Bewere the Night

IN THE SEEONEE HILLS by Erica Hildebrand

My name is Claire.

Four months ago, Jules told me she was a werewolf. We were already sleeping together. She should have known better, but I should have been more careful.

Lycanthropy, unless you’re born with it, is debilitating. Contracting it is easier than you think, even when you’re just experimenting with some rough play in the bedroom.

It’s all in the bite.

I went to the clinic—not just any clinic, the clinic, if you’re connected enough to find it—to get tested. The clinic’s only open at night, catering to the sensitivities of their clientele.

The test was just a smokescreen, my way of trying to cross paths with the Seeonee Pack.

I sat by myself, reading a pamphlet on lycanthropy. Jules had sworn to me it wasn’t a disease, but she’d been born with it. She could control it. I couldn’t. So, every full moon, her pack pumped me full of sedatives and muscle relaxants to keep me from changing. The Rothschild Pack ran a pharmaceutical company.

The clinic’s pamphlet talked about smells and instincts, about tapping into the primitive brain of the human psyche, all neatly arranged in bullet point factoids.

A nasty mechanical smell drifted from where the vampires sat, reeking of preservatives and rotten fruit.

I closed my eyes and focused on smells coming from the other side of the clinic instead, smells that reminded me of childhood trips to my grandparents’ farm: muddy creek water and cedar wood shavings. Comforting and familiar. The smells of a pack.

A clean, earthy smell came closer. Cinnamon, woodsmoke, and a November breeze. The plastic cushions of the bench shifted as someone sat beside me.

I opened my eyes and flinched when I saw how close she’d sat. She was early twenties, same as me. Her auburn hair had that short, tousled, bedhead look that I was pretty sure had taken an hour to style. Her amber eyes reminded me of white wine. Moon earrings jingled from her lobes, matching the long necklaces that draped over the cleavage her spaghetti-strap top displayed.

Her face dimpled with a devil-may-care smile and I instantly felt small and pathetic by comparison. She was gorgeous. I realized I was staring. My face heated with a blush and I instinctively looked away.

“Hi. You’re all alone. I’m Ginny Donnelly; would you like to come sit with us?” She gestured to the group from whom the earthy smells emanated.

“Please,” I said, and introduced myself.

“We’re the Seeonee,” she said. “Named so for The Jungle Book.”

“Never read it,” I said. I hoped I didn’t show reaction, even though my heart skipped a beat. I’d found them.

She tilted her head to one side, hair and earrings tumbling in the appropriate direction. “Really? You should. It’s one of my favorites.”

Her pack stood as we approached, and they all pressed in around me, touching my shoulders, shaking hands. Ginny pressed me forward to the only packmember still sitting, a pregnant woman of about fifty, golden trinkets interwoven in her salt-and-pepper hair.

“Mae is our pack leader,” Ginny said. “Her obstetrician works here.”

She turned to Mae. “Mom, this is Claire.”

“A new friend, Geneva?” I detected a note of criticism, but Mae reached her hand out and pulled me down next to her on the seat. “I smell you’re new to the wolf magic. Thankfully you don’t look harmed.”

Catching lycanthropy was normally a violent act, like being impregnated by way of rape, the pamphlet in my hand had told me.

“N-no, nothing like that,” I said. “It was an accident.” Should I be so nervous? What happened to a lone wolf when she encroached on a pack’s territory? The Rothschilds had kept me in the dark.

“Who infected you?” Ginny asked, sitting down on my other side.

Jules had instructed me to be honest with them. About anything except the plan. “My girlfriend.”

There was a subtle shift in Ginny’s posture. “What’s her name? We might know her.”

“Um,” I said, “Julia Straus.”

Mae and Geneva didn’t know her, but they asked the others. A boy with spiked hair nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “I’ve heard of her. She’s with the Rothschild Pack.”

Mae grumbled beside me. “Oh, them.”

I looked at Ginny, feigning ignorance.

“They’re a territorial rival of ours,” she explained. “They’ve recently been encroaching on Seeonee hunting ground.”

I absently watched the vampires across the room, not wanting to betray that I already knew that. My ears and nose, however, were busy sifting out the individuals of the Seeonee beyond Ginny’s clean autumnal scent.

“Does that make me a Rothschild?”

“Nah,” Ginny said, patting me on the back. I roused at the touch but stayed quiet. “You’re free to do as you want.”

Was I crazy? Why had I agreed to do this?

I was only dimly aware of a gothed-up vampire hissing at me from across the room.

“Never mind them,” Mae said quietly. “We don’t associate with that kind.”

I didn’t lower my gaze from the vampire staring back at me; a cold oily feeling poured down my spine. I’d never been a confrontational person, but I didn’t break eye contact with him, not until I heard the nurse call my name, crisp and clear.

