The full moon is eight days away. And when it comes, you’re going to get a big fucking surprise.

Oh, if there was a God this was a fine joke indeed. He had finally found the one woman he could spend eternity with…

Your little oak doors won’t hold me then.…and he had kidnapped her and raped her and kept her and ignored her when she spoke the truth.

You’ll realize you fucked up, bad.

He’d demanded she admit to being afraid of him, and when she wouldn’t, he assumed it was a lie.

You’ll know I was telling the truth the whole time, but you couldn’t see past your stupid injured male pride.

His stupid injured male pride.

I’ll be gone forever, and you’ll have the next hundred years to realize what an asshole you were.

He would have cried, but he had no tears.

Chapter 10

Three days later

Jane rolled over and stretched. Then shrieked in anger as she fell three feet and hit the cement with a smack. She’d curled up on the base of the statue in Park Square, promptly gone to sleep, and then forgotten about the drop when she woke up. Why don’t I ever remember this shit until it’s too late? she thought, rubbing her skinned elbow.

She was pleasantly tired and would be for the next couple of days. It was always like that when she chased the moon. She also felt very new, almost husked out. Purified. Whatever.

She stood and shivered. Step one: find clothes. Spring in Boston was like spring in Siberia.

She marched up to an early morning commuter, a businessman obviously cutting through the park to get to the subway. He stared at her appreciatively as she approached, but she had eyes only for his cashmere topcoat. “How—” was all he had time for before she belted him in the jaw and mugged him.

She had made her choice as a wolf and would carry it out as a woman. She didn’t have to wake up in the park, naked and alone. Or yesterday, in an alley. Or the night before that, beneath the docks by the harbor—ugh. She didn’t think she’d ever get the smell out of her hair.

There were only a hundred safe houses in Boston, as well as acres and acres of woods owned by pack members. She could have romped there and woken to clean clothes and a hearty breakfast. But as a wolf, she had avoided all those places and her kind. The beast knew what she wanted. Now it was time to get it.