Jessica sprawled on her bed, her heart thundering against her ribs as she replayed tonight's events with Kevin. The memory of his lips against hers sent electricity coursing through her veins, but a familiar surge of fear came with it. When they'd kissed at the downtown park, she'd felt it—that dangerous stirring deep inside, the beast clawing to break free. Her fingers had lengthened slightly, nails sharpening to points before she'd pulled away, making some excuse about her dad's curfew.

"Just keep it simple," she whispered to herself, running trembling fingers through her blonde hair. "No sex, no full transformation. Kevin stays safe." The mantra felt hollow, even to her ears. She'd been best friends with Kevin since their junior year when he'd shared his lunch with her after Tommy Martinez stole hers. Now, as high school seniors, that friendship had blossomed into something more complicated, more dangerous.

Jessica squeezed her pillow in her arms against her face. She couldn't imagine what would happen if she transformed while… Doing the tango with Kevin.

The house creaked around her, its familiar sounds were usually comforting, but tonight setting her nerves on edge. Her enhanced hearing picked up her father's heavy footsteps climbing the stairs—the slight drag in his left step from an old injury, the gentle jingling of his keys. His knuckles rapped against her door, three sharp knocks that made her spine stiffen.

"Come in!" Jessica called, pushing herself up and smoothing her oversized Moon Valley High School sweatshirt.

Sheriff Daniel Tumblerlee's broad frame filled the doorway, his usually warm brown eyes clouded with concern beneath his bushy brows. His pristine uniform pressed despite the late hour, badge gleaming under her bedroom lights. "Hey, kiddo. Got called into the station."

The pit in Jessica's stomach deepened. Her father's late-night calls always meant trouble in their small town, but something in his expression tonight was different. "What happened?"

"Break-in at the museum." He adjusted his badge, fingers worrying at the metal edge—a tell she'd learned to read years ago, after her mother's death. "That mummy they brought in? Someone stole it."

"What?" The word came out sharp, memories flooding back of last week's field trip. The ancient sarcophagus had set off every supernatural alarm bell in her body. Even Kevin thought they heard something from it. "The whole thing?"

"Seems like it." Her father's thick beard couldn't hide the grim set of his mouth. "And—" The hesitation made her blood run cold. "Two security guards are dead."

"Dead?" Jessica barely recognized her own voice, thin and reedy with shock. The beast inside her stirred restlessly, responding to her fear.

"I've got to go. Don't wait up and make sure all the doors are locked." His stern look carried years of unspoken understanding between them. Since discovering her secret last year, he'd become protective in new ways. "I mean it, sweetie. No sneaking out tonight."

"Be careful, Dad." She forced a smile she didn't feel, knowing they were both pretending she would stay put.

The moment his cruiser's headlights swept across her bedroom wall and disappeared down Maple Street, Jessica sprang into action. Her closet door banged open as she dove for her emergency outfit, stashed behind the pastel sweaters and summer dresses that made up her careful facade of normalcy. The black sweats and hoodie were well-worn, adapted for her other form with strategic splits in the seams.

Her hands shook as she changed, mind racing. Two dead guards. The image of Queen Aziza's sarcophagus floated before her eyes—ancient wood carved with hieroglyphs that seemed to shift when you weren't looking directly at them, the faint smell of lotus and myrrh that had made her sneeze during the tour.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The moon hung in a waning crescent outside her window, but Jessica had been practicing. Salina's teachings were paying off; the transformation no longer required the full moon's power. She closed her eyes, reaching for that wild current that lived in her marrow, that spark of ancient magic that had changed her life forever on her sixteenth birthday.

The power surged up eagerly, too eagerly. Jessica gritted her teeth, forcing it to bend to her will rather than letting it run wild. Bones cracked and reformed, an orchestra of pain she'd learned to endure. Muscles stretched and bulged beneath rapidly sprouting fur, her face elongating into a powerful muzzle. Her senses exploded outward—suddenly she could smell the leftover pizza in the kitchen two floors below, hear the scrabbling of mice in the walls, and taste the lingering afternoon rain on the air.

When she opened her eyes, the world had transformed into a tapestry of scents and sounds. Her room looked different through wolf eyes, everything cast in shades of blue and gray, yet somehow clearer than before. Jessica padded to her window on silent paws, her transformed body moving with fluid grace. She'd learned early on that the key to sneaking out wasn't silence—it was confidence. Move like you belong in the shadows, and most people's eyes will slide right past you.

