"I know. I've been thinking about that."
He nodded, as if confirming his own reasoning to himself.
"I think Cassius could bring someone here. Not from your group — someone I don't care about as much, because I want to know what happens to a regular person before I'm near you or Dad or Erica." He paused.
"I don't want the first person I might accidentally hurt to be someone I love."
I looked at my son.
Seven years old.
I'm scared I'll hurt you.
That was the sentence I'd been carrying since Aldric first described the transformation. The sentence I'd feared more than almost anything — not the words themselves but the possibility of them. The possibility that what Alaric became would be something that couldn't safely exist near the people he loved.
He'd arrived at it himself. Had bee
