Free Upon Waking (Youngling Series) by Ashley Mason

should have just come to me instead of going off on your own and with humans nonetheless. Do you know the danger you have put them in, including them on this little digging expedition of yours?
    “When you sealed your Coven bond by drinking Penny’s blood at the masquerade, you were basically pledging your life to the betterment of the species, Tessa. That does not include letting humans in on our little secret. I let your telling Penny slide because I didn’t really have much of a choice. But telling the male…you are asking for trouble.”
    “I didn’t exactly get a How-to guide when you changed me and left me for dead to wake up on an autopsy table, not knowing who -or what- I was, Harper. I don’t know the rules. As for my Coven bond…I was forced into that just as I was forced into my vampirism. So excuse me if I haven’t been a model student. Besides that…screw you. Ask you my questions? How am I to do that when I can’t even get ahold of you?” She ripped her arm from his grasp and stood up straighter, jutting her chin out in defiance. Her eyes blazed with a dark purple incandescence, flamed to life from her weeks’ worth of anger and frustration. “You and Elijah simply disappeared, leaving me to my own devices and this is the only thing I could think of to keep myself from going completely crazy. I want- no I need- to know more. I need to know it all.”
    Harper sighed deeply, shoving his hands into his Diesel jeans as far as they would go. He stared at Tessa for a long moment and she began to wonder if maybe she would finally get the information she wanted. She hadn’t meant to put him in the spotlight like that but what else could Tessa do? She deserved to know everything about this new life she had found herself in, didn’t she? It was like joining a super-secret society with an initiation but no rule book. And she had had enough of the cloak and dagger. It was time for answers and she was determined to get them no matter what.
    “You know, you are absolutely right. What the hell was I thinking? You’ll have to forgive me, Tessa. Unlike you, I was born into this life, as was my brother. Why don’t you meet me tomorrow night at the club? I’ll be there all night. I promise to give you some of the answers you have been looking for.”
    “Really?” Tessa lit up with a grin, clapping her hands. “Finally! You don’t know what a relief this is.”
    “I’m sure I can imagine.”
    Tessa did not miss the fact that Harper said some of the answers and not all of them.

 
    Tessa thanked the girl behind the counter and took her cappuccino to a dark corner of the café, pushing the sunglasses up farther onto the bridge of her nose. Absolutely nothing about the drink seemed particularly appetizing but she had needed to get away for a while and this was one of her favorite past times. She would sit in a random coffee shop with a drink and a good thick book and just lose herself until her troubles seemed less bothersome. Sure, her problems now were a little more intense, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t take a little breather from the world. Tessa had managed to feed the night before so even the late afternoon sun wasn’t able to keep her cooped up in Penny's apartment.
    Before she could even manage to settle comfortably into her seat, a woman pushed past her chair and nearly knocked the hot drink from her hands. Tessa's quick reflexes were the only thing that saved it from sliding to the floor.
    “Oh gosh, I am so so sorry. Did I spill any on you? I really need to learn to watch where I'm going.” Tessa waved a hand in the air, ready to dismiss the girl’s apology as it really wasn’t necessary, but stopped short when she looked up at her face.
    Eyes so dark they were nearly black stared back her, unblinking in a slightly unnerving way. They were fringed in thick, heavy eyelashes above a delicately pointed nose and rosy red lips that were a shade too full for the oval face. Dense black waves