Beneath the Skin. Amy Lee Burgess

it up into a white-gold halo around her head and, for a moment, I thought of Elena. The sun used to turn her hair into a white-gold halo too sometimes.

      My heart hurt so badly inside my chest I couldn’t breathe, and I stopped dead on the sidewalk and squeezed my eyes shut against the sudden blinding burn of tears.

      Two years. When would it ever stop? When could I walk down the street and see the sun hit some woman’s hair and not be overcome with grief? When could I wake from a nightmare and stop reaching out for somebody who wasn’t there?

      When would I run through the forest on all fours, fur whipping back against the wind, knowing I was with my bond mates, safe and secure, and above all, loved?

      Even though my hotel was only a few streets away, I didn’t feel like walking. Yet I wanted to escape the Paris afternoon where everyone was happy and be alone with my thoughts of dead connections.

      Instead I found a sidewalk café and ordered hot chocolate. I sat on the cold wrought-iron chair in the Paris sunshine and shivered a little in my navy blue pea coat as I people-watched until my drink arrived.

      It was sweet and warm, and I tried to convince myself I deserved to live again and to be happy. Over the past two years, I’d paid my dues to the Great Pack, to everyone, and tonight was my chance to start over again. I was not the same as I once was, but I could start over again. The invitation to the Great Gathering proved it, even though it was my right to attend, because the two years had been up three months ago, on my birthday.

      The clock always reset on birthdays. It was a day to examine yourself and your ties and bonds, to renew them if you wanted or dissolve them, if you could. At least start the process if it wasn’t a mutual agreement.

      My pack had severed our ties on Jonathan’s birthday. It was the first pack birthday after the accident and they only waited that long because they had to. The accident had occurred on the night of my birthday, and by the time they all knew about it and the circumstances surrounding it, it was already past midnight and the chance to dissolve then had passed.

      They’d formally severed ties on Jonathan’s birthday, because that was how our laws worked. They’d blamed me for the accident, and instead of offering me comfort, they’d condemned me.

      I hadn’t protested back then. I was too shocked—too shattered by the knowledge Grey and Elena were gone. I had felt guilty because I had been driving and it had been my idea to go to the club that night. Why shouldn’t we have gone out? It was my birthday. I was young and happy and I loved to dance. So why shouldn’t I have wanted to go to a dance club?

      I saw their hostile faces as I had been interrogated by the Councils at my tribunal, after they’d had time to think about it and talk about it among themselves without me. I smelled them too and I knew. They smelled of the same despair and grief I gave off. But they also smelled of anger—against me.

      One thing about being Pack, we could smell emotions. We could try to mask our feelings from each other, but our scents usually gave us away.

      Others, people who weren’t Pack, couldn’t do this. It was one of the things, besides shape-shifting, that made us different.

      All my life it had been drilled into me that the Others would not understand our kind. We would be persecuted and bullied, isolated and studied. Perhaps even exterminated. I was kept away, home schooled when I was little. The only people I knew until I was eight or nine years old were the members of my birth pack.

      One day my mother brought me to a grocery store. All the Others scared me, I remember that. A world that had consisted of twenty-four people who were Pack had suddenly changed and twisted. My insular little existence had been shattered, and the idea of the Others scared me. They outnumbered us. They always had, they always would. Somehow we had to coexist. We could know about them, but they could never know about us.

      My father made me watch werewolf movies so I would understand that I needed to keep silent about what I really was. I didn’t like the way those movies made me feel. Hunted, persecuted. I wasn’t a bit like any of the monsters in any of the movies or books, but he told me the Others would not see the difference.

      We had no special protection in wolf form. We didn’t bite people, or change them into wolves like us. We didn’t even call it werewolf. We called it being Pack. You had to be born Pack, or you would never be Pack.

      The legends of being bitten by a werewolf then turning into one were just that—legends. The grandmothers and grandfathers said the legends protected us. Spread false information about something real and you could hide behind the legends. Twist it just enough so no one would believe you, even if you told them the truth. Not that we would. Who would believe, and what profit would come of it if they did?

      Some of the Pack, especially the older ones, thought my generation was soft and the ones after us only getting softer. We were losing touch with our beast natures and becoming weak. We used our ability to shape shift as if it were a hobby, as if we were in a secret club. Our nature no longer defined us and gave us strength and purpose of will. Or so the grandfathers and grandmothers said.

      I supposed modern life had made things easier. I’m not sure about softer. In the modern world it was harder to disguise the fact we aged much slower than Others. We lived in isolated areas. Switched jobs often, changed social security numbers and passports. Of course most of the grandfathers and grandmothers disdained such things. They usually lived under the radar. They preferred not to have Other identities. They might live in cities but they didn’t vote or own businesses. They did nothing but exist on the fringe. If they traveled, they paid cash and used transportation that didn’t require ID. Or, if they still were up for it, they traveled in shifted form.

      They had jobs, but menial labor, under the table. Or they stole, begged or borrowed.

      Most Pack members were particularly adept at pick-pocketing and sleight of hand. Lots of the grandfathers and grandmothers gambled for a living. They ran shell games or dice or any game of chance.

      The younger generation liked material comforts. We didn’t want to live in squalor, or squat illegally on somebody else’s property, or rely on someone “legit” in our pack to provide us with housing. Lots of the old grandfathers and grandmothers lived in homes owned by their children and grandchildren.

      Since we weren’t the Alpha couple in our pack, Grey and I hadn’t been allowed to have children. In the old days, if you got pregnant and you weren’t Alpha that meant going to an old grandmother for a potion to miscarry. Nowadays we had modern birth control, thankfully. Not that the old grandmothers endorsed such things. They had herbal concoctions but their efficacy was not as reliable as the Pill.

      The old ways were good enough for us, they lectured. They should be good enough for you. But why not use something better if it was available?

      That’s how I thought anyway.