Page 12 of Bitten, Marked, Obsessed

He crouches beside me, eyes shining in the dark. “It’s done. You’ll feel it soon.”

“I’m going tokillyou,” I hiss, shaking so hard I can barely lift my head.

“You’ll understand. When it starts. When your senses sharpen. When your skin itches and your blood howls.”

“Go to hell.”

He touches my face gently.

Then he’s gone. Just like that. Like smoke in the wind.

I lay there, panting, everything burning. The bite on my shoulder throbs like it’s alive. My pulse is erratic, wild. My vision blurs at the edges.

Time blends together, making it hard to know how long I stay there before I force myself to my feet.

The world feels tilted now. Every shadow is too loud. Every scent too strong. My skin prickles like it’s rejecting itself.

And deep in my chest, something ancient stirs.

My whole body is buzzing.

I make it maybe twenty feet before I collapse against a dumpster, dragging in shaky, uneven breaths. The pain in my shoulder is still there, pulsing in sick waves, but it’sspreading—down my arm, across my chest, up my neck. It’s like fire under my skin, like my nerves are being rewired without anesthesia.

I squeeze my eyes shut. “What the fuck is happening to me?”

My heart’s doing this weird double-beat, thudding so hard it makes my teeth ache. Everything around me feelswrong. Too sharp. Too alive. I can hear a dog barking four blocks away. I can smell—God,everything. Oil from the street. Rotten food in the dumpster. Someone’s goddamn shampoo lingering in the air like they passed by hours ago.

It’s overwhelming.

I fall to my knees, dry-heaving, but nothing comes up. Just that pressure. That throb in my bones, like they’re trying to rearrange themselves.

My fingers twitch. Crack. Somethingshiftsin my wrist, and I scream. I swear I feel the bones elongate, just for a second and then snap back into place. Sweat pours down my face. My skin feelstoo tight, like I’m gonna burst out of it if I don’t crawl out first.

I claw at my hoodie, yanking it off, then the tank top underneath. My shoulder’s bleeding. Not normal bleeding,blackaround the edges, like the wound’s smoking. I touch it and recoil, the skin is hot, pulsing, almost alive under my fingers.

“No. No, no, no, no,” I mumble, panic rising like bile. “This isn’t real. Thiscan’tbe real.”

My vision flickers.

I blink and everything sharpens.

The alley isn’t dark anymore—it’s glowing. Moonlight reflecting off concrete like silver. I can seebugson the ground. Tiny things crawling through cracks, each leg moving in slow motion. The colors around me are…wrong. Too bright. Too much contrast.

I look at my hands.

They’re shaking.

The veins under my skin pulse with that same dark hue. My nails look longer, sharper. I scrape one against the pavement and sparks fly.

I sob—loud and ugly.

This isn’t happening.

This isn’tme.

I try to stand and almost fall. My legs don’t feel like mine anymore. They’re too fast. Too twitchy. Like they’re trying to run without permission.

My breathing gets shallow. I lean back against the brick wall, pressing my forehead to the cool surface.

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