Chapter One

I was the hunter and he was my prey.

I knew him, it was in his personality to never back away from a fight, especially one with me. Ethan was strong and he would do only what he believed was right, and running away was not it.

We both knew this, and yet he refused to play his part in this game we called survival. He dared to stand tall as if I were as dangerous as a de-clawed kitten and it filled me with rage when all he did was open his mouth and say a few words.

A violent hatred nearly choked me. How dare he try and talk to me with words I could care less about. The language he was using was odd, but it made sense. Broken, blind, candid and caged. Unnaturally crippled, like an avian unwilling to fly. Noise like this held no appeal when compared to any of the sounds I'd used, yet the man before me still managed to find fluidity and expression. Simple, plain, and yet it held beauty.

I took a step forward, waiting for the blonde before me to finally comprehend the situation and take a step back but it never happened. With each step I took forward, my frustration grew due to his stillness. He stood there as if he was a deer in the headlights, but his expression was not one of fear. It wasn't until I'd lunged, my left forepaw striking him across his chest, and he landed flat on his back did the air begin to reek of fear. Leaping atop him I felt his breath explode from his lungs with a small yelp, and I lifted my head searching for the pungent smell of fear.

I found it immediately.

I knew straight away that while this smell was pleasing it was bad. A very bad smell when it was coming from someone I cared dearly for. I should have been preventing the smell, not inducing it.

Like all prey, he began to squirm beneath me, unaware of how futile it was while pinned beneath my larger, much more powerful frame, and my ears flattened themselves against my skull as I hissed; revealing three and a half inch fangs. Indigo eyes went wide with panic, and the scent of fear increased dramatically … filling me with something I could only describe as carnal aggression. It was intoxicating, it was irresistible, and before I knew it I reared back, claws extended, and swatted him across the throat.

Fear forced my heart to loge itself permanently into my throat, and that was all that kept me from screaming. But I could not stop the keening noise I was making as the motion of my fingers- no my claws- tore through the flesh. He was going to die now and I was to blame. His flesh was butter and my hands were heated knives.

Blood poured from his neck, like water from an open faucet, and I watched fascinated as crimson spilled only to be absorbed by thirsty soil. He gurgled as his eyes widened further and distracted me from the magnificent sight of draining fluids. They stared up into mine, and fascination shifted to dread when he blew a silvery breathe into my face.

He had just sedated me. Something I had witnessed him do several times while horse back riding to calm the stallions whom decided to be wild, but I'd simply assumed the mist to be his breath in the cold winter air; though in a way it was. But I was angry, so angry that heat shot through my veins, causing me to feel as if my blood was boiling. Why hadn't he don't this sooner. If Ethan could have done this at anytime why was it only now he had done it.

Instinctively I inhaled the sickeningly sweet mist, scrambling off and away from him as I sneezed; I turned back toward him, my face twisting into a vicious snarl. Now I would finish him off and leave his corpse to rot. His death would benefit none!

It could have been seconds, minutes, hours, days, or even weeks since he had deliberately tranquilized me with his sugary breathe. But now I could actually feel the sedation wearing off as clarity took its place and I continued to watch seething silently as my best friend died by my hands.

With furious eyes I fought the paralysis and took unsteady steps toward her, my tail lashing through the air., with an audible whip. With each step I could feel less and less of myself as the paralyzing cloud spread through my body; I collapsed.

It was as if my memory triggered a sudden relapse in my condition and I felt my limbs lock down again. It wasn't that I was falling back into that forced state of calmness but I was bracing myself for the rest of the memory.

I glared at the man-child before me and watched with grim satisfaction as crimson still escaping his wound began to pool around hiss form because of soil so bloated with blood it could not be absorbed. He gurgled again and I met his eyes which were twinkling. His face was covered in sweat of our past run and blood from various scrapes but despite the fatal wound I had inflicted, his expression became an eager grin; his glowing navy blue eyes dimming over deep circles. The gleeful stare never faltered, and I watched as her form crumpled into ash.

I could feel the control of my body come back to me in increments now that my recollection was coming to an end. Increments that followed a fading image of his face smeared with blood, a violent, macabre sight but that dashing smile adorning his pale cheeks. My own uncontrolled boiling anger and snarling face. A low whine was the only sound that gave away my consciousness, but even then I could have still been dreaming, trapped in an echo of the unfamiliar rage in my memory, and reacting to the unknown.

I couldn't be sure whether the regal voice was spoken aloud or echoed in my head, but it rang loud and pierced through the last strands of the dream allowing me to take a bit more control of my thoughts.. "Mercedes. You need to come back."

The voice was familiar, and it at the same time it wasn't… Who was calling to me?

"Mercedes" a gruff voice said. I didn't recognize this one.

Something brushed my face, light as air and I knew that scent. It was the similar to the one in my memory. I took a deeper breath just to be certain and my mind suddenly cleared and I could see the light behind my eyelids.

"Mercedes." the same gruff voice grunted, and my eyelids felt heavy and I searched for the muscles that would open them. I could now feel that I was lying on my side… and though the position was one of familiarity … this felt wrong. There wasn't enough of me.

Compared to how I'd felt while I dreamt.. This me felt shrunken.

My hands were warmer than the rest of me, and that was because they were being held. Held in big hands, calloused hands that swallowed them right up and those warm hands release mine only to drift through the fur at the top of my skull, fur that had grown longer and shaggier. That shouldn't have been right. My fur should have been short, no longer than an inch. What had changed, how long had it been?

The voice spoke up again. "Logan, you must contain her. It is important that you keep her restrained!"

