"This is no good," Farzan said. "You need a complex diet or you will develop a vitamin deficiency. Did you know that overconsumption of animal products has been linked to cancer?"

His breastbone buckled, and his chest expanded in a feline curve. Hot bursts of pressure raced down his back as his spine extenuated and arched, sprouting an appendage from his tailbone. His shoulder blades flexed backward impossibly while his hips realigned, and the muscles of his shortened limbs broadened and knit together, taut. His nails grew and thickened while his fingers and toes retracted, and the balls of his hands and feet bulged into fist-sized roughened pads. All parts of his skin drew up tight around his muscles, and thick fur burst through his body. He could feel the complex transformation of his head — skull elongating, jaws receding, mouth and nose molding together into a muzzle. Fine shoots of whiskers prickled out of him. Though his feline senses worked in his human form, they were now multiplied times ten. His surroundings came into newfound focus, the unveiling of a hidden world.

His sentimentality got swallowed up by the frightening thought of Benoit's nature and what he, himself, had become. It wasn't a childhood story of Bella and her two daddies. He and Benoit were werecats, unfathomable, freakish things.