Shiver

The next morning, Sam’s super-sharp hearing and sense of smell alerts him that Grace’s father is getting ready to go to work. Expecting her father to check in on Grace before he leaves, Sam gets ready to hide. However, Grace’s father doesn’t check in on her, and neither does her mother, leaving Sam concerned about their indifference toward Grace. With Grace’s parents out of the house, Sam leaves a sleeping Grace to check out the backyard. Shelby, the white wolf, appears, visibly unharmed in the hunt. Smelling Grace’s scent on Sam, Shelby curls her lips in distaste. Sam observes that he and Shelby are often at odds with each other on the subject of humans: Sam clings to his human self and his connection to Grace, while Shelby wants to stay a wolf. Shelby also believes she is in love with Sam, but Sam thinks she wants to be close to him only because he is a high-ranking pack member, second only to the leaders Paul and Beck.

After Shelby leaves, Sam reflects that now is a particularly cruel time for him to meet Grace. Sam senses this is the last year when he can transform into a human for a prolonged time: The more time werewolves spend as wolves, the further they get from humanity. Older werewolves like Paul stay in their wolf form permanently. Sam pushes away these anxious thoughts to head inside, where Grace has woken up. Together, they make breakfast in the kitchen, easy in each other’s presence. Sam and Grace finally kiss, even though Sam wants to protect himself and Grace from the hurt that is sure to accompany their inevitable separation.

Grace skips school—a rare occurrence—so she can hang out with Sam, cherishing each moment he spends as a human. Grace asks Sam if it was Jack’s blood on his muzzle the day she petted him. Sam reveals the blood was from a cat he killed for food. He has little idea which of his pack members attacked Jack, though he tells Grace that Jack baited the wolves before his attack. Sam’s pack members “showed” Sam the image of Jack pointing a BB gun at them—wolves communicate not through human language but shared visual images.

Grace is curious if Sam thought about her as a wolf. Sam explains that in his wolf-state, he does not experience memory the same way he does as a human. Instead of remembering Grace, the person, wolf-Sam misses Grace’s scent. Sam too has a question for Grace: He wants to know if Grace fell sick after she was bitten. Grace tells him she got the flu right after her attack. Sam remembers he too felt flu-like exhaustion before his first transformation.

That night, Sam sleeps in Grace’s bed again. As Grace watches him, she’s filled with affection. She promises herself she’ll find a cure for Sam.

Sam drops Grace off at school. Grace’s friend Rachel informs her about the mayhem that occurred yesterday: A wolf with a bluish-grey coat was seen outside the school, triggering panic. Olivia and Isabel freaked out in particular. Grace thinks that the wolf must have been Jack. In the corridor, she sees Isabel crying. Grace wants to reach out to Isabel, but when Isabel gives her a challenging look, Grace retreats.

Grace’s story about Jack appearing at school reminds Sam of Christa Bohlmann. Christa was a young woman when she joined their pack. Resentful of the wolves who had bitten her, Christa took her anger out on humans, deliberately killing them. Sam recalls Beck yelling at an unrepentant Christa and throwing her out of his safehouse in the woods. Beck followed Christa with a gun and shot her dead since she was too much of a threat to humans. Sam wonders if he should call Beck about Jack stalking the school, but he can’t remember Beck’s cell phone number.

The next morning, Sam stumbles across Olivia’s photos of the wolf pack. He identifies the wolves for Grace: The large one is Beck, a quasi-father to Sam. Beck is the wolf who took Sam in when he escaped from his home. Paul is the pack leader when they are wolves, while Ulrik, with German heritage is their “crazy Uncle” who swears a lot (110). The pack has only had two newcomers after Sam: Christa and the wolf she turned, Derek. Sam tells Grace that Beck taught him how to hunt wild animals when he was eight. Learning hunting was necessary for Sam to survive as a wolf, but he hated it since he is squeamish about blood. When Sam sees a picture of himself as a wolf, he cannot recognize it the way he recognizes the other wolves, which makes him feel his wolf and human identities are at odds.

After dropping off Grace at school, a restless Sam wishes he could meet Beck to discuss Jack. Beck, the leader of the wolf pack when they are human, has been a father figure to Sam, taking care of him and educating him. Sam is also desperate to know if this indeed is his last spell in human form, and therefore, the only time he has with Grace. Sam goes over to the Culpeper house on the hunch that Jack may have been there as a wolf. At the empty mansion, he can pick up the stale scent of a wolf, and assumes Jack visited a while ago. He follows the scent and sees several stuffed animals in a high-ceilinged room. Amidst the deer heads is a wolf-head, smelling of Sam’s woods. This is the scent Sam had picked up. Repulsed, Sam leaves the mansion.

