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"Let's just get this out into the open. You're going to have to feed at some point," Sin told me as we drove down a curvy road with looming evergreens. Hunter lived on the opposite side of town as my house, where there was more forest and spaces between houses. I didn't like this part of town. It seemed darker, with less bright colors on the houses and not a single mailbox with custom bubbly decorations.

                  It reminded me a lot of the dreaded "Dark Side" of town, where Voldemort and Darth Vador stalked the streets with scowls, evilly alluring innocent victims from my end of town over to their side...

                  Hunter's blood had to be doing some seriously crazy things to my thinking.

                   "In the trunk, I have a cooler that you're going to hide somewhere in your home," Sin continued. Starting tomorrow, you will drink one and a half bags of blood a day. No more, no less. You will ingest only the required amount of blood your body needs."

                  "How long will this supply last?"

                  "About a week, then I will get you more. Perhaps one day I will teach you how to hunt."

                  "What does it taste like?" I asked, nervously fidgeting with my hands. He seemed a little bit stunned by that question, but his expression remained blank. Eyes trained unblinkingly on the road.

                  "Animal blood doesn't really taste like anything. It just...nourishes." He gripped the wheel tightly. "To be honest, you won't like it. It's thick and tasteless, you'll want to chew it, yet at the same time you want to just get it out of your mouth and think of it as a really big pill. But you'll get used to it, you have to."

                  "What what about feeding from a human?"

                  Sin stiffened significantly, not saying anything for a while. "It tastes incredible," he murmured truthfully. "It tastes like every delicious thing you've ever tasted, all in one, flushing into your system and feeding every fiber of your being until it's sated. It gives you a high that lasts for days at a time, makes you aware of every part of your body, electrifying all of your senses..."

                  "Then why can't I--?"

                  "Because I've seen it ruin someone like you," Sin snapped, jaw tightening. "You should have never, ever been forced into this life. You're young, courageous, beautiful, and intelligent...you still have a future ahead of you. Even though you're extremely sassy and rude, and I admittedly have imagined myself flinging you out of my classroom window, I've never met anyone like you. You're unique and innocent. Drinking from a human, it'll tear all of that that away from you. You weren't born into this life like Hunter and I. We've lived off of blood for years. Yes, Hunter drinks human blood, and yes, he's dangerous and he's changed since he's come off animal blood, but he has the control of a hybrid that was born into this life. Right off the bat, he didn't have to kill for his food, he choose to. You will not have that option right away. You will kill the first person you feed from.  Hunter probably doesn't even remember how it felt to feed from animal blood. It helps you stay touch with yourself most of the time instead of your beast."

                  "So you're saying I'll feel more normal if I drink animal blood?"

                  "That's exactly what I'm saying. Your choices and actions are similar to a human's, you'll blend in easier and be able to have a normal life as if you were never turned."

                  Hearing that almost brought stupid girly tears to my eyes again. I said almost..."That's what I want, Sin. I want to feel normal."

                  "I know you do, and I know that you can. That's why I want to help you. Just because you aren't human anymore, doesn't mean you can't be in touch with your humanity. When you feed from a human, unlike an animal, you can't always stop when you're hungry. You lose your sense of right and wrong when you feed. It's completely different. Some of our kind would tell you that you get used to it, that you can estimate how much blood that you're taking from a human and stop yourself, but that's just simply not always the truth. The truth is, there's a huge chance that you'll never want to stop the first hundred or so that you feed from. Without a doubt, in the beginning you'll toss humans effortlessly to the side like a used tissue, you'll kill them without wanting to and regret it later. You don't want to let human blood run your life. It'll do things to you that animal blood will not. Make you feel out of touch with yourself. Makes you feel invincible in all of the wrong ways and want to get that last drop of blood from a human's vein. You have a conscience. You have a good soul. If you never trust me again, trust me this one last time, when I tell you that the worst parts of yourself as a hybrid, the parts that you believe you hate the most, will never be a part of your humanity. They'll be a part of your beast. Choosing to feed from a human will bring out the worst in you."

                  I let that sink in for a while. The Good Twin wanted to help me, eh? It seemed too good to be true. "What is this really about, Trinidad?" I wondered. "Is it because I would be impulsive like your brother and you don't want to feel responsible to clean up after me? Is this the easy way out for your floppy little doggy ears?"

                  "I found you in that warehouse, therefore I'm already  responsible for you no matter what. And impulsive?" Sin tore his eyes from the road and bore into mine, his Caribbean Blue eyes were burning with flames--scratch that, glowing. "Impulsive isn't really the word, Miss Ballard. Ruthless is. What I told you that you are one of the first humans that Hunter has met in years that he hasn't killed on the spot and bragged to me about?"

