Chapter 1

Piper

The other woman was blonde.

The tramp, my now ex-fiancée, had pressed against the shower wall, was blonde. Henry told me he hated when women dyed their hair blonde. That it was trashy and underwhelming. It was the reason I stopped getting highlights.

Because he loved my naturally dark locks.

I couldn't get the look the blonde wore on her face when I pulled back the shower curtain and saw her staring at me over his scrawny deltoid, out of my mind. Her freshly manicured fingernails pressed into his skin, and her long slender legs wrapped around his waist.

She stopped her fake moaning, but he didn't notice. I didn't expect he would. Not that I would know, because I had planned to wait until we married.

Good thing we didn't make it that far.

Didn't look worth it to me.

When he finally pulled himself from his premature thrusts and saw over his shoulder, I was long gone. Only hearing his calls when I opened the door to our apartment and rushed down the steps.

It took me three weeks of staying at my parents' house before I gathered the courage to go back when I knew he was at work. My father helped me carry everything that I owned out and into the truck I rented.

My heart pounded against my ribs, breaking the entire world I'd built into many shattered pieces. My father hardly spoke as we put my things into the storage unit and drove back home.

The pain on his face hurt me. I was Daddy's little girl, and he warned me about Henry from the start. He'd been right, but I wouldn't admit it.

"I'm going to go on a trip," I said into the silence of my dad's pickup. "I need some time alone. I've already asked off for a week from work."

My employer at the insurance agency was shocked because I never took off until the end of the year for our annual ski trip with his family.

Screw his family and their fancy cabin in the snow. Their unspoken words about my upbringing and my lack of etiquette. The disdain they held in their eyes, and the pity smiles over their expensive wine at dinner. I hoped they would be proud of Henry and his new girl. Maybe she would live up to their expectations.

The thump of my dad's tires pounded against the pavement of the road, deafening the silence between us. "I'm glad," he said. "Where are you going?" he asked in his deep Southern accent.

"The bayou," I laughed. "I want to go see Grammy."

This brightened his face. "Good. She'll be happy to see you." He reached over and patted my knee. "I love you, Piper Girl."

"I love you, too, Dad."

If only I'd known what awaited me in Arabi, Louisiana.

I slammed the trunk on my small 1999 Honda CR-V and accepted the onslaught of hugs from my mother. She looked tired around her eyes, most likely worried about her twenty-nine-year-old daughter moving back home.

Her graying hair was twisted in a bun, and her hazel eyes—that matched my own—filled with tears that blossomed from me being hurt, and not my trip. "You tell Grammy I love her, and that it's her turn to come down for the holidays this year."

"Grammy is eighty-five," I said. "Give her a break."

Mom frowned, but squeezed me tighter. "Henry doesn't know what he's missing," she whispered into my ear. "You'd make a killer wife."

I smiled and pulled back, waving at my father from his stubborn place on the front porch. He wasn't a ‘goodbye guy.' I blew him a kiss that he ignored because a macho southern man didn't ‘blow kisses.' But I loved him more because of it.

I slipped into the worn driver's seat of my vehicle and buckled my seat belt. It was a three-hour drive from northern Louisiana to Arabi, and I wanted to get there before dark.

With my 90's music blaring, I only stopped for gas and food. Grammy would make sure I had something sweet before bed because she loved ice cream herself. She always made the best homemade peach ice cream.

My mouth watered at the thought.

With the nearest city in my review mirror, I flew down the homestretch, with my GPS perched on my dash, taking me down some shortcut that I wasn't familiar with. The sun descended over the trees, and I nervously drummed my fingertips along the steering wheel.

"Turn left."

I frowned and knocked on the side of my GPS.

"Turn left in 500 feet."

The dirt road looked creepy, like some monster family lived at the end, awaiting their share of Piper Soup. I swallowed, but followed the road. It'd been years since I'd been to her house, and even though I held wonderful memories of her house, most of the time, my parents drove me.

The road was curvy and narrowed the more I drove. The creepy low-hanging trees blew in a humid breeze that sucked the breath from me. I rolled up my window, no longer enjoying the surrounding nature.

"Oh my God, you piece of crap," I mumbled, hitting my GPS again. "This is not the way to Grammy's house! This is the way to our death, and you're coming down with me, Sister."

I parked in the middle of the makeshift road and tried to redirect my GPS, but it began to flutter and eventually shut off. "You've got to be kidding me," I mumbled, shaking it and tossing it into the passenger seat.

I dug my phone out of my cluttered bag and stared at the dead screen.

I swore I charged it before I left. It had been on 75% the last time I checked. What happened?

Frustration slithered up my throat, and a sob clung to my tongue. I wouldn't cry. I'd find my way out of here. I decided to back out of the road, slowly, because I never claimed to be a great driver.

The wind began to grow, and a distant howl flooded me with fear. I was in the middle of the woods, on a deserted dirt road, with no knowledge of the area or where I was.