Sam tells Grace he fears Tom Culpeper, Jack’s father, will go after the wolf pack again. The next morning, Grace has coffee with her own dad as Sam stays hidden in her room. As they chat, Grace’s father asks her if she has seen a gun cleaner around. Grace realizes her father was one of the men who shot at the wolves a few days ago. She’s angry that her father would target wild animals. Grace’s father says he joined the hunting party for her, since he doesn’t want the wolves to attack more children in town, but claims he only fired warning shots to disperse the pack. After her dad leaves for work, Grace wonders how she’ll ever be able to tell him about Sam and his secret.

Sam wants to check if Jack is hiding in Beck’s safehouse. He and Grace go to the large home, which is at the other edge of the woods. Beck, a successful lawyer in his human life, bought the house for the pack to shelter between transformations. He keeps it stocked with food and clothing. Finding the house deserted, they park the car in the yard and decide to explore the woods. As Grace walks further into the woods, she feels a sense of familiarity. Although she has never visited this part of the forest, she recognizes the birch trees with golden leaves. Grace’s familiarity with the woods confirms Sam’s hunch: Sam thinks Grace did change after she was bitten, but for some reason, has not yet physically transformed into a wolf state. Only a werewolf would be able to navigate the woods this way and understand Sam’s story. Grace is not sure about Sam’s theory. Lost in their conversation, the two belatedly realize the day has grown very cold. They hurry back to Beck’s house with Sam worried that the house may have no power.

Sam is afraid the cold will turn him into a wolf in front of Grace, something he wholeheartedly wants to avoid. However, he can’t stop himself from shivering violently as they near the safehouse. Grace pulls Sam into the house just in the nick of time and covers Sam with her jacket. Sam huddles on the floor and tries to focus on staying human. Memories of his first transformation, which occurred in front of his mother when he was seven, flash through Sam’s head. Meanwhile, Grace fills up a bathtub with hot water and drags Sam to it. She apologizes to Sam for forcing him to get into the tub, knowing his fear of drowning, but she has no other option. Once Sam stabilizes, Grace drains out the tub and wraps him in towels. Sam is awed at Grace’s strength and presence of mind.

As Sam recovers on the couch, Grace makes him soup and toast in Beck’s kitchen. Though she kept a brave face with Sam, Grace is terrified. She especially feels guilty about forcing Sam into the bathtub. Grace joins Sam in Beck’s living room, which has many photos of the pack as humans. Grace suddenly misses her own friends, Rachel and Olivia. She tells Sam that the fridge and heaters in the house are working, which means someone recently paid the power bill. This cannot be Beck, who is a wolf right now. The likeliest possibility is Jack. Sam stiffens at the mention of Jack and wants to take Grace home immediately. Grace asks him to rest for a bit. The two cuddle and kiss. Grace wants to make love, but Sam wants the timing to be right. They head out to Grace’s house.

Grace is surprised that her parents are home when she and Sam get back. She distracts her parents in the kitchen while Sam sneaks up to her room. Sam is glad to be in a warm house and gets into Grace’s bed, where she joins him later. Sam wants to tell Grace that this will be his last year transforming into a human but cannot find the words. He does inform her that once he stops turning, he will only live a wolf’s lifespan of 15 years. Dismayed, Grace distracts herself by hugging Sam.

Sam and Grace run into Rachel as Sam drives Grace to school. Rachel introduces Sam to Rachel as her homeschooled boyfriend. Later, Rachel tells Grace that a wolf came up to Olivia’s house twice; claw marks were found on her door. Grace knows this is Jack and cannot understand what Jack would want with Olivia. Since Olivia dismissed Grace’s suspicions about Jack, the two girls have not been talking to each other.

Isabel finds Grace and tells her she has seen her brother, though he is supposed to be dead. She says Jack told her something was wrong with him and ran away. He also said Grace would be able to explain what was happening to him. Grace refuses to share information with Isabel because wolf-pack-members don’t divulge their secrets to outsiders. Instead, she tells Isabel she’s mistaken about Jack being alive. Isabel needs to get help. Isabel counters that approaching Grace is her way of getting help.