I'll admit, I hadn't thought this through very well.

I mean, on some levels it made sense. I did need to get away from Sam. I had become essentially a punchline, a footnote in his epic romance, and I had become very, very mean. I did not like who I was, and not that I was blaming him exactly, but he was essentially the catalyst. He was the problem, in the sense that I had problems when I was around him. So I was leaving. I should have done it a long time ago. I should have left the day I walked into my house two years ago and found Sam kissing my cousin like she was the last woman on Earth. Besides, I had always planned to take a year off after graduating, maybe backpack Europe. Of course, tracking down lost supernatural werewolf cousins had never exactly been part of the plan.

Another thing I hadn't taken into consideration: flying. Like I said, I've never been away from La Push before—half a day in Seattle was as wide as my worldview had ever gotten. And you don't take a plane to Seattle.

I was gripping the armrests so hard that my knuckle-bones stood out white under my skin, trying to convince myself that this huge, heavy metal tube did, actually, have a chance of staying in the air. I wasn't having a lot of success—it's often difficult to convince yourself of things that don't logically make sense. Like planes staying in the air.

"Hey," said the guy sitting next to me. I had barely noticed him before, but now that I looked he was pretty cute. I was always slightly less likely to pick up on these things, post-Sam. Maybe I hadn't imprinted on him, but there were still a lot of stories to back up the idea that there was one true love for a person and no one else, ever. Even Shakespeare wrote one—and that had to count for something, right? "Are you okay?" he asked me. Cute and concerned, and he even had a British accent. Too bad I wasn't much into blonds. I was more of a brown-hair girl. Okay, so I was a brown-haired, brown-eyed, six-feet-two-inches…Sam Uley kind of girl.

"No," I told him honestly. No harm in flirting, right? I wondered if I remembered how. "Apparently I—don't like flying."

"You've never flown before?" Cute smile—kind of crooked and playful. "Where do you live?"

"La Push."

I didn't expect him to recognize it—we had, what, a couple thousand people within the borders, tops?—but he tipped his head sideways and smiled wider. "The reservation?"

"Yeah," I said, frowning. "Have you been there?"

"Not exactly," he said vaguely. "Sorry, I'm Ryan Glass. I didn't catch your name."

"Leah Clearwater," I said, shaking his hand, and as I spoke I could feel his hand tense under mine—I looked up and saw the muscles going tight in his face, tightening with—what? Recognition? What the hell, it wasn't like I was Britney Spears—why in the world would anyone know my name?

His face smoothed in the next second, and—yeah, I'd probably just imagined it. Seriously, how self-centered could I get? Thinking that he recognized my name. "Leah, nice to meet you. Where are you headed?"

"London." Translation: the only place I could get a ticket to on twelve-hour notice.

"No kidding? I live there!" And he turned and told me about the way London smells when it rains, the places to go when it's late at night and nothing is open, which art galleries to skip and which to go to at eleven in the morning, right before lunch. He smiled very crookedly as he spoke, and it was very cute.

--

"I know a hotel," Ryan said as we sat side by side and waited for our luggage to come down the black conveyor belt.

"Excuse me?" Did I look like some kind of cheap slut? I wasn't wearing that much eyeliner, was I? "Are you serious?"

"No, no, no," he said quickly, horrified. "I didn't mean—I just thought that you might need some help finding—I mean, these hotels by the airport, they'll rip you off. I just wanted to help." A perfect gentleman.

Now I was all suspicious and keyed up, but I did feel a little bad for jumping on him like that. Come on, Leah. Not everyone in the world is trying to kill or seduce you. Especially not seduce you. "That would be—really nice. Thank you."

"Is it okay if I drive you? My car is right out in the parking garage—but I don't want to make you uncomfortable—"

For a normal small, American female, this would have been a stupid offer to take. A strange guy offers to give you a ride home in a car, to a hotel you've never seen, in a city you've never visited? Obviously very stupid—unless, of course, you happen to be a werewolf. There really wasn't a lot that I was afraid of, and definitely not some random blond British guy with a Rolex watch and bedroom eyes. "Sure, Ryan," I said, giving him my best approximation of a warm smile. "That sounds great."

