(Amare and Saila, leaving the inn after an interesting night where he hacked at his own hand for a bit.)

?For fuck?s sake,? his hand wrapped in the bloodied rag, the one looped over her shoulders, squeezed more tightly, bringing her into him. He burned warm, but that might have just been his body on high alert, trying to keep up with the damage control to his hand, liver, and everything else that he was doing.

It was, as they say, a classic downward spiral. He didn?t care that it was clich? or well known, half expected and so easily predictable that someone could chart his progress on a graph that would match the hearts and unrest of everyone else in the world. If only he had some middle-income job to get too drunk or belligerent at so that he could be fired. He imagined the sensation would be therapeutic. Some middle-aged man who masturbated instead of dreamed would tell him that he just wasn?t meeting his potential and that someone with far more and better potential would be better. All of it sounded like a strange, indirect, penis-measuring contest.

No thanks.

?I want my cookie and then I want to go to the department store.? He could feel it already, the itchy, burning pain from where he?d cut his hand up and his body fought to put itself back together.

The taste of his blood was heavy on her tongue, the tang of copper intoxicating: it made her mouth salivate in a way nothing else ever did. Her stomach made a strange noise she hadn?t experienced often enough to recognize as a growling, and her mismatched eyes had dilated subtly in the moonlight.

Her senses flaring, Saila let him move her, their bodies pressed more completely together as he pulled her closer. She was intensely, acutely aware of the heat radiating off of him, his energy spiking like a solar flare that at once burned too brilliant to look at and drew her like a magnet. His wounded hand was there by her chin, and even though it was bandaged she could see the way the flesh worked to knit itself back together, bringing blood and more blood to the surface to accelerate the generation.

Her stomach rolled again. Saila was hungry. Without thinking about it, she wrapped the near arm around his lower back, holding him as tightly as he held her.

After a moment, the pang of thirst eased.

?Okay, okay. We?ll get you a fucking cookie. Do they sell those at department stores?? The mercurial teen didn?t know much about either cookies or department stores, only that when Amare got this singularly focused, it was typically bad news for somebody. She?d become something of a master at making sure the ?somebody? in question wasn?t her. ?And where are there department stores, anyway??

He wasn't dead or stupid, some part of him knew, if not because of the hormonal roll off her body. He knew. Then again, Amare always knew. He must have known about the shift in her breathing and the way her hand caught his side a little more tightly. Maybe he had even known those moments before. The ones where someone held their breath right before they smiled and plunged into who he was like they were falling off of the side of a building. It was a blissful, dying sensation he never understood because he was too busy causing it.

Then again, Saila already knew that, didn't she?

He held onto her like an anchor and she held onto him like a storm might take him away. Their steps were well enough matched that they didn't jar one another but continued on. ?They do. It's those cake cookie things with the icing and whatever.? His good free hand rolled in the air to make the motion. The market was near, already within their line of sight.

The only indication he was in pain was his sweating, the heat and the smell of his body working to stitch up his finger. Maybe the world reeled a little bit but he never lost his footing. He had those sort of sea legs.

There was a glimmer of light to her oddly ill-paired eyes that had not been there previously. Her hold on his opposite hip eased but did not fall away, her posture relaxing in a barely discernible way. They moved together seamlessly as they walked, their stride perfectly matched, the roll of joints in motion perfectly synchronized. It wasn?t an accident.

To be this close to Amare was to be right up against the speakers at a heavy metal concert. She?d stepped into a sonic wall of fury and pain that would have been overwhelming were she not already accustomed to it. He was a full frontal assault on her senses, but she?d learned to manage and navigate it because she couldn?t afford not to. And in the interim, she learned a lot.

Like what a ?cake cookie thing with the icing and whatever? was, what it looked like. What a department store even was. What it felt like to accumulate the kind of scars that had permanently warped the tattoo on his side. What you had to have survived to find the physical pain he was in right now comfortable because it was familiar.

Saila had gotten to where she could manage it, but for a time it kept her quiet. ?That must feel so strange,? she murmured at last after several seconds. ?The whole? body regrowing itself like that thing.?

?All it is is itchy,? calling it strange sounded like an embellishment, a way to make it sound more important than it was. The lights of the marketplace grew in closer and brighter, morphing from would-be lightning bugs into lights on cords with clumsy, hot metal coils.

The marketplace was a far cry from a department store, but there were a handful of shops open and perhaps a bakery. Well, one bakery at least that looked like it was half desperate to shut down.

?There,? his hand squeezed like a pressure from nowhere over her shoulder. It ached, and truthfully it was as if his batteries were beginning to run low. He needed food, energy, the sort that invigorated. Cookies instead of hearts would have to do, lest he long for the latter. His good hand pushed the bakery door open, the brass bells hanging on the back of the door chimed painfully.

