[The following is Ash's interpretation of what happened on the night of her first transformation] Tonight, I was in the woods with the Prince of the Forest. The palace was cold and the deer that drew my carriage ran away because his stomach hurt. I think he ate too many blueberries.The Prince arrived after dinner when they had taken all the food away. The fairies were playing a song when he asked me to dance with him, but the music wasn't right so I asked him to wait until it changed. The Prince gave me his tunic to wear because he had chosen me as his betrothed. I was very happy. I had never been chosen before. Then he asked me if I knew my way home so we could tell my parents of our engagement. But I couldn't tell the Prince that my parents were gone. It would have made him very sad, and I did not want to see him sad.I was only sad that we never got to dance.I picked up my garters from where I dropped them: if human things

At the pool, Hunter sat on the bench watching the others finish the last relay for the day. He had been benched by the coach for finishing dead last in the second race. Usually he would be neck and neck with Luka or Anwar, the best swimmers on the team, but today he was barely keeping up with the group.When training was over, Luka and Anwar came up to him on the bench. Luka put a wet arm around his buddy's shoulder and nearly knocked him sideways off the slippery plastic bench."Swimming a little heavy today, weren't you?" Anwar asked without looking at Hunter. He was concentrating on stretching his arms over his head."How does a man from the desert swim so fast anyway?" Luka interjected, smiling at Anwar mischievously, dark gray eyes twinkling."How can I not? It's so hot out there that I cannot help but take to the water. I would rather drown than melt." His caramel skin glistened as he rubbed water off his toned arms. Standing next to the two paler b

Although the lights went out in the library, the room didn't exactly plunge into darkness. The stained glass windows still let in a bit of daylight, but it wasn't bright enough to read by. Shadows moved across the floor as the students milled around, looking for friends to huddle with and empty seats to sit on as they waited for the backup generator to kick in. Two figures moved together behind the stacks, forming one large shadow as their individual forms merged. Hunter and Ash had locked in an embrace, bodies pressed against each other, their hands caressing each other's necks, and tousling each other's hair, oblivious in their passion to the world around them. Another shadow crept along the floor, moving silently away from the stacks where the lip-locked couple remained. Celia scurried away on her hands and knees, giggling like a naughty child who had seen something she shouldn't have. Further away, the librarian at his desk looked at his watch. Five minutes had gone by and the g

Ash sat on the floor next to her tattered uniform and her mobile phone. Her hands were clasped over her head as she stared hard at the floor in front of her. Her heart was racing in her chest and she was breathing hard just to keep up. With all the anger she felt, she wanted to run outside, find Hunter and take him apart with her bare hands.Ash wasn't particularly athletic: she didn't have a sport like her friends did. She wasn't very strong. She did a lot of manual labor and menial chores at the orphanage but at Saint Blaise's there was nothing to do but study and there was nothing to clean and no one to clean up after. She wasn't out of shape since she jogged with her friends every other day, but having good cardio wasn't the same as having actual combat skill.While Ash had been involved in a few scuffles growing up at the orphanage, she couldn't count any of it as real fight experience. They were just skinny kids brawling over broken toys and petty insults.

“Tell me and I’ll kiss you,” Ash said.Hunter tugged at her hands and inched his face closer to hers, smiling playfully.“I’ll tell you everything and THEN I’ll kiss you,” he said, challenging her.Ash pushed her cheek against his, avoiding his lips. And then she whispered in his ear.“Tell me everything and I might let you.”Hunter liked the game she was playing. He didn’t know the rules yet, but he was willing to play along.“Okay, deal,” he said, smiling, into her ear.Ash didn’t pull back. She stayed where she was and rubbed her cheek against his.“Go on. Tell me,” she said, whispering in his ear.Hunter swallowed as he felt her breath on his ear. The contact was making him feel unbearably warm inside. He wanted so badly to just kiss her and drown in the warmth.“You ran away from me, in your werewolf form, and then