Wen Spencer

“Are you some kind of tree police?” Joshua asked without opening his eyes. “Do you feel as if you have some kind of civic duty to come out here and—and—annoy the hell out of me?”
“Well—yes—I do have a civic duty to stop you—that is—if you needed stopping. If you’d kept to simple tree assault, I would have just kept watching. It was fairly entertaining, in a train wreck kind of way. You’ve moved up to tree homicide.”
“Homicide?” Joshua opened his eyes to give the man an annoyed glare. “That implies intent. At most, this is tree slaughter. Maybe even just reckless endangerment—it might not be dead.”
They eyed the tree in silence. His kick had sheered the tree trunk off five inches from the roots, leaving behind a jagged white stump, flowing with sap.
“No, that’s dead,” the man said.
“Yeah.” Joshua had to agree. It occurred to Joshua that this person might be undercover cop or some off-duty park ranger or a very lost Canadian Mountie or something. He’d seen Joshua destroy a piece of public property worth hundreds of dollars. The man might try to arrest him. That wouldn’t end well for either one of them.”
― Wen Spencer, The Black Wolves of Boston

“It was comforting for only a moment. Then Joshua realized that the dude still had a seriously huge knife in his hand.
The part of him that was crying like a kicked puppy took off running. Unfortunately it took the rest of him with it.
“No! Nononono!” He cried even as he bolted. This was what scared him about being a werewolf. He wasn’t in control of his body anymore. Because of his last name and small size, he’d always been a target of bullies. He’d learned early that they could hurt him but they couldn’t control him if he didn’t let them. And then he learned martial arts and they couldn’t even hurt him anymore. In the last twenty-four hours, it had been as if he was strapped into a rollercoaster: all he could do was go for the ride and scream a lot.”
― Wen Spencer, The Black Wolves of Boston