Joss came awake slowly; the taste of bile in her throat and her skin itchy with caked mud and dried blood. She didn't want to know where the blood had come from, didn't want to consider what she could have done the night before. For a moment she simply laid there blinking at the harsh light of the sun, too tired to move, although she knew that she should. Eventually, as she began to feel more awake, coherent thought came and she found herself wondering why she was outside and not in her storage locker or the basement of the hospital. And then it all came rushing back and she was on her feet and hurriedly running through the woods to the shed where she had left her clothes, only one thought prevalent: I have to find Nate.

She had known that dating would be a mistake; hadn't she always told Aidan and Sally that being with someone would only lead to messiness and heartache? If she had taken her own advice instead of theirs none of this would be happening now and she wouldn't feel like she was about to have a heart attack at any minute. To love is to destroy and she loved Nate, had only admitted it the night before in fact, but now she had ruined him. It had all started with those dreams, those horrible realistic dreams where they would be sitting on the couch kissing one moment and the next she would be sprouting claws and fangs and savagely attacking her boyfriend. And then when they were actually together, when things started getting carried away, she would find herself biting at him, scratching at him and once even letting out a growl. The one time they had had sex had been interesting to say the least and she was sure Nate now thought she had some control issues when really the wolf was pushing her towards something she really couldn't explain. The closer it got to the moon the more she would find herself staring at him at work or when they were together and a strange feral feeling would over take her.

She'd tried asking Aidan for help, for advice on how to control herself, she knew he had plenty of experience with that, but he had been brusurque and standoffish and then contrite all within a matter of minutes. It had scared her as much as it angered her, because she could tell that he had been binging and if this Jack Ass was what emerged in the place of her best friend than she wanted no part of that. So she decided that if she couldn't control herself than maybe a bit of distance would be best; of course Nate apparently didn't get the memo and it all came to a head last full moon. She had needed to change in the hospital because the building where her storage unit was had been temporarily closed for fumigation(she didn't even want to consider what kind of nasty bugs had been in the unit while she was in there. Naked. Ughh).

"Joss!"

She had just entered the room when she heard him behind her.

"Nate, what…what are you doing? You can't be here." The moon was going to rise soon, she could feel the pull in her bones; the first tingle setting in.

"What? I can't come down to the basemet of the hospital? The question is, what are you doing down here Joss? You've been acting weird, okay, weirder than normal lately."

She shook her head, "I haven't, I mean I just…look can we talk about this later?" Her breath was quickening and she had to remind herself to try and remain calm.

"You have," he crossed his arms and raised a brow. She wondered if she ran at him would she have enough force to push him over so she could escape?

"I've been thinking," she threw out haphazardly, trying to think of anything, anything at all, that would get him out of there. "I think we should just pace it down. A little." The tingle was spreading and she knew that soon she would be convulsing.

"Okay. Wow." His expression was not shocked, but he did seem a little pissed off.

"Just a little," She clarified. "I just want to dial it back, just so we don't ramp up and get too intense. I hope you understand." I can't believe I'm having this conversation now. Why now?

He nodded, "Its murky," he said sardonically. "But I think I'm beginning to see the bottom. So basically, we are still together, but not together like we were before, because that is too intense, although what's so intense about no sex and watching TV I don't know. So does this mean we see other people?"

She was beginning to sweat and her arm was hurting. It always was the first thing to start to feel the change and then she would get a pain in her side. "Um, sure. I mean I don't want you to see other people, I'm not going to, but…You know what?No. No don't see other women."

"You know for a woman, you are surprisingly Neanderthal."

She had to try not to laugh, even when the situation was so serious. This was why she was falling in love with him.

"I want to be with you Nate. I want to be with you. But there is something in my life and it has nothing to do with you, or another man, and I didn't kill anyone." A lie of course, but it had been self defense really.

"That's remarkably not reassuring if you have to point that out."

She sighed; he really needed to go, now. "Its just something private. About me. And it needs to stay that way."

He looked slightly less pissed off, which was good, but she still needed him to leave. "I know that makes me seem incredibly unappealing, but I don't know…I don't know how else to do this. You really should go."

He didn't move though, rather he didn't move out of the room but closer to her.

"Stay back…just stay where you are please." She closed her eyes briefly, close to tears. "I don't want this for you Nate, but I really don't know what else to do. I've hurt my family by keeping this to myself and my fiancé, it wasn't just that we were young, it was this thing. I don't want to hurt you; I don't want to hurt you too."

She couldn't stop him then as he stepped close to her, and cradled her tear stained face, she hadn't even known she was crying, in his hands. "Joss, you won't hurt me."

"How do you know? You can't know that."

He rubbed her cheek with his thumb, soothingly. "Because I know you doe eyes. I've seen my share of bad things in life and met some really bad people, but you are not one of them."

She wanted to reply, to push him away, but it was then that the first convulsions struck. She hunched over letting out a sharp cry and tried to push him away from her self, turning around quickly so he couldn't see her face or hands.

"Joss are you okay?" he asked worriedly, reaching for her.

