It was late in the evening and the Friday rush hour traffic of muggles anxiously returning home for the weekend was beginning to slow outside of the double story building. The building itself looked much as it had when Jonas Trevelyan had left it some time ago. The ‘Reed and Wright’ sign still could benefit from a fresh coat of paint. The first story bookstore was still showcasing the same window-front display. The outdoor security camera secured to the brick wall, half obscured by the ‘Reed and Wright’ sign was new, however. As was the dome camera positioned at the top of the staircase leading into Trevelyan Investigations.

Inside, the changes only continued to surmount. From the motion detectors strategically positioned around the office. To the glass break sensors mounted below and on the windows, meant to recognize the sound and impact of a window breaking as a result of an intrusion. And the contact magnet on the door set to shrill the alarm should the door be opened while the system was armed. Which it was. The access keypad, cleverly erected near the door, was flashing and ready.

The desk, while as disorganized as ever, was not forgotten in the additions. Room had been cleared for a monitor, showcasing the feed from the stairwell and outside the building side-by-side. There was an expectant hush inside the office. If machines could grin, they would have done so in eagerness of surprising their new owner when he walked through the door. Instead they blinked and hummed their anticipation.

Set in the center of the desk was a large box that within it contained several more magical security devices including an assortment of protection crystals and protective runes and instructions on how to properly use and key them. And on top of that box, weighed down by Jonas Trevelyan’s now former security measures was a single Ministry of Magic Pamphlet, a how-to on how to protect your home and the instruction manual to the muggle items, conveniently flipped open to the page concerning access codes and disarming the system.

Somewhere in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, already diligently at work, Tamis Raynor was smirking to herself.

He'd turned his collar up, but it was the only concession he was willing to make against the cold.  It had been a long day.  With the trip home to visit his family over Christmas, and then spending more time with the kids over the school holiday, Jonas had fallen ridiculously behind on most of the work he was supposed to be keeping up with.  He'd given Lexus most of the time off, too; it wasn't that he didn't trust the Canadian witch, because he did, mostly, but more that he didn't like the idea of her spending so much time alone in the office.  With all of the random visitations and unannounced drop ins he'd been receiving recently, Jonas didn't particularly want her there on her own if another Auror - or worse - came calling.

This was the first day that they'd really gotten back into it.  Jonas still had plenty to catch up on - he'd have to offer his thanks to whichever unfortunate god it was that had been assigned to watching out for private investigators that the Ministry was maintaining its own surveillance of Dazmond Wiedman, although he probably could have invented a week of carousing, drinking, and posting up caricatures of random Muggles and Malvivicus wouldn't have known the difference - but at least they'd gotten most of the mundane casework sorted.  He'd passed on a handful of tasks to Lexus and kept just the ones that he wasn't telling her about solely to himself. 

"Well, you know, the hair really isn't that bad," he replied in a tone that was too brisk to really be reassuring, as he stopped on the pavement and fumbled for his keys.  "Don't blonds have more to do or something, anyhow?  At least you didn't turn it green."

His gaze passed over the storefront of the used bookstore as he limped to the side door leading up to his office.  The display was unchanged; it still advertised the pre-Christmas sale back from the beginning of December.  Pressing his mouth tightly shut, Jonas regarded it for a moment and then sighed.  He was going to have to dig up the telephone number of the old man who owned the shop.  It had been weeks since he'd seen him, over a month since the bookstore had been open.  Something clearly wasn't right.

"And we'll get it sorted soon enough," he added reassuringly to Lexus, gaze dropping to the key ring as he sorted through it to find the correct key.  "Even if the woman who owned the dagger can't help, I think I've got a couple of other ideas now.  Besides, it's a bloody good way to learn self-reliance, innit?" he asked cheerfully, moving to unlock the door.  "Ought to require it of all wizards.  Teach them how to do things the Muggle way, so that -"

He stopped. 

Jonas had worked out of the same building for several years now.  It wasn't much, but he liked it as an office, even though it left plenty to be desired as a flat.  He liked to think that he knew every inch of it, that even when it was a mess, he could find anything he needed in a hurry.

But there, above the door, was a blinking camera that he had never seen before in his life.

Jonas stared at it, and then cautiously took a step back, as if it were a Muggle bomb about to go off.  "Lexus?" he asked carefully, in the perfectly calm tone that one used with angry customers, crying children, and rabid animals that were potentially getting ready to pounce.  "You don't know anything about any more wires on the door, do you?"