When I stood, Ginny stood with me. “Can I go in with you?”

I nodded. We went into the back room where a nurse in scrubs took my height and weight, blood pressure, and a blood sample.

Ginny took out a length of looped string from her pocket and we played Cat’s Cradle while we waited, sitting cross-legged on the exam bed. She wore her sleeves over her palms, the same way I did with the cuffs of my hoodie, and I liked that about her.

No, I told myself, don’t get sappy. The Rothschilds had told me these people hated anyone who wasn’t a natural-born. I didn’t know why Ginny was being nice to me, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t here to make a friend.

“So, you come here often?” I asked.

She laughed. “A pick-up line? I’m disappointed.”

I blushed furiously. “No, that’s not what—”

“I know,” she said, amused. “It just sounded funny. Yes, this is our one-stop shop for healthcare. We have to put up with the awful vampire smell but at least this way we can take note of which ones are in our territory. So, your mate let you go alone?”

“What?”

“Julia. She didn’t come with you to the clinic,” she said. Her expression turned serious.

“She’s not my mate,” I said, suddenly defensive.

“But you said she’s your girlfriend.”

“Well, yeah. Sure, I guess.”

“Oh,” she said, and avoided my gaze. “I’m sorry, I just assumed. I guess it’s a lupine thing. Sometimes I forget it’s not human nature to mate for life—I mean, you have to admit, people are flakes.”

“I guess,” I said. I suddenly hated that she was being nice to me.

When they came back with my test results and started explaining options and lifestyle changes, I didn’t understand why it hit me so hard. Maybe I’d held out some fool’s hope that this test would tell me it was all just a false-positive. That I was normal after all. I don’t know. All I knew was that Jules had done it to me. By accident, but it happened all the same.

I questioned helping the Rothschilds take over the territory. They hadn’t told me what I was supposed to do, exactly, except that I had to be among the Seeonee when I changed for the first time.

I had a week to get used to the idea.

My name is Geneva.

I carry in my veins the last legacy of Ireland’s wolves since Oliver Cromwell’s campaign of slaughter destroyed the packs all those centuries ago. We Donnellys aren’t strictly Irish, not anymore. Donnelly blood mingled with the American timber wolf and eventually the pack changed its name from Donnelly to Seeonee. I’m third-generation. Also, my mom’s Italian.

Even though a Donnelly bite can infect, we protect people who live in our territory. That includes culling the number of infected weres in the area, lest they run around spreading mayhem.

The problem started when Mae got pregnant, around the time my dad died, and her wolf magic went dormant. It only made sense that our rivals would try to murder the Seeonee’s alpha in her vulnerable state. We had a choice. We could spend nine months wearing ourselves out, worrying that at any moment we’d be attacked, wage fights and risk vampiric infection or death.

Or we could kill a human.

The human community would respond with all the fury of modern technology and send all of us—including our enemies—underground. I’d argued long and hard over the implications of the humans hunting us and our cousins the wolves, but it was all for nothing.

Mae suggested that if we could get an outsider to do the deed, we wouldn’t have to sacrifice any pack members as the culprit. We had no control over vampires, but we could dupe a hapless infected werewolf, serve them up to the humans and rid ourselves of a potential troublemaker all at once.

It was the will of the pack. That’s why, against my better judgment, I went to the clinic in search of a patsy.

And I hated myself for finding Claire.

The clinic gave me some pills. Some sort of suppressant that was nowhere near as strong as the Rothschild sedatives—which I was no longer taking. At the next full moon, the change would hit me no matter what.

A few days later Ginny, who’d gotten my cell number at the clinic, called and asked me to meet her for lunch. We met at a sandwich stop.

“Lost your appetite, I see,” she said.

I picked at my salami but otherwise didn’t eat. “Must be nerves,” I said.

“No, it’s those pills they give you.”

“What the hell else can I do?” I asked, suddenly irritated. “You’re natural-born, I’m infected. It’s different for me.”

I’d been reading as much on the subject as I could get my hands on. Jules had, of course, loaned me some books, but she was natural-born too and couldn’t understand any more than Ginny could.

“I’m afraid,” I said. “The nurses said it’s going to hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. They say I’m not going to be able to control it.”

With three days until the full moon, the lunar cycle was already twisting my insides, making me snap easily. I had no idea what I’d be like if I wasn’t on the pills. Feral, maybe.

“Your hormones are all misaligned,” Ginny said. “Those drugs are messing with your emotions.”

“You natural-borns can control it, right? The change?”

“It’s hard to explain.” Ginny munched on a potato chip before continuing. “We feel the pull of the moon just as the tides do. But we don’t go mad. And aside from the moon, we can change whenever we want.” She shrugged. “It’s easier if you’ve got other wolves around. A pack to submit to.”

