Sam made a face at the question. "It hurts. I'm not gonna lie about that. But it probably doesn't hurt more than, you know, being strapped down in a tube and bombarded with radiation does. You'll do fine. The weird thing is just- feeling it all, the way your body reshapes, feeling fur grow from your skin. The way the wolf's mind sort of...lurks in the back of your head. It's there all the time, but it's harder to ignore closer to the full moon."

"That sounds scary," he added hastily. "It's not, really. It's like a set of instincts, just knowing that there's this part of you that's a wild animal that wants to get out. It wants to run and hunt and do all the natural things animals do." Yeah, he was aware he wasn't really selling the whole wolf thing very well.