There were wild animals around there. I was in lower Louisiana.

Swallowing my fear, I backed up further, trying not to let the panic knot in my gut. "You've got this," I whispered.

The text I received from my best friend Amanda on the way down raced through my mind. She had volunteered to come to visit this weekend because she wanted a field trip. Maybe my not texting back will worry her, and they'll send the hounds.

Another howl echoed from deep in the woods to my left. My vehicle crawled backward as I tried my best to stay on the small dirt road and not make a visit to the grassy ditch.

The sound of my heart thumped wildly against my ribs, deafening the melody the cicadas sang to me in the distance. My breathing grew wild, and suddenly, a woodsy scent hit my nose.

I rolled my windows up, but they smelled so close, like someone sprayed cologne inside my vehicle. Weird.

The highway came into sight, and I nearly squealed.

I was on the home stretch.

Cutting my wheels, I began to turn when I saw him.

Him. It. Thing. I wasn't sure.

The silhouette of a man—a larger-than-life man—formed in front of me. The dust from the dirt road swept against his feet like something out of a scary movie. His eyes were vibrant, standing out in the dim lighting from my car. His auburn colored hair was disheveled, his deltoids large and slopped down to impressive shoulders.

The man was a modern-day giant.

The handsome curve of his jaw twitched slightly, and though he stared, his lip lifted in a snarl. Was I trespassing? Surely he'd understand, wouldn't he?

Unable to move, I stared. Stared as he slowly stalked closer to the driver's side of my car, and he rolled his neck, only to meet my gaze again with beastly eyes. This man wasn't human, and it only took two seconds for him to change.

This was voodoo country, and I'd stumbled upon some kind of mutant voodoo experiment. Or maybe it was the chemical plant I passed a few towns back. Someone had fallen into something toxic, and this was the result.

A beast.

He transformed so quickly into a wolfish—bearish—beast that I lost my breath as he snatched my door clear off my car. A scream rang loud in the air, and it took several seconds to realize it was my own.

The beast inhaled deeply into my car, and that woodsy scent overtook my body, rendering me motionless. Why did a beast from the bayou smell good? Didn't Big Foot have a reputation for smelling like a trash can?

His hands—paws—whatever you wanted to call them, snaked around me and tossed me over his shoulder like a rag-doll. My survival mode kicked in—better late than never—and I began to swing my limbs wildly.

Tears built in my eyes, and my limbs grew tired as I watched the gravel turn to dirt underneath his feet. Where was he taking me? "Please, let me go!"

He stalled at my voice.

Nerves skittered down my body. At that moment, I wasn't sure if I'd rather have him stalking away or stopping. "Please," I whispered into the wind.

His fingers curled around my thigh, and he seemed to shrink in size, back to his human form. Only for moments. It was a struggle within himself, and he began to run, shifting back into the Creature from the Black Lagoon. His roar seemed to stop the forest in its tracks and deafened my scream.

None of those howls. Cicadas or crickets spoke to me any longer.

They disappeared.

They hid because they knew. They knew the beast roamed these woods. Unfortunately, I didn't receive the memo. It seemed as if he stalked deeper and deeper into the woods for an hour before the trees died out, and I gathered the nerve to lift up to see.

The darkness was overwhelmingly silent, and it took so long for my eyes to adjust. His heavy footsteps moved from dirt to cobblestone and a random old-time street lamp brightened the way.

Which only showed me the woods he'd carried me through.

I yelped when he raced up the steps, and I noticed the well-built railing on each side of the wide steps, and then what looked like a giant pillar to my right that was one of many surrounding a plantation-type porch.

The beast groaned as he shoved open a heavy wooden door, and brought me into a ... castle? He didn't stop there, no; he walked me up a grand staircase, straight out of a storybook, and down a hallway with a fancy runner beneath his feet that were aggressively furry.

Did a furry dog-human-beast live in this wonderfully elegant castle? What universe had I fallen into?

The beast shoved his shoulder into another door, swung it open, and suddenly I fell backward onto a bed. The covers were satin, silky beneath my fingertips, and I almost admired the beautiful woodwork of the four-post bed.

But his presence sucked any admiration from my body, along with my breath and my sanity.

His beast form was out, but he struggled against it, pushing him back, while his human form pleaded to be seen. "What ... I want to go to my Grammy's house. Please let me go."

His head turned from left to right, and he bent over me, one fist on either side, his scent washing waves of pleasure in me. Embarrassment heated my skin. This was ludicrous.

"Stop!" I shouted, trying my best to shove him in the chest. What did he want? To rape me? Or eat me? Or both?

He crawled toward me as I helplessly backtracked and kicked. None of the contact seemed to bother him.

That's when the giant wooden doors swung open, and my hope resurfaced.

"Brother!" a dark-haired man with startling blue eyes yelled. "What have you done?" he whispered.

My scream for help ripped from me like a kid opening a present at Christmas.

The beast didn't seem to mind. A smile formed on his face, and then everything went black.