The pack had finished whatever communication passed between creatures that could think with human minds while wearing animal bodies. They arranged themselves around Evan in a formation that spoke of practiced coordination, of hunts and runs and shared experiences that stretched back further than I could imagine.
Then, as if responding to some signal I couldn't perceive, they moved.
It was like watching liquid shadow given purpose, six massive forms flowing through the forest with synchronized grace that took my breath away. They didn't run so much as pour themselves between the trees, paws striking earth in rhythm that sounded like distant thunder, bodies moving with efficiency that belonged to apex predators who'd never needed to question their place in the food chain.
I scrambled to my feet without conscious thought, driven by photographer's instinct and the desperate need to see more, to understand what I was witnessing even if understanding destroyed everything I thought I knew about the world. Mycamera came up automatically, motor drive whirring as I captured frame after frame of impossible beauty in motion.
But they were already disappearing into green shadows, swallowed by forest that seemed to bend around them like it was actively helping them vanish. Within seconds, even the sound of their passage had faded, leaving me alone in the clearing with nothing but the smell of wild musk and the rapidly cooling memory of transformation.
I sank to my knees in the exact spot where Evan had been kneeling minutes before, camera falling forgotten into my lap as the full weight of what I'd witnessed crashed over me like a collapsing building.
Werewolves. Fucking werewolves.
They were real, and they lived in Hollow Pines, and one of them was the boy I'd loved from a distance for most of my teenage years. The boy I'd abandoned six years ago because I'd been too scared to admit what he meant to me, too cowardly to risk rejection from someone who probably wasn't even human to begin with.
19
WEIGHT OF TRUTH
EVAN
The pack run was supposed to clear my head, was supposed to burn away the confusion and want that had been eating at me since Nate walked back into my life. Four legs, forest floor, the primal simplicity of muscle and instinct.
Instead, I caught his scent halfway through our circuit of the territory.
Human. Male. Fear-sweat and adrenaline and that particular combination of soap and darkroom chemicals that had been haunting my dreams for six years. Nate's scent, threading through the pine and moss like an accusation, like evidence of exactly how badly I'd fucked up by thinking I could keep these worlds separate.
My wolf slammed to a halt so fast that Jonah nearly plowed into my hindquarters, his confused whine cutting through the night air. But I was already peeling away from the pack, muscles screaming as I forced the change mid-stride, bones grindingand reforming while I ran toward the disaster I could smell approaching like a wildfire.
Because Nate was following us. Had followed us deep enough into Evernight Forest to see things that no human was supposed to witness.
And now all of that was about to come crashing down because I'd been stupid enough to think I could have both worlds without one destroying the other.
The shift hit me like a freight train loaded with broken glass, human form slamming back into place while I was still running full speed through undergrowth that clawed at newly naked skin. But I didn't slow down, didn't let the pain of transformation steal momentum I needed to reach Nate before he stumbled into something that would get him killed.
Or worse.
I found him crouched behind a fallen log about fifty yards from where the pack had gathered for our evening hunt, camera clutched in white-knuckled hands and eyes wide.
He'd seen everything. I could tell from the way he was staring at the clearing, from the careful way he was holding his camera like it contained evidence of the impossible. He'd watched me shift, had probably photographed the whole goddamn thing, and now he was sitting there trying to process what it meant that the boy he'd known in high school could become something out of folklore and nightmare.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
“All this time,” he said, voice shaking with an emotion I couldn't name, “you've been hiding this from me?”
His voice cut through the forest quiet like a blade, fury and betrayal and disbelief all wrapped up in three words that hit me harder than any physical blow could have. He spun to face me, and the look in his eyes made my chest cave in on itself with the weight of everything I'd never told him.
I stood there naked and bleeding from a dozen scratches, heart hammering against my ribs like it was trying to escape, and tried to find words for the truth I'd spent six years learning to bury. But my throat had closed up the way it always did when emotions got too big, when the gap between what I felt and what I could say became a chasm I didn't know how to cross.
“Evan.” His voice cracked on my name, and the sound of it made my wolf whine low in my chest. “How long have you been able to do that? How long have you been lying to me?”
“Not here,” I managed, voice rough with desperation and the lingering effects of transformation. “Come with me. I'll explain.”
It wasn't really a request. Couldn't be, not when he was sitting fifty yards from pack territory with a camera full of evidence and no understanding of how dangerous his ignorance could be. The Alpha command bled through my words whether I wanted it to or not, carrying the weight of authority that most humans couldn't resist even when they didn't understand why they were obeying.
Nate's jaw clenched, and for a moment I thought he might tell me to go fuck myself. Might choose anger over curiosity, might make this easy by walking away and never speaking to me again.
Instead, he stood slowly, camera still clutched against his chest like armor.