“I’m afraid,” I said again, and hell if I didn’t mean it.

She reached over the table and took my hand in hers, offering a little smile. “I already talked to my pack and they agreed to help for your first change. We’ll go into the woods, somewhere private, don’t worry.”

I shrank back and the wolf behind my eyes flattened its ears in embarrassment. I didn’t want a bunch of calm, collected werewolves watching me totally lose it. I’d never be able to look them in the eye. But this was what Jules had asked me to do.

Ginny tilted her head to the side. “You can trust me.”

I don’t even know you, I thought. But the wolf inside me wanted to say yes, trust her. Could instinct tell me if I was going to get hurt? Could instinct protect me?

“Fine,” I said with a sigh. “Let’s do it.”

“Good. You couldn’t be safer, I promise you that. Here, I brought you something.” She took an old Rudyard Kipling paperback out of her satchel and put it on the table between us.

On the bus ride home, I read about the wolves of the Seeonee, who called themselves the Free People and protected the jungle’s laws. I imagined Ginny’s family being like that. Whatever the Rothschild Pack had planned, if it was supposed to hurt these people, I couldn’t do it.

Jules hurt me. She gave me this, put this on my shoulders. I didn’t want anything more from her. I didn’t want to contribute to whatever she was planning.

So I called her that night and backed out.

When I tried to sleep, later, I heard distant howls with my increasingly sensitive ears. They sounded so sad.

Behind my eyes, the wolf responded to the terrible yearning brought on by the sounds. I wanted to empty my lungs and cry out yes, I want to join you.

Outside my window, the moon waxed.

I sent Claire a text the next morning letting her know where to meet me. Then I spent the day arguing with Mae, asserting that we couldn’t use Claire for our scheme. But my mom had already found us a victim, currently bound and gagged in her garage.

The plan was to take Claire and the victim into the woods, let Claire change and then ravage him. As an infected she wouldn’t remember the event, and we could make up whatever story we liked.

But she wasn’t just a nameless werewolf to me, not anymore. She was alone and frightened. One more victim of a pack that didn’t take care of their own.

I’d started hating myself for even considering the plan. Of course I wanted to protect my mom, but the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to kill anyone. And I didn’t want to do it at Claire’s expense.

I hung up with Mae just before dinner time, when Claire was due to arrive at my place. I had invited her to spend the night with me, afraid that she might change early. The first change had a general twenty-four hour window, but any more specific than that was a guessing game and I could tell she didn’t want to be alone for it.

I didn’t share any of this with Mae, who wanted me to keep an eye on Claire and bring her to the Seeonee meeting at tomorrow’s full moon.

I’d baked a ziti dish but I was too conflicted to have much of an appetite. Claire only poked at hers, too. She wore her dark shoulder-length hair down, smooth as silk. Her dress flattered her figure and she pulled off a casual, girl-next-door charm even when she was obviously nervous about the full moon.

I knew I couldn’t put her in harm’s way.

We sat on my balcony after dinner and sipped coffee, looking out at the hedgerow and the patch of woods beyond.

“I can open a bottle of wine,” I offered.

Claire shook her head. “I already feel strange. I don’t want to risk lowering my guard or anything.”

I nodded and we sat in silence for a time, swaying idly in the wooden porch swing I’d hung from the supports of the upstairs neighbor’s balcony.

“I don’t think I should be around the Seeonee when I change,” she said in a quiet voice. She bit her bottom lip and I couldn’t help but stare at her mouth, the softness of her skin.

“That’s a good idea,” I said. We could avoid the Seeonee. They could just kill Mae’s victim, deal with the consequences themselves, and leave us out of it.

She gave me a sidelong glance, her dark eyes suspicious. “Why do you think so?”

I sipped my coffee. If I told her the truth she’d disappear on me. “I just think it’s prudent. Why do you?”

Claire hesitated before answering. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

It dawned on me then that there was a chance she’d be able to harm me. The Rothschild Pack carried the blood of the red Eurasian wolves. A bit smaller than me, but we would be on par as predators. It was too much to hope for her to remain conscious through the ordeal.

“I don’t see how I can live with this,” she said, picking at a loose thread on my sleeve. I was very aware of her proximity.

“This is what you are now.”

“But I’ve got some sort of sickness. Isn’t that what you think? That I’m going to be one of those monsters, the kind that terrorize London in the movies?”

I bit my tongue. It was close to what I thought.

“I don’t see how you can be so hypocritical,” she said. “Natural-borns are the ones who give people this sickness in the first place.”

A growl threatened to rise in my throat. I realized I felt the moon’s pull, too. “So you’re just going to go through life believing you’re a victim?”

“I wasn’t born this way.”

“I was. I’ve been one all my life. That isn’t my fault.” I took a deep breath, and my nostrils flared as I inhaled the natural perfume of her skin. “It’s just who I am.”

