Vivian's werewolf clan has fled from discovery in West Virginia to the tenuous safety of the Maryland suburbs, but their leader, Vivian's father, is dead and the pack is in turmoil. Angry at her male age-mates who she feels caused her father's death, Vivian feels estranged from her own kind, yet unable to fit in with the humans at school. When a poem about shape-changing appears beside her expressionistic print in the school literary magazine, Vivian sets out to meet this young man who knows too much, and is shocked to discover that she is attracted to a meat-boy. Ignoring her werewolf suitor, and defying the laws of her clan she romances a human-it couldn't hurt, could it? But then the bodies start to turn up."