Wrapped in a winter cloak with a stylish hat covering most of her head Lexus absently touched one of the golden locks Jonas had indicated. Her hair wasn't as brilliant as it had been on New Years Eve but she was still getting used to the new blonde colour that was several shades lighter than her usual honey brown. She had been slowly trying her magic again here and there, staying away from the bigger spells. She was trying to get her hair to a more conservative colour and ended up going blonde. Which wasn't horrible but she had a feeling Jonas wasn't too pleased with it, "I think you mean Blondes have more fun." She smirked at him wondering if it was his wizard or British background that had him saying the expression incorrectly, "Anything is better than that horrible canary colour it had been when we visited St. Mungo's."

Outside the shop as Jonas gave pause to contemplate the well being of the man downstairs Lexus' blue eyes had lifted to the underside of the shop's awning where a rather new looking security camera was fastened. She tilted her head curiously at it. It definitely had not been there before. She wondered if Jonas had installed it or if the old man that ran the used book store had it installed. However if it had been the old man, why would it be positioned above the door leading into the separate staircase that went up to Jonas' office?

Staring at the camera she was only half listening to what Jonas was saying about self reliance and getting things sorted, or something like that. Her other senses had perked up the moment she noticed something was out of place. Since spending a night in the company of Kurby, the man who smelled of werewolves, she had been more aware of what she could actually smell. Normally the office, even the area outside it, had faints whiffs of those that had come in and out asking for Jonas' particular expertise and she had never been bothered by those - unless of course a client wore a particularly horrid cologne - but today even the landing outside the shop smelt of something else, something that shouldn't have been there. There was the smell of new plastic and if she wasn't mistaken, the smell of soldering, like one might do when installing electronic wiring.

"No." She said softly a little more disturbed by the fact that the new electronics had not been Jonas' idea. She lifted her eyes from the camera only to notice that Jonas was now staring at it as well. At least now she knew for sure where the smell of plastic and electronics had come from, "Where did it come from?"

The red-haired man paused, his forehead creasing as he examined the camera.  He took a step back, studying the rest of the building intently.  Nothing else looked to have been altered; the bookshop was still closed, the same as it had been, the paint still faded, the 'Reed and Wright' sign still swinging gently in the bitingly cold breeze.

"No bloody idea," he replied, limping forward to examine the door more carefully again. 

It didn't appear any different, but he suddenly didn't trust it.  Jonas touched the doorknob quickly, as if expecting it to be searing hot, and then yanked his hand back.  Nothing.  No burns, no explosions, no getting his hand stuck to the metal like it had that it had that one time at Hogwarts, which he still suspiciously attributed to a young Tamis Raynor. 

Warily, he took the key and inserted it into the lock.  Turning it didn't precipitate any imminent end of the world.  Jonas glanced over his shoulder at Lexus, gave a shrug, and then pulled the door open.

If it hadn't seemed as though the world was about to end before, it certainly sounded so now.  The instant the door swung inwards, an ear-splitting siren began to split through the air, barely masking the underlying and incessant electronic chant of "Intruder.  Intruder.  Intruder."  Gritting his teeth, Jonas yanked the door the rest of the way open, pressing his hands to his ears as he stepped inside.  He half-expected one of the monsters from Gwenna's beloved horror movies to come swooping down the stairs at him, but nothing tumbled down to greet him.  Apparently the planned assault had been only auditory.

"I don't suppose you know anything about this, either!" he shouted back at Lexus, raising his voice to be heard over the bloody siren. 

There was some sort of keypad on the inside of the door, but it could have been in Ancient Runes for all that he was going to be able to guess the code.  Clenching his teeth so tightly that he thought he might break his jaw, he removed his right hand from his ear, grimacing against the noise as he took hold of the handrail and began to limp up the stairs.

It seemed that neither of them were coming any closer to figuring out who had installed the camera and since it seemed to be posing no immediate threat - other than giving Lexus an extremely uneasy feeling about a shadowy figure watching her every move - Jonas decided it was safe enough to venture into the office. Although she had been eager to get away from that black glass eyeball that seemed to be following her she suddenly wished they had just walked away the instant Jonas opened the door.

The wailing was excruciating, the words completely lost on her. While she was just now accepting the heightened sense of smell her condition allowed her she had never truly appreciated or despised the added hearing that came along with the package - until now. Whereas the sound was merely loud, obnoxious and annoying to Jonas, a normal wizard, it had Lexus slumped to the floor just inside the stairwell clutching her ears. She had never experienced such a brain melting, ear splitting, instant head ache inducing sound before.

