“I’ll try,” she says. “Sweet sleeping.”

“Sweet sleeping, Scarlett.”

After she’s gone, I open my nightstand and stare at my silver. I know what it does to me in human form, but what would happen in wolf form?

I reach into the drawer and pull out all my jewelry. The silver singes my fingertips, and it takes a moment for them to stop sizzling.

I grab a pair of tweezers and use them to cautiously slide a silver medallion off its chain and onto a leather cord. I knot the cord, pull it tight. I hold it up, examine my creation. I forget where the cord is from, but I bought the medallion for myself when I got promoted. There’s a small diamond in the center and there are little lines etched around it so it looks like a sun.

I take a deep breath and slip the necklace over my head.

The cord is long, and the medallion rests in the valley of my rib cage. I wait to feel something. I wait to burn. But the silver isn’t touching my skin; it rests on my sweatshirt.

Maybe I’m grasping at straws. I tap a long nail on the medallion. I have no proof that it works, that the silver will save me from the violence.

Just a feeling. Just instinct.

I stay up all night, tossing and turning, sick and shivering and tortured in thought. Waffling about the wolfsbane. I’m already two days in. I’m not sure it makes sense to stop taking it now, no matter how miserable it is. Plus, seems unwise to rely on the medallion alone without knowing what affect the silver will have on me when I transform.

Hours pass, and I’m out of time to debate. I stand in front of the bathroom mirror, turning the vial of wolfsbane over in my hands. I don’t want to take it. I’m quite literally poisoning myself.

But this isn’t just about me. It’s for the greater good.

I need to see it through. Leave no stone unturned.

“Bottom’s up,” I say, and as I say it, the vial slips from my clammy hands.

If my wolf reflexes were intact, I’d be able to catch it no problem. But the wolfsbane has made me achy and slow and uncoordinated, and so I’m doomed to watch helplessly as the vial bounces off the sink, cracks, then falls to the floor and completely shatters, sending shards of glass and droplets of toxic purple liquid all over the bathroom, and all over me.

There’s a consuming dizziness; then my head connects with the vanity, then nothing.

XIV

There’s knocking. It’s so loud.

“What?” I croak.

“It’s time!” Mom yells. “We’re going!”

“Going where?”

“The hospital! Scarlett’s in labor!”

I slip in a puddle of my own blood.

I’m dizzy. I’m weak. I’m sore. I’m barely conscious. Everything is blurry. I feel simultaneously hungover and like I’m on a bad acid trip.

“Rory?”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” I say. “Don’t leave without me!”