ログイン“Can I tell you a secret?” he asks, voice so soft it nearly disappears into the hiss of the rain. I nod, not trusting myself to speak. “I don’t want to run anymore,” he says. “I want to be somewhere, with someone, and not feel like I’m always one step away from losing everything.” It’s too much,
We sit like that for a long time, hands a breath apart, the space between us humming with everything we’re not saying. The dessert menu appears at some point, but we don’t even open it. I want to touch him, to see if the world will come back into focus when our skin finally meets. But I hold back,
Lucas drops his voice to a near-whisper. “You ever wish you could go back and do it differently?” I want to say no, that regret is for the weak, but the lie would be too obvious. “Sometimes,” I say, rolling the word on my tongue. “Mostly I wish I could go back and tell myself not to care so much wh
Lucas draws a small circle on the tablecloth with the base of his glass. “You know, I used to think I had you figured out.” I cock an eyebrow. “And now?” He tilts the glass, watching the red pool at the bottom. “Now I think I’m just getting started.” I want to tell him he’s not wrong, that no one
The waitress arrives—young, with sharp features and a way of standing that reminds me of field mice on alert. She recites the specials in a monotone, but Lucas pays close attention, even as his eyes drift back to me at the end of each sentence. I order something off-menu, just to see if she’ll flinc
The following night, the rain starts in earnest on the walk over, turning the city into a blur of white noise and hissing tires, every window a dim halo behind its own curtain of water. The bistro is unmarked except for a brass plaque by the door, already beaded with droplets, the letters almost ill
The wolf dominates with relentless force. The moon dictates. The moon owns. My body sings with strength. I don’t know how to be Mara in this primal melody. I don’t know how to be Mara at all. Power surges in unfamiliar rhythms. The forest yields to my strength. I don’t want to yield. It is wild. It
The sounds are a violent rush. The cracking of branches. The scurry of prey. The sounds of my life. The sound of my bones. They are more than I can take, more than I am, more than I want. The violent and primal edge of it, and the quickness of it, the quickness and the loudness and the brightness
The world is a distorted blur. A terrifying abstraction. I feel my body disintegrate with the speed of the transformation. With the urgent and uncompromising force of the change. The first tingling spreads, the initial cracks ripple, and the seams of my skin explode with light. I can’t contain this.
I close my eyes against the change, close my eyes against the light, against the light of the moon, the light that is more than I am, more than I can be, more than I can hold. I close my eyes and breathe, breathe like I am human, like I am, like I am still Mara, like I am still, like I am. My brea