Whatever Jonas had said to her was completely lost. Her blue eyes were squeezed shut as a feeble attempt to block the noise out and she was completely unaware of the fact that she was growling, like a cornered animal trying to ward off an attacker. The only thing she was aware of was the pain and the simple fact that until that horrible noise went aware she'd be completely useless.

It was like being on a space station that was about to explode.  Jonas dragged himself up the stairs, teeth gritted, as he mentally ran through a checklist of all the horrible things he would do to whichever poor bastard had first invented sirens.

Even aside from the siren, there was no doubt that someone had been in his office.  His frog was gone, not that he would have been able to hear its croaking over the much louder security system, and there was another camera that had been attached to the ceiling outside in the stairwell.  Inside, his desk had been cleared to make room for some sort of monitor.  His missing frog was sitting next to it, on top of a pile of boxes, booklets, and a pamphlet.

The private investigator took one look at the pamphlet and instantly swore that, for whatever reason, he had been far, far too nice to Tamis Raynor over the past twenty-five years.  Letting loose a string of fluent profanity, he snatched up the booklet, scanned over the opened page, and began to limp back down the stairs again.

It took him several minutes before he managed to decipher the instructions well enough to get the incessant siren to stop.  The sudden silence hurt his ears almost as much as the painfully shrill alarm had.  Jonas pressed a hand to his forehead, willing all thoughts of a dead Head Auror out of his mind until he had a better chance to plot her demise, and took a deep breath, reveling in the lack of noise.

"You alright there, Lex?"  In the aftermath of the alarm system, his voice sounded tinny and distant.  Jonas shook his head; his ears were still ringing. 

"C'mon, let's get up," he said heavily, stepping back to grab his assistant's arm and lever her to her feet.  "It's over with.  Let's head upstairs and we can plot imminent deaths there, yeah?"

The relief was so intense it caused Lexus to slump against the wall with her eyes closed. The deafening silence that followed was all encompassing. It made her ears feel strange, so strange in fact that she had to reach up to them once more to make sure they weren't bleeding. Thankfully they appeared to be undamaged but any sound beyond that sounded so distant she barely registered it. As Jonas reached for her arm she opened her eyes and lifted herself to her feet not wanting to put any unnecessary pressure on Jonas' bad knee.

Her senses came back soon enough to notice two things, the first being that the smell of plastic and electronics was much stronger in the hallway than it had been outside and the second being the last part of what Jonas had said to her - about imminent deaths. Her eyes flashed and she forced herself not to pull her upper lip back in a snarl, the feral part of her lycanthropic mind flaring up in response to taking action against whoever had just attacked her.

"Sounds great." She smirked trying to push the wolf back again as she joined him back up the stairs and into the office. She looked around the office and frowned at the sight of the monitor which would no doubt be relaying the images from the front door and the new dome camera in the stairwell. Without moving from her spot she was able to tell, though not entirely locate, that there were other things in the office that hadn't been there before. She had no idea what they were but the unfamiliar smells in a place that she had pretty much called home for the past three months was frightening.

She turned her eyes back to the desk and zeroed in on the pamphlet that was sitting on top of another unknown box. She swallowed hard and with a shaking hand picked it up. Although she unfolded it and looked it over the words of advice on magical home security weren't sinking in. The only thing that was registering was the Ministry of Magic insignia that was plastered all over it. Swallowing even harder this time she spun on the spot looking to her employer, her friend as if he had betrayed her, "Why the hell did the Ministry do all do this for you?!"

The irritated buzzing now filling his ears was almost as bad as the alarm itself had been.  Jonas rolled his eyes, bracing himself against the handrail as he limped back up the stairs to his office for the second time in as many minutes.

Now that the noise was gone and it no longer seemed as if the building were about to explode, he could take the time to really survey the new additions.  The camera outside.  The keypad near the door.  Another camera at the top of the stairs.  A monitor on his desk.  The private investigator let out a low whistle.  The system was hardly inexpensive to put in, and considering whom he suspected the evil mastermind to be, even arranging it through a Muggle security company must have taken some doing.  If it wasn't for the fact that he suspected at least one of the cameras had been rigged to send a live feed back to the Ministry, he might have considered being touched by the gesture.

Jonas stopped at the top of the stairs, easing the weight off his leg as he peered up to examine the dome camera, as Lexus continued past him into the office.  Her question, sharp and sudden, surprised him into looking up.

