Page 6 of UNAwere

You need to Turn more, she chides.

I work with humans. I’m basically human. This? I lift my paw. Is just an unfortunate circumstance of nature.

Oh, I’m sure Mum and Dad would have been thrilled to hear you say that.

They knew I didn’t like Turning. I’ve been like this since I was a kid. They just thought I’d grow out of it.

It’s freeing, my sister says, shaking herself. I don’t know how you can’t love this.

I sniff the air. My senses are so much more heightened in this form. I can smell the forest, the rabbits and deer inside it, the leaves above our heads and below our feet. I can hear worms wriggling in the soil, the call of birds further to our east. I know for a fact that there are two Weres training about one hundred metres from us. I can smell their sweat, hear their laboured breaths. To my sister, these things are incredible. But to me, they’re… overstimulating.

Come on. We don’t have long, Maeve says.

I follow her, setting off at a run through the underbrush. And as much as Turning makes me feel uncomfortable, I can admit that running feels great. We’re fast and agile, and skirting around trees and jumping over fallen logs is utterly liberating.

After a while, we stop by a stream to drink. Maeve’s panting, big teeth bared in a grin.

I can’t believe we’re never going to be able to do this again.

We will, I tell her. It’s not like I’m dying.

She huffs and settles on her haunches. Do you think you’ll be okay?

Of course.

What if you hate Warner?

I shrug. Maybe he’s not as bad as he sounds, and he’ll bow to my every whim. Or maybe he can juggle?

Juggle? She gives me an exasperated look that makes me laugh.

It’d be cool, right?

You’re unbelievable. She shakes her head and leans towards the stream to lap up more water.

I watch her, a fist around my heart. You can come visit.

She raises her eyes to me. If it’s safe.

I’m sure it will be. With the alliance, and with Primrose being as strong as they are. This will be good for Luminaire.

They’re pretty primal. She sniffs. Prue said they have mating rituals, and their females go into heat cycles, and all the males share her and compete over who gives her a baby.

I cringe. Those are just rumours.

What if they’re not?

There’s no such thing as “heat cycles”, for one. You know this. We learned it in school.

Our anatomy is different to humans, she argues. And our sex-ed teacher was human. And we hardly learned about human anatomy, let alone Were.

Maevey, I’m thirty-one, and I’ve never had a heat cycle. I should have by now, if they were real.

Maybe you don’t get them, but others do. She sniffs. I think Izzy said something about her knowing someone who had one.

In our pack?

I don’t know. I think so.