Descendant by Eva Truesdale

several seconds, and it occurred to me that they were probably doing the thought speech thing Vanessa had done earlier. Whatever Eli was saying, however, he kept short.
    “Anyway, to answer your first question—” he said, turning back to me. “‘Werewolf’ is a term you humans are probably more familiar with; it’s one name your kind gave to the vicious, bloodthirsty shape-shifters that have terrorized the human-race over the past few centuries. We lycans, on the other hand…” When he said the words ‘we lycans’, he stood up considerably straighter, and the pride in his voice became evident. “Are bound by an ancient pact that would not all ow us to harm a single hair on your head—even if we wanted to.”
    “Okay so let me get this straight— you guys are…friendly werewolves, basical y?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
    “Let me finish, Alex?” Eli replied. “Aggression toward humans aside, there is another major difference between a lycan and a werewolf—and that is the fact that one is born, while the other is created. We…” Eli paused and placed a hand on his chest, then gestured to Will and Vanessa. “…
    and all lycans, are born with the spirit and the blood of both the human and the wolf within us, and are equal y at home in either form. Werewolves, on the other hand, are an unnatural mutation of our genes. They are often a danger to humans, and even their own kind, when in their unnatural beast forms. This is especial y true during the full -moon, when transformations become involuntary for most werewolves—much like suggested by the folktales and myths of humankind.”
    “Right. Okay so… I was attacked by a werewolf, right?” I thought aloud. “But… it was in the middle of the day.
    Definitely not a full moon, and it seemed like a perfectly controll ed attack to me.”
    “Yes…” Eli’s brow creased in thought. “It is not that werewolves are incapable of voluntary transformation as well .”
    “And,” Vanessa chimed in, “…unlike lycans, they are bound by no pact that prevents them from attacking a human.” Her lips fell into a frown as she spoke. “We’re still trying to determine just what the motivation behind that attack was, but it is entirely possible that the attack was simply for sport,” she said.
    “And my dad?” I said, suddenly recal ing the conversation with Sera. “Was it a werewolf that…that attacked him too?”
    I couldn’t bring myself to say the word ‘kill ed’. “It kind of seems like they’re targeting my family, don’t you think?”
    “That idea has occurred to us, of course. But we do not know all the details yet, Alex…” Eli said quietly.
    His inconclusive words made me angry, and I had to take several deep breaths before I trusted myself to speak again. “Okay. So that’s it then—that thing bit me, and now I’m turning into some shape-shifting monster?”
    “Not necessarily,” Eli said.
    “What?”
    “What?”
    “That is why we have brought you here—intervention.”
    “Intervention…?”
    “I told you that you were lucky you had only been—to use your word—‘poisoned’, remember?”
    I nodded.
    “Very lucky, in fact, because there is an antidote, which is almost always effective if administered in time. You do not have to become a werewolf. In fact, we insist that you do not.”
    “What?” I said again. “An antidote?” That’s not how it worked in all the fairy-tales I’d ever heard. In fact, I’d already started cringing at the thought of gruesome transformations and uncontroll able, beastly urges.
    “Your first shift would take place tomorrow night under the light of the full moon. But as long as we give you the antidote before sundown tomorrow, you wil remain human.
    If not…”
    “…I become a werewolf?” I finished.
    “And our enemy. Something I would much rather avoid so…”
    “Enemy…?”
    “Yes. You would be unstable, a monster we would have to eliminate for the sake of the other