Agnes strode into the larder and found it stocked with dried meat. Cured pork for slicing and thick sausages, their scent sharp, hung from the ceiling from twine. She tugged a hunk of curing bacon free and sank her teeth into it, not even bothering to cut off a slice. Wrong, wrong, the taste was wrong. Salt burned her tongue. 

Her stomach growled. She tore another bite free, swallowing down the taste.

It was Eileen who found her, opening the door and letting in the light of day. 

“Agnes?” She asked, her voice soft as though she cared. 

Agnes tore off another bite of meat. By the moon she hungered. What a mistake it had been, transforming!

After she’d turned back, it had been Rosemary, her silver hair shimmering like a halo, who had helped her to the castle, snuck her back into her room. Rosemary who’d called for a bath to be drawn and helped Agnes into it. Her hands had been soft against Agnes’ scalp, the hum of her voice tender as a throat. Agnes had curled in on herself like a dying insect and refused to look at anything at all.

Yet whenever she closed her eyes she remembered the honey sweet scent of Rosemary, sharp for the first time in a way it had never been. And she remembered the way the moonlight had struck her hair and how it had shown through her white gown that night. And she remembered the bloody tint of her eyes, like flesh rent open. And it made her stomach growl and her jaw hurt and it made her hungry.

So she opened her eyes and allowed herself to be trapped beneath Rosemary’s terrifying, gentle gaze.

She had run so well. Letting Agnes stay just in her periphery. Like a white deer, delicate as it bounded across the forest. 

All of this welled up inside her and made her feel… mad. Perhaps there truly was something to the moon. She seemed to see its reflection everywhere now, as though it had been burned into her gaze.

A perfect white circle.

Eileen was looking at her in silence. Her ears flicked. “You hunted.”

“I did,” Agnes said. Her voice grit as though it was not her own.

“It has been a long time since you did such a thing,” Eileen observed. “Poor dear. Let me get you some better food than that.”

“Don’t pity me,” Agnes hissed. “I don’t want help.”

Eileen clicked her tongue. “I should have guessed you would be this way.”

“Why.”

She shook her head, instead choosing to offer a hand. “Give me that, and I’ll cook you something to make you feel human again.”

“I haven’t felt human for years and years.”

Eileen clicked her tongue. “Come now. Don’t you have work to do?”

Eileen strode right past her and snatched the meat from her hands. Then she rummaged around the room, producing a few eggs and a loaf of bread. Beckoning Agnes follow her, she stalked to the kitchen.

Agnes was deposited next to the fireplace. “Set it please,” Eileen said, “and I’ll call the pack.”

Calling the pack? Agnes allowed herself to flow through the motions, lighting up the kitchen stove. She hadn’t done something like this since before she’d moved to the hunting compound with Ariadne. Clan Lunae, in charge of its vast kitchens, had kept the two of them far better fed than their mother had ever been capable of.

Still, the scent of fire was nostalgic. For a moment she was back behind her mother’s worn skirts, watching the harnessing of danger for the mundane. 

Then the door swung open. Eileen returned, followed by Catherine, Lumina, and Minerva. “I would have brought more,” Eileen explained, “but I did not wish to startle you.”

“What about Lady Rosemary?” Agnes asked, and then snapped her mouth shut. The last person she wished to see was Rosemary.

“Aster is fetching her,” Eileen explained. “In the meantime, lets get you human.”

Exhausted, Agnes could only watch while Eileen sawed out thick slices of bacon, placing them on a skillet over the fire. The scent of cooked meat wafted through the air, settled in Agnes’ bones. Eggs joined a moment later. Meanwhile, Catherina sawed slices of the thick, seeded bread and arranged them on a plate.

Lumina placed a little cup of tea before her, and there, suddenly, was breakfast. Crisp bacon, fried eggs, their golden yolks soft and runny, and soft bread. Agnes’ stomach growled. 

Not caring for the eyes that watched, she swallowed the meal down until her belly was full and she hungered no longer. And she looked up and saw that she was not alone at the table. Hadn’t these people agreed to be her pack before? Was this what it meant?

Eilleen was smiling at her. Catherine watched intently. Even Minerva and Lumina, neither of them werewolves, seemed invested.

“How do you feel?” Catherine asked.

“Human,” Agnes said, and meant it.

She still did not understand the purpose of a pack, but their presence with her was a comfort. It was as though she had been floating into the heavens, and was now being pulled back into her body with warm, firm hands.

The kitchen door opened once more. Before it stood Aster and Rosemary, who were quickly welcomed in.

The meal had grounded her, but Agnes still saw the moon’s afterimage in Rosemary’s hair. “You’re here.”

“I’ve been worried about you,” Rosemary said, eyes lilting to the side. 

“Have you now,” Agnes said. She shut her eyes a moment, and the moon waned. “I did not mean to scare you.”

“Yet you did,” Rosemary said. “But perhaps I pushed you too far.”

“No,” Agnes said. “It was important for me to experience this.” On that note, she stood, and strode from the kitchen. “Thank you, everyone.”

“Where are you going?” Aster asked.

“To retrieve something I lost in the woods.”

At the mention of her bracelets, Rosemary’s face fell. But Agnes had promised to wear them.

She had transformed once. Perhaps, she might again. Perhaps it would be useful on hunts. But until that day, she must keep to her routine, and master the wolf within. It would not do for her to lose her humanity, no matter how human the night beasts around her seemed.