Yugi and Tea ordered their coffees and sat down at a table. Yugi brushed the tips of his shoes against the floor. He felt strangely uncomfortable. "This isn't a date," he assured himself, but Atem's words kept floating back into his brain.

Tea felt uncomfortable too. She had spent much of last night just trying to cope with the fact that Atem was an actual, living, breathing werewolf. It was disturbing enough to find out that werewolves existed. But now Atem was one of them? Had he been bitten or accidentally sipped water from a wolf's print or something? No, of course not. Atem hadn't been wounded since he came back to life, and he would never have stooped so low as to drink water from a muddy footprint. But how could it have happened? And what would happen now?

"Yugi," Tea said softly, "do you know how Atem became a werewolf?"

"Well… you can't become a werewolf," Yugi said. "Werewolves are born. You don't turn into one when they bite you."

"But Atem used to be human," Tea said. "It must have happened when he came back to life, somehow." This didn't make any sense. Why would the Millennium Items turn Atem into a werewolf? Was it a punishment or a price? Did it take too much magical energy to revive a true human being? Did Atem have a choice, or was he forced to come back as a werewolf? Tea had so many questions, but she wasn't sure that Yugi understood much more than she did. He looked troubled, and his eyes were full of concern.

Yugi leaned back in his chair and sighed. "You know the pocket knife you gave back to me last night?" Tea nodded. "That pocket knife used to belong to my father," Yugi explained. "He gave it to me the night before he died. It's made of silver, and its blade is laced with essence of wolfsbane."

"Silver and wolfsbane?" Tea asked. That didn't sound particularly werewolf-friendly.

"Knives like that were used by werewolf hunters in my hometown," Yugi continued. "My dad was a werewolf hunter. And so were my mother and my two older brothers. I was going to be one too, when I grew up, so my parents taught me everything they knew about werewolves and how to kill them. How to hunt the hunters, they said."

"And… they were killed?" Tea asked. "By werewolves?"

Yugi nodded sadly. He blinked a little, trying to repress his tears. Tea was sad that his memories of his parents, whether good or bad, caused him pain.

"Papa, why do werewolves want to kill us?" Yugi asked, watching as his father sharpened and poisoned the blade of his hunter's knife. "You told me everything I need to know about how to kill them, but won't I do it better if I know their… their… their motive?"

Ichigo, Yugi's "papa," smiled. "You're curious. That's good—it will help you as you grow older." He turned around and tossed the knife to Yugi, who caught it by the hilt with a practiced hand. "You see, Yugi, in life there are two kinds of creatures: predators and prey. Werewolves are born with the idea that they are the predators of the earth, that they are superior to humans and to all other forms of life."

"But don't we hunt them?" Yugi asked. "That means that they're the prey, right, Papa?"

"Though werewolves are born with superhuman strength and speed, the bloodlust can make them incredibly stupid, at least by human standards," Ichigo replied. "And since they can only breed on full moon, their population is little. Strength and speed can never defeat numbers and technology. Remember that, Yugi."

"But what happens when you're all by yourself, and you don't have a weapon?" Yugi asked. "What do you do when you don't have numbers or technology?"

"You keep your wits about you, and you remember everything I taught you, alright?" Ichigo said, clapping Yugi on the shoulder. "But don't worry about that. Your mother and I will always be here. This is why we work as a family… almost like a pack of our own, do you understand?"

"You want to fight fire with fire?" Yugi wondered, grinning.

Ichigo ruffled his son's hair. "You're going to do alright, kid."

Yugi shook his head. "Atem is different from the rest of them. Somehow, even though he had the same bloodlust as the rest of his kind, he was able to remain human in his mind. When he transformed, I was able to trust him because I knew that it was still him. But it doesn't make sense…"

"You thought that all werewolves thought that humans were nothing but prey, like your father told you, didn't you?" Tea asked.

"Yeah. And as far as I know, he was right. Except for Atem… Was it because he wasn't born as one? Was it because he remembers what it was like to be human? Or was it because he cares about us so much?" Yugi wondered.

"Why are you focusing on that so much?"

Yugi looked down at his half-full coffee cup. "If this is only temporary… if this isn't going to last, then I need to know. I need to know if the real Atem is going to die one day… and I'll be forced to kill what's left."

