e

hanging in the sky like a wound, like

oths for this moment, since the Blood Moon has never spared anyone's clothes. Bones crack,

laws at me from the insi

No.

people who would carve it out of me. I grip my head as the pain blinds me, my bones aching, my skin burning, and I hold on with ever

e floor, a figure br

now. He shoves through the shifting bodies and reaches me in secon

crack, and then a wolf stands where he was, huge and black as night,

rving between me and the hall. I am so scared. But he doe

protec

snaps, my bones break, m

my stomach, dim until now, blazes like a star. Ter

hut against the glare. Some whimper. Some tremble. Not one dares to look at the light. Not Derek, not the nobles, not

and unbreakable and ancient. The fear drains out of me as if someone has ope

at

rejection, after the pain and the humiliation. Everyone kno

. She stops in front of him and lowers her head, breathing him in: pine and rain, something warm, something dangerous, s

eeting, a promise. My heart pounds, my blood burns, my wolf sings. In wolf form

he wolves shift back, falling to the ground and rising as humans, their he

noise, the eyes. He takes a cloth from the stack by the wall, carries i

another. He does not look at me or speak. His back is to me,

ng. He is a

let him

but does

y voice shakes. "The

tion, for the pain, for the w

eyes flick past my shoulder to the hall, to Derek risin

ha

orks, and the words come out stiff, as if he is reading them off a page he

slap, a punch, a kn

ice is cold, but his hand trembles at hi

and wal

ain that he does not love me. Confusion, anger, sadness, all tangled toget

rk, and I do not know whether to

stand

on

ai