I fell asleep to the scent of my wolf. Pine needles, cold rain, earthy perfume, coarse bristles on my face.

Do you ever get the feeling that something awful might happen?' James asked me. . . I sat up. 'I'm the awful thing that happens.

There are moments that you'll remember for the rest of your life and there are moments that you think you'll remember for the rest of your life, and it's not often they turn out to be the same moment.

When he kissed me, his lips soft and careful, it was all the thrill of our first kiss and all the practiced familiarity of the accumulated memory of all our kisses.

Sam?" Rachel asked. "Do you know you have the saddest sad face ever?

I knew he wouldn't come, but I howled anyway, and when I did, the other wolves would pass images of him to me of what he looked like: lithe, gray, yellow-eyed. I would pass back images of my own, of a wolf on the edge of the woods, silent and cautious, watching me. The images, clear as the slender-leaved trees in front of me, made finding him seem urgent, but I didn't know how to begin to look.

My parents had always been so careful with me, until the day they decided I needed to die.