"What?" Jonas asked, running a hand over his face as he stepped through the doorway.  The pamphlet in her hand clearly told the story.  He sincerely hoped that Tamis Raynor was no longer watching; there was no way he was going to be able to avoid cracking a smile.

"Ah," he said, doing his best to swallow any hint of amusement back.  "Yeah.  About that.  I, ah..."

He cleared his throat, visibly struggling to keep bemusement from his face.  "An, ah, old friend is the head of the Auror Office," he said, waving a hand dismissively at the pamphlet.  "I dropped in on her a bit before Christmas, and I reckon you might say that we've been sort of playing one up on the other.  We, ah..."  He eyed the folded paper, and then gave up and cracked a smile.  "She was giving me a hard time about security in the office last time she stopped in, so I told her to send over a pamphlet.  Looks like that's a problem we won't be worrying about now, though, innit?" he concluded cheerfully, flashing her a lopsided grin.

At that moment in time the two occupants of the room couldn't have been in any more opposite of mind states. Where Jonas was fighting amusement and finally giving into a smile that crinkled his eyes and showed a side of him that Lexus would like to see more of, she was battling a raging war between tearful hysterics and a berserker rage. She knew he worked for the Ministry once upon a time. He had told her that much the first day he met her and sure it was only natural to have made friends on the job but she was under the impression that that had all been a long time ago, in a life he was no longer connected with.

She stared at him with utter disbelief on her soft features her dusty blue and golden flecked eyes searching for an answer that she doubted she ever truly get, "An auror?  . . . The auror? . . . the head of the whole ruddy department?!" She felt as if she were shaking, her lower lip quivering. She had sudden visions of her eyes glowing red and her teeth elongating into fangs, nails turning into claws to tear him limp from limp, "Well that's just bloody brilliant!" She threw her hands up in the air and spun around to turn her back to him. She let out a growl of frustration and anger, slamming her fists down on the desk hard enough to actually cause the wood to splinter.

"Did she do all this then? Is she watching us right now like this is some kind of sick game?" There was no room in her irrational mind for kind gestures and looking out for an old friend. Paul Martin was already enough proof that the Aurors here in London knew who she was. If a rookie auror could spot her out of a crowd surely the Head of the whole fracking department knew who she was and now there were cameras everywhere. Couldn't they have just arrested her instead? Brought her in for questioning instead of spying on her like she was some kind of lab rat.

She turned back to Jonas and her eyes flashed, the golden flecks standing out more predominantly against the softer dusty blue, "Does she know who I am? Did you tell her about me? About where I'm from?" She gritted her teeth for a moment a small part of the rational Lexus trying to desperately keep the wolf from breaking through but in was no use. In a matter of moments the kind, sweet and overtly flirty assistant that he had grown close to for the past three months was gone, replaced by a five foot eight tower of feral anger, "Do you have any idea what they'll do to me?!"

Now that he'd gotten over the initial shock (and now that the ringing in his ears had subsided slightly), Jonas had to admit that the entire situation was hilarious.  Raynor had clearly outdone herself.   Jonas couldn't help hoping that she had set the system up to record his entrance for posterity.  He would have quite liked to see his own expression.

Lexus, meanwhile, was jabbering on about something, but the words didn't really register.  He only caught her last sentence as he paused to admire the machine perched on his desk. 

"Well that's just bloody brilliant!"

"Yeah, innit?" he echoed cheerfully, only half listening.  The system looked state of the art; he'd seen something similar once or twice before, but never in a private residence.  The thought of getting to mess around with it and figure out how to work it was making him giddy with technological anticipation.  "I'm amazed she took the time, meself.  Makes you think she might really care, yeah?"

A sudden bang jolted him out of his contemplation.  Jonas jumped, his gaze jerking back to Lexus as his assistant turned back towards him, her eyes flashing with anger.

"Wait, what?" he asked, looking obviously startled, as his brain tried to catch up with the conversation.  Ruddy department...desk slamming...even replayed, it still didn't make any sense.  He shook his head, watching the younger woman warily. 

"Lex, what the hell are you on about?" Jonas asked sharply, brows knitting as he studied the Canadian.  She looked furious, as if on the verge of attack.  "Tell who about you?  You mean Tam?"  He nearly cracked a grin again at that, but settled for shaking his head.  Obviously, the possibility was working up the younger woman.  "She's not going to give a damn about you.  Trust me," he said dryly, in a clipped tone.  "And it's not as if we did a lot of catching up.  I didn't even tell her that I was married.  A new assistant wasn't about to enter the conversation."

