“Dear Jessica!” Dr. Jace entered the room, his familiar white hair fanning around his face like a fragile halo, his expression full of open amusement and wonder. “You gave us quite a fright! You’re a miracle, young lady, truly a miracle.” He shuffled to my bedside, grabbed on to my hand, and patted it affectionately. “Who would’ve thought it possible? A true female among us. Amazing! Truly amazing!”

“Doc Jace.” I tilted my cheek toward him so he could give it a quick peck. “It’s great to see you again. It’s been too long. You’re looking well.” This man was the closest thing to a grandfather I’d ever known. He was an Essential human in our Pack, like his father and grandfather before him—meaning he knew our secrets, worked for us, but was not supernatural himself. Essentials were a necessity in every supernatural Sect, since the human race had no idea we existed. They were doctors, teachers, lawyers; individuals recruited to play a special role within the Sect. Doc Jace was a brilliant doctor, an extreme asset to our Pack. “I’m so glad you’re here”—I flashed him a grin—“because you’re just the man to answer a burning question.”

“Of course,” he said. “I will always do my best to answer your questions, Jessica.”

“How did I survive? I thought I wasn’t coded for wolf, that it would be impossible for me to make a full transition, and if my body chemistry did change late after puberty I’d likely die from the ordeal. But I’m alive.”

Doc absently stroked his short beard. “Males carry their wolf markers on their second Y chromosome, very uncommon indeed, but they are there, coded very clearly. You have never had any such indicators and no second chromosome. My best guess is your body must carry the gene, the one that marks you as a wolf, elsewhere, perhaps in a noncoded region. But as you can guess, I will be doing exhaustive research on that very topic.” He patted my hand. “Exciting work it is.” Puzzling over our genes was his life’s work. “Having you make a successful transformation as a female is revolutionary. We are blazing a new trail with this research. It will be marvelous indeed.”

I already knew it was revolutionary, because females didn’t exist in our race. My birth had sparked a frenzy of discontent, which was enhanced to a breaking point by a certain unsubstantiated but extremely well-circulated myth proclaiming I was pure evil, a menace placed on earth for the sole purpose of bringing down the race of wolves. Once the Pack found out about my new status as a full-blooded wolf, there was going to be a huge uproar, and everything I’d built for myself would slide straight down the drain. Without going into all that with the Doctor, I asked instead, “What time is it? How long have I been out?”

“It’s seven o’clock in the morning,” Doc answered. “You’ve been asleep for nearly eighteen hours, which is not uncommon for a wolf recuperating from a traumatic injury. I’m guessing you’re ready for some coffee and some breakfast? You must be famished. Shifting utilizes an incredible amount of energy, and newborn wolves are more hungry by nature.”

“Yes, coffee and food sound heavenly.” My stomach growled on cue. “I’m actually starving.” Dr. Jace left and I turned back to my father. “I’ve been asleep for eighteen hours? Are you telling me it’s Monday morning already?”

“Yes, it’s Monday.” My father leaned forward in his chair. “But don’t worry about missing work. I’ve already been in contact with Nicolas. He’s already on his way. You’ve actually been asleep with a little extra help from the Doc. He wanted to be perfectly sure you would heal completely with no complications, and I wholeheartedly agreed with him. Injuries like yours take time to mend, especially for a newborn. I’m just thankful you came back to us in one piece. That was a hell of a ride you took us on.”

I was relieved to hear my business partner and best friend, Nick Michaels, was on his way. It would be good to have another ally here, since I had no idea how this was going to play out. “The whole transition was insane, but I don’t really remember how it went down.” I corrected myself. “No, that’s not exactly what I mean. I do have a clear memory of the pain, but for some reason I can’t remember the actual turning very well.”

My father sat back. “It’s not uncommon to disengage with your wolf during your first turning. Your change was an unexpected, traumatic event. As we discussed, fighting the process can make it excruciating. Your wolf likely took over while your human side remained in a shocklike state. It happens. It’s not ideal, but it happens.”

I was mildly surprised by his reaction, but ultimately happy he wasn’t going to hatch an immediate plan to chain me to a bed until I could master more control. “It didn’t feel like I was in shock, but I guess I could’ve been. In the end she toggled something between us and handed me control again. I’d been a passenger up until that point, but when I finally slid into the driver’s seat, I took one sniff of my injuries and passed out.” My first tough werewolf moment and I’d passed out like a champ.

