POV: Jake
I had known Liam Black since we were five years old. We met in kindergarten, two weeks into the school year, when I made the mistake of sitting in the chair he apparently considered his and he stared at me with those dark eyes until I moved without him saying a single word. I moved. Then I sat in the chair next to him instead, mostly out of stubbornness, and he looked at me for a moment with something that might have been respectful and that was that.
Seventeen years of friendship built on a five-year-old's decision not to be intimidated. I had known what he was by age eight, when I saw him shift in the woods behind the estate during a sleepover that got out of hand. He had been mortified. I had been fascinated and then, after about ten minutes, completely matter-of-fact about
