"You’re being punished for not talking to me this long! No kissing until you tell me what you’ve been doing!"

He sighed and kept his arms around me. "We just had some stuff to take care of. I couldn’t call you because we were halfway to Salt Lake by the time the problem was taken care of and I can’t talk on the phone in my wolf form. You know that."

"Well you couldn’t have sent me a message through Zane? He was home last night but wouldn’t talk to me. He acted like a guard dog outside my bedroom window. When I said it like that, I realized that Zane probably was guarding me last night. It kind of creeped me out at first, but now I think I’m glad.

"What’s going on?" I asked again when Mason didn’t deny my guard dog theory.

"It was nothing serious Zo. I was just taking an extra precaution because Carter’s threat is still vivid in my mind."

"Are they gone now?"

He nodded. "But they’ll be back. They always come back even if they go away a few less than they come here with."

My eyes widened. "You’ve killed people?"

"No, vampires. And I didn’t take part in it, even though I wanted to, so don’t worry."

I took a couple steps back. "You wanted to kill them?"

"Zoe, I can’t always control my wolf moods. If I’m in a hunting mode, I’m going to want to kill them. Do you want them to take you away? And kill other innocent humans?"

I relaxed a little and felt better that he wasn’t running around constantly killing things. It just didn’t feel right to think of him as a killing monster. His beautiful wolf image in my mind was starting to darken in the amazement I felt when I thought about it.

"Can I hold you now?"

I rolled my eyes, but welcomed his arms around me once more.

"What were you doing before you came here?" he asked me, kissing my forehead.

"Writing out graduation invites, I need to call my mom."

She told me that she was almost done, and I didn’t have to go back and help her. I didn’t protest too much, since I wanted to be with Mason, and he took me to his house where his mom made us some dinner.