"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."