I awoke on my couch to steady strokes of a tongue-in-the-face wash and Medea’s distinctive thrumming. Stefan’s voice came as a relief because it meant that he was alive, just like me. But when Samuel replied, though his purring tones bore more than a passing resemblance to the noise my cat was making, there was no comfort to be had from the cold menace under the soft voice.

Adrenaline pumped through me at the sound. I pushed the memory of the night’s terrors aside. What was important this minute was that tonight was the full moon and there was an enraged werewolf not two feet from me.

I tried to...