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pitchfork I’ve ever seen—out of water , with your mind —and then you stabbed Fennrys through the heart with it. That’s not stopping someone. That’s ending someone.”
    Inside the Weather Room, another piteous howl shivered in the air like a warning siren. Cal wondered if Mason realized now, for real , who was the monster and who was the man. The scars on his face tingled and he winced. Heather was still staring at him. He couldn’t tell if it was with pity or hate.
    I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need her .
    He had everything he needed in the next room. In Mason. And once she realized that—and that she and Fennrys could never be together now—she’d come to him. Standing between Cal and the doorway to that potential future, Heather smiled sadly, as if she’d read his thoughts.
    â€œNever gonna happen, sweetie,” she said. “Frankly, I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t put that spear she has right through your chest when she gets back. Just to show you what it felt like when you did the same thing to the guy she loves.”
    Cal winced. “Jeezus, Heather. You really can be a bitch sometimes. You know that?”
    â€œAnd you can be so blind.” She shook her head. “I really hate to say this, Cal, but I think maybe there’s a whole lot more of your mother in you than you’d care to believe.”
    â€œShut your mouth—”
    â€œOpen your eyes!” Heather almost shouted at him.
    She took a deep breath and closed her own eyes for a moment. When she looked at him again, he was shocked by just how much love for him he could still see, filling her gaze. It didn’t make any sense, but he was starting to figure out that “sense” and “love” had very little to do with each other in his world. A wave of bitterness at the absolute, utter unfairness of his situation crashed over him.
    â€œWhat’s happened to you, Aristarchos?” Heather asked, a note of pleading in her voice. “Really. I’m trying to understand.”
    â€œI don’t know how you could,” Cal said. “We’re not the same. We never have been.”
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?”
    He shrugged. “Maybe that’s why I couldn’t ever really love you, Heather. It’s not your fault. You’re only human.”
    He hadn’t really meant to say it like that. Like an insult. But that’s how it sounded—even to his own ears—and from the look on Heather’s face, he knew that’s how it had sounded to her, too. She blinked and took a step back from him and her gaze became suddenly shuttered. Instead of crying or yelling or even looking at him with hurt in her eyes, Heather Palmerston just laughed at him.
    â€œYeah,” she said. “I guess I am. Thank god—or gods , I guess—for small favors.” Then she turned and walked past him through the door, tossing her hair over her proudly squared shoulders and leaving Cal standing there feeling like he was the lesser being.

VI
    â€œF ennrys?”
    No. No no no . . . not Fennrys .
    Not this. This wasn’t him.
    This is not . . . I am not . . .
    â€œFenn?”
    The pain was excruciating. A bonfire lit from within. He could feel the thready fibers of every single muscle in his body searing as if flooded with a virulent toxin. His blood wasn’t blood; it was flame. It burned him as it coursed through his veins. The were-transformation had triggered something, awoken something deep inside him, and Fennrys didn’t know what it was. All he knew was that it was hungry.
    The great holes torn in his chest by Calum’s trident throbbed with distant, detached hurt, already healing, flesh and lung and heart all knitting themselves back together. But the deep bite wounds on the sides of his throat were like constellations of agony—each puncture a miniature