Chapter 24: Chapter 24: Maggie the Witch

Maggie laughs. She doesn’t cackle. She laughs. “Careful. I wouldn’t use that word around others of your kind. Even Nickolas here is fighting to suppress his irritation.”

“My kind?” I ask. That seems to be her answer, then?

“Yes,” she says. “You are, beyond question, a wolf shifter. Of that much I am entirely certain.”

There it goes. The last bit of doubt. I’m not a human. Every friend, classmate, teacher, co-worker, boss, or acquaintance I’ve ever had was a different species than me. The only body I’ve ever known is a disguise.

All at once, I seem to have lost some great innocence. My life until now was a childhood, no, a cubhood. I’m not a human. I’m something strange and dangerous, which I do not understand.

If I go back to St. Louis after this, how will I go back to the life I had, knowing that I’m not the same kind of creature as everyone around me? That the thing they see when they look at me is a lie, conjured to hide a predator that could rip them to shreds?