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"It's getting warmer," Amanda said, touching the plastic jug resting on the work table.

"Just don't open it. I want to give it a look later," Jacob said.

"I know. I was just curious."

Amanda was especially in good spirits for someone who had yet to know if the dialysis had worked. Good spirits for anyone who had just been through three four-hour sessions of dialysis over the course of a week. Jacob knew the toll it took on his sister when she suffered kidney failure. A chronic necessity of going to the clinic every few days, just one session seemed to leave patients spent and exhausted. But Amanda was perfectly healthy, and if this worked, she wouldn't need to go quite as often as his sister did.

"You seem very happy."

"I guess I am. I can feel it getting darker outside, but I don't feel...it, you know? I know it was the dialysis."

Jacob hoped his wife was right. Ever since she was attacked a year ago, they had discreetly scoured the Internet for solutions to her affliction. The sum total of publicly available knowledge about her condition, however, was a jumble of vague half-truths and pure fiction bordering on fetish. Amanda needed a concrete remedy that was better than what they were already doing.

"It's getting to that time, Amanda. We should get you downstairs."

She turned around to face her husband. She had a sly smile as she leaned back against the work table, arching her body toward her. "I don't need it." She sure smelled good, Jacob thought. And it worried him, because she smelled good on these nights since the attack. Was it not working, then?

"I know it will be alright," she assured him, almost as if she read his mind, "My skin is warm but it's not burning like it would be. My heart isn't beating so fast. We'll be safe."

"Yes, we will," Jacob said, inching closer, "But we'll be safe in the basement. You promised this morning, remember?"

Amanda groaned, almost disappointed. "Fine," she said, "I'll get the chains."

***

Amanda had been overwhelmed by a powerful animal on a business trip over a year ago. She would have suffered worse if not for some highway trooper stopping to ward the beast off. Her wounds healed, but the full moon left no doubt the animal had left a mark.

She hated being a werewolf, except when the full moon was this close to changing her. The electric excitement of unleashing the beast and losing all control destroyed any sense of restraint in the hour or so before moonrise, when the wolf within her began to awaken. But most of the time, she dreaded it. She didn't want to be cursed, forced to hide in her and her husband's basement, chained to the wall to protect Jacob and the neighborhood around them. But lycanthropy had no cure, that much was certain from the mess of information on the Internet. Short of finding another werewolf by random chance, they were on their own. All they had was her determination to cope with her condition, and their love to get through each full moon.

And maybe a little bit of common sense.

The funeral for Jacob's sister three weeks ago was particularly heartbreaking, but it did bring about a strange idea. When family and friends got together and remarked to no end how the dialysis treatments had extended her life by seven years when doctors only gave her six months at first, it got Jacob thinking.

The wolf was in Amanda's blood. That much they hoped was true, given that her heart beat faster and her skin burned whenever the change was imminent. If it was an impurity, surely it could be filtered out like any other waste product. Just as dialysis did for his sister.

It took a bit of getting around the clinic's questions about why a healthy person such as Amanda needed what was called hemodialysis, and on a regular basis. But money talked, and it had to without the recommendation of a doctor. Thankfully Jacob's publishing business took care of both of them very well. She was put on the machine for the first time, one week before the full moon. They finished her third treatment just that afternoon. Out of morbid curiosity, Jacob slipped the nurse an extra fifty to allow him to take home the plastic jug that held the used diasylate that filtered his wife's blood. To the clinic, it was little more than biohazardous waste to be drained in the sink. To him, it held his wife's lycanthropy and all of its impurities that would react to the full moon.

"You're right, it is getting hot," he said, touching the sides of the jug one more time. He had brought it, his wife and her restraints down to the basement, her home during the nights of her transformation. It would stay down here as well. He didn't want anything related to his wife's curse outside of the basement. If it spilled for any reason, at least they could contain it there. As he had one hand resting on the now hot plastic surface of the jug, a spill seemed like a real possibility. It was heavy and rooted to the cement floor, but the surface seemed to vibrate a little. As if the liquid inside was moving about, sloshing around on its own power somehow.

Amanda, fully undressed, was tightening one of the cuffs around her wrist with her free hand. Her ankles were already shackled against the floor. "I know, I can feel it, too," she said, starting to sound more fearful, "Maybe it was a waste of time after all."

Jacob shook his head, feeling a tinge of confidence. "You're still talking, you're not thrashing around."

"Not yet."

"That's the point. You usually feel it coming out a lot sooner. Maybe the dialysis had an effect after all."

"I don't know. I still feel the moon," she said in between labored breaths, "I feel I'll change any minute now."

Jacob had no time to reassure her that dialysis had to be, at minimum, a step in the right direction. If there was one tuft of fur on her body when the change was finished, then it had to be a success, and only more sessions would make her better. And if that wasn't true at all, he had no problem taking care of her every full moon for the rest of their lives. He loved her, no matter what.

He kissed her on the lips, a dangerous thing to do with a werewolf so close to the transformation. Any transmission of the curse into his blood would surely double their problems on the next full moon. But it calmed her down long enough to steady her free hand against the restraints above her and to the side. Jacob took care of the last lock for her.

"What would I do without you?" she said softly.

"Hunt down large animals and wake up naked in the forest."

It was a joke, and Amanda laughed nervously, but it flashed back to painful memories of her first change, when they didn't know a wolf lived inside her and wanted to be unleashed. On the drive back home when he found her, all he could think of was the dried blood of some creature running down her chin and upper body, and his wife hesitantly but ultimately licking at it to savor some taste of her first kill.

