Unleashed

Daniel Morning seems perfect -- handsome, charismatic, intelligent. But living up to everyone's expectations has cost him the right to make his own decisions. The urge to shatter those expectations is beginning to gnaw at his insides.

Then Daniel meets Misty. She's smoky, rebellious, tender...and much more. She decides to let him into her pack of outcasts -- and in on their little secret: She and her friends have learned to shapeshift, and have been prowling the night as wolves.

Daniel soon falls in love with the primal sensation of shifting, just as he's falling in love with Misty. The freedom to follow his most basic instincts is like nothing he's ever felt. But Daniel will slowly come to realize that such freedom comes at a price....

“I’m about to slap you if you don’t shut up.”

“Quit yapping, Keith,” Scotty said. “You can’t even lift your arm with that hunk of fake platinum strapped to it.”

“I bought a nicer watch at Burger King once,” Bwana added, covering his mouth with his fist as he laughed. “At least it had SpongeBob SquarePants on it.”

Napkins and empty plates littered the table. Getting in one more night of jaybird chatter before the end of winter break, Daniel sat with his friends and his cousin Keith, a small riot wedged into the diner’s corner booth. While his friends jostled one another, Angie curled her fingers through Daniel’s hair. “Tell them,” she whispered.

Nudging Angie’s hand away, Daniel asked, “Seriously, Keith, why’d you buy that thing? You hope if you’ve got a watch with four dials, people might think you can tell time?”

“I can tell— Shut up!”

At the Galleria, Keith had spent his Christmas money on an aviator’s watch with sixty-second, sixty-minute, and twenty-four-hour dials set into the face. Now, flustered, he stumbled over every joke they threw at him.

“We’re just messing with you. Relax. Let me see it.” Reaching across the table, Daniel grabbed Keith’s wrist.

Angie mouthed, “Tell. Them.”

“Man, the numbers go up to five hundred. What kind of Korean junk did you buy?”

Keith snatched his hand back. “That’s the tachometer, idiot.”

“It’s tacky, all right.”

Before another swell of laughter could drown her out, Angie blurted, “Daniel got accepted to Cornell! He got in.”

The booth went silent. Everybody turned toward Daniel.

“He got in,” Angie said again.

Bwana stood up on the seat. He climbed over Geneva and Spence, then dropped back down to give Daniel a bear hug. Squeezing Angie out of the booth, both Bwana and Daniel spilled to the grimy tiles.

“When did you find out?” Bwana punched him. “Why didn’t you tell anybody?”

“I found out a couple days ago. I was going to tell— Will you get off me?”

Bwana got to his feet just in time to smile at the waitress and keep her from kicking them all out. After folding themselves back into the booth, Daniel said, “I was going to tell you. It just hasn’t, I don’t know, sunk in yet.”

“How do you already know?” Geneva asked.

“I sent my application in October and got an early decision slot.”

“Aren’t you excited?”

Daniel shrugged. “Yeah.”

The table shook again as Scotty grabbed Daniel’s head. “You got into Cornell! The Ivy League! Be excited,” he told him. “Be running around buck naked, smoking a blunt, and telling Birmingham it can kiss your ass on the way out.”

Grinning, Daniel pried free of Scotty’s hands. “I’m excited. I promise. I’m excited.”

Claws scraped against asphalt. Vapor trailed from muzzles. All around the wolves, the city was an opal, cold-burning with a million flecks of light.

A white water of sound—tires and grumbling engines—rushed along the overpass above. Val carried a spray can in her jaws, but she couldn’t paint in wolf shape. Shifting into her human skin, she began slashing at the first pillar with black strokes of paint. Eric, still a wolf, brushed against Val’s legs as she worked.

Misty loped down Clairmont toward a diner’s parking lot. Hidden among mounds of dirty slush, she watched cars float past and kept a lookout for cruisers. Chunks of ice froze to the coarse outer coat of Misty’s pelt, but they didn’t bother her.

Val finished the first pillar and dashed to the second. Above, Misty’s twin brother, Marc, patrolled the expressway, padding ghostlike through the orange glow of street lamps.

A homeless man trudged along the overpass’s narrow footpath. Seeing Marc, he stopped and held out a palm for him to sniff, cautious but not afraid, mistaking Marc for an ordinary dog. The man didn’t see that Marc’s rangy shape concealed more speed and strength than any pet. He didn’t realize a wolf could tear the skin and sinew of his arm, shatter the bones, as easily as he could bite through an apple.

The man tried to scratch Marc’s head. Ducking, Marc leaned against the guardrail to let him pass.

Misty’s ears flicked toward giggling whispers. A couple stepped out of the diner. Strains of laughter and food smells, onions, sizzling oil, and meat wafted out the door with them. They hurried across the parking lot, the woman pressing against her lover for warmth. Before sliding into the passenger seat, she kissed him. Her voice dropped to a gentle hush.

Misty listened from between the cars. She remembered the way Andre used to whisper to her, even though he was a jerk. Suddenly, the wind that had plucked harmlessly at Misty’s pelt stung her face cold enough to sear. She grunted, realizing she was a human again, the slush soaking through the knees of her jeans.

They shifted into wolves from the inside out. Before their bodies changed, Misty’s pack had to let their minds sink to a primal, instinctive depth. Thinking about Andre or how good the woman looked in her red overcoat—thinking too human—yanked Misty back into her shivering human shape.

Closing her eyes, Misty imagined her wolf-self. She dropped her hands against the ground, but her fingers stayed thin and tipped with pearl white polish. Frustrated, she slapped the ground over and over until a speck of glass scraped the pad of her thumb. The ragged pain made Misty cuss. She sucked the cut, rocking back onto her heels. From the overpass, Marc sent up an alarm of frantic barks.

Misty turned and saw the cruiser coming down Clairmont. Luckily, Marc had spotted it before the police spotted Val and Eric.

Eric answered Marc with more barking. Fangs bared, he twisted around, snapping at the air. Val dropped to all fours and turned back into a wolf. The pair ran east. Bounding down the embankment, Marc ran west. All of them were on the opposite side of the street from Misty.

She tried shifting one more time, but it was no use. Giving up, she watched her pack scatter in different directions. Marc vanished behind a twenty-four-hour pharmacy. Eric decided to cross Clairmont and double back. Horns blared and the flow of traffic closed immediately behind him, leaving Val stranded on the far side. They were werewolves. They just weren’t competent werewolves.

The cruiser pulled into the diner parking lot just as the couple in love pulled out. Misty slipped behind the building. A single bulb burned above the rear door. Misty inspected her hurt thumb and stomped her tanker boots against the cold.

Listening to the Friday-night clamor, Misty waited. After a minute, she heard Marc howl. He was a couple blocks west. Zipping her jacket up above her mouth and stuffing her hands in her pockets, she trudged off to find her brother.

Daniel’s friends wanted to know everything about Cornell. He gave them one- and two-word answers until the conversation finally drifted to their own applications at different colleges. It was past midnight when they left, sidling past two policemen coming in.

Daniel drove Angie home. On the way, she asked, “Why didn’t you want to tell them about Cornell?”

“I was going to tell them. I just . . . I don’t know.”

“Is it that SAT thing?”

“No.”

Angie sighed. “Daniel, you got into Cornell. So what if you had to hustle a little? I promise, everybody up...