“I wish we could keep everything about our DNA except this,” Quinn said. “I want to be part of the pack. I want to have the senses, even though they’re too much right now. I just don’t want to change.”
“The change gets easier in time, once your body gets used to it.”
“There should be some way by now. All the studies on our genes and they don’t bother studying how to keep us from changing.”
He put his arm around Quinn and let Quinn lean into him. “They’ve been studying that too, for a long time. They just haven’t found a way. But remember, it’s ten seconds or less. Then you get to run around here and go hunting with your pack.”
“That part’s great. But I don’t want to be dangerous, Aaron. I don’t want my mom to be afraid of me every single day, not just the full moon.”
“She’s got no reason to be afraid every day.”
“Well, she is.” His eyes filled with tears, and he looked away. “I didn’t tell Aunt Em because she’d besomad at Mom, but it wasn’t a misunderstanding.”
Aaron’s pulse notched up, an exaggerated sensation with the collar’s prongs resting against his neck. “What’re you saying?”
“When Cassius and Sydney came for me, my mom’s the one who said… She saidforfeiture, and they said no, it’s not like that, and she said it had to be. Those were her terms, not theirs.”
“I’m sorry.”
He buried his face against his arms. “She forgot I could hear her when she said it. But it’s my own fault. I scared her.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
He lowered his arms to his sides, and one tear fell down his cheek that he didn’t wipe away. “And my dad let her say it. My dad signed the paper along with her and never said any words at all, and—and I don’t want to talk about him.”
“Okay, pup.”
“Will you run with us tonight?”
The one request Aaron couldn’t grant. He pulled Quinn into a side-hug then let go, the most contact Quinn would be able to handle. “I would if I could.”
It was the end of their talk, at least until morning. The moon was inching up into the sky, and the sun was dipping down. Through the trees the light shifted from yellow to orange, a change that seemed gradual to human eyes but was stark from one second to the next through the eyes of the wolf. Under his skin, Aaron’s body knew. He had only minutes left in this form, not hours. Quinn rocked from toes to heels and back again as his body screamed the same knowledge.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Aaron said.
“Yeah.” Quinn tugged at his collar, then turned and bounded to join the others.
Aaron stood still. Loneliness gnawed at him, but for one night a month, camaraderie cost too much. He would stay within the second, smaller perimeter as programmed by his collar. He would listen to the others hunt, and some nights he did long to join them. He’d even challenged his personal fence a few times over the years. But he never took Malachi up on the offer to get rid of the second fence.
Aaron sat in the grass and looked out on the clearing, on the antics of the pack, and a sense of safety welled up within him. The world outside was safe from him tonight because of this fence. He would hurt no one ever again.
Light moved through the trees, began to fade. Flavors and scents heightened around him. His body convulsed. Organs and bones and skin seemed to ignite.
The change began.
Satellite photos of Malachi’s property wouldn’t have meant much without Lucy’s description. A man-made clearing. Something like ten acres. Invisible fence. She took copious phone screenshots of a cleared square that lay out of sight from Malachi’s house. Easy to find, and easy not to wander into danger as long as she kept this side of the tree line. She hunted in kitchen drawers until she came across a high-powered flashlight. Then she drove next door and parked her car beside a fleet of pickup trucks including two familiar, one black and one khaki.
She began her hike five minutes after sunset while afterglow still poured through the foliage. This distance couldn’t have been easy on Aaron’s leg. Would he still be injured after tonight, or did the change also heal? Would he say she was buying into Hollywood myth?
Fifteen minutes later orange and pink light had faded to gray, and the moon shone brighter than she’d anticipated in a cloudless sky, casting long shadows. Doubt crept in for the first time. She was about to become a trespasser on what Lucy had called private, on what had locked Aaron down like a bank vault.
She’d told Claire she trusted Aaron. She wanted it to be true, but he couldn’t trust her, not with this. Anyway she might want the trust too much, all because of his eyes, his body, his compassion, and the fact that he’d told her to be exactly Ember.
So here she was. Being exactly that. Acting on behalf of those she cared most about. Left home alone for days at a time, Ember not Poppy had climbed the counters and cabinets for food, had fallen and split her lip and climbed back up again because her sister was crying with the hunger that made Ember want to cry too. Ember had pushed between Poppy and the world anytime the world was too much for her sister. She had grabbed hold of Poppy and held on tight when something set off her fears, sent her into hours of sobbing. Their foster families had been fair and done their best, but only Ember knew why Poppy sobbed whenever she got hungry. Only Ember could hold on tight until Poppy ran out of tears. And if Quinn needed Ember now to grab hold of him somehow, to hold on tight, to face the worst part of his new life with him and not shrink away, then here she was, the best aunt for the job.
The clearing loomed near, only a few dozen feet of woods between her and…them. She stopped to listen. Rhythmic galloping, nearly as loud as horses’ hooves. And then a howl. Followed by two more.
Her heart hammered until her chest hurt. In moments she would see, would know.