Saila laughed, quietly. ?Itchy seems like it?s pretty strange to me, too,? she told him. It wasn?t a sensation she could ever remember feeling, except in the distorted memories of those closest to her, and who could say how accurate that was? As much as Saila had grown and discovered in the last year and a half, there was still so much she didn?t yet know, hadn?t yet experienced. She had memories of being punched that belonged to virtually every man she?d ever met and some of the women too, but she?d never been punched herself. Was the pain the same? The teen had no idea.

The pressure of his bloody hand on her shoulder drew Saila from her own distracted thoughts. The smell of blood sharpened in her nose, but she could ignore it more readily now, especially given the way his energy seemed to recede suddenly, sagging around her. Part of a frown drew her eyebrows closer to one another, but she stepped into the bakery still fastened loosely at his side. ?I know you want your fucking cookie,? she commented as they moved inside, her strange gaze already moving over every part of its interior as she tried to decide whether she?d ever been here before. ?But maybe we should get you like? some real food, too?? What she meant by that was left open to interpretation, but there was a reason the girl tended to carry Quinn-sized clothes and several towels in that bag of hers on the regular.

?That?s all right,? for whatever reason, he didn?t want whatever it was his own wolf had to offer. That wasn?t a particularly healthy decision, or one that he could control forever. But since when had Amare not happily skipped off into a blood-lit evening? There wasn?t an explanation for his belligerence, and it came only as an offhand shrug before he peeled his arm off of her shoulders and stepped up to the counter.

In the wake of where his arm had been was a cool chill. A slight sheen of sweat was on the back of his neck, but beyond that, she knew he was hurting. That his hand itched like all hell. His good one moved to the bar towel wrapped in red over his hand, digging at the cloth to appease his itching skin. With a sharp upnod of his chin to the teller he beat, ?A large cut of cookie cake whatever and,? he looked and Saila for a second and then back to her, annoyance raking his voice, ?Just make it two and don?t take all fucking night.?

The teller had been smiling with a plastic, prepared niceness until he had spoken. Her demeanor was dampened, but she set about the task, giving him cautious, intermittent looks as she did so.

Saila did snag the rag off the table as she stood, stuffing it into her bag alongside the bloodied bandage that still held little scraps of his skin. It was a force of habit born primarily from watching Cane and Sal, and she could no sooner not do it than not breathe. Raking one set of fingers through violently violet locks, she pulled the bag higher up on her shoulder and followed him out of the little bakery with a single backwards glance thrown over her shoulder at the permanently affixed tables and chairs.

Back out into the night, the mercurial teen took a deep breath, trying to soothe the painful ache dragging its barbed-wire wrapped chains down the corridors of her mind. The vodka had helped some, but there was too much sugar in her system to head it off completely. She caught up to Amare in four steps, falling into sync beside him once more.

Whether or not he was aware of her pain was difficult to say. If he had known, it was not likely that he would pause and give it sympathy. The vodka bottle stayed, loosely strangled by one hand as they walked down the street. Sometimes it seemed as if he wanted to say something but he never did. His eyes just kept jumping, raking in the thoughts from behind his blue eyes. He used his bloodied hand to push back his blond hair where miraculously none of the blood left coloring behind. It must have all been dried like paint.

Truthfully, he wanted to hunt. Knowing what it felt like and knowing that it would satisfy his own nature coupled with that of a wolf should have made it infinitely appeal. The problem was that he didn?t want to feel better. He didn?t want to feel good or that things moved in a positive direction.

He took another swallow of the vodka and paused outside the clothing shop. Amare was handsome in his own right, he?d known that since he hit puberty and realized the way he looked caused people to give him certain allowances he didn?t deserve. His physical traits were polished, with broad shoulders and a swimmer?s build. It was as though his body had spited him by insisting on a more refined and aristocratic look than the one that might have really suited him. He kept buying expensive suits he didn?t like. He kept treating them poorly, like they would learn their lesson for staying in his closet. Inanimate things, like people, weren?t in the habit of learning.

The vodka bottle was offered back with one thrust of his hand, not looking at her. Hiis mind was calculating the storefront when he spoke, ?Did you know, fuck, well, of course you know. Anyway,? he felt like talking, so he continued, ?One of the things that made me the saddest about becoming a werewolf?? He turned his head to look at her, his lips splitting into a salty half grin, ?The drinking. I missed being able to just get drunk.? It was the werewolf metabolism that made it a challenge. A body that healed like that burned through energy and left him hungry.

There wasn?t much about being human that he?d liked. He didn?t have any tears to shed for the turning of that chapter but he also didn?t talk about it much.