Tea looked up at him. "Yugi…"

"You know that he wouldn't want to be the cause of anyone's death!" Yugi exclaimed. "Tea, if he loses his human soul, his knowledge of human ways would make him the most dangerous werewolf on earth, and I've seen some dangerous ones."

"Yugi," Yugi's mother, Kanae, said to her son frantically, "go to the hiding place." She smeared his face and clothes with mud to cover his scent. "Do not come out, no matter what you see, do you understand?"

"I can help you fight!" Yugi exclaimed. "Papa trained me, like he trained Etsuya and Junsuke!"

"Yugi, do not misbehave!" Kanae shouted. "Obey me, and obey your father, and hide until we tell you that it is safe. You are not yet of age!"

Yugi reluctantly did as his mother told him. He was small, so he could fit in the narrow air duct that led hot air in from the furnace, which was off during summer.

The front door burst open. A thin, lanky, muscular man walked into the room. He smelled like forest, bad breath, and rotting flesh. He smiled, revealing yellow teeth and black gums. Even though he was in his human form, the wolf was evident in his appearance. "My dear Kanae," he said, his voice low as a growl, "it has been so long."

"For good reason, snake!" Kanae declared. She slipped silver ringlets onto her knuckles, and the man bared his teeth in a wicked grin.

"Now, do you really think that this is a time for violence?" he asked. He casually sat down in one of the wooden chairs in the Mutous' dining room and crossed his legs. "I only came for a brief conversation. Don't you think that we can be civil for a moment?"

"Civil?" Kanae spat. "You killed my sons! You killed my sons!"

Yugi's face fell and his eyes slowly widened. His brothers… dead?

Enraged, Kanae launched herself at the werewolf, and he leaped up from his chair with inhuman speed and grace. Kanae flew at him with a flurry of blows, yet only once she made contact. Her silver knuckles grazed his cheek, and he howled with pain. She grinned with sadistic pleasure as his skin burned.

The werewolf's eyes burned golden-yellow as the red and orange light spilled into the room from the setting sun. "You are too late, Kanae," he hissed. "The world of darkness doesn't belong to you."

He showed no signs of pain as he leaped forward and transformed in an instant. His fur was white and matted with sap. He was on Kanae before she could even gasp; he ripped her throat out before she could scream.

Yugi looked on in disgust and horror as the werewolf ripped into his mother's flesh and consumed it with a gory display of feral lust. "Mama…" Yugi whispered.

The wolf's ears perked up and Yugi covered his mouth with his hands. But Dante had heard him already, and Yugi knew that he would be joining his mother soon.

Someone opened the back door and screamed in agony as they saw Kanae's body. "Nooooo!" Ichigo roared. "No! Dante—you bastard!" He unsheathed an enormous silver sword and ran at Dante in a passion of fury, but the werewolf was still too strong for him. Regardless of his enormous amount of training and experience, Ichigo could never defeat an alpha male on the night of the full moon, one-on-one.

"My family's death inspired everyone else in my hometown to take a stand against werewolves," Yugi said. "Now, thanks to their sacrifice, nearly all of the werewolves in the world are dead. They would have wanted that."

"Do you think they would have approved of Atem?" Tea asked.

Yugi sighed. "I really don't know. I don't think that they could accept the fact that a werewolf could be good after everything they've seen."

"Can you?"

Yugi looked out of the window to stall. "I told you that I trusted him, Tea. But I don't know how long he'll be here to trust." Yugi sighed. "I guess that I should tell him about this. He's been wondering how I know so much about werewolves." Yugi gulped down the last of his lukewarm coffee. "But I was raised to kill his kind. What's he going to think of me?"

"Yugi, you couldn't hurt a fly," Tea said softly. "You're a duelist, not a hunter. You've honored your parents by fighting evil in other ways."

"I just hope that my parents would have seen it that way," Yugi said. He paid the bill, ever the gentleman, and he and Tea left to go back to the Game Shop.

A short, brawny man sat with his legs crossed in a chair near them, sipping a cappuccino and fuming. "Yugi socializing with a werewolf…" he muttered. "What is he thinking? His parents would never approve of this." He threw his coat over his shoulder and stomped out of the coffee shop. First he would see how deluded Yugi had become. Then he would make Yugi see the light.