Disclaimer and summary: See first chapter!

Dinner

With three pairs of eyes locked on me, it was an understatement to say I felt nervous. I knew that they knew it, too. How couldn't they? I was able to smell my own fear coming off me in waves. I brought my thumb to my mouth and chewed on the half-grown nail, knowing that eventually I'd have gnawed on it so much that I'd end up biting it off and starting the process over again.

As I half-chewed, half-sucked on my thumbnail, I shifted my gaze to Jeremy. He was the only one of the group who didn't have some variation of the "Think about doing anything and you die" look to him. I watched as he sighed and sat up in his chair, as if he had reached a difficult decision.

"Do you remember what happened last week?"

I shook my head.

"What do you remember, then?"

I was sure that I could fudge the details on this answer a bit. "Sitting down in front of my computer after unwinding a bit. I had some intention to get some manip work done, but I think I ended up just passing out in my chair."

His brow twitched in the slightest furrow of confusion. "We had tracked a mutt to you, just before he attacked you on an empty backwoods street. I...we were rather surprised how well you fought him off. But, the damage was already done. He had bitten you, and you had survived, so we brought you here."

My eyes darted from Jeremy to Clay then Elena, the vague memory of Elena's comment when I woke up that first time flitting through my mind. When I chose to not speak, Jeremy continued.

"You know about us, though. I want to know how."

I knew I wasn't quiet in the clear yet, and that the whole truth and nothing but the truth won't help me here, so I pulled the best load of bullshit I could think of. "I was asking about your place. I had seen it while cruising around before, so I asked the locals. Just the regulars at some doughnut place not too far from here."

All I could do was pray that my attention to detail in books would save my ass here. None of them were buying my story, I could tell in their eyes, but at least I didn't say anything that couldn't be true. It was all very possible. In a rural town like this one, everyone knew everyone and was all up in their neighbor's business. I just hoped that they'd accept that the locals would tell an outsider about the family who made outsiders of themselves with their isolation.

Jeremy lowered his eyes from mine and shook his head. A wave of sad anxiety washed over me, as if I was ten years old again and caught in a lie that disappointed my father. I rolled my shoulders, trying to shrug it off. Jeremy, though, pushed himself away from the table and Elena stood with him.

"You'll be staying here until you've got yourself under control."

I blinked at Jeremy, halfway in the process of clearing the table. "In the cage?" I could hear the half-whimper in my voice.

To my relief, Jeremy shook his head. "There's one extra bedroom upstairs. It'll be yours until a decision is made."

With that, Jeremy left with Clay right behind him. Elena and I collected the dishes in silence and carried them into the kitchen, where they were rinsed and dropped into a dishwasher. As I was leaning against the counter, lost in how I was going to keep up my charade of half-truths, Elena broke the silence.

"You're going to need clothes. You can't wear Clay's old shit forever."

I looked up at her and frowned. "And how am I supposed to get those? Forgetting the fact that my wallet's MIA, my bank account is pathetic enough as it is."

"Don't worry about it."

I frowned as she pulled her car keys from her pocket and jangled them at me. My frown turned to a scowl as she turned her back on me and headed toward the garage. Great, now I was going to be in financial debt to fictional characters to boot.

It wasn't that I hated shopping. Quite the contrary. Drop me off at a bookstore, electronics store, or even an art store and you probably won't find me for a couple hours at least. Clothes shopping, though? Ugh... Hated it. I made sure to memorize every variation on women's sizing that I possibly could just so I could go in, see something I want, grab my size and get the hell out of there.

Elena made sure that I picked up enough shirts and pants to last me a week, enough so I wouldn't have to do laundry every day. The trip had taken longer than we anticipated, though. The wannabe mall that we went to had a few name places that I recognized, but most of them weren't anything I had ever heard of. One thing I did notice, that was far different from California, was that as many diet and health food places there were back home, there was at least twice as many bakeries and mom-and-pop places out here. With my newfound sense of smell, I kept stopping and sniffing the scent of the various baked goods that wafted out of these stores. This place was a super model's nightmare.

At the first signs of stomach rumbling, Elena steered me into the first diner we came to and invited me to order anything I wanted. My stomach voiced it's impatience as I looked over the menu, nearly salivating over my choices. I settled on the diner's home-made chicken pot pie. After the waitress took my order, I took a good look around the room we were in. It was typical of that backwoods, homegrown, family operated diners. The benches at the tables were a lumpy comfortable only in that odd way that places like this can have. I drank deep the scents of cooking sausage, bacon, ham-steaks, eggs...the usual foods that the average Southern Californian avoided. Too many carbohydrates, fats, salt, sugar...

Upon returning to Stonehaven, later that afternoon, I had to admit to myself that it felt good to be back in my personal style of clothing. The whole wearing the guy's shirt the morning after thing got old pretty quick. It was awkward, though, walking around with empty pockets. The small weight of my keys, cell phone, and wallet were a comfort to me. While out with Elena, I actually stopped in front of a T-mobile store and considered getting a cell phone. What would I have needed it for, though? I didn't have the number to contact anyone at Stonehaven or Elena's cell number. Just because they were letting me stay there didn't make me their pack mate. I was still little more than a mutt to them, scum of the earth and overall not worth their attention most of the time.

Even so, they treated me as politely as they would any stranger who happened into their home. Elena, having had lost me for a couple hours in the local used bookstore, showed me the study where Jeremy kept all his books. I was scanning the titles on the shelves, nose wrinkled at the complete lack of fiction, when someone joined me.

"You won't find anything like the titles you were browsing in the bookstore."

I turned my head to look at Jeremy over my shoulder, surprised for only a moment until I figured that Elena had told him about my "escape" to the dead-tree section of the store. I turned the rest of the way to face him, nodding a bit. "Yeah, they probably won't hold much interest to me anymore."

