a good time in the sack, Michelle couldn’t understand why I’d turned


    each of them down.


    “Ugh.” I could almost hear Michelle’s voice reverberating in my head.


    “Why are you always so damn picky, girl?” Because the truth was, I had a secret.


    At the age of neen, I was the only virgin she-wolf in our whole pack. I’d been through three


    seasons, and no matter how sex-crazed I became, I had never given into my carnal desires.


    I know. Very un-wolfy of me to care about “feelings” and “first times,” but I cherished mine.


    It wasn’t that I was a prude. In our society, there was no such thing. But, unlike most girls, I refused to


    settle until I found my mate.


    I was going to find him.


    I was saving my virginity for him.


    Whoever he might be.


    I continued to sketch the Alpha when I looked up and saw, to my surprise and sudden dread, he wasn’t


    there.


    “Not bad.” I heard a low voice beside me. “But the eyes could use a little work.” I turned to see,


    standing right next to me, looking down at my sketch…


    Aiden.


    Fucking


    Norwood.


    Before I could catch my breath, he looked


    Gvw von un up and our eyes met. I tensed, realizing I was making direct eye contact, and immediately


    looked away


    No one in their right mind dared to look the Alpha in the eyes.


    It could only mean one of two things: You were challenging the Alpha’s dominance AKA a death wish.


    Or, you were inviting the Alpha to sex


    Since I didn’t intend to do either, my only option was to look away before it was toote and pray he


    didn’t misinterpret the meaning of my nce.


    “Forgive me,” I said quietly, just to be on the safe side. “You took me by surprise.”


    “I apologize,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”


    That voice. Even saying the most polite words imaginable, they sounded loaded with menace. Like at


    any second, he might rip your throat out with his bare human-form teeth.


    “It’s okay,” he said. “Really. I don’t bite…most of the time.”


    I was so close I could reach out and touch his rippling muscles and golden skin. I lifted my eyes and


    chanced a look.


    A brutal, jagged face that shouldn’t be handsome, but was. Thick eyebrows that looked coarse to the


    touch, like a hint of his werewolf form


    And a nose, even though slightly crooked no doubt broken in some past scuffle-that couldn’t interfere


    Text property ? N?vel(D)ra/ma.Org.


    with his so-sexy-it-hurts looks.


    The Alpha took a step closer as if to test me. I could feel every hair on my body rise in trepidation. Or…


    was it temptation?


    “Next time you draw me,” Aiden said, e closer.”


    “Oh…okay,” I sputtered like an idiot.


    And then, just as quickly as he’d appeared, Aiden Norwood turned and took off, leaving me by the river,


    alone. I sighed, feeling every muscle in my body ease.


    It wasn’t an everyday eventcha to see the Alpha out of the Pack House, the headquarters for all pack


    business. Mostly, we saw the Alpha at gatherings or balls. Always something formal.


    What had happened here today was rare,


    I could already see, from the jealous looks of Aiden’s adoring fans who had followed him here, only to


    be ignored, that this could quickly spiral out of control.


    Even a whiff of interaction with a female, especially a youngmoner like myself, would be enough to


    send the horniest bitches into a frenzy, tearing down the Pack House’s walls just for a taste of him.


    An event of that magnitude was sure to stress the Alpha out. And a stressed alpha meant a


    dysfunctional alpha, which meant a dysfunctional pack…you get the picture.


    No one wanted that.


    I decided, with the little light that was left of the day, I would finish drawing to clear my mind. Just me


    and the river in peace.


    But all I could see were Aiden Norwood’s eyes.


    And how very wrong I had drawn them. The Alpha was right. I could do better.


    If I could just get…closer. But when would I ever be this close again?


    I didn’t know then what I know now. That within a few hours the Haze was about to begin.


    That I was about to be a sex-crazed beast. And that Aiden Norwood, the Alpha of the East Coast


    Pack, was going to y a very prominent role in my sexual awakening… It was enough to make a girl


    howl.