chapter SIXTY-THREE
• SAM •
For one second, one part of a second, one fraction of a breath, pain wiped all of my thoughts away from me. My veins were molten. My body was remapping itself, charting new courses, planning new bones while it crushed the others to dust. There was not a part of me that wasn’t negotiable.
I had forgotten the agony of it. There was no mercy to this. The first time I had shifted, I’d been seven. My mother had been the first to see. I couldn’t even remember her name right now.
My spine crackled.
Cole threw the syringe onto the step.
The woods were singing in the language I only knew as a wolf.
The last time I had done this, it had been Grace’s face in front of me. The last time I had done this, it had been good-bye.
No more. No more good-byes.
I am Sam Roth. I am finding Grace.