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Prologue

• GRACE •

This is the story of a boy who used to be a wolf and a girl as beco one

Just a few o, it was Sam as the mythical creature His was the disease we couldn’t cure His was the good-bye that e and wonderful and terrifying to comprehend

But now it is spring With the heat, the re out of their wolf pelts and back into their human bodies Sam stays Sam, and Cole stays Cole, and it’s only me who’s not firmly in my own skin

Last year, this hat I wanted I had a lot of reasons to long to be part of the wolf pack that lives in the woods behindfor one of the for me to come to them

Their eyes, human eyes in wolf skulls, re the spring sky, the brown of a brook churning with rainfall, the green of the lake in suray of a snow-choked river It used to be only Sam’s yellow eyes that watched me froht of the entire pack’s gaze The weight of things known, things unsaid

The wolves in the woods are strangers now that I know the secret of the pack Beautiful, alluring—but strangers nonetheless An unknown human past hides behind each pair of eyes; Sam is the only one I ever truly knew, and I have him beside me noant this, ainst my neck

But my body betrays me Now I am the unknown, the unknowable

This is a love story I never knew there were so many kinds of love or that love could s

I never knew there were so ood-bye

CHAPTER ONE

• SAM •

Mercy Falls, Minnesota, looked different when you knew you’d be human for the rest of your life Before, it had been a place that existed only in the heat of summer, concrete sidewalks and leaves curved up toward the sun, everything s truck exhaust

Now, as the spring branches shared seldoed

In the months since I’d lost ain I’d gotten my old job back at The Crooked Shelf, surrounded by neords and the sound of pages turning I’d traded my inherited SUV, full of the scent of Beck and h for uitar I tried not to flinch when I felt the cold rush in through a suddenly open door I tried to reht, Grace and I crept into her roo in the s my heartbeat to hers

If ht when I heard the wolves’ slols in the wind, at least I had the balm of this simple, ordinary life to console irl inold in this unfa

Gift of time in me enclosed

the future suddenly exposed

I had started to bring uitar with o by with no one to hearmy lyrics to the book-lined walls The little notebook Grace had boughtords Every new date jotted at the top of a page was a victory over the disappearing winter

Today was a daystreets still devoid of consu after I opened up the store, I was surprised to hear soainst the wall behind my stool, I looked up

“Hi, Sae to see her on her oithout the context of Grace, and stranger still to see her here in the bookstore, surrounded by the soft reality of my cave of paperbacks The loss of her brother the winter before had made her voice harder, her eyes sharper, than they’d been the first time I’d met her She looked at me—a canny, blasé look that made me feel naive

“What’s up?” she asked, sitting on the es in front of her Grace would’ve tucked hers underneath the stool Isabel saw h

I looked at the violated tea “Not much New haircut?”

Her perfect blond ringlets were gone, replaced with a brutal, short style that ed

Isabel raised one eyebrow “I never pegged you for a fan of the obvious, Sam,” she said

“I’m not,” I said, and pushed the untouched paper cup of tea toward her to finish It see to drink from it after she did I added, “Otherwise, I would’ve said, ‘Hey, shouldn’t you be in school?’”

“Touché,” Isabel said, taking antly on her stool I hunched like a vulture on mine The wall clock counted off the seconds Outside, heavy white clouds that still looked like winter hung low over the street I watched a drop of rain streak past the , only to bounce, frozen, on the sidewalk My uitar toon the counter (“What shall I do with this body they gave me, so much my own, so intimate with me?”) Finally, I leaned over and pressed the play button on the sound syste the music overhead

“I’ve been seeing wolves near my house,” Isabel said She shook the liquid in the cup “This tastes like lawn clippings”

“It’s good for you,” I said I fervently wished she hadn’t taken it; the hot liquid felt like a safety net in this cold weather Even though I knew I didn’t need it anymore, I still felt more firmly human with it in my hand “How close to your house?”