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  I don’t know how long I sat there but eventually, the urges stopped. Or rather, they were replaced by stronger and more compelling physical sensations. My skin tingled and I radiated heat. I untucked my legs and felt an unfamiliar soreness in my limbs. Then, the full-body convulsions seized me. It felt like cramps in every muscle at the same time. Distantly, I heard a cry. Mine?

  The nausea hit me faster than I could clamp down and then, I was vomiting my dinner into my lap. I didn’t have a chance to clean myself before another round of cramps lifted me from my sitting position and flipped me onto my side. I vomited again and this time there was blood. I wrenched myself back into a sitting position and looked toward the observation room. My vision was filmy, as if something thick and viscous was covering my eyes. I squinted and could barely make out Valentine’s shape. It looked like she was pounding on the window and someone was holding her back. My stomach contracted and I rolled into a fetal position. I felt fire within and without. My mind didn’t know how to process the assault of sensation. I felt numb, frozen not in oblivion, but in a haze of agonizing pain.

  I began to retreat, psychologically and physically. My mind, in a last ditch effort for self-preservation, began to shut itself off from my body, absolving itself from physical responsibility. I let it. It hurt so much. I let myself detach from the nerve endings and the synaptic passages. I let myself fold my consciousness into a box tucked in the recesses of my awareness.

  That’s when she came alive—the panther. She flowed into all the places I vacated and filled them willingly, eagerly. I felt her muscles stir and her senses prickle, but I wasn’t in control anymore. Karma had been right: the sensation was much like watching a movie, but from a distorted, alien perspective while being held immovable in a straitjacket.

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  The detachment was disconcerting—I had no body, and experienced the sensations of hers only as distant echoes reverberating across the protective shell I’d gathered around my precious consciousness. I didn’t know precisely when the transformation completed, but I was aware of her first steps. Her body elevated, she lurched forward, and then she fell to the ground. She was like a newborn foal learning to walk, and I felt her movements as though I’d sprouted phantom limbs. Her claws scrambled for purchase on the smooth concrete. Again and again, she found herself on the ground. Finally, I tried to help, tentatively daring to reach across the barrier that I had erected between us. I tried to manipulate her muscles like a novice puppeteer, willing her legs to move more slowly, only to find that command dismissed and replaced with a stronger imperative to push harder and faster. It felt like a rebuke, like a mental slap on the wrist, and I withdrew even further into my cocoon. I clearly wasn’t in control anymore and the panther intended to keep it that way.

  Eventually, she was able to move in a stuttered and uneven gait. The pitching and rolling of her new stride was dizzying and awkward. I would have found it nauseating had my body been my own, but the panther never stopped moving. Her drive to explore the room was instinctual and irresistible. She was halfway around her second circuit when a grinding sound stopped her mid-step. The air pressure in the room shifted and she whipped her body around in a tight circle, seeking the source of the change. For a moment, as the echo of her movements reached me, I couldn’t help but be impressed by her strength and agility.

  And then, several dozen yards away, a small brown rabbit hopped warily into the room. The metal doors snapped shut behind it, and it skittered forward in alarm before freezing, poised for flight. Even huddled on the edge of desperation, it was cute. It reminded me of a stuffed animal I’d owned as a child.

  Every molecule of the panther fixated on the rabbit. Dormant instincts flickered into life from deep within. My logical brain rebelled against the delicious scent echo, but I had no agency. She wanted to sink her teeth into the neck of that rabbit, and I couldn’t stop her. Most of me didn’t even want to, really—not because her appetite was rubbing off on me, but because feeding was the only way I’d be able to regain my own body.

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  She prowled, slinking into the foliage around her, willing herself into invisibility. She got very close to the rabbit, close enough that I could make out the pungent odors of urine and cedar shavings under its distinct meat-smell. And then a stray branch caught against the panther’s flank, leaves rustling. The rabbit perked up like it had been electrocuted, and faster than my human mind could process, it skittered out of sight.

