“I wondered and I prayed and I Googled.”

“I smiled half a smile at her puppy antics, wondering what it would be like to be able to join her, to shed my human skin and the confines that went with it and just live in the moment as a wolf. What would I look like with four legs and fur—would I be light-colored like Katie, or a darker timber, like Dev? I wondered if I would be velvet black with ice-blue eyes, like Chase.”

“I did a quick injury check on my organs and bones. The routine was familiar, one I paced my way through every other morning as I went from dispassionately watching my body heal to wondering if this time, I might have pushed things too far.”

“I had to protect him. And me. So I took everything I felt for the pack. I saw the bond, and instead of closing myself off to it, I pulled. I pulled at it and I thrust it toward Chase.”

“I am everything. I am nothing. I am powerful. I am forgotten.”

“If one thing was perfectly, crystalline clear, it was that I could take care of myself. I just kept coming and coming and coming. I was what I was.”

“She'd let me in, and for the first time, I actually wanted to do the same, to tell someone the truth. That I wasn't normal. That I wasn't human.”