She shook with another convulsion, trying to suppress a scream of pain and instead let out a groan. "Nate get out of here. Please." She hunched over holding her hands to her chest as her teeth began to elongate and claws sprouted. She could feel her bones shifting. As she gasped for breath she felt his hands on her back.

"Joss, just let me look at you."

"No," she shook her head, her tears starting anew. "No, no no. You can't. NO!" and then she was up, ripping herself away from his hands, grabbing him by the arms and with a surge of energy brought on by her impending change, she propelled him out of the room and slammed the door closed. And then she did allow herself to scream in agony; there was no keeping it back now. She had seen his face, the confusion and the fear. Later she would find out that he had seen her whole change through the window of the door, seen her face elongate and her back break, her legs bend impossibly and her chest pop out. He had heard her scream and cry and he had stayed for the whole thing, even though by all rights he should have run and run fast. No one but Aidan and Sally had ever seen her change; it was the most intimate thing she could share with someone and yet when she found out he had been there the whole time, she found that she was okay with him seeing.

In the days that followed, once she realized he was still talking to her, that he still wanted to be around her and be with her, she had told him how it had happened, about Ray, she told him everything, about how it happened every month but she was trying to find a cure and she repeated how sorry she was until he took her in his arms and told her that it wasn't her fault; he knew now and maybe, just maybe they would be okay. She had wanted that more than anything, because it was so freeing to finally be honest, to be able to talk about it and not have to hide who she was. Nate was surprisingly good about it all, especially when he found out about Aidan being a vampire and she explained that she lived with a ghost too. She should have clued in then, especially when he asked so many questions about her change, but she had so wanted everything to be good. And then last night had happened.

"Nate!" She tore through the woods, panic overtaking her. Just breath Joss, she told herself, deep breaths. Her arm hurt and she knew that she would have to get Aidan, although she was still pissed at him, or someone to look at it but not until she found Nate. "Nate!"

He had insisted on driving her to the woods, because the unit was still locked down, and after some argument she had let him although she hadn't been happy about it.

"When I was a freshman in College," he said, catching her out of the blue as they came to a stop. "I woke up in some theatre majors apartment with my cloths across the room, covered in vomit. I puked in front of the whole party. Repeatedly." He looked at her sidelong and she must have looked confused because he said, "the point is that once you've picked your way across a theatre geeks apartment in the cold light of day after a drinking binge…"

"Its not the same Nate."

"No," he said slowly, seriously "Its not the same thing. But the reason I want to be here for you is that I don't want you to feel alone in this."

She took in his words for a moment and then clarity hit. "You want to hold my hair back while I vomit."

He laughed slightly, "Yes."

"Essentially," she nodded, touched by his admission and as she turned to look at him she realized something. She blinked a few times, trying to process her new thought, but she knew she had to say something.

"I love you." They stared at each other for a moment, her admission lingering between them. She finally broke the silence, saying, "And now, seriously, get as far away from me as possible." And then she had kissed him, trying not to tear up, because everything seemed to make her want to cry lately, and then she had exited the car and headed for the woods. It had been when the change began that she had heard the unmistakable sounds of someone else changing, the wind carrying the screams and groans of agony to her, and she had known that it was him and something told her to go to him then, that she had to. So she had, or at least she'd tried because as she'd tore through the woods towards him she's been stopped abruptly by a gun shot to the arm from none other than her not so friendly Amish vampire friend and his silver rifle. After that it was a blur and she didn't even have time to wonder why he was after her before the change over took her. But she did remember another wolf saving her from being killed. Nate. Nate had saved her and now she had to find him.

Eventually she found herself back where she had started and noticing Hageman's gun on the ground, picked it up. She then made her way back towards the road just in case Nate had made it there. He hadn't, although the car was there and in bad shape and so she knew that the best recourse would be to go home and wait and hope he would show up and be whole and okay. Although she didn't think that anything was going to be okay anymore, because she had done the one thing she had promised she would never do and that was change someone. Worse, someone she loved.

As she neared the house, an hour later, she was just able to make out someone sitting on the front steps, their head between their jean clad knees. As she approached, he looked up.

"I looked everywhere for you," she said hollowly. "I thought you were…" she blinked rapidly, because there were those cursed tears again. She really needed to see if she had some kind of hormone imbalance.

He nodded, knowing what she was thinking, understanding that she had been afraid he was dead.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Just a little shaky." He sounded dazed.

She looked down and saw the scratch marks on his arm and not for the first time in days to come, she mentally kicked herself for not seeing them before. To be fair he had worn long sleeved shirts and at night when they were in bed it was too dark to see anything really. She reached out and touched them lightly, tracing them with her fingers. "I did this to you."

She had to sit down, she felt like the air had been knocked out of her. As she sat beside him, close, but not really touching, she let the tears fall silently, because she didn't want him to hear and comfort her. She didn't deserve comfort and this wasn't about her. She did notice that the feeling that had been consuming her of late was gone, although replaced with some other nameless pull, and she realized with sickening clarity that the wolf had been looking for a mate and it had found it. I'm going to fix this, she silently resolved. I need to fix this. It was just as she was turning to tell Nate that they should go inside that she was hit by another very familiar feeling and had to jump up and run to the side of the house to be sick in the bins there. Today is not going to be a good day.