                  "I'd hope that you were lying," I whispered, "because that doesn't seem possible. Sure, Hunter's an arrogant jerk and he's terrifying sometimes, but he doesn't seem like the kind to...kill like that. Senselessly."

                  "I told you, I lost my brother to his beast a while ago. It's said when a hybrid loses their hearing, they simply hone in on their vision, smell, and taste. But when a hybrid goes blind, they hone in on their other senses after they go partially insane. Think about it Pepper, being deprived of your vision for almost an entire month, and then only getting it for a few hours on a full moon. It drove him insane and made him heartless. The irony of it all is that Hunter had the best eyes in our entire family and was the most passionate in keeping our family strong. The Trinidad bloodline is traced down thousands and thousands of years, Hunter used to respect that name and now he wipes his ass with it by having his own separate pack. Things will never be the same between us or between him and my entire family."

                  "Was that only because of his vision? Or did something else spark it?"  I wanted to ask Sin so much more. About his power over his brother. That girl in Hunter's journal.

                  "That's a story for another time."

                  "Do you think he still kills innocent people just for the heck of it?" Like with a Smiley mask on? I wanted to add.

                  "Undoubtedly."

                  "How do you think he'd kill someone like me?"

                  Sin looked at me as if I was crazy. "Are you sure you want me to tell you that?"

                  "Yes."

                  "He's an Alpha with little to no morals. He doesn't really follow Pack Law, what every hybrid and werewolf lives by. My father is an Alpha, he enjoys the hunt, but he doesn't senselessly kill because he strictly follows Pack Law. Hunter enjoy the thrill of a kill more than anything, he's always been like that, it just used to be with animals. These days, he ignores Pack Law when it comes to killing. He has too much pride to let someone else's rules run his entire life."

                  "Hunter has pride, I would have never guessed."

                  Sin snorted. "My brother is not the kind of man who'd outright says he's going to murder his enemy. He waits for his enemy to relax and forget about him ever existing, bangs and kills their girlfriend, invites his enemy over for dinner, and then ruthlessly slits their throat as they're eating perfectly cooked steak, spraying their blood all over his new wooden floor and rubbing it in with his boot like a nice wooden polish. In the end of it all, Hunter would have planned the kill out perfectly so that it looked like an accident. Because accidents happen in Orange Gate County. It's reaccuring accidents that matter." Sin took in my in my pale, nauseous expression, his mouth in a flat line. "But for you, Pepper, he'd probably just bang you senselessly and then make your death look like an accident."

                  "You better protect her from me, Sinny-boy!" Hunter's voice echoed in my head.

                  "Well it's a good thing he doesn't want to kill me," I said sarcastically."You'll protect me from him, right? Have some of your doggy friends stand outside my house and watch over me?"

                  "That depends, have you done your paper for my class yet? School stars on Monday, Miss. Ballard. I expect you to be proactive and send it in early, and I expect an A."

                  I shot Sin a sharp look. He chuckled.

                  "I'm only kidding."

                  We started to discuss my story as to why I hadn't come home for two days. Sin said that I had miraculously recovered, and although he didn't exactly say Hunter's name, he did mention that perhaps it was a better idea to give me blood from a hybrid so that my disappearance didn't look too suspicious. With only animal blood helping me through my transition, Sin said it could have taken weeks for me to recover.

                   Minutes later, after rehearsing my cover story out loud to Sin, we came around the bend to my street, and things started to get a lot worse for me than they already were. Sin passed my house by a mile, shutting the headlights off and hissing under his breath once we were at least ten houses away from mine.

                  "Damn it to hell," Sin said. He took the words right out of my mouth.

                  We had both seen the police car parked at the front of my house as we drove by. Clearly, neither of us had thought for a second that my parents would call the police and report my disappearance. How did we even let something as logical as that slide past us?

                  "You should get out of here," I said, unlocking my door. "I have to now make up a ridiculous story to my family and the police why I have a cooler filled with a two weeks supply of animal blood and why my K9's are twice as big as normal."

                   Sin locked the door before I could get out. His eyes were shut and his fingers pinched the bridge of his nose. His voice was low and rough. "There's something I haven't told you, Pepper."

                  "What is it?"

               Sin's fingers gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles went white and his shoulders tightened. "Your parents. They'll know the instant you enter the house what you are."

                  Panic closed my throat. This was just what I was afraid of, what Sin hadn't brought up and therefore I thought wouldn't happen. "I figured that," I said in an oddly calm way. "What do you think they will they do once they know?"