The fact that he hadn't noticed she was angry nor was he aware of why she was so angry only served to make her even angrier. She started to pace in front of the desk like a caged animal and clenched and unclenched her fists. Only small amounts of his words were registering. Those in the forefront being that Tamis Raynor, head of the Auror Department wouldn't care about her, that was rich. If her little run in with that Martin fellow was enough to go on then yes, yes she would care about her.

Lexus let out a cold dark laugh, her searing anger still at the forefront of her mind and radiating out of her through her incessant pacing,  "You think she wouldn't care about who I am?" She shook her head and looked away from him, the small part of her that was still Lexus didn't want to be looking at him right now, "Goddammit Jonas you don't even know who I am! And you certainly don't know why the aurors would be after me." She had no idea how much research he had done into her past and how many of the puzzle pieces he had put together not to mention his conversation with her youngest cousin about her monthly affliction.

"And clearly I know nothing about you." Her anger was brought to the surface yet again but this time her eyes flashed blue instead of gold and there was a small amount of hurt shining through, "Were you ever planning on telling me you're married?! For fuksakes Jonas, you . . . I mean I was . . . Goddammit why didn't you tell me?!"

The private investigator blinked, his eyes narrowing as he looked the Canadian up and down.  "Yeah, I do think that she wouldn't care who you are," he replied, his tone cool and even.  "Level Two has plenty to worry about outside of you, Lex, believe me.  They're not going to send Aurors out hunting you down when -"

He cut himself off, biting off the last few words as he pressed his mouth tightly closed.  There were some things he wasn't about to pass on, frustrated or not.  All he had been doing lately was keeping secrets, and he was getting bloody sick of it.

Her next words cut.  The sentiment behind them was ridiculous and illogical and he knew it, but Jonas still felt the sting as she threw them back at him.  Who the hell did she think he was if she didn't know him?  He might not have known the Canadian woman for very long, but Lexus had been practically living under his roof since he'd taken her in.  After ten years of hiding from the Ministry, trust wasn't something that came easily, but he had extended it to her.  Of course she knew him.  Who the hell did, if she didn't?

"What, why didn't I tell you that I was married?" he asked, volume rising even as he fought to keep his tone even.  He forced himself to take a deep breath, to hold his ground.  Losing his temper was not going to resolve the situation.  Remaining calm and rational was.

"Because it's not just something you bring up in pleasant conversation," he retorted, trying not to clench his teeth.  Not helping.  Getting angry wasn't helping.  He had to remember that.  Calm.  Rational.  "Yeah, I was married.  And yeah, I didn't tell you.  But it's not like you told me that you were a werewolf, Lex."

Had Lexus been in her right mind she would have been much more observant about what was going on. She would have been able to realize that her words had actually hurt Jonas, that her friend, probably her best friend, was hurt by the fact that she was insinuating that she didn't know him. On one hand she didn't know him - she hadn't known about his marriage, she didn't know that he had been an auror himself, she didn't know about his kids or what he was like when he was attending Hogwarts but on the other hand she knew more about him than she ever considered possible. She knew that when he smiled it crinkled the sides of his eyes and made him look ten years younger than he was, that he'd do anything to finish a case, that he loved drinking his beer at cellar temperature, that he was uncomfortable about physical contact and that he snored when he slept on the couch. She knew him more intimately than most people she had met in the last five years.

Unfortunately lycanthrophy wasn't just a once a month curse like most people thought it was, the rest of the month left her with a quick temper and such irrational thought patterns that she ignored things she would have focused on when she was normal, when she was human - things like the fact he said he was married.

Perhaps she would have calmed down had he taken a different approach.

As the last of his words struck her she collapsed, falling back to sit on the edge of the desk with her head hanging low. It had only taken one word to zap all of her energy. Her head was spinning as her mind returned to her, thousands of thoughts rushing to take precedence in the forefront of her mind. He knew she was a werewolf. He knew the deepest darkest part of her soul, the side of her that she had been trying to keep hidden since she met him. Sure people like Dazmond knew about her but when you were an illegal potions mistress that hung out with ex- azzies and had a husband that was a criminal as well, having a werewolf for a friend wasn't such a big deal. Jonas on the other hand had once worked for the ministry and obviously still had friends there. He had flipped out when he thought she had been muggle baiting, she always thought that he would be the first to turn her over to the ministry if he ever found out about her. Which begged the question - how long had he known? If he had only found out the day before he still had time to turn her in but if he had known for much longer that meant that he didn't care, that he was sticking by her, keeping her employed and safe despite what a monster she was.