  The panther took off in a bolt. Her legs bunched and stretched like pistons. Between strides, I caught glimpses of the rabbit through the grass and bushes. The panther would get close, and then her prey would veer off at an impossibly sharp angle, making her scramble to readjust. Despite its ultimate purpose, the run energized me; I allowed myself a moment of exhilaration as the ground blurred beneath the panther’s feet, but all too soon, she skidded to a stop. While I had been reveling in the power of her movement, the panther had managed to corner the rabbit.

  Horror and revulsion at what she was about to do seized my consciousness. I attempted to wrest control back, and when that didn’t have an effect, I tried to shut out the scene before me. Neither worked. I couldn’t turn off the movie—I would be bombarded by echoes, apparently, until I changed back.

  The panther edged forward unfettered, and with a sharp contracting of her haunch muscles, she launched her body at the rabbit, snatched it with her teeth and crushed its neck with a powerful clenching of her jaw. Somewhere inside her I tried to scream at the almost-sensation of my phantom teeth crushing bone, but the panther continued unaware, pinning the bloodied rabbit against the ground with her claws and tearing at the flesh with vicious abandon.

  It was over quickly, the rabbit reduced to a scrap of fur and a pool of blood on the ground. Satisfied, the panther backed away and began cleaning herself. As much as I wanted to remain horrified by the brutality of her hunt, I could feel her satiation bleeding over into my mind. The steady, measured motions of licking and smoothing eventually calmed both of us, and lethargy beckoned us toward sleep. The panther shut her eyes and I was grateful. The last thought I had before oblivion claimed us was a prayer that I would wake up as me.

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  Chapter eighteeN

  The sound of the door closing behind Val jerked me awake. As usual, the panther reached for control, and I had to focus hard on subduing her. By the time Val had crossed the room, my heart was pounding wildly. I knew she could hear it.

  “I startled you,” she said quietly as she began to remove her clothes. “I’m sorry.”

  It had been almost three weeks since the full moon, and while I had made some progress at integrating the two halves of myself, I still had to actively fight the panther’s urges far more frequently than I would have liked. During the first few days, I had transformed at the slighest provocation: a slamming door, the wail of an ambulance siren, a paper cut. I’d been afraid that I would have to withdraw from school, but gradually, I had gained the upper hand. I had only missed a week, but the constant internal struggle was draining, and I was exhausted all the time. Like a cat, I slept for much of the day, leaving only to go to class and then come directly back. Every trip that I made out into the city felt like an epic journey and ended with me fighting a massive headache. Between the horns, the sirens, and the crowds, I had my metaphorical hands full trying to hold my excitable feline half in check. Every time I was jostled by a random passerby, I feared that the panther would gain the upper hand. It was a vicious cycle—my anxiety only fed hers. When Val slid between the sheets, I immediately curled into her body, sighing in relief at the sensation of her skin against mine—warm velvet gliding across smooth silk. She threw one arm around my waist and pressed a gentle kiss to my lips. But her mouth didn’t linger, and her relaxed pose betrayed the tautness of her muscles. The thirst was riding her hard, as it had been sinc
e my infection.

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  “How did things go today?”

  I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I put aside my guilt long enough to bury my face in her neck and breathe in deeply, filling my nose and lungs with her sweet scent. It calmed me. “Today was okay,”

  I murmured. “No accidents. I still slept way too much, though. My grades are going to be in the basement this semester.”

  Val shifted her hand so that she could massage my scalp, sliding her fingers through my hair as she worked. She took any chance she could get to touch my hair now—the novelty of its dramatic turn from red to pitch black hadn’t yet worn off. Somewhere in Karma’s files, I had read about the possibility of permanent physical changes as a side effect of the Were infection—hair color, eye color, sometimes even a subtle shift in body type—but I had never imagined that the impact on my appearance would be so obvious. I could still remember the shock I’d felt upon looking into a mirror, the morning after my first full moon, to discover that the roots of my hair were the precise shade of the panther’s ebony fur. And it was growing much more quickly than normal, too. During the transitional period, I decided to dye the rest of it dark to match.

