I haven’t opened the book that Charity wrote, and it’s been three weeks since the birthday party. I don’t know what’s holding me back, but I just haven’t started it yet. These past few weeks have been a handful; since recognizing that Raina has a whole world I didn’t know about, I have wanted to crack down and figure out what Ramsay is up to. 

Callum has been on board with helping me, and to keep it a bit more secretive, we’ve been doing our planning at his house. Callum has been a huge help because he doesn’t need to sleep and Ramsay has been spending late nights at one specific location with an assortment of people. 

We’re barely into November, so the days are short so I’m sometimes up, but Callum insists I need to sleep. Which, to be fair, he’s right. I haven’t been getting enough sleep with all of these ideas wracking my brain and I’m exhausted. 

“Get some more sleep,” Callum says, sitting at his desk. 

Dad has still been strict, but I was able to talk him into letting me spend some nights at Callum’s. As long as I text him and make sure that I’m in a house by the eleven o’clock curfew, Dad has allowed it as long as I remember to take my vitamins with me. Besides, I can truly relax at Callum’s house. 

There’s something off at our house. With Raina’s insistence that I keep her mate and son a secret, I feel like there’s a lot that she’s not telling me. I don’t think it’s a life or death scenario, but the more I think about it, the more I feel like everyone has their own secrets and isn’t willing to open up. 

It’s especially weird in Ramsay’s case; he and I used to tell each other everything, but after we got ungrounded by Dad, I feel like I barely see him. I’m sure people would assume it’s because I spend all of my time with Callum, but I continuously have been texting Ramsay and asking him if we could go on a run or hang out and I’m met with apologies and him being unable to. 

“I’m fine,” I say, starting to sit up. 

In seconds, Callum is on my lap, pinning me down. It makes my face go bright red; we’re affectionate and while we haven’t done more than kiss, Callum has gotten comfortable climbing on top of me and literally making me lay down when I should sleep but don’t want to. 

I’m a few inches taller than him and we’re both strong so I could give a good fight, but it’s not worth it to hurt either of us. Besides, he gives me this look when he does this and it makes me feel like I should listen to him. I don’t have that Alpha personality that demands control so it’s not an issue. 

“You look like you need more sleep.”

“Did you just tell me that I look like shit?”

Callum grins and leans forward to kiss me on the forehead, the nose, and then my lips. “The most beautiful piece of shit that I’ve ever seen,” he says, kissing me again and gently biting my bottom lip as he pulls away, careful not to pierce me with his fangs. 

“I’m glad I impress you,” I grumble, glaring at him. “Callum, I got plenty of sleep.”

“I stayed up all night working on our plan for today and you slept so restlessly,” Callum says. “It’s only six. Go back to sleep, Lennox.”

I scowl, but Callum rolls on his side and squeezes me into his chest. Of course, the affection is endearing to me and I can’t help but make myself comfortable. I’m not stupid; Callum knows this is my weakness and he proves it by grabbing the comforter and pulling it over both of us. 

“What’s he up to, Callum?” I whisper, closing my eyes. “You’ve been following him to the same location for weeks, but we’ve never seen the blond guy from the restaurant.”

“We’ll find out today,” Callum says, rubbing my stomach comfortingly. “I don’t know what he’s up to, but we’ll find out. It’s probably nothing dangerous, just a way for him to make friends with other vampires.”

I hum, knowing that Callum’s told me everything he’s observed. I feel bad for thinking it, but he’s really the only one whom I trust wholeheartedly. Everyone else in my life that I want to trust has some kind of secret, I know it. I know it. 

“When are we going to have sex for the first time?” I ask, and I feel Callum move a bit and I assume he’s surprised that I’d just bluntly bring it up. “Sorry, I was just wondering.”

Callum kisses my neck. “Eventually. I don’t want to rush it. We’re immortal.” He kisses my neck once again, gently sucking on the skin and making me inhale sharply. “You’re a werewolf.”

“What an astonishing observation.”

“I know we’ve only been together for a few months, but shouldn’t you have a rut every few months?” Callum asks me. “Because I’d at least like to have sex once before you go sex crazy for a week.”

I turn back to look at him. “I’ve never had a rut.”

“Isn’t that, like, a big part of being an Alpha werewolf?” Callum asks me, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. 

“I mean, I didn’t live around werewolves, so I guess my body never got into that cycle.”

Callum still looks confused. “You know how human women have periods? Even if they don’t grow up around other women, they still have periods. You should still have a rut even if you grew up with vampires.”

“Well, I don’t,” I reiterate, since I don’t really have a solid reason for not experiencing a rut. 

“Huh… Well, we can have sex whenever then, I guess. It’s going to be special, though.”

I turn to face him and smirk. “Are we gonna flip a coin to see who tops?”

“I was thinking more of a rock-paper-scissors best two out of three kind of deal,” Callum responds before laughing to himself. “I’ll bottom for our first time, babe. I mean… you’ve never had sex, have you?”

I shake my head. 

“Then you get to choose,” Callum says, smiling as he holds my hip and rubs my lower stomach with his thumb. He kisses my lips again. “Now go back to sleep, okay?”

“Stay with me and I will.”

Callum makes himself a bit more comfortable, silently assuring me that he’ll stay with me while I sleep. He buries his nose into my neck, giving me much more of a werewolf vibe than a vampire one, but it’s kind of endearing to me in some weird way so I just accept it and close my eyes. I’m definitely falling hard for him and I don’t plan on trying to slow it down. 

