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"You need help--"

"No!"

"Siht--"

"No!"

He twisted and I caught a gli He whipped his head down before I could process what I’d seen

He gagged, the sound horrible and raw, like he was coughing up his insides His back shot up again, li His ar The moon chose that moment to peek from the cloud and when his arh to break the surface, then sliding back under his skin And his hands… His fingers were long and twisted like talons, digging into the earth as his back arched

In ain "Guys like Derek have… physical enhance, as you saw Better senses, too That kind of thing"

That kind of thing

Thento run into any olves or vampires, am I?"

And Sih "That’d be cool"

Not an answer at all Avoiding a reply he couldn’t give

Derek convulsed, his head flying back, jaw clenched, an awful h his teeth Then his head whipped down and he gagged, strings of saliva dripping

"Derek?"

He retched, his whole body racked with heaves When they subsided, I inched forward He tilted his head away

"Is there anything I can do?"

A voice inside my head said, "Sure Run for your life!" But it was a s, not even serious, really, because there was no question of running This wasn’t aon his arrowled at , he was still Derek

"Is there anything I can do?"

A ridiculous question I could iine the response he’d make any other time--the curl of his lip, the roll of his eyes

But after one halfhearted "go away," he crouched there, head turned, body tre in a quaver

"Don’t" His fingers dug into the ground, ar "Go"

"I can’t leave you here If there’s anything I can do…"

"Don’t" A sharp intake of breath, then he expelled the words "Don’t go"

His head lifted reen eye, ith terror

His ar up as he heaved Vorass, a fresh ith every spas nothing, because there was nothing I could do My brain raced through ideas, discarding each as fast as it ca the coarse hair push through red-​hot skin that writhed and pulsed That was all I could do--stay and tell him I was there

Finally, with one last heave, one last spray of vo the fence three feet away, it stopped Just stopped

The muscles under my hand went still, the coarse hair receded Slowly, he relaxed, his back dropping, hands releasing their grip on the earth He crouched there, panting, hair hanging around his face

Then he sluers still long, misshapen, the nails thick, like claws He curled up on his side, knees drawn in, and et Siuttural, as if his vocal cords weren’t quite human

"It’s over," he said after a minute "I think Pretty sure" He rubbed his face, still shielded behind his hands "Shouldn’t have happened Not yet Not for years"

In other words, he knew perfectly hat he was, he just hadn’t expected the… transforer that he’d misled me, made Simon lie to me, but I couldn’t sustain it, not after what I’d seen, not sitting there, watching hiled to breathe, his body shaking with exhaustion and pain

"Go," he whispered "I’ll be fine now"

"I’m not--"

"Chloe" he snapped, the old Derek back in his voice "Go Help Simon Tell him I’rowl

"Five runted, but settled into silence, relaxing onto the grass

"See, you did rip out of your clothes," I said, trying to keep ht "Hope you didn’t like that shirt, ’cause it’s toast"

It was a weak joke, but he said, "Least I didn’t turn green"

"No, just" I was going to say "hairy," but I couldn’t get the word out, couldn’t wrap ed Derek shot up, his hands falling from his face His nose looked crushed, wide and flat, cheekbones jutting as if rising to meet it, his brows thick and heavy Not monstrous, more like an artist’s reconstruction of Neanderthal aze away and crawled toward the corner of the shed He caught etting a look"

I slid onaround it A flashlight beam swept the yard

"A woman," I whispered, as low as I could "I think it’s Rae--no, too skinny Ms Abdo, ed my ankle My jeans had hiked up, and his hand rapped around bare skin above ’s feet

"Go," he whispered "I’ll boost you over the fence Cliht beam cut a swath across the back of the yard

"Who’s out there?" The voice was high, sharp, with a faint accent

"Dr Gill," I whispered to Derek "What’s she--?"

"Never mind Go!"

"I know solanced at Derek, his face still deforrabbed the shoe of his that I’d dropped, and kicked off one of h for rasp and dart to the side fence, squeezing between it and the shed At the last second, he scraed in too far to reach, and he couldn’t follow

"Chloe! Get back here! Don’t you dare--"