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arm soon began to change, thick black fur sprouting out to completely cover his skin, while burgeoning muscles took root beneath. As he completed one side, he began to concentrate on his torso and stomach, roaring in anger as internal organs and bones were painfully displaced and rearranged to accommodate the thing he was becoming.

    Last to go were the human head and feet, the sections of his body that were the least painful to change. More claws distended, canine teeth lengthened to dangerous, steely points, and Jacob the Man became Jacob the Beast. Once finished, he stood to his full height, one that was awesome to behold. Uncaring who heard, he let out a triumphant roar, his muzzle opened wide and shaking with the effort as large deposits of drool pooled and stretched to drop to the ground. As always, Becoming made him heady with a sense of freedom that he knew he could never feel as a man.

    All right, Jacob, enough showing off . And with that, he went down to all fours and loped back toward the woods in search of his prey. The bear, every fierce inch of him, was on the hunt.

     

    Jacob knew that what he was about to do was dangerous, but if at all possible, he needed to see who had been following him. If, as he suspected, new slave catchers had entered the area, he needed to let other underground members know. He backtracked over the way he had come only minutes before. Reaching the cover of the woods, he slowed his pace and tried to move with as little noise as possible toward where he'd last sensed them when he was a man.

    He snorted. I love Becoming bear . Cheetah didn't appeal to him as it did Grace, and he wasn't one to vary his choices like his father and Matthew did.

    But of course, as bear, stealth was completely out of the question. It was all he could do not to go crashing madly through the woods like the animal he was. And with paws as big as platters, a backside that never met a branch it didn't love to brush up against, and a grace that was, well, nonexistent, as little noise as possible was the best he could manage.

    Suddenly he stopped, every instinct he had shouting out a warning. Nose lifted to the air, he scented his prey. There were three of them. He could smell their separate odors, yet they also smelled the same. He lifted his muzzle higher, taking deeper breaths. Yes, he'd been correct. It was the same odor he'd smelled earlier, the same one that had had such a curious effect on him. He sniffed again. The men smelled of sulfur and—another sniff—and yes, that was it: brimstone. They smelled of sulfur and brimstone. After moving toward the scents, he stopped at a point where he could see them, but one at which he could not be detected. Angry and panicked now, he took a long look at them. The words kill or be killed burst into his head and quickly—terrifyingly—became a deadly chant he could not cast out.

    The instinct to protect his people and kill indiscriminately, shredding throats and ripping out entrails, warred viciously with his common sense instinct. Killing three white men would only bring trouble for the people of his town and for the underground's cause—not to mention that he feared it would do something irreversible to his soul. With flaring nostrils and short, angry breaths, he watched them—watched the three men who he sensed were nothing but masses of evil covered with skin. Their malevolence was palpable, reaching out and touching him as if with a large hand. His big body shuddered in revulsion, his mind automatically rejecting the contact.

    The three men had dismounted from their horses and were searching the area just off the side of the road. Jacob recognized none of them, which told him they were new to the area. He deliberately stepped on a branch, making it crack loudly in the stillness. His eyes glowed with satisfaction when all three men spun around, trying to figure out where the sound had come from.

    “You hear that?” one of the men asked the other two in