Instead of answering, Claire leaned towards me and pressed those soft, pretty lips against mine. Desire fluttered deep within me. I wanted to touch her. But I couldn’t do this, not until I was sure I could protect her.

Abruptly I stood and went in through the open patio door—putting some distance between us—and set my cup down on the kitchen island. I turned the faucet on.

“If you have kids,” I called over my shoulder, desperately wanting to change the subject, “they’ll be natural-borns like me. That isn’t so bad.”

I plunged my hands into the cold water and splashed my face and neck until my roiling blood calmed and my shallow breathing steadied. The water only momentarily cooled the heat of my skin.

I toweled off, waited a moment, took a deep breath and when I heard no response I returned to the balcony. “Claire, listen. I’m sorry. I—”

Claire was doubled over, clutching her stomach with both arms and her face twisted in pain. I rushed to her and put my hand on her back; the muscles beneath her thin dress shivered. I cursed.

It was starting.

“Come on,” I said, and pulled her to her feet. She needed to be in the natural world for this. I took her through the apartment, hoping I could get her down the stairs and out into the hedgerow. Halfway out the door I thought to grab my digital camera. Claire cried, moving slowly from the pain. I dragged her across the lawn, sparing a quick glance to make sure no one saw us, then pulled her into the forest. At the first clearing I dropped everything and stripped off her clothes, thinking she’d not want to ruin them.

Her skin rippled from the spastic changes underneath.

As I yanked her dress off, two loud pops of bone and tendon—sickening sounds, even when you’re used to it—signaled the shift of her shoulder joints.

“It’s all right,” I said.

She writhed on the ground, crying and begging me to make the pain stop. My heart tripped; I wanted to comfort her, but I couldn’t. I set the camera to start recording, checked the angle of the shot and balanced it on a maple branch. She’d need to see this. Through the viewfinder I saw her snout elongate and the fur grow. I stripped off my own clothes.

Her pheromones filled my nose with wafts of pine boughs and pumpkin seeds and something else, something I hadn’t noticed before when her human scent masked it, something that grew pungent when she changed.

Some sort of drug.

The change came easy to me so close to the full moon. My shoulders dislocated and rolled forward, my nose popped, my insides burned with the familiar fire. It hurt, but I was used to it and I had control. Claire didn’t.

The wolf magic consumed me as my vision blurred and diminished, focus going to my ears and nose. Claire’s transformation was nearly complete. She was not quite a common wolf; her fur was thicker, richer, and ruddy.

I put my big paws on the leafy ground and stood straight and tall. I was a daughter of alphas, and the wolf magic raged within me as I watched Claire, my instincts howling: Infected. Dangerous. Stranger. I moved forward, intending to press her into submission. She was smaller than me and I smelled fear and anger and insanity brought on by the drug. Still beneath the drug she smelled, to my surprise, natural.

Once she shook off the pain, Claire focused on me with fangs bared and lunged for my throat. She only caught ruff and as I recoiled she caught my leg in her teeth and a lightning bolt of agony ran up my foreleg. I lashed out in reflex and latched onto the fur at her throat, forcing her to the ground.

Despite her fury, she was disoriented and confused, though her snarls could have woken hell itself.

I held her there for what seemed like hours.

As she metabolized the drug and eventually grew docile, I wondered whether my family had engineered this unnatural aggression in her.

She whined and I finally let her be.

We sniffed each other, as is the way of wolf introduction, and she bent her head and nuzzled my injury by way of apology.

I watched the video recording of my change for the third time. I didn’t remember any of it.

I sat curled up on the floor of Ginny’s bedroom in a borrowed robe, fresh from a much needed bath, my back against her bed. I winced at the ruthlessness of the two wolves—us, me, that’s actually me—on screen, and rubbed my throat with a shaky hand.

My ached everywhere. The wolf behind my eyes was thankfully silent.

“How long were we like this?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

“Just the night,” Ginny said, sitting across from me with her back against a wall, hair disheveled from her shower. She’d bandaged her arm in gauze.

“I don’t know what to say. Your arm—”

“Will heal,” she said, and glanced at the clock on the nightstand. The sky outside glowed pink with the coming dawn. “I have to get you out of here before tonight. The Seeonee will be angry.”

She’d told me about the drug she’d smelled, what had sent me into a rage. She’d also told me about her pack’s plans to make me murder a human.

“Ginny,” I said, but I turned my head and buried my face against her comforter. I wanted to tell her the truth. She’d already had the chance to kill me, and to trick me, and she hadn’t done either.

I heard her come closer, felt a hand on my arm and when I lifted my head she sat beside me. Wordlessly she pulled me against her and I laid my head on her shoulder.

And I talked.

