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catch her, with his slippery come on her hand and her
uniform all in disarray, face too hot, hair all a mess, everything looking as
if she just needed to be fucked, right now.
    When she finished bundling together her tray—cloth, bowl
full of soapy water, various pathetic medical instruments and vials—and turned,
he’d opened his eyes. And she could see it in his gaze, how sluttish she
appeared. She could see him burning still, hand almost out as though he wanted
to grab something on her, pull her back.
    So she ran. She ran with the tray in her hands and the water
sloshing over the front of her uniform, and him calling to her forever in her
head—Serena, Serena, Serena.
    She realized then with a kind of pained clarity that she
should never have told him her name.

 Chapter Two
     
    She tried not to think about it. She tried not to think about
it in the canteen, while Tara droned on about her duties doubling and the
stupid wolf she was having to deal with lately— he thinks he’s going to bite
me with all his teeth pulled out! —and how much she hoped they would all
die. She tried not to think about it while staring up at the ceiling in her
tiny room, listening for every tiny creak and crack it made because sometimes,
they broke through the brittle ground and got into the walls and then you just
had to run and run and run.
    Would she have to run from Connor one day? He couldn’t
possibly carry on living like this. She didn’t understand why he hadn’t tried
to escape a thousand times already, when really he’d never even attempted it
once. He just sat in his rusty, rickety old hospital bed, waiting for her to
come to him and…
    She closed her eyes and forced the images away. Why had she
done it, for God’s sake? It just seemed so impossible and insane whenever she
let it slip into her ordinary, everyday thoughts. It seemed like something Tara
would do, only in reverse. Tara would sneak in and stab him in the night, then
get seven hundred demerits for her trouble. Tara would sneakily pull his hair
or otherwise tamper with him, then laugh about it over potato soup in the
canteen.
    Tara would not jerk a wolf off and then wonder what it would
feel like to have him touch her in return. Maybe with his hands. Maybe with his
mouth.
    An agitated sound burst out of her and she shoved herself up
against the wall, back to the blanket darkness, fists pressed into her eyes. He
was a wolf, a wolf, and she’d touched him so lewdly and wanted him more than
she’d ever wanted any human and nothing in her could figure out why.
    Because he was handsome? Because he was big? None of those
things tempted anyone else. And she’d seen other wolves just the same anyway,
wolves that could still talk the charming talk and smile with all of their
ordinary-looking teeth, before suddenly ripping off their man-skin to reveal
the beast beneath.
    Connor had never tried to charm her. She knew he hadn’t. He
barely talked and when he did it was careful, so careful, as though at any
second she might pull out a pin and stick it in him. And when they’d finally
started their little hesitant conversations, he’d seemed almost reluctant to
offer his own lost loves.
    As though sharing the books he missed or the films he longed
to see again meant he had to give away a piece of himself. As though she might
tell him he was wrong for loving things the government hadn’t archived—like Near
Dark or I Sing The Body Electric .
    He’d told her he remembered that one for the title, and then
he’d seemed to pause, eyes so still and watchful, as though considering if he
should go on. But he must have seen something in her face—something
trustworthy—because he had continued.
    He’d told her that those words described how it felt, to go
from a man to a wolf. Like my body is singing electric , he’d said, and
maybe that was when she’d first fallen for him.
    Because she had, of course. She’d fallen for him, utterly.
That’s what it meant, when you