Saila put a fair amount of effort into making sure he didn?t know. She loved her pseudo brother - he and Quinn were quite literally all she knew of family - but she wasn?t entirely stupid no matter what he said. Somewhere in Lesson One was the lesson about keeping one?s vulnerabilities secret, and this was one of the few the mercurial teen had definitely identified.Three people knew how much sugar made her head hurt, and with any luck she?d keep it that way.

Content to walk beside him in silence, Saila?s mind was both here and elsewhere, on Amare and not. The streets made no sense to her whether she?d ever been on them before or not, so she trusted that he knew where the hell he was going, or maybe she just wasn?t particularly worried about it either way. When his steps slowed, so did hers, and she turned to contemplate the storefront window with him.

There in the glass were mannequins, making her think of Mannique though she did not say so, but what Saila was really looking at was their reflections. Her gaze moved thoughtfully over Amare first, examining the differences between the way he looked to her and what the image in the glass looked like, divorced as it was from the halo of his energy. Then, curious, her gaze moved over her own reflection, taking in the fuzzy details it afforded her, trying to memorize what she saw.

For a girl who had a full time job in theater, she didn?t actually spend much time looking at herself.

The vodka bottle was thrust out to her and she accepted it, her hand wrapping around its barrel automatically. Saila watched the exchange happen in the glass before them, then turned her face to look over at Amare directly. A dim smile touched her lips when he corrected himself on whether she knew -- it was one of the few things about him that reminded her of Quinn. What neither wolf seemed to grasp was that just because she had access to the information didn?t mean she understood it -- data without context is meaningless. There were still good reasons to talk to her even when she already ?knew? everything.

?Quinn gets drunk,? she said slowly, working through in her mind what factors might make it possible for one wolf and not the other. Was it sheer quantity--that the white wolf was just so goddamn committed to getting drunk that he managed it? Quinn approached drinking sometimes like it was his job. Was it a matter of metabolism -- did they each burn it off differently? Saila had no idea. ?I?ve never been drunk. I don?t really know what it feels like except in other people?s memories.?

?Yeah? You ever see him have just one shot or does he drink like this?? Amare was willing to bet, wiggling the vodka bottle at her, that he took his medicine straight and in large handled bottles. ?It?s that or he?s older than he said.? He wasn?t a biologist, but what he did know told him that the young were restless with energy and the old wanted to take naps.

?It doesn?t do much.? There was the roll of his shoulders and he stepped up to the front doors of the merchandise shop. His voice meandered, his thoughts interrupted by his curiosity about the front door, ?Getting drunk. It doesn?t do that much for you but what I?ve come to like,? he pushed his hands on the door. That?s what happened when you had a lazy staff. Sometimes, doors were just left unlocked. It was like Christmas.

?I like the place where it?s just enough that my brain is quiet. I don?t hear all that shit going around in my head anymore, there.? He liked being made temporarily dumb. Amare pushed the door all the way open, holding it like a wide open mouth for her to step in first.

No, Saila had never, ever seen Quinn do just one shot. If he only drank one bottle he was still having a fairly light night. She shrugged to acknowledge that he had a point, and possibly also to avoid actually answering the question about Quinn?s age.

She listened, and as she listened, she tried to remember when she?d ever seen Amare drunk, or even a memory of Amare drunk. It had been a while, to be certain. While she was busy listening, the wolf was busy figuring out that the doors were already unlocked. Well, that was convenient, and also possibly terrible news for the department store in question. ?Have you tried pot since the change?? She asked as she stepped inside, since it was clear it would be a thing if she didn?t. ?I have these lollipops that are made with it. They don?t affect me the way they do other people, but the fact that they affect me at all means they?d probably work on you, temporarily anyway.?

There were memories of drinking and more than just drinking, buried with the years he had been human. If there was anyone left in his life that had known him from that time, she hadn?t met them and he had made no mention of it. She?d seen him work his way to a buzz, but no, she?d never been around him when he was drunk.

After she stepped inside he was behind her, splitting off to the left where some of the mannequins tried to make appealing poses. He went about four feet before stopping in front of one of the them, his head tilted to the side as if to study her and recall some distant memory. His gaze moved down her perfect, unmarked arms that were extended out in the air to catch a bright blue beach ball suspended by fishing line from the ceiling. Her dress was white like a new napkin and though her body was running forward to catch the ball, the dress hung in a limp and quiet way.

?No, but I?m pretty certain they?ll be terrible,? but he didn?t like pot based on its core principles: it helped someone relax and everyone talked about how it would give them the ?munchies? after having it. Neither were states of being that he liked. He didn?t want to relax and he didn?t need to consume more than he already was.

He kept walking, his mind working over some of what they saw until he stopped in the lingerie aisle. So far there hadn?t been any silent alarm tripped to send the watch in their direction. His eyes jumped back at Saila, checking on where she was.