I told her about my infection, about Jules, about the Rothschilds’ plan to overthrow the Seeonee, about my role in it. I guessed they’d administered the drugs when they sedated me at full moons, testing on me, planning all along to make me go insane and hurt someone. I opened up to her about my fears of dealing with it alone, about what a mistake I’d made in agreeing to help with the Rothschilds and how horrible I felt.

“If you hate me,” I said, “I understand.”

After a moment of tense silence, Ginny said, “Likewise.”

Then she stiffened against me.

“My mother,” she said. “That’s who they wanted you to attack. She can’t change while pregnant. That’s why they feralized you with drugs.”

“Well,” I said, sitting up straight, “I won’t be there to do it. You told me the drugs got flushed out of my system.”

She nodded, “You smelled clean, after.”

I touched her bandaged hand. “I didn’t … didn’t give you anything, did I?”

At that, she looked at me with her Chardonnay eyes and flashed her dimpled smile. “No.” Then she assumed an Irish brogue. “If anything, I pray you swallowed some honest Donnelly blood and put your spirit to rights.”

I laughed with the relief of broken tension.

She laughed, too.

And then she kissed me.

She hesitated, as if unsure. After my surprise subsided, I nudged my lips against hers. Accepting that as permission, she kissed with renewed fervor, parted my lips with her tongue and drew me into her lap.

I ran my hands through her disheveled wet hair and traced the features of her face with my lips, moving towards her neck. She opened my robe and slid her hands in, cool against my warm skin, sending electric shudders along my flesh.

I pulled back long enough to peel off her shirt. Straddling her, I slid my hands down her breasts, drawn to her warmth. Her hands caressed my ribs. I shivered as her hands slid lower, tracing my hips. Her thigh pressed up between mine.

Ginny rolled me and laid me down on my back, parted the robe and pressed her breasts and stomach down against mine. She nudged my head to the side and wrapped her lips around my earlobe as her hand slipped between my thighs, her hair spilling across my face, our heartbeats pressed against each other.

I panted, clinging to her shoulders. Her breath trembled against my ear and then she was inside me, eclipsing all other sensation. heat radiating against mine, her careful rhythm built a slow mounting pressure within me. I moaned into her shoulder.

The sensation crested, then faltered, lingering.

“Claire,” she whispered. A sweet nothing carried by her breath, but so genuine. I knew what it asked. Let me take you.

I surrendered. The mental barrier dropped; the sensation blossomed and exploded within me. The world fell away.

When it passed, she held me, fingers exploring the contours of my body. I’d never dreamed I would feel so safe at the hands of a wolf.

After a moment, I took a deep breath and said, “Can I touch you now?”

She smiled, nipped at my throat. “What’s your hurry? You’re mine now. Think I’m letting you go anytime soon?”

My heart swelled. I answered with a kiss, long and slow.

I laid my ear against the spot between Claire’s breasts and listened to her heartbeat, letting it lull me. She dozed on the carpet, her fingers tangled in my hair.

I recognized then and there, watching her sleeping, that I wanted her as my mate. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind. I didn’t care that she wasn’t a natural-born; she had smelled perfectly natural to me.

In the afternoon I returned to idle stroking along her skin. She eventually squirmed and made little half-asleep noises. I set my mouth to work rousing her as pleasantly as I could, her legs parting as she realized what I was up to.

Suddenly alert, her nails dug into my shoulder blade. “What time is it?”

“Who cares?”

Claire opened her dark eyes, but they slid closed again as I pressed a palm to her cheek and she turned her head to kiss my fingers.

Then she started to sit up. “The full moon.”

I rested my hand on her chest. “You changed last night. Don’t worry. It won’t happen again so soon.”

“But the Seeonee think I’m going to be there,” she said. “And the Rothschild Pack knows I won’t.”

I froze. “You told them you weren’t going?”

Her expression turned worrisome and I reminded myself she wasn’t to blame for this.

She said, “I told them. What if they send someone else?”

“What are their plans, exactly?”

“I don’t know. They kept me in the dark.”

I started to disentangle myself from her limbs and the blankets. “I should get to them,” I said, glancing at my clock on the nightstand. We’d been lying here all day. Evening approached.

Claire sat upright, wincing. She was probably still sore from her change last night. “I’m going with you.”

“Better if you didn’t,” I said, pulling on my underwear. “I haven’t talked to my pack yet. They think you’re coming to play our scapegoat.”

“I’m not going to let you face this alone,” she said.

I opened my mouth to speak but a loud crash interrupted. I flinched. Someone kicked in my front door and just as quickly, footsteps sounded in the living room. I pushed Claire to the floor behind me, but as soon as the shadows appeared in the bedroom doorway something stung my thigh and I looked down at a tranquilizer dart.

The dart, the room, and the advancing figures spun out of focus as the ground rushed up to meet me.

