Relaxation was a distant memory. Jess had decided that we now needed a day of shopping, and when she said a day she meant a full day. We'd been wandering around the mall for the last three hours and from the way Jess was talking there were at least another two nearby we had yet to visit. I wasn't generally a shopper, but Jess had been so excited I didn't have the heart to put a damper on her day.

The diner had always been like a second home to me. I'd worked there for years, both before and since I was bitten that night. It had provided a constant in my life when I'd needed it, it was my daily dose of normal. I valued working alongside people who simply knew me as Maggie, not as a werewolf, certainly not as a rare female wolf. At the diner I was just me, with no other identities attached.

Running was freedom. In my wolf form all the threats and worry faded away and animal instinct took over. It was bliss to feel the damp soil beneath my paws and to have the fresh wind ruffle my fur. This was simple and easy and didn't require complicated thoughts or feelings of guilt.

What did one wear to a good friend's birthday party when also planning to keep an appointment with a murderous stalker? This was the question running through my head as I stood in front of my closet examining the contents. I'd managed to put on my underwear and that was as far as I'd managed to get. My usual solution of asking Nate was out as I knew he'd try and get me into a dress, and that wasn't going to happen tonight. I wanted to be covered up and comfortable, with the ability to make a run for it.

Two long days and endless nights later and nothing had changed. Time passed and still I lay curled in a corner of the cabin, unwilling to talk to Zachary. This hadn't stopped him from talking to me, or rather at me, it seemed I wasn't a necessary participant. Zachary, I was learning, was not interested in much beyond himself and his life, everyone else were simply a means to an end.