Dark of the Moon by Rachel Hawthorn

Brittany is another young woman who is coming up on her seventeenth birthday and her transformation into a Dark Guardian. But as her time approaches, she feels that something is wrong. All the other girls near her age feel something different, something special: a heightening of their senses, and a rush of heat and sensation when they get close to the one who is meant to be their chosen mate.

Brittany feels- nothing. She feels no attraction to any of the men who comprise the Dark Guardians, and no attraction to any of the men brought in for her to mate with. And she resents being paired with anyone, because the man who helps you through your first transformation is the mate who is supposed to be with you always.

So when the full moon comes, she goes off on her own, even though no female guardian has ever survived her moon passage alone. And, much to her shock, nothing happens. Nothing at all. No transformation. She remains merely human. In shock, she wanders through the forest alone for a day and another night before returning home. But she hopes she can hide her non-transformation from the other Dark Guardians.

But even as she searches through the Dark Guardian's holy book to find an answer, Dr. Keane and Mason are still out there, still looking to study the werewolves, and use their genes to turn humans into supersoldiers. At the same time, Brittany is finding out some painful truths about herself, and why she didn't transform.

But when she and Connerare captured by Mason, He alternately threatens her and lures her with the promise of using his research to become a Dark Guardian in her own right and become what she has most longed to be. But will Brittany betray the Dark Guardians, and Connor, who she is slowly coming to love, to change the genetic quirk that left her human, and not Were?

This is the third and final novel in the Dark Guardians series, and one of the most enjoyable. From Kayla, a werewolf who didn't know who and what she was, to Lyndsey, a werewolf who was confused about what she wanted, but knew what she would be, now we have Brittany, who knows what she wants and what she wants to be, but is denied it by her genes.

The Question for Brittany is what she will do next, now that she has lost everything. What will her former compatriots do to her? Will they kill her for knowing too much? wipe her memories of what she knows and send her elsewhere? She doesn't know, and she can't give up on the people she grew up with and lived with all her life. But it separates her from those she's always been close to, just when she needs them most

I liked the uncertainty in the novel, although we, the readers, are kept in the dark about Brittany's choices and why she is making them. And in the end, she finds a reason to stay with the other guardians: she can do things they can't. But even if I found the ending slightly contrived, I thought this was the most compelling and gripping of all the Dark Guardian novels. Recommended.