They’d found me. I didn’t expect them to come after me, but they had. Ginny landed beside where I lay, unconscious, and I threw myself over her to shield her from the red wolves that stalked into the room on their hind legs. Peter stood in the doorway with a tranquilizer gun. Peter, alpha of the Rothschilds.

Worse, Jules was there, too. I recognized her instantly: curly dirty-blond hair, firm short figure. She was only a few inches higher than five feet and, even so, she was strong. She’d had to quit rugby after she’d broken the clavicle of a woman twice her size.

The wolves came towards me. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have the instinct for this sort of thing. They grabbed my arms with their padded hands, hauling me to my feet. Naked, I shivered.

Lamplight glinted off Peter’s glasses as he scanned the room. His short gray beard gave him a wolfish appearance even in his human state. He motioned to the wolves.

They pulled me along after him. One of them stooped and lifted Ginny, throwing her over its shoulder. Peter rummaged through Ginny’s satchel until he found her cell phone.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“Breaking up your little love nest,” Jules said, arms crossed. “You left me for this?”

My nostrils flared. “I left you because you used me,” I said.

Jules jabbed a finger at my unconscious lover. “Like she isn’t? You’re just an infected to her.” She stepped forward and pain registered on her face, if only briefly. “I’m sorry. I never should have let Peter talk you into this. But once this is over, we’ll talk.”

“Once what is over?” A chill crept up my spine as I watched the wolf carry Ginny out the door. I started to struggle but the other wolves manhandled me to a less mobile position. “What are you doing to her?”

“As much as I’d like to, I’m not doing anything. We take the Seeonee territory tonight.” She sniffed at me. “You’ve already changed.”

“If you hurt her, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Jules spread her arms, inviting me to explain. “You’ll what, Claire?” She stepped towards me and touched my chin with her fingertips. I didn’t have the freedom to recoil. “Don’t you see how they were planning to use you?”

I did. Ginny had come clean with me about that. But that was Seeonee scheming. There was no way Jules could know. “You’re lying,” I said.

“Why would I lie to you?” Her hand moved from my chin and stroked my cheek.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I stiffened as I tried to turn my head away, and she dropped her hand.

“Then you’re a bigger fool than Peter took you for.” She took a step back. “The Seeonee were going to use you for murder and let the humans kill you for it.”

I blanched. How did she know?

I didn’t have time to think about it. Jules pulled a hypodermic out of her pocket and removed its plastic sleeve. The red wolves tightened their grip on my arms and one grabbed a fistful of my hair. Another held out my wrist.

The wolf inside my head snarled. “What is that?”

“A new batch of cocktail,” she said.

She came at me with the needle but I struggled. The claws in my hair tightened and pain lanced up my spine. Jules grabbed my face and brandished the needle in my field of vision.

“You can hold still and let me administer this,” she said with an undercurrent of a lupine growl, “or you can keep up the shenanigans and I’ll jam it straight into your tear duct. Which will it be?”

Terrified, I held still. She grabbed my wrist, tapped the veins there with the back of her fingernail, and stuck me. The fluid spread up my arm like ice water.

Tingling followed the numbness and the wolf howled inside my head, trying to claw its way out. Every muscle cramped. I started to faint, but shook my head violently to clear my vision. The change was coming again, the pain still familiar from last night. “Why are you doing this!”

Jules waggled the empty syringe at me. “Test subject.”

My skin crawled from beneath, as though she had injected me with a hive of angry bees. My legs faltered and the red wolves dragged me along as they followed Jules out of the apartment. I wanted to vomit. My head spun. Tingling spread to the rest of my limbs, my mouth watered and my vision tunneled. I forgot where I was.

Next I knew, I was dropped on my knees in the gravel of the driveway. I did retch, and felt a little better afterwards, except the drug was making my heart race and spots clouded my vision. I heard Jules’s voice, painfully loud in my ears. “Did you make the call?”

The plastic click of a shutting cell phone was as harsh as a gunshot.

“Yeah,” Peter said. “They barked my ear off. Pretty convincing, to their credit.”

Footsteps on the gravel crunched like a coffee grinder. I wanted to cover my head but my arms wouldn’t move. My shoulders, still aching from last night’s disjointing, popped again and I blacked out as they readjusted.

“They’ll come right to us,” Peter said. I strained through the blurry vision and saw him crouch down beside Ginny. He stuck a needle in her arm. There were more wolves in the parking lot, at least a dozen that I could see.

Jules walked over to me, straddled me, and draped a loop of chain around my neck. I growled a deep, horrible sound at her and it shocked me that I’d made such a noise. I looked down at my hands, but black paws had replaced them. The pain and rage faded.

I was conscious. The change had come, and I was still conscious. This wasn’t the same drug as before.

