“No you’re not. What happened?”
“I…I don’t know. I heard something—a howl.”
Jasper tilts his head like he doesn’t understand. Probably because I’m talking gibberish.
“What do you mean?” he asks. “What howl?”
“I think…” I say, trying to string together the thoughts swirling in my aching mind, “I think it was calling to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Someone is calling me,” I say. “And whoever they are, they’re in pain.”
MAXIE IN THE BATHROOM
As the weeks pass by my headache remains—a constant reminder that somewhere out there is a wolf in pain. But how am I supposed to help them if I can’t focus in on their life force without my head feeling like it’s being torn in two, like there’s a drill whirring away at my gray matter?
If only I had a better grasp of my blood-wolf abilities, if only I understood my connection to wolfkind better, how it works, what I’m capable of, maybe I could sort out where this distressed cry is coming from. But right now it’s taking all of my energy just to keep the wall of sound at bay. Each night I arrive home from school exhausted and ready for a nap.
Jasper put a pin in our mind-link practice until we can be sure it won’t send me into an agony spiral. We return to texts and FaceTimes as our main means of communication. But as winter turns to spring, tensions between our and the neighboring packs rise and I hear less and less from him.
“Jericho has him traveling pretty much anytime he doesn’t have classes or exams,” I whisper into my phone.
“That’s tough,” Mason says, his voice staticky on the other end of the line.
I’m crammed into a stall in the boy’s bathroom on the third floor of my school. No one really comes in here unless they’re on their way to the art rooms, so it’s a great spot to take private calls during my lunch period. On the door of the bathroom stall in front of me someone has scrawledBrad sucks cox.
I roll my eyes.Super original.
“I know he’s trying to stay in touch as much as possible but it’s tough when he’s between time zones and keeping weird hours.”
“And the mind-link thing didn’t work.”
“Nope.”
“Will you keep trying?”
“Not unless I want my brain to explode out of my ears.”
“Gross.”
“Anyway, how are things with you?”
School has been weirdly lonely since the semester started back up. I have a couple of friends, Becky and Peter, who I sit with at lunch, and a cool lab partner in Biology, a girl named Norma, who always has a different-colored streak in her hair. But I can’t exactly tell them about everything that’s going on in my life. Wolf and human culture aren’t supposed to mix. They’d probably report me to the school counselor and petition for me to be hospitalized if I did try to tell them the truth.
With so much going on it sucks not to be able to talk it all through. Scheduling time to see Katie has been difficult—school and her mates are keeping her busy—and Aisha’s dance company has just started rehearsal for a new show, which is taking up the brunt of her time. With Jasper stretched thin between his studies and pack duties, Mason is the only other person I can talk to. And he’s stuck in the mountains, in a pack that may or may not be harboring hostilities toward ours.
“I’ve got to say,” Mason says, sounding sort of tired, “things have been pretty weird since Morven came back from New York. This whole year has had a strange vibe.”
“What’s going on?”
“All pack dinners have been canceled. Morven and my dad have been in meetings with the other officers pretty much day and night.”
“What do you think they’re meeting about?”
“I dunno. Strategy? In case things fall through between our two packs.”
“Has your dad said anything?” Not that I’m trying to spy on the Rocky Pack, but getting a little bit of inside information from our rival pack’s beta, their second in command, could be useful.