                  "They might try and kill you, Pepper."

                  How did he know that for sure? I took a deep breath, my chest rattling with anxiety. Would my own parents actually try and kill me? They're own flesh and blood? They're precious little baby? They're cutie patootie? Did they even think of me as their daughter anymore?

                   "Then we have to have some sort of plan in case they try and stake me," I concluded, my voice distant.

                  "There's more to what I said, Pepper." Sin turned to me, Caribbean Blue eyes unwavering. "The reason why I believe they will try and kill you is because they're the reason I knew where you were two nights ago. They knew that you were had been looking for Smiley after watching some surveillance footage of your house and asked me to follow you to each location and watch over you. They trusted me to help them because my mother and father are in debt with your parents. Years ago, your parents took out an alliance of vampires who were out to kill my father and instead of being paid in cash, they wanted a few favors. Two nights ago, I was continuing that favor, and when I saw Vlad's van peel out of the parking lot, I went inside to find you barely breathing. I immediately called your mom. She started to cry hysterically, put your dad on the phone, and he told me what to do next. He said when your heart stopped beating to make sure it stayed that way."

                  "What?" I was crying so much that I didn't even feel it. "They asked you to make sure I was dead?" Now I was furious, storming out of the car and collapsing on the ground. Sin came out of the car, rushing towards me and gathering me in is arms. I started hitting him, wailing on him with my fists and crying until he put a hand over my mouth and pressed me firmly against the car, restraining me. "Why didn't you tell me this before?!" I demanded, sobbing at this point. "Why would you drive me all the way out here? Were you even planning on telling me? Did you expect me to just walk in there and be staked? Pepper doesn't like to be staked!"

                  "Pepper, I--"

                  I freed my hand and slapped him straight in the face. His chiseled face went sharply to the side.

                  "Stupid psycho!"

                  I freed my other hand and went to punch him, when he caught my hands and pinned them next to my head, lips a breath away. "I didn't tell you for the same reasons that I went to Hunter after I couldn't save you," Sin hissed in my face, his features sharpening and his eyes glowing with rage. "I couldn't tell you the truth about your parents. I tried, Pepper. I tried to talk myself into telling you while I was out hunting, but something that my brother said kept getting to me. He thinks I'm selfish. My brother, my bastard of a brother, said that I was selfish. Me." He threw back his head and laughed madly. Whoever this person was in front of me, it was no longer Sin. It was a darker side of himself.

"I just wanted to help you, Pepper. I wanted you to be alive and snarky and rude and you again, not the dead, pale, and bloody version of you that I found. But Hunter, damn him, he kept telling me that I should have just let you die!  That Smiley probably would have killed you anyways! Hunter said all of this after he ended up saving you. He wanted you dead! After all the things that I've done the bastard, he still is trying to ruin my life, and make me feel like I'm the bad guy! He told me that your parents would never kill you, but he had no idea what your mother and father had told me!" Sin threw his arm back, punching the passenger window of his car in and letting it shatter. I flinched.

I tried to reach out to him. "Sin..."

 "God damnit!" Now Sin's voice was raising with rage. He was losing control. "I thought if I left you alone with Hunter, that you would see what I see. The heartless, empty bastard that he is. But when I came back to the house, you were in his clothes, touching him, and you smelled like him..." Sin's nostrils flared. "I felt betrayed, and I was beyond jealous. I've never been so jealous in my life. It actually hurt. But I wanted Hunter to die, not you. It took me the whole car ride to stop being an idiot and finally realize that."

                  At the end of it all, Sin stood in front of me, hands in fists, broad shoulders and bulky muscles straining against his leather jacket. Stepping close to me until our feet touched, Sin looked down at me with pleading, darkening blue eyes. "I've loved you ever since you blew that stupid whistle in my ear and almost shattered my eardrum, Miss Ballard." Trinidad held my head in his hands as I shook my head. I was letting him, and I kind of liked the idea of that. "I would never hurt you," he whispered.

                  "Oh, boo hoo. This is getting worse than The Notebook and Princess Bride combined. You are so whipped, man," a deep computerized voice said from behind me.

                  Something hard struck my head, knocking me to the ground. I struggled to get back up, watching through black splotches of vision as Sin and a dark shadow battled, throwing and slamming eachother into Sin's expensive car and the asphalt. Finally, Sin was struck with something and snarled, pinned to the roof of the car. For a while, Sin growled wildly underneath the shadow, but his protests slowly morphed into the low, dying off whimpers of a wolf. 

The last thing I heard before I blacked out was a distant, piercing howl of a beast that electrified my blood.

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OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH SNAP. *snaps*

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