He raised an eyebrow, my only encouragement to continue.

"I was always on the hunt for the perfect werewolf novel. Something that cast a different light on the creatures." I smiled a bit as my gaze went to the fire. "Found it once..."

I wasn't ready to tell them yet. That the once was what landed me in this situation, several years after my discovery. I still remember the email that I had sent to Kelley Armstrong, thanking her for writing novels that told the story of a werewolf, not a rabid beast. I even remember how excited I was that she wrote me back only six days later. I was sure that she didn't bother with personal emails. I had already known that she got the idea for a more humane werewolf based on an X-Files episode, but reading that she agreed that we share the same opinion on the werewolf legend still had given me that warm, fuzzy, my-hero-is-talking-to-me feeling.

I looked up from the fire to see Jeremy still staring at me, as if expecting me to go on. When I didn't, he broke the silence. "There's food served in the sunroom. You're welcome to join us." Without waiting for me to respond, he turned and left the study.

"Us" included the whole pack as I knew it. Jeremy, Clay, Elena and the Sorrentinos which consisted of Nicholas and his father, Antonio. Nick and Antonio both had dark, wavy hair, that they wore cut short and large brown eyes. That was where the similarities between father and son stopped. While Nick was tall, slender, and neatly groomed, Antonio was just barely taller than me, with wide shoulders and biceps that made me wonder how often he thought of becoming a pro wrestler.

I leaned against the door frame as the floor seemed to lurch under me. The Danvers household I could handle, but the whole pack? Shit, this was going to take some seriously creative Sidhe-style fibbing. I was just about to excuse myself back to the study to rethink my situation when strong hands steadied me. I blinked and looked up at Nick, blushing a bit at his disarming grin. Blushing more at blushing, I looked away from him down at his hand that gripped my arm with enough firmness to support me but not restrain me. I don't remember what I mumbled, later I hoped it was a word of thanks, but the next thing I knew I was sitting at the head of the table in the sunroom, flanked by Nick and his father.

Nick had slid a plate with two of the largest pieces of steak I'd ever seen on it toward me with a smile and a wink that could only mean "there's more where that came from." I bit my lip nervously and busied myself with the food, trying to keep from blushing again. It wasn't that I didn't like Nick, it's just that I knew already what type of guy he was.

At forty-something, he didn't look much older than my twenty-five. Chalk that up to werewolf genes, the ultimate in the fountain of youth. He was known as the playboy of the Pack, chasing tail yet always the gentleman about it. Definitely a dinner-and-a-movie-first guy, and usually something very upscale at that. If I didn't already have to worry about being put down as a rabid mutt, his playboy status would make me wary enough of him. I like fun-loving guys, just not that kind of fun-loving. Call me old-fashioned...

After supper, the questions started up again.

"Where you from, Nyx?"

I eyed Antonio warily. My gaze must have been less wary and more humorous because his booming laugh made me jump.

"Okay, I'm sure you've had enough of these probing questions from Jer. How about this one, then. You're sure taking this whole being bitten by a werewolf well. I wonder why that is?"

"I have a strong belief that humans aren't the only species of it's kind on the planet," I murmured. "Creative, intelligent...." I paused a moment and rolled my eyes, "relatively intelligent, though to have gotten this far I'm sure they had a good amount of help." I smirked a bit.

"Dislike the humans even though you were one! Sounds like our own Clayton, doesn't it?" Nick laughed. This only earned him a smoldering glower from Clay across the table.

I smiled a bit as I picked at the steak remains on my plate. It actually felt kind of good to have a friend on my side, no matter how much that feeling was wishful thinking on my part.

"Perhaps it's not so much a dislike for humans as the herd mentality of them. It's all about one-upping each other, no matter what or whom you hurt, but crying pity party when it doesn't work in their favor." I turned my gaze to Clay, keeping it level and just on the safe side of challenging. "The world is hard for a lot of people. Not everyone in it expects hand-outs."

The table went as quiet as when we were eating. I swore at myself silently, realizing that I may very well have offended someone at best, or driven away the one person actively trying to be my friend through all this at worst. I was not getting off on the right foot here. I excused myself from the table and high-tailed it up to the guest bedroom that Jeremy had set up for me. Guess I couldn't quite call it "mine" just yet. The complete lack of decoration and furnishings besides a bed and simple dresser made it quiet obvious that I wasn't home. Not that I was missing home or anything. In fact, I didn't feel homesick at all. A small voice in the back of my mind told me, screamed at me, that this was something I should be worried about. Why wasn't I trying to find a way back home?

A knock at the door stopped me from answering my own question. A quick sniff (Goddess, would I ever get used to this?) told me that Antonio was on the other side. I stood frozen a moment, a brief wave of unfounded panic washing over me and rendering me paralyzed before I coughed and cleared my throat to shake myself free of it.

"Yeah?"

Antonio let himself in just as I was plopping myself down on the bed. "We were thinking of going on a post-supper run. Care to join us?"

"We?" I tilted my head to the side, curious who "we" entailed.

"Jeremy prefers to run alone, so he'll probably be going some other time. It'll just be Clay, Elena, you, me, and Nick"

I chewed nervously on my lower lip. "I didn't... I didn't hurt Nick's feelings with my comment downstairs, did I?"

Antonio fell into surprised silence for a long moment, seasoned with a suspicious look in his eye. "No... Why would you ask that?"

I was just batting a thousand with keeping my knowledge of this bunch on the down-low. "Just felt like I stung someone. I didn't mean to... Not really... It just kind of slipped out."

He frowned and shook his head. "Don't worry about it. C'mon down and we'll show you what it's like to Change without the bars."

I stood and allowed Antonio to lead me out of the house and into the woods.