Start | Chapter Twenty One Part Two | Index | Chapter Twenty Two Part One

“Damn it! No!” Leisa snarled as Ragnar vanished into the trees. Even injured and in daylight Ragnar would be able to easily outrun them not Anna was not weighing him down.

“Worry about him later, Leisa,” Sarah said as she knelt down by Anna. “We still have his scent so we can track him down any time and there’s more important things to worry about here.” She brushed Anna’s hair out of her eyes and frowned. “But a none full moon and partial first shift? That is not good.”

“Only if you believe the stories,” Tanya said. “Personally I think it’s superstitious nonsense.”

“I’m not sure that any of us should be talking about something being superstitious nonsense,” Sarah said.

“What are you two babbling about?” Leisa asked in exasperation.

“She only shifted her hands,” Tanya said. “First shifts are usually full body. And it’s not full moon. Both of those are supposedly bad omens.”

“Well if you look at the stories there is a pattern…” Sarah trailed off at Tanya’s glare.

“They are just stories!” Tanya said firmly. “We’ll make sure they are just stories.”

“What stories?” Leisa asked.

“Well supposedly werewolves this happens to tend to die young. But it’s not as if being a werewolf is especially safe what with hunters and renegades to worry about and there aren’t really enough of them known to prove a pattern. Dan thinks it’s possible most of us have partial shifts between our fever first change but mostly we don’t notice them because they’re internal.”

“What about her mother?” Sarah asked. “She had a non-full moon first change and look what happened to her.”

“Karen was murdered by renegades and I don’t think her partial change had anything to do with that. At least not the way you mean.” Tanya said.”But that is an interesting point.”

“Maybe it runs in families?” Leisa said.

“No, I don’t think it’s that,” Tanya said. “I think it’s the stress. Karen shifted the first time when she was attacked by renegades. They tried to kill her several times before they succeeded when Anna was little.” She bent down and scooped Anna into her arms. “But we had best get back to the others. We’ll tell Dan about this. He’ll know if it’s anything to worry about.”

“Yes, we’ll have to break Ragnar’s blood link to the girl we rescued the hard way,” Leisa said. “Or he’ll use it to find us if we keep her with us or to track her down and kill her if we send her home.”

“I know the rituals for that.” Tanya began walking back towards the car with Anna still in her arms. “So I can help with that. But we’re going to have to hope we can persuade her to cooperate or it won’t work and that might be hard since she’ll probably have Stockholm syndrome.”

“I think I can persuade her,” Leisa said. “But let’s get back before Anna wakes up. She’s likely to panic when she does.”

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