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it back before you’re done with your ten miles.”
    “A mile?” I glanced at my watch. It had taken me eight minutes to do less than a mile. I had to be in better shape than this if I was going to survive the trials. But my chest burned and my shins ached. As a werewolf, Isucked: Like all werewolves, I had natural agility and speed, but evidently endurance wasn’t an automatically included ability.
    By the time I completed three miles, I was reduced to walking. I avoided Thorn’s eyes each time I passed him. Why stir up his animosity?
    Thirty minutes later, I plopped down on the other side of the track and lay between the lanes. All this torture and I still had a long workday ahead of me.
    A shadow passed over my head. It was Thorn. “This’ll be a long week for you. Expect to be here at four a.m. tomorrow.”
    “Don’t athletes get a day of rest between events?”
    He snorted. “A day of rest is for people who exert themselves. See you bright and early tomorrow, Nat.” With that he walked off the track and disappeared into the woods.
    A part of me warned myself not to watch him walk away. But I couldn’t help it. Between training for the trials and wanting Thorn, the trials would be far easier for me to deal with.
    My group therapy day was usually Tuesday. A regular schedule made my life, or should I say my stress level, a lot easier to manage. But at this difficult time, with the trials coming, my therapist thought it’d be a great idea to shake things up and have us meet on a Friday. In his phone message last Friday, Dr. Frank explained that he wanted to put me in a new situation to help me learn to accept change. He had sounded cheerful, but his good cheer didn’t help me much while I scrambled to rearrange my work schedule.
    I told myself that now that I’d had my first “official” day of training, I should spend more time working to improve other aspects of my life. Even though I’d beenthrown yet another curveball, with the added Friday session, at least I was on the path to normalcy.
    Since I wasn’t on the Long Island pack’s hit list anymore, it was safe for me to drive to New York City, a somewhat pleasant drive on an early winter day like today. Dr. Frank’s Manhattan office was located not far from Central Park. The building appeared to be no different from any other in Midtown. Matter of fact, the regular folks who walked by every day had no idea that inside the ordinary-looking building was a bunch of supernatural physicians and their practices.
    I’d been to this building many times before I’d officially restarted therapy with Dr. Frank a few months ago. I’d first come here with my parents back when I was a teen. Mom and Dad had settled into the flow of the city easily, and no wonder, they’d lived here many, many years ago. Perhaps through their eyes, the city hadn’t changed much at all from when there had been horse carriages and Model Ts in the streets. But for me, New York City had been a frightening place.
    After growing up in a small town like South Toms River, the city that never slept was too bustling and dirty for me. Even Dr. Frank and his office had been intimidating. The only thing I knew at the time was that I had a problem—and my parents felt it was bad enough for me to seek out magical help.
    As I drove past a street vendor selling Eastern European food, I couldn’t help but think about that first trip. How after I barely survived my session with my therapist, my father had stopped at a cart very similar to the one I now passed and bought me some piping hot piroshki. I remember how the outer breading melted in my mouth while the ground beef within had been spiced to perfection. The whole time, Mom had grumbled about me not needing therapy. But Dad simply bought me the food and told me not to worry about her. He promisedme everything would work out. All I had to do was look forward to more piroshki when we came back for my next therapy session.
    As I walked up to