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His anger quickly overcame him. “I do not want to talk to you.”

He started walking again, but Markus was quick to catch up to  him. Lance didn’t stop, however. He kept right on going. Markus

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walked backward just so they could both face each other as Lance  tried to make his getaway.

“Please, I just need you to listen for a minute—”

“Go away.”

“I can explain. I swear to God I wasn’t making fun of you.”

Lance shook his head. “Whatever. You just like howling like a  wolf when you come. That’s perfectly normal. Everybody does that.”

“It’s not like that. Will you stop?”

Markus reached out and took Lance by the arm. He was  surprisingly strong, and when Markus stopped, still holding onto  Lance, he had no choice but to stop with him. “Let go of me.”

“I promise I’ll leave you alone when this is over if that’s what you  want. I just need to show you something.”

Lance was immediately suspicious. “Can’t it wait until  tomorrow?”

If this was some kind of ploy to get Lance back in bed, he swore he was going to kick the man’s ass.

Try to, anyway. Markus looked pretty fit.

Markus released him. “No, the sooner you see this, the better, actually.”

He was far from in the mood, but maybe it was just because he was a naturally curious person or that he still couldn’t help but look at  Markus and have some tender feelings for him, but he decided he would go along with it. “All right, what do you want me to see?”

“Well.” Markus scratched the back of his head, and he looked

toward the darkly wooded area where the lamplight didn’t quite reach.  “We kind of need to be alone for this. Can you come with me?”

“Where?” Lance asked, though by the way Markus was standing  and occasionally glancing toward the woods, he already knew where  Markus wanted to take him.

“Well, I know this is weird, but I was thinking over there.”

Markus pointed, confirming Lance’s suspicions.

He raised his hands a bit and stepped back. He might like the guy

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and all, sort of, okay a lot, despite what a prick he’d been, but Markus  was still a virtual stranger to him. Lance was pretty sure that walking  alone with him into the dark forest at night was not a good idea.  Curious or not, that was a real recipe for getting cut into a hundred  little pieces and scattered all over the woods.

“Look, uh, thanks but no thanks. Whatever it is you want me to  see can wait until tomorrow. You can show me at the restaurant if you  want.”

“Lance—”

“I’ll see you later.” Lance turned to go, but Markus ran in front of  him, as fast as though he had Superman speed or something.

“What the hell?” Lance demanded, more annoyed than ever,  especially when Markus kept right on stepping in his way preventing  him from moving. His anger was so great that he wasn’t even  suspicious about how it was Markus had gotten in front of him so  quickly.

“Will you get out of my way, please?” he asked, which was more  of a demand.

“This involves your website,” Markus said. Now he was the one  to keep his hands raised, as though he were trying to show a scared  animal how harmless he was.

“What, you want to show me a werewolf or something?”

“Kind of, yes.”

Unbe-fucking-lievable. “Markus, I’m being serious, get out of my

way. Now.”

He didn’t know what he would have done if Markus still refused

to listen to him, but he spoke in such a threatening tone anyway  because he somehow felt it was what Markus would respond to best.

Markus looked past him for a second, toward the trees. Worried  about who, or what, he might be looking at, Lance quickly turned his  head.

He saw nothing. No one was there.

Jesus, of all the people in the world he had to pick up, why did it

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have to be this guy?

Lance quickly tried to step around him, deciding to just make a

break for it back to his motel room and leave Markus with whatever

inner demons he was struggling with.

“I’m really sorry about this,” Markus said, and Lance turned just  as Markus reached out and grabbed him.

“Hey!” Lance struggled when Markus grabbed him by the arms,  but unlike before, he didn’t let him go, and his grip was a hundred  times stronger, too.

“What the fuck? Let me go!”

“I can’t. I need you to see this.”

Lance tried to cry out, hoping someone from the restaurant would  hear him.

Markus’s hand was over his mouth in the next second, before he

could even get a good yell out, and then, with his free arm, he hoisted  Lance into the air and started carrying him toward the woods.

Jesus Christ! He was going to kill him! Lance wiggled and  struggled with every ounce of strength he possessed, but somehow  Markus had more strength in his one arm than Lance did in his entire  body. Even when he made his weight go dead try and force Lance to  drop him, he still kept carrying him toward the dark trees.

Then three more people stepped out from between the shrubs and  pines, and his heart really started to hammer as the panic set in.

“Calm down, baby, I can hear your heart going,” Markus said, and  then he muttered something about Lance’s inhaler, but Lance could  hardly hear anything else he was saying because he was panicking too  much.

“Guess he wouldn’t come quietly,” said the man with the deeply  scarred face, and Lance really started to kick and punch and squirm.

He never thought of himself as being weak or small. He’d never  joined the football team in high school or anything, but Markus’s  strength made him feel like a child.

“Hurry up, before someone sees us,” said another, younger-

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looking man. Were those guns under his arms?

Then they were within the trees, and suddenly Lance couldn’t  breathe anymore. That invisible hand that had always come to him  when he was a child, stealing the air right out of his lungs, returned  with a vengeance. Like it was making up for lost time or something, it  yanked every bit of air right out of him.

