Page 32 of Howl for the Gargoyle

But she liked good food, and she was a vegetarian werewolf struggling against the expectation of being a massive carnivore, and preparing something like this for her would be…thoughtful.

I tossed my notebook down into my bag on the floor. "You guys, obviously," I said. "A main and a group activity, all at once."

"Next time, bring score cards so we can eviscerate your efforts anonymously," Elias suggested, and I glared at him only to find him smirking back at me, a little too knowingly for a moth fae who couldn't read minds. I'd have to corner Astraeya at work and make sure they weren't gossiping about me behind my back.

CHAPTER 12

Hannah

"Hi, I'm Fletcher."

"Hi, Fletcher."

"I was turned a few months ago actually, but…it's just been…"

I stared at the man standing now, huge and rugged and handsome in a scraggly woodsman sort of way. He looked like a good candidate for a werewolf, a properly terrifying one. But he was standing with his shoulders hunched, a wounded flinch crinkling the scar near his right eye. He cleared his throat, and my eyes fell to my lap, too familiar with this particular wound.

"Hard," he said lamely, the single word thick with meaning. Someone in the circle hummed in sympathy, and his lips twitched. "Just hard. Don't really…know who I am anymore. Feel like the monster just has all of me."

My chest burned and my thighs ached with the urge to stand and run. There'd been other new members to our little circle since I'd joined, and some stayed while others moved on quickly. They were always the hardest stories for me to listen to, my own experience endlessly fresh.

"But I don't really wanna be that guy, so I'm…so I'm here now. And I'm hoping you can help," he said, shrugging and looking briefly around at us through large, vivid ice blue eyes, the reddened whiskers of his beard shifting as he licked his lips. Always hungry, us werewolves.

He glanced at Diane as he started to sit, and then startled and stood straight again. "I am what I am?" he asked, guessing at the words we'd already repeated several times today.

"I am what I am," we answered him in unison.

I forced my lips to sound out the words with the others, but not for the first time wondered what they really meant. It sounded so resigned. For me, it was simply a reminder that I couldn't turn back time, not be running in that graveyard on the full moon, feeling quiet and calm one moment, and then panicked and frantic the next. Maybe for the others, it was a reminder to embrace our nature, all teeth and claw and hunger.

"Hannah?" Diane called, rousing me.

I found her at the front, opened my mouth to shake my head and answer my usual 'not today,' and then paused. I'd never spoken, just listened. Theo twisted in his chair to glance back at me, and his eyes were owlish behind his glasses, huge and surprised. Because I was standing up.

"I—" I was supposed to introduce myself, to let the group call back to me, but if I hesitated, heard their requisite "Hi, Hannah" back and faced what I was doing, I would sit back down immediately. So I just barreled ahead. "I've never transformed in front of anyone. Not even a mirror. I don't want to see myself as a werewolf, or know what I look like. I don't want to see the monster that made me a werewolf in a reflection," I said.

A few eyes winced away, but I was trying to keep my stare resolutely up above them all anyway, aware of the glow of Diane watching and listening, and the little reflective glimmer of Theo's glasses still turned in my direction.

"I have a…a safe opportunity to spend the full moon with someone. Not another werewolf. But someone I can't hurt…who won't hurt me. And I hate the shelter. I fucking hate being there. I hate everything about the shift. But I don't know if I can let someone else see me transform."

The room was quiet, and Diane cleared her throat to speak, but Theo beat her, which was a relief because his voice was familiar and safe—he was my friend.

"What's the benefit of not seeing your werewolf?"

I swallowed once, but my throat refused the motion and I had to fight through choking to do it properly. "The shelter, the full moon…it's like a- a scheduled nightmare. It's not part of my life. It doesn't feel entirely real."

Theo nodded, not encouraging, not agreeing, just telling me he'd already known my answer.

And that we both knew it was bullshit.

"I don't want this to be real yet," I admitted softly.

And because there was no hopeful way to spin this admission, no optimism burning through me to tie a bow on the speech that would make any of us feel better, I sat back down in my chair. Silence burned into my ears, as loud as screaming, and I realized I'd forgotten to say the final words.

I am what I am. And because I'd forgotten to say them, no one else had echoed the sentiment. Because I didn't want to be what I was, and I couldn't force myself to start the chorus for the others to follow. It was awkward, and it had turned the energy of the group down to a wounded limp. Diane's gaze held mine, cutting around the others to find me, but she didn't force me to finish, to speak. She just let the pause linger painfully—not an admonishment against me, but maybe the others. A reminder that we were here not just as cheerleaders towards progress, but as people who'd been hurt. I'd shoved that in their faces, and she'd let me. I nodded to her, and I don't know if it was acknowledgement or gratitude, but it was enough, and her eyes slid away.

It was too much to hope I might escape the session without comment. I'd expected Theo to find me, but it was Diane who cornered me at the fruit plate.

"It was good to finally hear from you," she said, her voice all raspy velvet reassurance.

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