It’s easy to fall back asleep being held like I’m the most important thing to exist in this world. I hope that Callum feels that way about me because I feel it for him. In the past few months, he has truly become the most important person in my life. 

He’s there for me, which is nice, but that’s not what I love about him. He’s funny, he’s smart, and he always knows how to put a smile on my face. Bickering with him is fun and while we tease each other, we also know when not to and when we just want to feel tender, simple love. We haven’t called it love yet, but I know that’s what it is. 

At least, I hope it is. 

When I wake up, true to his word, Callum is still holding onto me. I smile when I look up and find that he’s also asleep, his mouth slightly open. He looks completely relaxed and his arm feels like a dead limb flopped across my side. 

I reach over and grab my phone, moving slowly so I don’t wake him up, and the clock shows that it’s ten in the morning. Since we’ve been tracking Ramsay, (like concerned people, totally not stalker-ish) we know that he’ll be at his little meeting place around nine tonight. 

He’s been meeting various people and he’s been entering locations where Dad has never met others at. It’s weird, since I know he’s not doing it for Dad so I have no clue what his motive is. It’s an exclusive club and I have to use scent blockers, colored contacts, and Callum’s clothes to make me appear as a vampire because they seldom let in anyone who isn’t a vampire. The only plus side is that the club is eighteen and older and they’re not big on checking IDs. 

I just hope they don’t recognize Callum or I, because I’m obviously a werewolf and Callum is known as the nephew of a vampire who is extremely against the idea of exclusive clubs. Plus, we need to be kind of discreet so Helen doesn’t find out what we’re doing since I doubt she’d approve. 

I look at the bottle of scent blockers on the nightstand and decide to take the first one since they last eight hours so I can take the second one a few hours before we leave. Callum always leaves a glass of water on both of the nightstand so I use one to take the tiny white pill. They often make werewolves feel sick from the attack they have on natural hormones to bury the scent, but I’m hoping that I’m some kind of exception. 

“Lennox,” Callum mumbles, and I look over to see his eyes opening a little bit. “Did you sleep?”

I show him my phone screen. “Yeah, for four hours. I just woke up.” I finish the glass of water and slide out of bed. Like he does at my house, I’m wearing Callum’s clothes and I know he likes it. “I took the first scent blocker.”

Callum frowns. “Are you feeling sick yet?”

“It’s only been a couple of minutes, so no.” I walk toward the door to his room and lean against the wall, waiting for him. “I’m hungry. Wanna come with me?”

In an instant, Callum is out of bed and following me down the stairs. I open the fridge and toss him a blood bag before taking out a vanilla Greek yogurt and a fruit cup. We sit together at the kitchen table where the windows and back door look out into the surrounding forested area. 

“When you brought me here the night we met, you called someone to pick up food to settle my stomach and you said that you didn’t know the difference between Greek and regular yogurt. Did you never eat yogurt when you were human?”

“I was lactose intolerant, hence my tendency to use almond milk in my tea,” Callum responds, pouring his blood into a non-see through cup because he knows I don’t like it when he pierces the bag and drinks it that way. “I still don’t drink milk or eat yogurt, but I’ve used other dairy products and they haven’t caused issues so maybe being turned into a vampire cures lactose intolerance.”

“Wow, you should report that to the World Health Organization.”

Callum reaches over to me to poke my nose. “Gods, you’re a dork.”

“It’s endearing. You’d be so bored without me.”

“That’s probably true,” he responds, sipping from his cup. 

We go on a jog together on the trails in the forest behind Callum’s house before showering. We shower separately since I’m still a little apprehensive about intimacy because, well, I’ve never been intimate with anyone. Mate or not, I still need a little bit of time. 

I keep going over the plan for tonight while Callum tries to get me to relax. We’re using one of the club cars because it’s discreet and doesn’t show that it’s affiliated with the club in any way so we can stay under the radar a little bit. 

“Come on, it won’t hurt you,” Callum says, sitting on the bathroom counter and trying to help me put in the red contacts. “Lennox, just stay still!”

“That’s easy for you to say! No one’s playing with your eyeballs!” I say, pulling away from him once again. 

Callum snorts. “Yeah, because I do it myself,” he points out. “Just stay still, I won’t hurt you.”

I whine but stay still as he opens my eyelid and puts the first one in. It doesn’t hurt, but it feels really weird so I keep blinking my left eye. Since it doesn’t hurt, I stay still for the second one and Callum is able to easily put it in. 

“I like your eyes more when they’re brown,” Callum says, standing up taller to kiss my lips. “But you do make a sexy vampire.”

I slide off the counter. “Just get me those plastic Halloween vampire teeth and I’ll be a ten out of ten.”

Callum chooses what we wear, and the clothes are really similar to those that Ramsay and I wore to Vampieress’ Dungeon. Tight black pants, sleek shirts that show off our frames and will match the other people that frequent the place. Surprisingly, despite both of us being integrated with the vampire community, neither Callum nor I heard of the place we’re going to before we started stalking Ramsay. 

Callum has been occasionally entering the building sporadically for the past week to get an idea of where Ramsay sits and how we can figure out what’s going on. Originally, I was against the idea because I obviously couldn’t go because I would consistently run the risk of being seen by my brother and Callum blends in much better. Even though Ramsay knows him, it would still be a bit more difficult to pick him out. 

I guess it’s similar to a club, but it’s more like the quieter parts of Vampieress’ Dungeon. There’s more meeting and discussion there, though there’s a small dance area where vampires go to meet each other before quickly departing for conversation or drinks. 

“Ready?” Callum asks as we slide into the back of the car. 

I nod. “Let’s find out what he’s up to.”