My father regarded me quietly for a moment. He ran a single hand through his thick dark hair. It was a gesture of stress, and he didn’t do it often. “Well.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure what happened there, but it can take a wolf many years to master Dominion over their wolf. If your wolf willingly handed control back to you, it seems you’re not going to have a problem with mastery.” He leaned in closer, his eyes alert. “It’s a sign your human side is strong, and that’s a damn good thing.”

A wolf was required to prove Dominion over his inner wolf before being allowed to reenter human society. By instinct your wolf wanted complete control—demanded it. The human side had to be powerful enough to override the wolf’s urges at all times. No exceptions.

I bit my bottom lip.

That wasn’t exactly how it’d happened. I knew I’d stopped her from killing the farmer, but I had no idea how to do it again if I had to. But I was content to drop it for now, and asked instead, “How did you know I changed? How did you find me?” I grew up on the Compound, so naturally I knew a lot about wolves, but I’d been kept in the dark about a lot of things too.

Before my father could answer, my brother bounded into the room. He’d grown even taller since I’d seen him last. “We found you because you stink, and stink is easy to track.” He dropped himself onto my bed, edging me over without a thought.

“Be careful, you big ox. I’m recovering from a serious injury here.” I chuckled as I shuffled my barely hurt leg out of his way to make room for him, but it still wasn’t enough because he was massive and the bed was tiny.

“Then you must not be that strong, wimpy girl, because if that was my leg it would be as good as new already.” He grinned, flashing teeth and dimples. My ever competitor.

“That’s easy for you to say,” I said. “You didn’t just get your leg almost blown off in a gunfight with an angry farmer.” I leaned over and gave him a playful shove. He didn’t budge an inch. At six foot five, he was built like he was trying out for a spot on the WWE circuit. Tyler resembled our father, we both did, except Tyler had blond hair instead of our shared darker shade. He’d also inherited a pair of shameful dimples, also courtesy of our late mother. But the one feature marking us so clearly as siblings was our matching sky blue eyes.

“Face it, Jess. I’ve gotten into a hell of a lot more scrapes than you have, and the next day I’m always fine,” Tyler said. “You’re just wimpier because you’re a girl.”

“Yeah, right. Remember that time with Danny in the mountains? You had to be carried out on a stretcher. And if I remember correctly, you were out cold for three days straight.”

“My skull was split open and my brains were leaking out. That hardly constitutes a minor injury.”

“The last time I checked, getting a leg blown off is not exactly minor either.”

“Oh, please. That”—he pointed to my hip—“it’s nothing more than a flesh wound.”

Flesh wound my ass, little brother.

Comprehension lit his face. Our shared mental capacity as children had always been tenuous at best, blinking on and off like a loose wire. Most of the time it had run unfairly one way—from Tyler to me—and when Tyler had changed at puberty the connection stopped for good.

Now it was back.

Time for a little payback, huh, brother?

“Okay, that’s enough,” my father ordered. “Tyler, I need you to behave. Your sister’s going to need our help; what’s happened here is unprecedented. We’ve managed to dance around the seriousness thus far, but now we need to determine the right course to follow to minimize the fallout. The wolves are restless and we must tread carefully.”

My brother sobered instantly. He took Pack business seriously, he always had. At twenty-six, he held an unusually high Pack status; the only other wolf with more status was my father’s second-in-command, James Graham, who’d been by my father’s side for more than a century. Tyler had fought a lot of bloody battles to move up so rapidly in the Pack ranks. He was a strong wolf and I hoped it ran in the family.

My father stood and paced to the end of the bed. “The wolves know something, but there’s still a good chance they don’t know you’ve turned. Most are unsure of what they heard last night, because I snapped the line quickly. We’re going to use that to our advantage and try to hold off sharing the news of your shift as long as we can—possibly indefinitely if we’re lucky.”

“What do you mean, ‘what they heard’?” I asked. That didn’t sound good.

“A new wolf signals his first shift to the Pack. It’s a built-in safety precaution and your wolf sent out that very same alert.” My father turned to face me. “At first change, your body triggers a beacon, and hundreds of years ago we found wolves all over Scotland and Wales exactly like that—wolves who didn’t know what they were prior to their first shift.”