LOGINI stare at the last item in the kit: a burner phone, set to autodial Lucas if I press the panic button. There’s a temptation to smash it, to sever the backup plan and force myself to trust only my own willpower. But I don’t. The wolf in me knows the value of fallback positions, and the human isn’t s
The transformation always begins subtly—an itch beneath the skin, a metallic taste where there should be only saliva and regret. Tonight it arrives early. The moon is only a waxy gash in the cloud cover, but my body reads the angles, the old arithmetic of hunger and inevitability. The pulse in my wr
“Just one for now. But I’d bet there’s another backup car somewhere out of sight. Classic setup.” I close my eyes, picturing the streets in layers: Reeves inside, sweating through his secondhand shirt; Lila somewhere between the kitchen and her laptop; the watcher, parked and pretending to text, bu
It’s not a question, but I answer anyway. “Yes. The moon is… bad this time.” He nods, like a man who’s already made peace with the fact of monsters. “I’ll be ready. If you need to tag out, just say the word.” The offer is comfort and threat both. I want to bite it, test the strength of it, but I j
I check the itinerary again, as if some alternate option will have materialized since I last read it. The line for the meeting is double-underlined. 2100 hours. I imagine Martin Reeves: the sweat, the darting eyes, the kind of man who can balance six sets of books but can’t keep his own hands from s
The moon tonight is the kind that leaves nowhere to hide. It hangs low, lashed to the horizon by black wire clouds, its face so bright it spites the city’s sodium haze and sends hard lines of shadow through the slats of my office blinds. The silver finds my skin in cold needles. I roll down the slee
The pen wavers in my hand, an unsteady promise, an unsteady threat. I draw a line through Derek’s name, feel the pull to call him, to complicate things. The urge is sharp, almost as sharp as my need to avoid him, to handle this on my own. The breeze catches the edge of the calendar, rustling it like
I sit at the vanity, the invitation like an accusation at my side. It catches the lamplight, sending tiny, taunting reflections across the mirror, across my face. My own eyes challenge me from the glass, daring me to risk it, daring me to ignore the cost. I scroll through photos on my phone, past ga
Crystal shivers on the edges of the too-long silence between us. I search Derek’s face as we eat, my eyes skipping over his proud nose and chiseled jaw, noting every flicker of emotion that might tell me why this evening feels different. He smiles, but it’s an empty gesture that doesn’t reach his ey
I let them watch my lips on the crystal glass, as if that momentary union might yield some secret they can grasp at. The water is cool on my tongue, a contrast to the dry heat that thickens the room and everything in it. It carries the faint taste of minerals, the texture smooth and sliding, an in