*****

The museum sat on the other side of town, but distance meant little to her werewolf form. She looked through the familiar maze of backyards and alleyways, keeping to the shadows of oak trees and garden sheds. Her powerful muscles ate up the ground effortlessly, and she allowed herself a moment of pure joy in the freedom of running.

The museum parking lot blazed with red and blue lights, and police cruisers created a barrier around the building's entrance. Jessica circled to the loading dock, where deep shadows offered perfect cover. Her sensitive nose picked up a cocktail of scents—the sharp tang of fear-sweat from the officers, coffee, and donuts from the crime scene techs, and something else that made her hackles rise. Something ancient and wrong, like millennia-old cloth and dried herbs, but underneath that was a current of copper and decay that made her want to bare her teeth.

A second-floor window stood slightly ajar, probably left open by the cleaning crew. Jessica gathered herself and leaped, her claws finding purchase in the old brick facade. She scaled the wall with practiced ease, slipping through the window into what appeared to be a storage room full of crated artifacts and bubble-wrapped paintings.

The museum took on an entirely different character at night. Shadow and moonlight played tricks with the exhibits, making statues seem to shift and paintings appear to breathe. Jessica crept along the ceiling beams, thankful for her wolf form's natural agility. Below, voices echoed off marble floors.

"Never seen anything like it." Deputy Earl Simmons's voice carried clearly to her enhanced hearing, stripped of its usual good humor. "It's like something sucked them dry."

From her perch in the rafters, Jessica could see her father standing by the empty sarcophagus, his flashlight beam dancing over the ancient wood. Two sheet-covered forms lay on the floor, and even from this distance, the wrongness of their deaths permeated the air.

"The medical examiner's preliminary report says severe dehydration," her father said, his beard-scratching telling her just how troubled he was. "But that's impossible. Bodies don't just... desiccate like this. Not in a few hours."

"You think it's connected to the missing mummy?"

"Has to be." Sheriff Tumblelee's flashlight beam highlighted deep gouges in the marble floor that made Jessica's blood run cold. "Whatever did this, it wasn't human."

The claw marks were massive, bigger than anything she could produce even at her most feral. They followed a strange pattern—almost feline, but hideously elongated, as if made by something that was only pretending to be a cat.

"Should we call in the feds?" Deputy Simmons asked, voicing the question Jessica had been dreading.

To her relief, her father shook his head. "Not yet. Let's keep this quiet for now. The last thing we need is a panic." Federal investigators would make her investigation nearly impossible, not to mention increasing the risk of her secret being exposed.

A door creaked somewhere in the building, the sound echoing off marble floors. Both men tensed, hands moving to their weapons. "Check the west wing," her father ordered. "I'll take the east."

As their footsteps faded, Jessica crept closer to the sarcophagus. The musty scent was overwhelming here, mixed with something that made her nose burn and her supernatural senses recoil. She recognized the sharp tang of magic, but this was nothing like the gentle earth magic Salina practiced. This was older, darker, carrying echoes of desert winds and ancient curses.

Fresh footsteps approached, forcing Jessica to retreat. She slipped back through the window and down the wall, landing silently in the shadows. As she touched the ground, a breeze carried an unfamiliar scent that made her fur stand on end—fresh death mingled with that ancient magic, coming from somewhere in town.

Whatever had killed those guards wasn't just another supernatural creature. This was something primordial, something that reeked of forgotten tombs and ancient vengeance. And now it was loose in Moon Valley, hunting who knew what—or whom.

Jessica turned toward home, her mind already forming plans. She needed to warn Kevin and Salina. They had to research Queen Aziza, had to figure out what they were dealing with before anyone else died. But as she raced through the shadows, Jessica couldn't shake the feeling that they were already behind in this game. The image of those massive claw marks seemed burned into her mind, and Kevin swore he heard a strange voice.

She picked up her pace, powerful muscles carrying her through empty streets. Whatever this creature was, wherever it had gone, one thing was certain—Moon Valley had a new supernatural adversary on the loose.

Deep down, Jessica feared that even her werewolf powers, combined with Salina's magic and Kevin's brilliant mind, might not be enough to stop whatever escaped from the sarcophagus.