I hear the mechanical whir of something moving closer toward me. Something pleasant, a change in the air as the whir stopped close by me. Another scent, I thought. Something different besides the masculine scent of the man holding my hand and smell of this sterile, odorless room; of this hospital room. I force my eyes open, and the man holding my hands face is close, his eyes wary, his lips curled into a slight grimace. He can tell that I'm aware, unlike most hospital patients and I don't need time to adjust, so he opened his mouth to speak.

But before the words are able to come out I yank my hands free and shove hard against his chest, he takes a step back to regain lost footing, unprepared for the action. I sit up in the space where he just was, my legs swinging over the edge, my gaze raking the room, nostrils flaring as I searched for some sign of him — a body, a scent, that pile of dust, his clothing - something! But I found nothing.

"Mercedes?" the man with the gruff voice said, and my eyes locked onto his slow moving form. Before I can react, his hand shoots out and he grips my right wrist, and while i gain my bearings he was already reaching for my left.

"Where is he?" I hiss, trying to yank free while I threw myself off the other side of the bed. I wasn't dizzy but I was unbalanced and very uncoordinated on my feet. How long had i been on all fours? How long would it take me to adjust to being on two legs again?

He stares at me, bewildered at my ferocity, still holding onto my wrist with his arm stretched across the table. I only meet his eyes for a half second and then I'm looking frantically around the room again, angry that all I can smell is the stink of chlorine and ammonia.

I don't smell the Nautica tinted with sun flavored scent I'm looking for. It's not here and hasn't been in here for some time it seems.

But then I do find a scent that only he produced, the honey lilac smell he secreted when he so desired. I smell it where my head had once rested when he had used it to knock me unconscious.

A scent that got him taken away from me only to have me brought back in an emergency, a scent that had no business here where he was no where to be found. There is no excuse for this. It was cruel to use his power without him being around.

Were these people insane? Why did they do this when everything was just fine the way it was before? Why was it so important they goad me into attacking? Why did I have to attack him? Did they have that planned from the beginning? Was him life that much of a game? Were they playing him till the end?

Or did he think he was doing them a favor by sacrificing himself to ensure no one else was hurt by me? Was he twisting with pain? Writhing in agony while I slept in a sedated sleep? Impossible, his neck was ripped wide open. A bubble of sound built in my chest, my lips pulled back of their own accord to expose my teeth in warning.

The man circles the head of the bed, never freeing my wrist, and tried to pull me into the circle of his arm.

"Mercedes, it's okay. You're back."

I analyze him, his blue-black hair fell into intense chocolate brown eyes, and I think of how he could have survived my assault. He seemed more than sturdy enough. I then realize he still had a hold of my right hand, so instead of punching, I backhand him with my left, catching his face across the cheekbone. The force of the blow sent bolts of pain straight to the bones of my hand.

It seemed to surprise him more than it did hurt, like i had snuck up on him and he sucks in a shocked breath before jumping back, dropping my wrist. Freed now I follow through with a strong uppercut that glances off the side of his jaw as he ducks away.

I ignore the pain it gives me.

I remember telling Ethan I didn't think I could put my hands on anyone no matter how upset I became, no matter what. That violence wasn't the answer, that it was never the answer because it only made things worse in the long run. But right now all I wanted to do was hit this man harder because this was all right before I murdered my best friend.

The internal protest to my fury was dialed down to a level I had not expected, the innate sense of wrong was dulled by bloodlust I wished to sate sometime ago, back, but dulled significantly and this only makes me more furious. "How could you let that happen?" I snarl at him as I swing again, missing. "What is wrong with you? How could you let me kill him?"

I remember him leading me away from the group, provoking me into arguing with him, the painful shift into that stronger more powerful form, the hunt, how it felt when my claws cleaved straight to the bone in a single swipe; and I could only see them from the perspective of a predator with an unsated bloodlust. Rivers of crimson flowing into the soil and I had not even had a taste of it…

I lunge for him and some unseen pressure held me in place- and my gaze immediately locked onto a bald older man in a wheelchair- and the feral growl spilling from between my teeth shifted to an open mouthed roar and the man flinched as I broke free of his mental hold. I turn toward him my eyes wide, lips curling back to expose teeth, and my hands trembling as my fingers began to ache.

"You made me kill him!" I growl at them both, although my attention is on the seated man. "You're monsters! Both of you! Monsters!"

"Mercedes!" the bald man calls. "if you would just listen-Logan!"

I lunge for him, and Logan is immediately in my way, hands out as though he was going to try to restrain me. I pause and consider my options for just a second and am shocked when I can feel the hardness of my fingers. I twitch them, touching my palm and I can feel the claws. Some part of me realizes that I'm out of control, but I don't care to be sane. Not with Ethan dead — dead because of me — all because these people wanted to 'help me'. "Mercedes, please just "

"You couldn't leave well enough alone? I wasn't dangerous!"

I swipe at him, claws extended, but I miss. For all his bulk …Logan is fast.

I never expected him to stop trying to defend himself and go on the offense, but he does, and he leaps forward. I am already mid-lunge and I try to back peddle but as I said … Logan is fast. He grabs my wrist and maneuvers it so he is behind me and pulls my arm behind my back. I can tell he is being careful, that he doesn't want to hurt me. Rather allowing me to hurt myself if I struggle and try to escape. "Mercedes Caudwell," he growls into my ear, and I'm so shocked to hear him say my full name that I don't interrupt. "Calm down!" he orders.

"Ethan's 's here."

I turn to stare at the man in the wheelchair and feel my mouth fall open.

My eyes fall onto the tank in his lap, a glow pulsing red on top. The light reminding me of the Electrocardiogram Machine, without the actual sound of a heartbeat. Inside there are particles swirling about lazily, and they seem to be at ease.

Ethan.