--

"Ryan," I said after twenty minutes. "Where is this hotel, exactly?" Granted, I didn't know a lot about downtown London, but it really seemed to me like we had passed the hotel district.

"It's right up here," he said in that chipper, clipped British accent. If he did actually turn out to be a psycho killer, he had a fairly good racket going—basically built on the cornerstone of him being pretty nice and really, really attractive. It's much easier to trust attractive people, it's just a fact of life. Guy that pretty, couldn't possibly be a psycho killer, right? Not him. Yeah, well, that remained to be seen. "A few more streets."

"Riiiight," I said. I wasn't really big on subtlety. It wasn't really my—thing. Even before the great Sam Schism of '06, I had never been big on subtlety. Which was the explanation for why I just came right out and said, "So, are you planning to murder me, or what?"

He laughed, and thank God it wasn't a creepy psycho-killer laugh. Just a pleasant, lightly British laugh, genuinely amused—which was pretty reassuring, actually, that he thought killing me was a hilarious joke. "Not hardly, Leah Clearwater."

Okay, that was creepy. "Why are you saying my name like that?" I said, my voice going sharp, naturally hostile.

"Saying it like what?"

"I don't know," I said, frustrated. "Like it means something."

"You don't think you mean anything?" he asked, politely inquiring—and unnecessarily gentle, that pitying tone I'd learned to live with and still really hated.

"I don't think there's anything particularly fascinating or different about me," I argued. When had this become a psych examination? I was damaged goods, everyone knew that. So what? I had learned to deal.

He smiled that crooked smile, still staring straight ahead at the road with the streetlights flashing against the windshield, fragmenting onto his face. "You're wrong."

I was seconds away from shifting and biting his arm off. He was seriously creeping me out now, pretty eyes or no. But before I could do anything rash or reasonable, he was turning—pulling into a parking lot on the right side of the road, a lot in front of a subdued shopfront and a small sign that said Lycaon in red cursive neon. "It's not a hotel," I said flatly. "Shocker."

"I'm not going to hurt you," he said easily, shutting the door behind him, crossing around the other side to open mine for me. Such a gentleman. "Come on, I just want to show you something."

I gave him my best frigid-bitch look—the one I used when I wanted to send people running screaming away from me. It had a less than desirable effect this time, as Ryan pretty much just kept standing there, politely holding my door. "Are you serious?"

"Come on," he said, grinning. "It's not like you can't tear me apart if I try anything."

This should have alarmed me, but call me crazy, I was a little intrigued. I had come here looking for true werewolves and hey, maybe they'd come to me. What were the chances? Either way, he was right—I could tear him apart, and maybe the curiosity was enough to trade off for some danger. It had been awhile since I'd done anything that got my blood pumping this fast. I was used to stagnation—total flat boredom, day after day of grayness and general misery. Danger, at least, was interesting.

So I got out of the car. So what. I'm a werewolf. I can do dangerous things. So I followed him to the door, and then inside it as he opened it for me and beckoned me inside. So what.

Strobe and music hit me like a riptide, and I recognized it instantly—it was just a club. A dark and terraced club packed with a few too many people, too much smoke in the air and a little too much bass, but after all just a club. Not some kind of Venus Flytrap waiting to snap over me, just a stupid club. He probably just wanted to get me drunk, or something. How typical.

Instead of steering me toward the free drinks like I expected, though, Ryan stopped me in the doorway, turning me by my shoulders until I faced the whole room, looking out over the pulsing bodies lit over and over by the lights, lighting then darkening.

"Leah Clearwater," he said loudly, his voice rolling over the bass beats, the loud music—like an announcement, like an introduction. "Welcome to London."

Everyone stopped. Like they'd been flash-frozen, just stopped at the sound of my name. Even the music stopped, leaving echoing silence and darkness and people staring at me like there was something very wrong or very, very weird. Strobe lights still flashing on an off in perfect silence, and every person in the room still staring at me.

"Well," I said. "This is…awkward."