“I HOPE YOU KNOW HOW proud I am of you,” I told my brother hours later as he squeezed packet after packet of fast-food ketchup into our wolfling’s gaping maw during our last stop before reaching the Tribunal’s peacekeeping grounds. It turned out that ketchup slowed the effects of F2F while also lessening the after-headache, proving that Cricket’s instincts about Ethan’s dining habits had been spot on after all.
Luckily, my own instincts that a brave young man lurked beneath the tattooed body of my little brother were right as well. I could barely imagine how much strength of will it must have taken to inject himself with Dale’s d**g the first time, not knowing whether he would die, would wind up stuck in wolf form for the rest of his life, or would be entirely unaffected by the cocktail.
