City of Blood

10

Callum is predictably already awake when I get up, once again holding and looking through my photo album. He's got a soft smile on his face and I suspect he doesn't even know it's there with how soft and barely there it is.

"Why do you keep looking at that?" I ask, sitting up and stretching my back as I sit up.

Callum shows me the album and points at a picture of Ramsay and I when we were probably six or seven, both of us completely covered in mud from playing outside in the rain, mud, and puddles. Both of us have always liked going out in the rain. Even now when we go on runs, we'll purposefully run in the puddles and mud.

"I just like seeing baby pictures of you," Callum says, turning to the next page. "How did that happy little kid end up so broody and judgmental?"

"When have I ever been broody or judgmental?"

"When we met you were pretty broody."

I scowl. "I drank two drinks with supernatural alcohol in them, threw up on my mate, and was terrified I'd be grounded for fifty years, so positivity wasn't the energy I felt like giving off. And I was judgmental of you because you deserved it."

"How did I deserve it?!"

"Come on, your personality that night versus how you usually are? You were, like, two different people. That deserves my judgment." I get out of bed and open my closet to pick what I'm going to wear.

Callum comes up behind me and wraps his arms around me. "Can I borrow some clothes?"

I'm not sure why he's asking me because he definitely didn't last night when he went through my drawers to pick out what to wear to bed. Not that I really mind; I thought it was kind of funny to watch him pick through my clothes and try to determine what was the softest and what would comfort him the most.

"No, you have to go out naked." I put on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. "Embrace your inner stripper."

"I would if it wasn't October and forty degrees," Callum says, opening my dresser and choosing clothes very similar to mine. "Let's go downtown and go for a walk."

We go downstairs and, despite it being early, the house is already empty. Dad, Raina, and Joseph being gone is normal, but I'm still suspicious of Ramsay. He's hiding something and I feel like it's something big. He's my brother and I care for him, but I'm worried he's doing something that will change how I see him.

Callum starts his car after I take my vitamin and lock the house up. He drives us to the downtown district and very smoothly parallel parks on the street. Before we get out of his car, Callum pulls down the mirror and puts in colored contacts. It's a common practice for vampires to utilize colored contacts when they may have a run in with a human; all of my siblings were using them when they started going out in public.

I don't like that they take away from the gorgeous wine color of Callum's eyes, but I also wouldn't be a fan of humans freaking out over seeing red eyed people. There have been the extreme humans who are convinced we exist (which, honestly, isn't extreme because they're right) but thankfully no one is taking them seriously.

It's not rainy, but it is cold out and the sky is cloudy and gray. I'm glad I'm wearing a jacket even though I can withstand the cold better than humans can. We cross the bridge to the shifter and werewolf district, even though I don't usually come over here.

The city part is primarily shifters and werewolves, but the ones who live here aren't part of a pack. They have large families or smaller packs made up of five or six people, but it's not the same as the local pack that resides in the forested area and reflects what packs were before moving to cities.