Jules tightened the chain and pulled my head up, but I felt her finger pressed against my nape, under the chain, to prevent it from choking me. She bent to my ear.

“I know you can hear me,” she whispered. I couldn’t see her and I tried to struggle, but she put a knee between my shoulderblades and yanked my head higher. “I know you can, Claire, so listen to me.”

A car pulled up with a blaze of headlights. The doors opened and Mae got out, along with two of the Seeonee, who dragged out a fourth person in chains. He was a scruffy man, bruised and beaten, but he wore designer jeans and a nice jacket. His eyes widened when he saw us.

I tried in vain to sniff for Ginny, but Jules’s quiet, urgent voice distracted me. “I told you I wasn’t lying. I knew what Mae was planning to do with you because Peter told me. Just watch.”

Peter sauntered to the car and, to my astonishment, kissed Mae. He put his hand on her swollen stomach. “How’s our son?”

Mae’s hand covered his. “Doing fine, sweetheart.”

“Peter?”

The voice belonged to the shackled man.

“Peter, what’s going on?”

“I’m sorry to do this to you, David,” Peter said, putting an arm around Mae’s shoulders. “But you’re only human, after all.”

I could hear David’s panicked heartbeat.

Jules rested her other hand, the one that gripped the chain, atop my head. I thrashed but she was strong enough to hold me still. “That’s the man you’re supposed to kill,” she whispered.

Mae appraised me with a glance, then nodded and asked, “How is Geneva?”

“Ready to wake up with a bad temper,” Peter said. He glanced at his wristwatch. “When’s the rest of your pack due?”

“Any minute.”

“Good. Get your perfume ready,” said Peter. He stripped out of his suit. The two Seeonee that had come with Mae did the same. One of them handed her the car keys.

“Remember,” Mae told them, “These are our new packmembers. We can’t have an all-out war. Attack only the dissenters.”

“Including the Donnelly girl,” Peter added. A shadow crossed Mae’s face when he said that. “Do whatever’s necessary to kill her when she comes after your alpha.” He put his hands on Mae’s stomach again. “We’ve got a new heir, combining the bloodlines.”

I bristled. So, that was their plan all along. Unite the packs with deception, kill anyone who didn’t accept it. We’d all been duped. I snarled, and when Mae caught sight of me she flinched. She said to Jules, “Is she feralized?”

“Yes,” Jules lied. “She’ll kill David like you want, as long as he’s in her path when I unleash her.” At that, the smell of David’s sweat soured.

“Good,” Mae nodded and turned back to Peter. “Good.”

Howling sounded in the woods. I felt the immediate urge to answer, but Jules tightened the chain to prevent me. Peter stepped back from Ginny; she stirred and started spasming.

Mae stood back as Peter and the others changed. While they shifted, Jules bent and whispered quickly in my ear. “This has been in the works for a while, and I won’t follow an alpha who lies to the pack. When I let you go, do whatever you think is right. But know this—the fight is coming.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry I exposed you to this. I’m trying to make it right.”

She stroked a hand down the side of my furry neck. Then she slipped the chain off and I heard her begin her own change, clothes ripping.

I did the one useful thing that occurred to me. I filled my lungs, reeled my head back, and howled.

Other howls responded, closer now. I strained to listen and heard them brushing against undergrowth in the woods. I howled again. A dozen gray wolves charged from the hedgerow into the gravel lot and bodies of red and gray clashed in growling whirlwinds beneath the brightness of the full moon. I couldn’t tell which were loyal to the alphas and which were loyal to the packs.

Peter, now a huge red wolf with a dark muzzle, watched me. His fur twitched once, and half a heartbeat later he bolted for David, who’d been handcuffed to a parked car and was trying desperately to get away.

A small red wolf darted past me and hopped on Peter’s back, biting at his face and snarling like a demon.

I ran to Ginny, who had changed and gnashed her teeth like she had gone mad, spittle flying from her mouth. She was bigger than me, the gray wolf. Her injured foreleg was still bandaged. I nosed towards her but she snapped at me and I backpedaled and then she saw Mae, the only human standing.

I smelled something foul and swiveled my ear towards Mae, hearing a hiss of aerosol. Mae sprayed something from a small perfume bottle. I bared my teeth at the rotting stench of vampire odor, but I was able to control my predatory urge to rush her.

Ginny wasn’t.

She charged Mae. I blocked her path. I didn’t want to hurt her but she snapped at my throat and got a mouthful of fur as I flinched away. I didn’t want her to hurt me. I caught her on the injured foreleg and bit through the bandages; she yelped in pain and kicked me loose.

She rushed at Mae again.

I jumped on her back, letting instinct lead me, and clamped down on the back of her neck with my jaws. Please, I begged silently, please stop.

I held her with my teeth as the battle raged around us. Wolves stalked towards us but never reached us, either blocked by another dogfight or engaged in one by Jules’s supporters.