She slowly lifted her head to look at him, all signs of the wolf were gone for now but he knew full well now that it was always just under the surface, "So you know." She glanced down for a moment wringing her hands together, "How . . ." her voice was choked with emotion, mostly fear, "how long have you known?"

"What the hell sort of difference does that make?" Jonas snapped, losing his 'calm-and-rational' mantra.  Admitting just how long he'd suspected, that he'd started to poke around and fit the pieces together back when he'd first hired her on, defeated his current purpose in the argument, which was to prove a fortiori that he was not guilty of the currently biggest attempted concealment.  It didn't matter that he had known; what mattered was that she hadn't told him.

So he hadn't sat her down and related his entire life's story.  He hadn't bloody well done it for anyone and he wasn't about to start, and exploding at him when she'd thought she was keeping something even bigger to herself was ridiculous.  The thought of it all was making his head ache, and not just because his ears were still ringing in the aftermath of the goddamned alarm.  He was through with keeping secrets, but just because he was through keeping them didn't mean he was going to sit down and write out the exposition for everyone else.  If Lexus hadn't put the pieces together, it wasn't his goddamned fault.

"Don't get on after me for keeping things to meself when you've got that lurking about," he said heatedly, shooting her a mutinous look.  "Stones and glass houses, yeah?  I might pick and choose what I keep to meself, but being private doesn't get anyone killed, Lex.  And I never kept it a secret that I knew blokes at the Ministry."

A part of her had not been expecting Jonas to lose his cool. He never seemed to be the type to give into his emotions and get as fired up as she did. Although coming to that realization indicated just how serious and crazy this whole situation was Lexus still wasn't really paying attention to it. How could she when his own retaliation had spoken more to the wolf than to her. Being an animal she was prone to do whatever necessary to survive. She just never thought that meant being on the outs with Jonas.

"I don't kill people!" She was up on her feet but refused to look at him, well aware that she had that dangerous glow to her eyes again, "At least I've never done it on purpose!" She ran her hands over her face, "I'm not one of those monsters you read about in the Profit. I didn't know I was a werewolf! Do you seriously think that if I'd known I would have slept in the same house as my own parents?!" She had no idea how he had figured out she was a werewolf but she figured it was safe to assume, given his profession, that he knew the entire story, "Do you have any idea what it was like to wake up in a pool of my own parents blood?! Being dragged off by Aurors to stand trial, being forced to constantly look at pictures of their maimed bodies while the Wizengamot badgered me about being so irresponsible?!"

She spun around swallowing and placing her face in her hands to keep away the dizzying sensation that had swept over her. She had never spoken to anyone about this before. She had been far too afraid to let anyone know how she truly felt about all this, "I can understand not telling me about being an auror and I can even understand you not saying anything about your ex wife. It hurts that you didn't want to be that open with me but do you seriously think that any of that compares to me not telling you that once a month I turn into a horrible murderous monster?"

This time she finally lifted her eyes to meet his, "For chrissake Jonas, when we first met you were ready to hand me over to the Aurors for confunding a few muggles, do you honestly think that instilled any sort of confidence in you to trust you with something like this? It's been killing me for three months now that I've constantly been keeping this from you, that every full moon I have to make up some stupid excuse as to why I won't be at work. I spend almost every second by your side terrified that you'll notice, that you'll see my scars and ship me off."

She took a deep breath, "People think that being a werewolf here is horrible, that you can't get a job and that you'll be socially shunned for the rest of your life but at least there's things here like SAWS and PAWS. There are people here that are convinced that we're just normal people, that what's happened to us is unfortunate and that we can become normal members of society. Werewolf segregation here is nothing compared to the welcome I'll get if I go back home. Most werewolves no matter who they are the rest of the month are hunted down and slaughtered. Anyone who's found to be a Loup Garou when the moon isn't full are captured, imprisoned and when the moon is finally full they're staked, skinned alive and left to bleed out. It's barbaric but it's tradition and it's how wizards have been dealing with people like me for centuries."

"The only reason I'm still alive is because they decided I didn't know I was werewolf and my parents deaths were ruled to be accidental. If I ever go back home, I'll either be killed on sight or slaughtered during the next full moon." She stared into his eyes for a long moment, "Still pissed off I never told you?"