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through the ground and air and into my skin.
    I swayed once as I turned my head to survey the room completely. The werewolf that had been preparing to pounce on me was moving backwards, and the nurse had managed to slide away from the other one as it stared at me.
    Uncoiling one lower loop, I skimmed the top part of my body over the closest wolf and twirled myself around him. I could feel my fangs preparing to pump poison, even as the muscles of my body tightened around the wolf's body. Apparently I had managed to re-create the battle form I had used before, a hybrid snake that was both venomous viper and constrictor. The wolf yelped once before I squeezed hard enough to cut off his breath.
    I stopped for an instant to consider what I should do. If I killed him, I would have yet another death on my conscience. My parents had worked hard to raise me with human ethics and morals, and my training as a children's counselor had only amplified that training.
    Then I glanced down and saw the nurse, whose name I hadn't ever even asked, struggling to stand up next to the incubator. Her hand slapped once against the side, then slid down, leaving a bloody handprint behind. The werewolf must have slashed her when I wasn't looking. The copper smell of blood—that scent that did taste like food on my tongue—wafted up to me.
    Without a second thought, I contracted sharply around the wolf, snapping its spine. Then I dropped it on the floor and whipped my tail out to knock the other wolf off its feet. The nurse, only a few feet away, froze in her attempt to stand, her eyes wide and frightened.
    Deliberately, I turned my face away from her, telling her as clearly as I could that I would not hurt her. I felt, more than heard, as she continued to pull herself to her feet to check on the infant.
    The wolf, too, was attempting to scrabble to his feet. His paws skidded a little on the white tile floor, and I reveled for a moment in how easily my scales slipped along to bring me closer. Really, though, it was dropping my upper half down next to him that underscored exactly how huge I had grown in this shift. My head alone was almost as big as the wolf.
    When I opened my mouth and unhinged my jaws, the werewolf peed itself.
    With one fang, I pierced him through the neck as he turned to run. I didn't even bother to pump out additional venom. The fang itself almost beheaded the wolf, and he was dead by the time I withdrew it.
    The nurse was standing, and had managed to wrap one arm in a bandage before beginning to check the machinery attached to the baby, so I assumed she was doing well enough for the moment.
    My view of Kade, however, was obscured by the bear, who had my mongoose-shifter backed into a corner. I didn't think he had had time to shift—and even if he had, I knew that his ability to shift into larger forms was limited, so he was almost certainly, at best, a human-sized half-mongoose, or a mongoose-sized mongoose, either one with shifter strength that far outstripped an average human, but nothing compared to a giant bear-shifter.
    As I reared up higher, rising to balance on the last third of my body, I got a better look around the bear. Kade had managed to barricade himself behind several other medical machines, and had some sort of machine on a pole that he was swinging in an arc in front of himself—either to actually attempt to hit the bear, or to at least keep the bear from reaching in and swiping at him. Some kind of tubing slung around from it and slapped the bear across the nose, causing it to jerk back a little.
    Kade redoubled his grip and swung the machine like a baseball bat, just as I recognized it for what it was: a breast-pump. This time, he managed to whack the bear across the snout with the boxy machine end of the pump, and the Kodiak took several steps backward.
    I used the bear's distraction to whip my tail around its feet and tug backwards. I was hoping to knock it over completely, but it managed to land on its front