Moonspear by a route obscure and lonely

Everything about the young male invited Alya's curiosity. He was a stranger, but he was Dark like her, like her sisters and her mother. Like Dashie had been. Already, she felt a certain kinship. But there were other feelings, too. Not kinship, and caused by something other than the color of his pelt - though it was still a sort of darkness, what drew her.

"Cursed?" she asked, a chill going through her at the word. A flash of tawny fur and pale, hungry fangs tore across her memory. "What do you mean? What's cursed? How do you get cursed?"