  “Don’t be discouraged, babe,” Val whispered. “I wish you could see yourself through my eyes. You’ve made so much progress in such a short time. Don’t you remember what Karma said a few days ago—that it took her months to reach where you are after only weeks?”

  I smiled against her skin. “How could I forget? You remind me all the time.”

  She pulled me a little closer. “Yeah, well, you need the reminders. You’re too hard on yourself.”

  I could have said the same to her. The discouraging fact was that we were at an impasse. I might have gotten much better at retaining control of my other half, but she still emerged every time Valentine began to feed. Which meant that Val was hungry, I was tired, and we both were frustrated. I had tried everything I could think of to keep her in control when Val sank her teeth: meditating, a higher dose of Klonopin, even some herbal teas that Karma swore by. But nothing seemed adequate to the task of convincing the panther that Val’s fangs were not a threat.

  When I felt the familiar despair begin to engulf me, I rebelled, shifting so that I could kiss Val properly. We had to keep trying. Her

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  soul and our relationship depended on my ability to control the beast within. I would fight the panther on this until I had no more strength to give.

  Val’s tension increased as soon as my lips met hers. I made the kiss gentle at first, even chaste, until I felt the tightness in her muscles ease slightly. “I love you,” I whispered against her mouth. “I want you.”

  The words were water on boiling oil; I could feel the precise moment when she released the iron hold she’d been maintaining on her desire. The kiss quickly flared into so much more, until our tongues were slip-sliding and our occasional gasps for breath echoed loudly in the empty room. I rolled on top of her, my hips undulating of their own accord, and thrilled to the firm pressure of her hands at the small of my back, clutching me tightly. After a day spent alternately trying to keep my eyes open and working to hold the panther at bay, I felt wholly alive, wholly myself. When I caught her lower lip between my teeth, her body jerked, driving one of her thighs between my legs. The pressure was exquisite, and I cried out.

  Val’s answering groan sent twin waves of lust and anxiety surging beneath my skin. I tamped down the latter, focusing on how badly I needed to feel her touch on me and inside of me. I sat back on her thighs and shed my pajama top. Her hands immediately found my breasts, and my vision blurred. I wanted her everywhere at once. But Val had other ideas. The movements of her elegant fingers across my skin became slower, more gentle. No less purposeful, but much less frenzied. She was trying to calm me, so as not to wake the sleeping cat within. I didn’t want slow and gentle—I wanted us to fuse like atoms in a star, coming together as the equals we now were. I rocked against her, telegraphing the magnitude of my desire. She shook her head and rolled me beneath her in one fluid motion.

  “Shh,” she said, pressing a kiss to each corner of my mouth. “There’s no rush.”

  I wanted to disagree—to tell her that this urgency would always be present, even if we lived out every second of forever. That the fire that burned between us was eternal and insatiable in its hunger. But her mouth covered mine again, and her hands were tenderly caressing the sensitive skin beneath my breasts, and my head was spinning at the sensation of her body pressing me into the mattress. I did not protest. She took her time, kissing every square inch of my torso, it

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  seemed, until I could do nothing but beg breathlessly for her skin against mine. When she finally relented, pulling back just enough to remove her sweater and jeans, I reached for the latest pair of leather restraints furnished by the Consortium. Val paused.

  “Can’t we try without them, this time?” Her voice was soft and tinged with regret. “You’ll feel more…free. Maybe it will help.”

  I was breaking the mood. The wistfulness in her voice made my heart ache, but I shook my head. “I can’t risk hurting you,” I said, deftly fastening one of the loops around a bedpost. Once the bonds were in place, Val returned to the middle of the bed and slowly began to work my pajama pants down my thighs. She pressed sucking kisses to the skin that she revealed, even biting gently with just her front teeth sometimes. The panther no longer reacted to those little love nips—

  another sign that we had made some progress. But I wanted so much more than that. I craved the sense of completion—not to mention the physical ecstasy—that we could only find together when she fed from me.

