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  She sighed, her eyes avoiding his and drank from her cup. Jayden could hardly breathe. They were going to tell him, weren't they? They were going to just blurt it out, tell him that they were vampires and one day he would be too.

  "I think I know what you're going to say," he said.

  His dad looked at him with surprise. "Oh, really?"

  Jayden nodded. "Yes. You're going to tell me that you're vampires. I already know."

  "Excuse me?" his mother said and stared at him like he had told them they had fallen from the moon.

  "Come on, Mom. Stop pretending. I know. I’ve seen Robyn's parents. I know you’re running around doing stuff with them all the time even though you hate one another. I know. I saw…I saw Dad's…fangs and h-h-his claws the other night. I know. So, let's just all stop pretending and get it out in the open, shall we? I also know that Logan has been turned and that's why he runs out at night, just like Robyn's brother."

  Jayden's mom stared at him, startled, her eyes wide, then sank back in her chair. "Well…I have…I never…"

  "Well, there you have it," Jayden said. "So, what you're going to tell me is that by the time I reach eighteen, you'll turn me into…that too. I'll live forever and suck human blood and turn into a bat and all that …nasty stuff."

  Jayden's mom shook her head. "How on earth…why, I should ground you for even making such an assumption."

  "Excuse me?" Jayden asked.

  While his mom looked appalled, his dad couldn't help chuckling. "You thought…you seriously thought we were…?"

  "Vampires, yes," Jayden said, wrinkling his forehead. Had he been wrong after all? "I saw your fangs, Dad."

  "Vampires," his mom spit. "Of all the things you could accuse us of being, I have never…"

  "Claire," his dad said.

  She looked at him.

  "Focus."

  She nodded. "Yes, you're right. I’ll forget your little…whatever we shall call it, but, son, that is not what we are. Not at all."

  Jayden looked at them suspiciously. "Then what are we?"

  "We are wolves, son," his dad said.

  "W-wolves?"

  Jayden stared from one face to the other. "But…I saw…"

  "I was just in the middle of changing," his dad said, laughing. "The fangs come first, then the claws before the entire transformation occurs." He couldn't stop laughing and slammed his palm into his thigh. "Vampires. That is hilarious, Claire. Can you imagine?"

  "Yeah, well…" she said, not finding it nearly as funny as her husband.

  Jayden didn't know what to say or how to react. He thought about Melanie and how he had seen her transform and it occurred to him that they were right. At first, she too had looked just like a vampire, for a little while, a weird and hairy one. And they had even thought that was what she was until she had shown them herself as a wolf outside the church.

  It was quite a shock to Jayden, but he also felt a little relief. It all made sense now, the muscles on Logan and the smell…oh, how bad he had started to smell.

  "But…"

  They nodded. "Yes, you'll be one too. When you turn eighteen, we will make you one of us."

  They looked at one another, oozing with pride. "We can't wait for the entire family to be wolves together. We’ve waited many years for this."

  Jayden stared at them as they looked at him with such proud eyes he didn't dare to tell them he had no intention of following this family tradition, no matter how much they had been looking forward to it. He had no desire to live eternally as a wolf. Especially not since the girl he loved was going to be a vampire.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  I wasn't asleep when the pebble hit my window way past midnight. I walked over and looked down, then opened it, smiling from ear to ear.

  "Jayden!"

  "Can I come up?"

  "Sure," I said. "Use the front door."

  I rushed down and opened it for him.

  "Your parents are out, I take it?" he asked and came inside.

  I nodded. "Apparently, they still think that Melanie is somewhere in the mountains because every night since the night we freed her, I see them in the sky as they fly far away at midnight and I assume they go to look for her there. I don't mind. I kind of like it, to be honest. Gives me a few hours on my own at night when I can breathe properly."

  We walked to my kitchen. "I would like to offer you something, but we really don't have anything good."

  He chuckled. I felt warm inside. Gosh, how I loved him and loved being with him. I could still taste his kiss on my lips.

  "How have you been?" I asked.

  He sighed. I just then realized he had a look on his face that made him look like he had just seen something terrifying.

  "Is everything all right?" I asked.

  He scratched his head. "I don't know. I…I mean it was kind of a surprise, but…"

  "What is?"

  He looked into my eyes and sighed. "I am not…I mean my parents are not what I thought they were."

  "Yeah, tell me about it," I said. "Mine either."

  He shook his head. His deep brown eyes made my knees wobbly. I longed to kiss him again.

  "No, not like that. They're not like yours either."

  "What do you mean? We saw your dad in the basement that night. Fangs and everything."

  "I know. But…well, can you think of another creature that has fangs and claws?"

  I stared at him for a few seconds, then gasped. "Melanie."

  He nodded. "Exactly."

  "So…so your family…is not…ah…it totally makes sense," I said.

  "What does?"

  "Why our parents hate one another. If yours are wolves and mine are vampires, then they really are mortal enemies."

  "But why?"

  "Van Helsing. Ever watched that movie?" I asked.

  He shook his head. I exhaled. "All right. The only one who could kill Dracula was a werewolf. You saw what Melanie did to the pastor. They were all terrified of her. All the vampires. My mom hates your mom because she is the only one who can kill her."

  Jayden looked startled, then nodded. "You have a point. Wow."

  Our eyes locked again, and he approached me. My hands were shaking as he grabbed mine in his.

  "Jayden, I…"

  He shook his head and shushed me. "Please, let me say this. I’ve been trying for ages to find the courage to say this. Actually, Jazmine helped me."

  "Jazmine?" I asked.

  He took in a deep breath. "I came to her first. To get help, because I didn't know how to approach you with this. Then you got mad at me and I was mad at you and then…well, I suddenly found myself dating her instead of you and it was all…wrong."