Ginny raged beneath me like a gray hurricane, but I clamped down harder and prayed that she’d snap out of it. She was stronger than me but her leg was lame and I’d pinned her.

I had no idea how long the drug-induced rage lasted. I tried to think back to the video recording of last night. It hadn’t lasted long, had it? Seemed like hours now.

My jaw ached, threatening to lock up. Ginny settled down and I must have dropped my guard because she wrenched free and spun on me, black lips peeled back from deadly fangs. I wasn’t quick enough. She bit down on my throat and rolled me onto my back. Her growl vibrated against my neck.

She had me. I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable crush of my windpipe. Or was it the jugular first? I clung to the memory of last night’s tenderness. I wanted that to be my final thought in life. Joy, not pain, not betrayal.

The sounds of fighting faded around me, as did Ginny’s growling. I squeezed my eyes shut.

Instead of oblivion, the jaws lifted and a wet nose pressed against my face a moment later. I wasn’t dead. I squinted one eye open.

The gray wolf licked it.

When I regained consciousness, I had my jaws around a red wolf’s throat. Was I fighting or asserting dominance? Not knowing frightened me.

The red wolf smelled like pine boughs and pumpkin seeds. Claire. Oh, God. I pulled away immediately and searched for signs she was all right. She seemed to be.

I scanned the area. Were we in danger? I smelled Seeonee, but other wolves too, and blood, and anger. A large black-muzzled male lay bleeding out beneath the shadow of a parked car. A human lay slumped and bleeding against the same car.

In the distance I saw another car’s taillights receding and heard the boom of an accelerating engine. The stink of vampires faded in a whiff of car exhaust.

Claire nudged me to my feet, though my foreleg threatened to give way beneath me. She sniffed at my face and I smelled a mixture of worry and relief on her. She was a wolf but … she seemed aware. She wasn’t impeded by her infection at all.

One by one, wolves—all except the dead—shifted back to human form, the moon’s demand sated for another month. When I shifted back, I wobbled and sat in the dirt, my head swimming. Claire wrapped her arms around me and squeezed me so hard it almost hurt.

Almost.

I sat in the waiting room of the clinic while Ginny got dressed in the medical wing. The doctors had checked her thoroughly; she’d been so pumped full of drugs.

Jules came back from speaking with the toxicologist and sat on the plastic chair beside mine with a sigh. “Peter’s dead and hell if I know where Mae ran off to. If we catch her, she’s dead. But that’s really Geneva’s call.”

I didn’t know what to say. My first reaction was to protest talk of execution, but the world and its rules were different for me now.

“David is still alive,” Jules added. “Infected. But if he wants our drugs, he’s welcome to them. I doubt we’ll see the human backlash Mae and Peter dreamed up.”

“I’ve had enough of your drugs to last a lifetime,” I said.

She nodded, not meeting my gaze. “But that’s what I can offer you.” She reached into the pocket of her torn jeans and pulled out a prescription bottle. “If you want them.”

“More sedatives?” The wolf inside me bristled.

“No,” she said, balancing the bottle on the armrest of my chair. “What I gave you tonight. Clarity of the natural-born. I can’t take back what I did to you, but I can … I can make it easier.”

“Thanks,” I said quietly, not sure what else to say. I watched the others—Seeonee or Rothschild, in human form I couldn’t tell them apart—filter out from the exam rooms. They looked tired, and sad. They stayed close together, like they were waiting for something.

“I am so sorry for everything,” Jules said. She scrubbed her face with her hands, looking exhausted. “Jesus, what a day.”

“Jules?”

“Hm?”

“Thanks,” I said, and meant it. I squeezed her shoulder in gratitude and stood, going into the back of the clinic. I wasn’t content to wait anymore.

Ginny came out into the sterile hallway. She smiled at me, that dimpled smile, and I couldn’t wait the length of the corridor. I ran to her and threw my arms around her, claiming her mouth with a kiss. She wrapped her good arm around my neck and tangled her fingers in my hair.

“I had a feeling you were coming for me,” she said.

“Jules has these pills,” I blurted out. “She’s going to offer them to infected werewolves, to keep control during the change and I … I was wondering if … but I won’t if you don’t want me to pretend to be—” She gently tugged my hair, bit her bottom lip in a wicked grin, and I stopped rambling. “If you’re going to be a Seeonee wolf,” she said, “you might as well do it properly.”

I smiled at that. I pushed her through the nearest door and when we were alone, she lowered her good hand to my hip and pulled me against her.

“Good to know you’re not an elitist,” I said.

I flicked off the fluorescent light and let our hands and noses and mouths take over in the ensuing darkness. My mate’s scent bewitched me and I breathed it in: cinnamon, woodsmoke, and a November breeze.