  Her mouth moved all the way down my legs. She paused for a long time on my calves while attaching the ankle restraints, and then she ran her hands firmly up the entire length of my body to pay the same attention to my wrists. When she finally sat back and surveyed me, spread-eagled beneath her, her pupils expanded dramatically.

  “So beautiful,” she whispered, just before taking my mouth in a tender kiss. And then her free hand was trailing down my body to cup my hip and pull me even closer, and her tongue was parting my lips as her fingers caressed the dip between my thigh and abdomen, and I was surging against her as she stroked me with feather-light touches. She moved down my body just enough to ease her fingers inside. Her tongue was a swirl of heat against my aching breasts, and I surged against her as much as the bonds would allow.

  She raised her head, and I saw thirst in the tightness of her jaw, the trembling of her lips, the darkness of her eyes. The panther’s consciousness shifted, growing more alert as I sensed Valentine’s need. The feline presence in my mind was decidedly wary. I didn’t know how to calm her, how to convince her that what she perceived as a threat was anything but.

  In that fraught moment, Val twisted her fingers inside me, hard. The slight twinge of pain only sharpened my pleasure, but it also compelled

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  the panther to unsheathe her claws. I sucked in a deep breath, trying to send her some kind of signal that she would understand.

  “Gently, love,” I whispered to Val, wishing that I didn’t have to.

  “Sorry, I’m sorry,” she gasped. When she paused to tenderly kiss my stomach, a drop of sweat fell from her brow to my skin. She was starting to lose control. The panther growled.

  In an effort to calm both herself and me, Val rested her cheek on my abdomen. “Should I stop?”

  “No. Please.” I would have run my fingers through her thick gold hair, had my arms been free. “Just…you were right. About the tone of this.”

  Feeling her nod, I let my head fall back to the pillow. Relax, I told the panther. Just relax. Val stayed just like that for a few minutes, listening to my heartbeat. Once my pulse was back to normal, he
r lips began to ghost once more over my skin. And then, so lightly that I almost didn’t feel it, she fluttered fingers that were still deep inside my body. “Val,” I breathed reverently. “So good.”

  “Love you,” she said, and the air behind the words tickled my most sensitive skin. My pulse spiked again. Oh, God, she was going to—

  When her tongue touched me, I arched into the air and bit down hard on my lower lip to keep from screaming. Nothing could ever prepare me for Val’s mouth—for the heat and softness and exquisite, relentless stroking.

  As the pleasure built, I thrashed against the restraints. The vibration of Val’s answering moan catapulted me right to the edge. Dimly, I could feel the panther respond to the tension that gripped every muscle, but I had no focus, no energy to spare her. Every molecule in my body craved union with Valentine.

  As if she could read my mind, Val raised her head. “Babe…” Her voice was low, husky, pleading. The absence of her mouth on me was torture. My head spun.

  “Need you,” I gasped. Immediately, the pad of her thumb replaced her tongue and she bent her head to kiss my inner thigh. And then she struck.

  The pain of her teeth sinking into my skin merged with the perfect pressure of her fingers against me, inside me. But as I surrendered to

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  that glorious ecstasy, the panther enraged, rebelling against the clench of the parasite’s jaws and the sucking pull of its lips. She demanded the use of her own lethal body—of those sharp claws and viciously curved teeth that could protect us so much better than could this frail human shell. Tied down and now apparently injured, she was beyond all attempts at consolation. Appeals to reason—even the kind of animal logic that she appeared to understand sometimes—were futile. Val was a predator. The panther would not allow herself to become prey. And so we fought. I thrashed against the bonds, not out of passion now, but as a physical manifestation of our internal struggle. My mind was a battleground between her instincts and my will. She pushed at me with the weight of millions of years of evolution, and I pushed back with determination fueled by my love and need for Valentine. The contest was like a tug of war, and I dug in my metaphorical heels, hard. But all I could do was hope to slow her progress. Inexorably, she crowded me out of my own head.