The Ascension by Kailin Gow Page B

woods melted back to reveal them. One moment, there was only trees and earth.
    The next, more than a dozen huge wolves padded into a rough circle around the tree where Gem sat.
    Just one of them would have been a daunting prospect, but a dozen together was far worse. The circle of wolves tightened gradual y, apparently to preclude any chance of Gem escaping from it.
    “You know,” she remarked to the universe in general, “just once it would be nice if I could get through the day without being thought of as a snack.” A shaggy, white wolf, that looked over the others with a confidence that made it obvious to Gem who the pack’s alpha male was, advanced deliberately from the circle, stopping just a short leap away from her. Gem stood careful y. She had had enough. A dozen feral wolves might prove to be too many, but she could certainly use a ruler word to make sure that the first one to move didn’t get anywhere near her.
    A shiver seemed to go through the white wolf.
    No, Gem decided, not through the wolf. Through the world around it. It trembled until Gem couldn’t quite keep her eye on it and then, the moment she turned away for an instant, the wolf was gone. In its place stood a muscular man in what had to be his late forties, though the long, white hair that hung halfway down his back probably added at least a couple of years. Gem found herself staring in flabbergasted shock, not so much at the fact that wolves could turn into people, after a couple of months around a dragon, that kind of thing struck her as almost normal, but at the fact that the man in front of her would wander around the woods like this wearing nothing more than a large loincloth.
    Gem looked around, and found that the other wolves were gone too, replaced by younger men wearing no more than their leader. They were al muscular and tanned masculine perfection, but even so…Gem brought her hand up to her mouth.

    so…Gem brought her hand up to her mouth.
    Gem realized that she was rambling. Perhaps she had underestimated the shock of wolves turning into people after al . A series of movies of dubious quality probably hadn’t done much to prepare her for the reality of running into a dozen real werewolves.
    Make that a baker’s dozen, actual y, because it was a fair bet that the wolf with her would have transformed too.
    Gem looked round for him and found him kneeling beside the tree, apparently exhausted by the change. He was dressed the same way as the others, and Gem couldn’t help her eyes roving over him for a moment. He was just as muscular and tanned as the others, but slightly more slender. A tattoo of a mechanical claw ran over his left shoulder.
    It was only when he looked up that Gem realized who it was.
    “Rio?”
    “Hi Gem,” Rio said hesitantly. “You know how I said that nothing much happened to me the last couple of months? Not entirely true. Don’t be scared, ok?”
    Gem didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t believe that Rio was… wel , a werewolf . It seemed too much of a coincidence, on top of Sparks and her.
    On the other hand, it did make a bizarre kind of sense. Far from making it seem like an aberration , Rio’s newfound werewolf status seemed to fit him perfectly. It took those currents of vigilance , control ed violence and cunning that had been in Rio before and brought them to the surface, turning them into something almost primitively dangerous. It was like seeing through a façade to something far more direct. Also, Gem had to admit, far more enticing.
    Rio stood with difficulty, taking Gem’s hand for support. He kept hold of it as they turned together to face the white-haired man and his… would pack stil be the right word while they were human, Gem wondered, and decided, given the look of some of the young men, that it probably would.
    The white-haired man’s eyes gave Gem a cursory glance, but most of his attention seemed to be reserved for Rio.
    “You are one of us.” He snapped out the words,