Now Lance wasn’t just struggling to get away, he struggled to  remove Markus’s hand from his mouth.

These signals he thankfully understood and followed.

“Oh shit! Lance!”

Markus’s superman arms released him, and when he was on the ground and free, he viciously tore into his bag, gasping for breath that he couldn’t seem to catch no matter how much he told himself to calm

down and take it slow.

He couldn’t find his inhaler. It wasn’t in the small side pocket where he usually kept it, and that only deepened his panic.

Markus’s hands were also in his messenger bag, shoving items around, also searching. “Where’s your puffer? Where is that stupid thing?”

Lance found it first, hidden under one of his notebooks. It must’ve

fallen out of the little pocket during the struggle.

He grabbed it, ripped the cap off, and put it to his mouth. Like a  key that opened a door, his airways expanded and fresh air was able  to get down his throat. He breathed deeply, taking another breath from  his inhaler, even as he glared at Markus.

Markus had his hands on Lance’s shoulders, worry all over his  face. “Lance, Christ I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you  like that.”

When Lance finally caught his breath, he threw another punch at  Markus’s face. Markus didn’t try to dodge it, but despite all the strength Lance put into the strike, Markus barely fell back at all.

“What did you think would happen when you drag me into the dark woods with your friends?”

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He tried to punch him again, but a pair of hands grabbed his swinging wrist.

He was getting really sick and tired of people grabbing him like this.

“Don’t touch him!” Markus yelled before Lance could start on the  guy who had the gall to grab hold of him.

He looked like the youngest member of their group. His face was  all young and fearful of the scene that had just played out. Lance had  no sympathy for him.

Markus suddenly coming to Lance’s rescue was a little confusing,  however.

Lance yanked his hand out of the grip of the young man. “What does it matter to you if someone else grabs me after you just kidnapped me?” he seethed.

If Markus had any feathers, they would’ve ruffled at those words.  “I didn’t kidnap you!”

“Technically, we are kidnapping him.”

“Shut up, Isaac!” Markus yelled.

Great. Now Lance had seen their faces, and now he knew what

one of their names was, too. This wasn’t boding well for him.

“Please just let me go. I never did anything to hurt you.”

Lance’s night vision kicked in, and he was able to see how

saddened Markus’s face had become. “You need to see this first, and

then, if you want, you never have to see me again.”

“What?”

Markus got to his feet, and Isaac, the young one, and the scarred one came to stand behind where Lance was still sitting on his ass.  They were preventing him from running, he realized.

Lance didn’t start to worry until he looked over and saw Markus’s hands on the button of his jeans, and then he started to undress.

The urge to run was greater than ever, but so long as those men were behind him, he was going nowhere.

“What are you doing?” he asked when Markus was fully naked.

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All sort of horrible things were going through Lance’s mind.

Markus got down onto his knees, but he kept his eyes on Lance. “I wasn’t howling like that earlier to make fun of you. I did it because I am a werewolf, and sometimes I do that.”

Lance’s eyes widened. He shook his head.

The one called Isaac spoke again. “You’ve been looking for proof all this time, but you won’t believe it when someone tells you that’s what they are?”

He shook his head again. “Anyone can say they’re a werewolf.”  He looked back at Markus. “Prove it.”

Markus nodded, and then he fell onto all fours.

At first Lance didn’t notice the change in his body. He thought maybe the moon was going behind the clouds or something because the first thing he was able to notice was the way Markus’s skin became darker.

It took him a second to realize that it was hair growing out from the pores of his skin.

Then the sounds of snapping branches stuck the air, but they weren’t tree branches being snapped somewhere. They were Markus’s bones.

His bones were snapping, and there was hair growing on his skin.  His fingers shrunk, and his nose and mouth got longer, his teeth becoming sharper.

Lance grabbed his puffer again and had to take a couple more breaths as he watched the show, but this time he was not panicking.  He was so happy and excited that his breath was stolen from him.

The whole process probably took less than thirty seconds, but as  Lance watched and observed, it felt like so much longer than that.

Markus shook out his gray coat of hair when he finished with the transformation, and then he sat and stared at Lance.

The man with the scarred face chuckled then patted Lance on the shoulders. “Congrats. You’ve just witnessed proof to the existence of werewolves.”

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Markus trotted toward him, and Lance held perfectly still as

Markus swiped his tongue across his face.

He couldn’t wait to tell Buddy about this.

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Chapter Nine

“You can’t tell anyone about this. Ever.”

Markus couldn’t help the disappointment he felt at the way  Lance’s face fell in openmouthed shock.

“But the world needs to know about this. You aren’t some product  of a horror movie. You’re real people. So much can be learned about  life and nature just from what you do. Just because you exist.”

Markus nodded, looking over at James and Isaac real quick for  support. “The fact that you even mention horror movies is one big  reason to avoid coming out. People fear us.” He would tell Lance  about vampires and other shifters later. That was a whole other kettle  of fish. “And as for learning from us, do you really think everyone  will be like you? People will want to learn from us by caging us and  dissecting us, not by going through an interview process or anything  like that.”