“I know you’re interested in this,” she said. “If you don’t help me, I’ll get someone else. One way or another, with or without your help, I’m going to break this story. How about it?”

There wasn’t even a question. She called me pretty well: I wouldn’t let a story like this get away from me.

“I’m in,” I said.

I came within a hair of changing my mind outside the Pepsi Center the night of the bout. The crowd swarmed, jostling around me as they elbowed their way through the doors. This many people, all of them with an underlying aggression-they had paid a lot of money to watch two guys beat the crap out of each other-was making me want to growl. The Wolf side of my being didn’t like crowds, didn’t like aggression. I wanted to fight back, snarl, claw my way free to a place where I could run, where no one could touch me.

Concentrating, I worked to keep that part of me buried. I had to keep myself together to do my job.

I still wasn’t sure I wanted to do this job. If Larson turned out to be right and Macy was a werewolf, what if he didn’t want to be exposed? Should I step in and somehow talk her into keeping his secret? He had a right to the life he was carving out for himself. I’d been in his position once. On the other hand, maybe Macy would be okay with exposing his werewolf identity. Then I could claim his first exclusive interview for my radio show. Larson could break the story in print, I’d get the first live interview-part of me really hoped Macy was okay with telling the world about this.

The other part hoped he wasn’t a werewolf at all. Luck had saved him during that bout in Vegas.

Larson met me inside the doors with a press pass that got us close to ringside. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be ringside. Flying sweat and spit would hit us at this range. The arena smelled of crowds, of old sweat and layers of energy. Basketball, hockey, arena football, concerts, and circuses had all played here. A little of each remained, along with the thousands of people who watched. Popcorn, soda, beer, hot dogs, semi-fresh, semi-stale, ground into the concrete floor, never to be erased. And the echoes of shouting.

The arena filled. Larson talked with her colleagues, talked on her cell phone, punched notes into her laptop. We waited for the gladiators to appear.

“You look nervous,” she said to me, fifteen minutes into the waiting. I’d been hugging myself. “You ever been to a fight?”

I shook my head and unclenched my arms, trying to relax. “I’m not much into the whole sports thing. Crowds make me nervous.” Made me want to howl and run, actually.

The announcer came on the booming PA system, his rich, modulated voice echoing through the whole place and rattling my bones. Lights on scoreboards flashed. The sensory input was overwhelming. I guessed we were starting.

The boxers-opponents, combatants, gladiators-appeared. A great cheer traveled through the crowd. Ironically, the people in the upper bleachers saw them before those of us with front row seats. We didn’t see them until they climbed into the ring. The challenger, Ian Jacobson, looked even more fierce in person, glaring, muscles flexing. Already, sweat gleamed on his pale skin.

Then came Jerome Macy.

I smelled him before I saw him, a feral hint of musk and wild in this otherwise artificial environment. It was the smell of fur just under the skin, waiting to break free. Two werewolves could smell each other across the room, catching that distinctive mark.

No one who wasn’t a werewolf would recognize it. Black hair cropped close to his head, he looked normal as he ducked between the ropes and entered the ring. Normal as any heavyweight boxer could look, that is. He seemed hard as stone, his body brown, huge, solid. In his wolf form, he’d be a giant. He went through the same routine, his manager caring for him like he was a racehorse.

Just as I spotted him, he could sense me. He glanced over the ropes, scanning for the source of that lycanthropic odor. Then he saw me sitting next to Jenna Larson, and his eyes narrowed. He must have known why I was here. He must have guessed.

My first instinct, wolf’s instinct, was to cringe. He was bigger than I, meaner; he could destroy me, so I must show deference. But we weren’t wolves here. The human side, the side that needed to get to the bottom of this story and negotiate with Larson, met Macy’s gaze. I had my own strengths that made me his equal, and I wanted him to know that.

As soon as Macy entered the ring, Larson leaned over to me. “Well?” She didn’t take her gaze off the boxer.

Macy kept glancing at us and his mouth turned in a scowl. He must have known who-and what-I was, and surely he knew about Larson. He noted the conspiracy between us and must have known what it meant. Must have realized the implications.

“Yeah, he is,” I said.

Larson pressed her lips together in an expression of subdued triumph.

“What are you going to do?” I said. “Jump in and announce it to the world?”

“No,” she said. “I’ll wait until the fight’s over for that.” She was already typing on her laptop, making notes for her big exposé. Almost, I wanted no part of this. It was like she held this man’s life in her hands.

But more, I wanted to talk to Macy, to learn how he did this. I knew from experience-vivid, hard-fought experience-that aggression and danger brought the wolf side to the fore. If a lycanthrope felt threatened, the animal, monstrous side of him would rise to the surface to defend him, to use more powerful teeth and claws in the battle.

So how did Macy train, fight, and win as a boxer without losing control of his wolf? I never could have done it.

The bout had started. In the ring, the two fighters circled each other-like wolves, almost-separated only by the referee, who seemed small and weak next to them. Then they fell together. Gloves smacked against skin. I winced at the pounding each delivered, jackhammer blows slamming over and over again.

Around me, the journalists in the press box regarded the scene with cool detachment, unemotional, watching the fight clinically, an attitude so at odds with the chaos of the crowd around us.

I flinched at the vehemence of the crowd, the shouts, fierce screams, the wall of emotion like a physical force pressing from all corners of the arena to the central ring. Wolf, the creature inside me, recognized the bloodlust. She-I-wanted to growl, feeling cornered. I hunched my back against the emotion and focused on being human.

The line between civilized and wild was so very thin, after all. No one watching this display could argue otherwise.

They pounded the crap out of each other and kept coming back for more. That was the only way to describe it. An enthusiast could probably talk about the skill of various punches and blocks, maybe even the graceful way they danced back and forth across the ring, giving and pressing in turn in some kind of strategy I couldn’t discern. The strategy may have involved simply tiring each other out. I just waited for it to be over. I couldn’t decide who I was rooting for.

Catching bits of conversation between rounds, I gathered that the previous fight between Macy and Jacobson had been considered inconclusive. The blow that had struck Macy down had been a fluke. That he had stood up without being knocked out-or killed-had been a fluke. No one could agree on which of the two had gotten lucky. The rematch had seemed inevitable.

This time, Macy clearly had the upper hand. His punches continued to be calculated and carefully placed, even in the later rounds. To my eyes, Macy looked like he was holding back. A werewolf should have been able to knock an enemy across the room. As a werewolf, I could have faced down Jacobson. But Macy couldn’t do that. He had to make it look like a fair fight.