Mal started out as a seemingly minor character, your stereotypical sullen, standoffish teenage boy. By the end, however, he surprised everyone – myself included – by Turning into a Werewolf….
As Mal establishes himself within his new pack, he slowly begins to unravel the Lycans’ closely guarded secrets. The facts he discovers about Turning Houses and the Half-Souled make his skin crawl, and the more he uncovers – the closer he gets to finding out the truth about his sister – the greater the risk.
I enjoyed watching as the stakes were raised, plot twists popped up, and old friends and family from Random reappeared to lend Mal a helping hand.
If you enjoyed Random, I have no doubt you’ll be exceedingly pleased with Wolf. It’s a worthy progression of the series, and Mal is a protagonist you can root for, sympathize with, and even fall for. I’m so excited to see what’s next for Mal, his friends, and his family in The Were Chronicles’ final chapter and only hope the months fly by until book three is released! ~ Angela Cabezas, Angela's Library
When I first physically lashed out at a bully, it was with predictable results – and those results repeated themselves all too often in the fights that followed. Black eyes. Bruises. Scrapes and scratches. Bloody noses. Even, once, a broken arm – but that one, I gave as good as I got, and you should have seen the other guy, as they say. Well, perhaps I exaggerate. But I wasn’t a punching bag. I was a miniature warrior, standing up for… for things I myself was probably too young to fully formulate in my own mind. All I knew was that it was necessary. That words would only be laughed at the harder. Celia did have that option – and I knew something of her own troubles, and her loneliness, but she was a girl and she dealt with things in her own way, quietly, on the inside. It would only have made it worse if I had tried to do the same.
So I fought. And I lost the fights. And I learned from every one of those losses. Until the day that I actually found myself left in possession of the field, breathing hard, a magnificent bruise already starting to flower on my cheekbone, but still standing, and with no other combatants in sight.
For the first time… ever… I had actually won.
There had been two of them that time and I knew that if I relied on physical strength alone I would have gotten more bruises than usual. But for once I fought quietly, coldly, using guile and strategy rather than simply strength, and somehow I was still standing after they had had enough and had slunk away.
I became aware of my audience only slowly, an awareness of a presence, and for a moment I braced myself, expecting a new assault from a fresh adversary. I had spent myself already and I was simply going to have to curl up and take the blows as they came. But it wasn’t a third enemy. It was a boy whose age I found hard to guess. He was thin, almost scrawny, but there was a sense that he was made of steel and whipcord underneath clothes which hung awkwardly on his wiry frame. His dark hair, chopped by an obviously amateur hand, just brushed his shoulders; his face was all hollows and cheekbones and his eyes were an odd dark green shade which I’d never seen on another human being before. He gave me a half salute once he realized that I had registered his presence.
And brought into focus another thing.
There had been three of them who had jumped me. I had dealt with two. But there had been a third. A shadow somewhere behind me. I had no clear memory of what had happened, after, but that third shadow… it had just…
Now that I filtered my blurred memories of the fight to focus on what I had not had the time to pay close attention to in the thick of battle, I remembered a grunt and had a glimpse of falling. But it hadn’t been my doing. None of it.
The boy watching me could probably see all of this unraveling in the expression on my face – the realization of what must have happened, and a blossoming resentment that my accomplishment, my winning this tussle, was not my own accomplishment. He grinned at me, revealing a mouthful of teeth which looked like they ought to be sharper. His build and his looks might have hinted at vulnerability but it was camouflage, and that grin was pure predator.
“I saw them jump you,” he said. “I hung around to see if you might need help.”
“Do I know you?” I asked, spitting the words out through uneven breaths I was still struggling to get under control. He was a total stranger; I didn’t know every face of every kid in our school, to be sure, but I was pretty certain that I’d have remembered this face if it had been hanging around the halls. And I didn’t know him. I was still out of breath, but I figured I could take him, In a moment of two. When I had recovered just a little.
But he didn’t seem inclined to pick a fight. In fact, he looked about ready to leave me to it, shoving himself off the wall he had been leaning against and stuffing both hands into the pockets of his scruffy jeans.
“Don’t mind me,” he said, shrugging his narrow shoulders. “Just happened to be passing.”
“What did you do?” I demanded, furious, as he turned his back on me and began to amble away.
“Not all that much. Didn’t stop him from doing anything he wanted to do. He just happened to walk into something on his way there.”
“Walk into what?” I said, still not mollified.
“My foot,” he threw over his shoulder, together with a last flash of a grin.
“He’ll just come back to finish it!” I yelled after him as he walked away, presenting me with a view of a thin back and a pair of long gangly legs clad in clean but obviously well-worn jeans.
“So you’ll get him next time,” he said as he vanished around a corner.
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