The car engine gave one final, dying sputter before falling silent. My father beckoned for me to get out, his breath hitching in the frozen air. I didn't want to move. Inside the car, I was a ghost in a metal box. Outside, I was just another stranger in a village that didn't want me.
I pushed the door open, and the cold hit me like a physical blow. The snow crunched under my boots—a loud, intrusive sound in the quiet street. I tried to keep my head down, pulling my hood up to hide my face, but my eyes betrayed me. They drifted toward the girl with the apples.
She was finishing up with the old lady, dusting snow off her sleeves. My father was busy wrestling a heavy trunk out of the backseat, swearing under his breath.
"Drayan, grab the smaller bag!" he snapped. "Don't just stand there staring at the sky."
I reached into the footwell, grabbing my old leather satchel. As I pulled it out, the strap caught on the seatbelt adjustment. I gave it a frustrated yank—too hard. The worn leather snapped, and the contents of my bag exploded across the icy pavement.
"Great," I muttered, my face heating up with a mix of anger and embarrassment. "Just great."
I dropped to my knees, scrambling to grab my things before the slush ruined them. My sketchbook, a few pens, and then—the locket. It had slid further than the rest, spinning across the ice like a silver coin. I lunged for it, but my fingers brushed against someone else's boots.
Heavy, fur-lined boots.
Before I could reach it, a hand clad in a fingerless wool mitten snatched the locket from the ground. I froze, my hand still hovering over the ice. I looked up, and my heart did that strange, painful stutter again.
It was her.
Up close, she didn't just look warm; she radiated a kind of heat that made the snow around her boots seem to melt faster. Her glasses were perched on the bridge of her nose, reflecting the gray sky, but her eyes—they were a deep, honeyed amber. They weren't the eyes of a human.
"This is beautiful," she said. Her voice wasn't high or airy; it was soulful, with a slight rasp to it. She held the locket out to me, the silver glinting against her palm. "It looks old. Is it yours?"
I stood up slowly, dusting the snow off my jeans, trying to regain some of the "cold" dignity I usually wore like a mask. I reached out to take it, but as our fingers brushed, a jolt of electricity shot through my arm. It wasn't magic—it was her. She was burning hot, like a hearth fire in the middle of a blizzard.
I pulled my hand back quickly, clutching the locket to my chest. "Yeah," I managed to say, my voice cracking slightly. "It's mine. Thanks."
I expected her to walk away, to find me weird or brooding like everyone else did back in the city. But she didn't. She tilted her head, a stray lock of short hair falling over her frames. She leaned in a little, her nose wrinkling as if she were... sniffing?
"You're new," she stated, a playful smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. "I haven't smelled someone like you in Redpaveley for a long time. You're a 'Stray,' aren't you? From the city?"
I felt a defensive wall go up. "I'm not a stray. My father and I just moved here."
"A city-vampire," she chuckled, ignoring my tone. She wiped a smudge of flour from her cheek—probably from the crates at the bakery. "Well, watch your step, City Boy. The ice here is trickier than the pavement back home. I'm wolfie,by the way."
She held out her hand, waiting for me to shake it. I stared at it, paralyzed. If I took her hand, she'd feel how cold I was. She'd see how much I was shaking. I wanted to reach out, but the voice in my head—the one that had been my only friend since my mother died—whispered: She won't like you. No one does.
"Drayan!" my father yelled from the porch of the small, crumbling house we were supposed to live in. "Move it!"
I looked at wolfie, then at my feet. "I have to go," I said, turning away before I could see the disappointment on her face.
I hurried toward the house, my heart hammering against my ribs. I didn't look back, but I could feel her amber eyes watching me. I didn't know then that she was a werewolf, or that my kind and hers had spent centuries at each other's throats. All I knew was that for the first time in years, I felt like I was actually breathing.