"I love you, no matter what happens," he said, eliciting a smile before the convulsing began.

"J-J-Jacob!"

The chains rattled at the force of Amanda's thrashing. Jacob stepped back to examine her and hear her cries of agony. The moon was surely burning at her now. The restraints would hold, Jacob told himself. They always did. Still, the clattering noise of the metal links brought about by her transformation was no less unsettling in the first few moments of every full moon.

Amanda leaned forward until the arm restraints snapped taut against the wall. She bared her teeth at Jacob. They had already become sharpened into fangs.

The werewolf was still there.

Jacob looked behind him when he heard a bubbling sound. The plastic jug at the foot of the stairs on the opposite end of the basement had begun to steam. Wisps of smoke came from where the cap to the jug used to be, and the diasylate mixed with Amanda's lycanthropy began to foam and spray all over the floor around it.

He looked back, and Amanda's small frame had been replaced with greater muscle tone. The musculature of a hungry and fit werewolf. She opened her palms, which had been bloodied by the growing claws forming at the tips of her fingers. Her voice had adopted a snarling effect as saliva trickled from her mouth. The animal was coming out.

Jacob despaired for a bit. He was not as certain as his wife when they were upstairs and she then expressed confidence they had beaten back her curse. But logical thinking told him that the dialysis would have some effect, that he would get some of his wife back during the full moon. Was this all that he had to look forward to every month?

Amanda screamed in pain as the moon took her.

Screamed.

She was still screaming.

Still sounding human.

By now, Jacob had pretty much learned the timing of Amanda's transformation. Her werewolf was too powerful to resist or even slow down, so the time it took for the animal to be unleashed was always more or less consistent. By now, her screams would have turned into howls. The whine of a vicious animal that had lacked any language or rational thought.

It was then that he looked more closely at Amanda. Yellow fur matching the tint of the hair on her head had indeed sprouted up and down her body. But it was more downy, smooth and short, not shaggy and tangled like his wife's fur was when fully transformed. And there was less of it. It sprouted in the places where it usually grew first and thickest. A line of fur from between her legs up to the gap between her breasts. Under her armpits, tracing another line down her arms to the backs of her hands. And her chin, creeping up the sides of her face. The rest of her skin, however, was smooth as always.

"Amanda?"

She still didn't register, as she continued to thrash about. But less violently this time. It still looked painful but nothing like the violent movements of a rabid animal that wanted to be released. She was still changing, but if Jacob focused enough, he could see that the change was slowing down. Her nose blackened but her snout never emerged. Still, when it was all over, she howled.

"AAAAAaaaaaarrrrOOOOOOO!"

Amanda the werewolf - the half-transformed werewolf - collapsed as far forward as the chains would let her. She hung against the wall, letting the chains suspend her in mid-air, keeping her from falling flat onto the ground as she lost consciousness for a moment.

Jacob began to worry. He had never seen his wife asleep as a werewolf before. What if the dialysis didn't cure her, but instead killed her? What if the wolf didn't appreciate half-measures and decided killing its host was better?

He crept forward, still cautious that he was approaching a dangerous creature, even if it was his wife. But as he drew closer, he could see she was exhausted, and wasn't going to hurt him while she was asleep. He held his half-transformed wife by her arms. He had never touched her as a werewolf before, and it felt odd. Except for feeling how muscular her arms were, the sensation of her smooth and delicate skin against his hands was just as familiar as anything about her when she was human.

Jacob observed the other changes across her body. He pulled her hair to the side, revealing the telltale pointed ears of the werewolf, shifted toward the top of her head. He looked behind her and down her back. Fur had crept down the center of her back toward her rear, where a furry tail lay lifeless, reminding him that his wife may in fact be dead. But her breathing on his neck as her chin rested on his shoulder removed any doubt she had survived.

He gasped in intense relief. It had worked!

She was heavier, he thought as he pushed her against the wall into a more comfortable position.

"Jacob?"

He moved back to look at his wife, just now recovering from her physical ordeal. She looked at him with almost-glowing yellow eyes, feral and inhuman. But human somehow. Recognizing her husband.

"Are you okay?" he finally said after a moment.

Amanda moved her head about, examining herself. With each look, her mouth curled into a grin. He looked at her face. Everything was slightly different about the way she looked, except the most important features that reminded him she was his wife.

"I can still think," she said, a growl tracing the intonation of her voice, "I can still speak!"

Jacob smiled in satisfaction.

"I can still feel the wolf, but I can control it. It's so powerful, but I can control myself!"

He looked behind Amanda, and he could see a happy tail swishing in both directions, signaling how elated she was. He didn't have wife fully back, but she was still there. Most of the werewolf lay in a puddle behind both of them, reacting and burning against the full moon outside. A little bit remained inside Amanda, and Jacob suspected it would always be this way. But small victories couldn't be ignored. The love of his life would still be with him on the nights of the full moon.

Jacob did the dangerous thing, but also the most natural thing, in leaning forward to embrace Amanda. He hugged her tightly as if he would physically lose her to the werewolf curse. She couldn't return the embrace, but he could feel how overjoyed she was. He could hear it in between her inhuman growls, where a human-sounding, relieved laugh lay.

"It worked, didn't it?" she said, already knowing the answer.

"Yes, it did."

They hugged again, and her chin rested on his shoulder again.

"Can you do something for me, Jacob?" she whispered in his ear. It was subtle and seductive, every quality of a human voice that the rabid wolf within her could not imitate.

"Let me out."