Free Andre by V. Vaughn Page A

captivating, but the cold way he stares at me is borderline rude.
    I scowl at him too before I jog up the flight of stairs to my room. I enter to the giggles of my two triplet sisters, Ginny and Tori. Ginny is my roommate, but Tori goes to school farther north at the University of Maine at Orono. They look over at me from Ginny’s bed, and I squeal. “Tori!”
    She jumps up, and we embrace. Hard muscle on her back is under my hands when we do, and I say, “Wow, you’re getting ripped. What’s that about?”
    She steps away from me, and I gaze at green eyes just like mine. A feature all three of us are proud of, since the color is an unusual emerald green.
    Tori says, “That’s why I’m here. It has to do with something I need to tell you.”
    I slide out of my jacket and hang it on a hook by the door. Ginny says, “I’m so glad you’re finally back, Nessa. She wouldn’t spill her news without you.”
    Tori says to me, “Sit. I’m about to tell you something pretty huge.”
    “Okay.” I lower myself to Ginny’s bed, and it squeaks under me when I sit.
    Tori stands in front of us, and I inspect her new look. Her face is more angular, as if she lost weight, but her size doesn’t seem to be much different. The security guard’s sexy cheekbones flash in my mind for a brief second before Tori begins to speak. “Do you two still get the bear dreams?”
    I shake my head. Almost two years ago, the three of us starting having sex dreams about hot guys and a bear. I convinced myself it was the stress of college applications and senior year. After all, it was the biggest decision any of us had ever made. My dreams reappeared last spring but have faded away again.
    “Not really,” says Ginny.
    Tori takes a breath and blows it out. “Those dreams mean we were called.”
    I look at Ginny, and she shrugs. Tori might as well be speaking a lost language.
    Tori shakes her head and says, “Right. I’ll try to get to the point.” She licks her lips and says, “Okay, so you know how we are in the dark about our biological father?”
    Ginny leans forward. “Yeah.”
    “Well, there’s a good reason for that.” She pauses to bite her lip before she continues. “You guys are going to find this really hard to believe.” Silky locks slip through her fingers as she rakes her hand through her hair. “Oh, boy. Fortunately, I have a way to prove this to you.”
    I hate when Tori does this. I’m a spit-it-out kind of girl, and I glare at her as I speak. “You were going to get to the point.”
    Tori glances up to the sky before she blurts out, “He was a werebear.”
    I snort and grin as I ask, “What the hell’s a werebear?”
    Tori’s cheeks flush pink in the way I know means she’s getting angry. “Part human, part bear.”
    Ginny says, “Wait. Like a shapeshifter?”
    “Exactly.”
    I shake my head in disbelief. “Right,” I say. “Binge-watching Vampire Diaries, are we?” Tori always did like being unusual, but I’m questioning her sanity with this one.
    Ginny’s jaw is hanging open, and I hit her arm. She snaps out of her shock and says, “She said she could prove it.”
    We both turn to Tori. My sister has a flair for the dramatic, and while her stories can be entertaining, I’m all about the facts right now. I say, “Prove it.”
    She sits on my bed, which is across from Ginny and me, and reaches her hand out to us as she says, “Watch this.”
    A tiny sound that’s a bit like stretching rubber carries over to us as hair sprouts on the top of her hands and her fingers shrink back to reveal claws.
    “Whoa,” says Ginny, and she gets up to go inspect them.
    I yank her back to the bed in fear, and it bounces when she lands. “What the hell are you doing?” I yell. I glance back at Tori to say, “Oh my god. What happened to you?” The comforter on the bed wads up in my hands as I grip it.
    Ginny pulls away from me and reaches out again, as if she needs to know if what we’re seeing is real.