RULE #4

I've moved many times since then, always searching for a pack and finding no one willing to look past the magic in my veins. They either see me as a monster or a man. They can't ever see me as both. No matter how good I try to be, I know the connections I make are shallow, and eventually I stop making them altogether.

By twenty-five, loneliness claws up my throat and settles on my shoulders like a cloak. It doesn't leave again. I have no home. I have no one.

I'm a lone wolf. A desperate wolf.

And still a monster in every eye that looks upon me.

Always the monster.

Never the man. Never both.

I hear a rumor about a pack of wolves like me from a man in a pub, but when I search for them, I never find them. I never even find evidence they existed at all. I try my best to blend in, to hold my anger in check, but it only grows. Wildness lives in my veins, and the first time someone talks about a monster in the woods, I leave.

I'm not welcome there.

I'm not welcome anywhere.

I never find my pack. . .