"Listen to me Silvia. Your Psychiatrist didn't want to get sued after we all nearly died in his insane experiment, so he wiped your memory but let me keep mine – I threatened him otherwise, I caught his malpractice on camera and sent it to my email to find even if he wiped my memory too... but ha, I didn't really capture anything, but Vos was gullible and believed I snuck a phone into the ward," Carmen is talking so fast, while I stare at her, truly believing she's nuts, as we eat in the food hall at Frost University, "Are you following?" I nod, a lie, but really I'm so beyond confused, "You were taken by a Lycan – and I believed you were claimed as a sex slave. I'm glad you had your memory wiped, Silvia... it's too easy to fall for their glorious cocks. They bring so much pleasure it's ridiculous –"

"Okay, okay, you can stop now," I narrow my eyes, honestly? Annoyed. I watch Carmen exhale in disappointment and pucker her lips as she sees my protest rising, "I don't want to hear this story again. It. Never. Happened. Stop repeating it over and over and over again. I don't understand it any better than the first time you explained it. I've never seen a Lycan in my life. I'm not insane. We haven't been in a ward together, in an asylum for crying out loud. Like, what's wrong with you, Carmen? We're not in a movie."

"Have you even bothered to wonder why I'm wearing a scarf while it's hot?" Carmen hisses now, triggered.

I just widen my eyes, "No – but you don't sound anymore sane, where did that question come from?" I put on a bitchy tone, mostly because I'm beyond flustered at this point. I don't know why she is so obsessed with this make believe story.

She was an amazing best friend but always had an over active imagination, which was fun in school. Now, we had to be grown ups. I wasn't enjoying this story anyway. I sounded crazy. And so did she.

"Fine," Carmen stands up, looking hurt, "You know what? Don't worry about it. I have assignments to do, and I'm not that hungry," she turns from her half eaten lunch and struts off with a clenched fist.

I want to call her back but I don't know where to begin.

I shake my head and lay down my burger. I take a small sip of my caramel milkshake but feel like I've lost my appetite.

It's only the first week of study and I'm just getting used to the campus, and all the frickin' handouts.

Like right now.

I'm also knocked off my seat as a brochure is shoved at me from a passing, rushing student, who thanks me before I've even processed the paper in my hand.

I have a quick look at it.

Thinking of quitting college? Don't like your degree? Join the academy police force of Dire Wolf City. No pre-requisites required, however, a simple fitness test is mandatory.

I stare at it for a long while, and, for some reason I don't bin it. I place it in my backpack and head off to my next lecture in theology.

I was learning about 'origins of the supernatural' next.

It's a lecture that will change my life forever.

Later that hour, at the end, I sit clenching my notepad and my pen is frozen over the paper. Over words I wrote down. Over very specific facts I just learned.

At the end of the lecture the teacher wanted to leave us with an exciting topic. A dangerous topic; Lycans. The creatures Carmen had been harping on about all week.

My notes were as follows: They were born in hell. Raised to hunt everything not their own kind. A lust comparable to their hunger for flesh. And an eerie human side. Where they could communicate and slip into mortal communities.

And then a fun extra fact.

That I just wrote down last of all, and which was already haunting me.

Lycans mate with split minded mortals. And the teacher added more. Mortals who saw the other side since birth. Mortals who frequently had night terrors. Mortals who were likely to develop personality disorders, unknown still if they were related to their destiny of mating to a monster, or whether it was purely chemical and uncontrollable. In fact, a lot was unknown, and therefore... speculative psychiatry and speculative treatment was often used to save mortals before they were imprisoned in hell by their mates... before they succumbed to the Lycan bond.

The lecture has ended a few minutes ago and students already file out, while I'm staring at my notebook.

For one horrifying moment, I imagine everything Carmen has said, is true.

I can't sit here any longer.

Theology and the supernatural and the strange things of the world, are abhorrent to me right now.

I had always been interested in that world, but now I was terrified.

I lift my head, and I see an image is left up on screen. Of a blurry picture, taken of a mark, on a girls' hip bone. She's on an autopsy table, body covered with a tarp, other than the mark on display and photographed. It looks identical to that strange discolouration on my own hip. I had tried to reason it was a bruise.

It's enough to scar me for life.

As I get up in a fright and finally walk out, I rummage through my bag for the brochure in a slight panic.

I gulp.

Fuck it. I was going to join the police.

They list their divisions, and Lycan Control is one of them. There. That. I was going to do that.

My brain can't let go of it. I don't know what's going on. I don't know why I can't remember anything of what Carmen is actually saying happened last week. But I still crave what all mortals crave.

And that is safety.

That is why I leave to find the nearest recruiter for the Dire Wolf City police force.

Whether all of Carmen's insane latest stories were true or false – I was going to be prepared for the worst regardless.

I was terrified. I didn't want to die at the hands of a Lycan!

Yet what could possibly be worse? Being sexually bonded to a monster from hell? Or death?

A stupid fucking thought. They were as bad as each other.

I wasn't going to be either. A slave or dead? Fuck no. I was going to live. I was going to be free.

Just because I was marked, had night terrors and a shoddy memory...

I was not going to stand by and fucking die waiting.

Police. Lycan Control. Here I come.