  "Please, get to the good part," I said. "Soon."

  He chuckled nervously. "What I’m trying to say, Robyn, is that I think I…like you…as in like, like you."

  "What?"

  "Don't laugh at me. I’m serious here. I’m in love with you, Robyn, and think maybe I always have been. I don't care what our parents say…I want to…"

  I smiled, every cell in my body screaming with joy. Yet, as I remembered my parents and that we couldn't be together, it hit me like a forceful punch in my face and I turned my back on him.

  "I do too, Jayden. I do too. But how? What about our parents? It will never work."

  He grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me back to face him again. We stood very close and I could feel his warm breath on me.

  "I don't care about our parents. What can they do to us that they haven't already done? They can't hurt us, Robyn. They're our parents, for crying out loud. They'll just have to get used to it. Once we're eighteen, we can decide our own fate. They’ll have no control over us. It's two years. Until then, we'll sneak around. We'll meet secretly without them knowing until it blows over. They can't hurt us, right?"

  I stared into his brown eyes, not feeling completely sure my parents wouldn't hurt me if they found out but deciding that it was worth a try.

>   "What do you say?" he asked. "You wanna give it a try? You're the one good thing in my life that I don't want to let go of."

  He reached out his hand and I grabbed it, then he pulled me close and kissed me. We kissed for a very long time, to the sound of howling wolves coming from outside the windows.

  As our lips parted, I looked at him.

  "But…that means…if your family are wolves, then…one of them…bit Melanie and made her what she is? And that same wolf killed Natalie Jamieson and Blake Fisher."

  Jayden stared at me, confusion rushing through his eyes as the realization slowly sank in.

  "Wow. Guess I’m not the only one in danger in my own home, huh?"

  "I guess not," I replied. "I guess not."

  We held each other in a warm embrace, both of us thinking once again how our worlds had changed and how nothing would be the same after this.

  There were still eight months to the Halloween Block Party.

  Afterword

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for purchasing Blood & Fire (The Vampires of Shadow Hills #2). I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. This is turning out to be a fun series to write and I am so glad that you keep reading it.

  Don't forget to write a review if you can. It means so much to me.

  Take care,

  Willow

  Books by the Author

  Paranormal Romance/Suspense/Fantasy/Sci-fi Novels:

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  About the Author

  The Queen of Scream, Willow Rose, is an international best-selling author. She writes Mystery/Suspense/Horror, Paranormal Romance and Fantasy. She is inspired by authors like James Patterson, Agatha Christie, Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Isabel Allende. She lives on Florida's Space Coast with her husband and two daughters. When she is not writing or reading, you'll find her surfing and watching the dolphins play in the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. She has sold more than two million books.

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  Savage, Excerpt

  Daughters of the Jaguar Book 1

  For a special sneak peak of Willow Rose's Bestselling Paranormal Romance Savage turn to the next page.

  Chapter One

  SO HOW MUCH DO you know about St. Augustine, Chris?”

  The woman driving gently touched her elegant yellow hair, careful not to mess it up with her colored nails. She spoke with a strong southern accent and was incredibly beautiful for her age, which I guessed was more than twice my age of twenty-two. Her name was Mrs. Kirk. I had just met her at Orlando Airport for the first time a few minutes before. She was waiting for me holding a sign with my name, Christian Langaa, printed on it.

  The year was 1983 and I had recently finished my third year of med school at a university in Denmark. I had just left my country of birth for St. Augustine in Florida. Leaving Denmark was my father’s idea, really. I guess he thought it was about time I left the nest, so he called in a favor with an old friend of his, an American eye surgeon, to take me in and help me get a year at a medical school “over-there.” I can’t say I was unhappy about it. At that time all kids my age wanted to go to the States where stone-washed jeans and Michael Jackson came from. His latest album "Thriller" had just been released and was played on every radio station all over the world. Like so many others, I bought the cassette and played it
again and again on my Walkman. Where I came from, anything that was American was considered hip and cool. That summer before I left, my friends and I had watched the movie Flashdance, which made ripped sweatshirts popular, and we loved the TV shows Dallas and Dynasty that made everybody wear increasingly oversized shoulder pads—even us guys. We drank lots of Coke and dreamt of watching MTV, which, at that time, wasn’t something you could do in Europe yet, and especially not in my small home-country of Denmark, where we only had one national channel on our TV.

  The older generation in our country thought we were indifferent to the times we lived in and didn’t understand us at all. They named us the “So what-generation” or the “No future-generation” because they felt like we didn’t care about what went on in the world around us. We weren’t even rebellious. We didn’t have ideals and dreams about changing the world like they had back in ’68. Meanwhile, they were terrified of the A-bomb, the Cold War, and the communists. While we listened to disco music on our ghetto blasters and danced electric boogie, they fought with a bad economy and the fear of someone deciding to push the big red button, dropping the A-bomb, and ending the world as we know it. Not to mention the increasing fear of AIDS that was spreading among people, commonly referred to as the "Gay-Plague" since it was believed back then to be an "Epidemic of a Rare Form of Cancer Triggered by the Lifestyle of some Male Homosexuals," as the headline said in one newspaper.

  The older generation simply felt like our generation just didn’t care about anything. And maybe they were right. We weren’t that concerned about political affairs and foreign threats. Politics simply didn’t interest us, especially not me. I was fed up with listening to my father talk about politics and war during my upbringing. I was a dreamer, not a fighter. You can’t be both. Not in my book. And AIDS? Well, I guess we thought we couldn't get it since it was a disease for homosexuals. Plus, we were in our twenties. We didn't think we could die at all.