All around me, bodies are churning, except for two, standing near the fireplace. One of them pointing a gun, eyebrows raised, lips pursed. The other at the muzzle end, wearing a furious, calculating expression and a stretched-out T-shirt from St. Elizabeth’s College of Nursing.
I lay Evie down, and because it’s too late to hide anything, I curl down around her.
I put my mouth to her neck, feeling the muscles thicken under my lips.
It will not be like last time.
I presume parents are the ones who have “the talk” with their children. I had no parents so I, lucky boy that I was, got to have the talk with August.
There is a place in every Lukani, August had said, and before he went any farther, I had wrapped my arm around my ribs, my fingers feeling the spot near the floating rib on my left side that felt equally like pleasure and shame.
“Don’t go looking for it,” he’d said as soon as he saw me. “It lets the monsters out.”
I dropped my hand and “the talk” was over. I knew better than most Lukani my age what those monsters were. Years went by before I was tempted again, but by the time that moon rose from the North Atlantic, so cold and large and necessary, I was no longer worried that there was a monster inside me. I was now terrified that there was nothing but a big, empty, monster-shaped space.
Cassius yells something at Tiberius, but the sound is already indistinct in my itching ears.
It will not be like last time.
The Great North Pack is not like the Lukani, who came from France to rip up the forests of Canada and make the land safe for cabbages. And though he had never used an ax himself—not on a tree, in any case—August was in his soul a défricheur, a clearer of the land. An extirpator of the wild.
With the last of my dissolving agency, I let my arm drop around Evie’s waist, sorting through that Alpha scent of the entirety of the Pack for the growing scent of granite and moss that is all her.
It will not be like last time.
Tiny crystals float in front of my eyes and swirl together, blinding me. Bones soften and unknit, tissue unravels, skin tingles and itches as fur erupts. Organs rumble and rearrange themselves and my mind drops, like a dreamer jerking on the verge of sleep.
My ankles narrow and ache, whether from phantom pain or actual damage, I don’t know. Last time, I hadn’t known what was happening. I was still dressed, though my pants had fallen off or maybe August had them removed. I still had on the shirt that fell in front of my face so I could see nothing. But as a wolf, I could smell.
It will not be like last time.
I could smell Magnus, hear his ragged sobs. I know now why Magnus had always been able to find me, but I wish that one time he hadn’t found me in that secluded beach in the middle of the change.
It will not be like last time.
Terrified, he had run for August, who had me strung up by my back feet, or rather paws, from the single tree of the old compound as a lesson to anyone who might feel inclined to forget who we were.
“Nous sommes Lukani. C’est notre devoir de dompter le sauvage qui nous entoure, comme nous l’avons dompté en nous-mèmes.”
We are Lukani. It is our duty to tame the wild without, as we have always tamed the wild within.
I don’t know how long I hung there, blindly swaying when the wind or some asshole poked at my body.
The Lukani knew that was not a wolf hanging there. They knew that if August didn’t kill me, I would take revenge on everyone who had spit at me, who had jabbed at my genitals, who had made me bleed. They gave me a wide berth. The humans didn’t. Magnus tried to keep them away, but he was young, and without me looming behind him lending him power, he had none of his own. August knew he would have to replace the humans once my ankles healed and I was able to walk again, but it amused him to tame the wild with these disposable employees.
It will not be like last time.
Eventually, my ears begin ringing, a welcome change from deafness. The door slams and I move my jaw, trying to pop my ears. Sound and smell begin to