He takes my hands and tries to pull me inside but I resist.
“Jasp, something’s not right. I’m supposed to be finding a wolf or…no, wait…I’m supposed to be figuring out how to use my blood-wolf abilities, or…how to mind-link with you. But I keep getting lost. I need help.”
He wraps his arms around me and kisses the top of my head. “I’m here now.”
“Thanks, I feel like I’ve been running all over the place.”
“What do you want?” he asks, like that’s an easy question.
I lean back so I can look up at him. “I want this.” I touch his face and kiss him once, quickly. “And I want things to be—different. I want to make things better.”
He smiles and brushes the hair from my face.
“Come with me.”
We slip through the entrance and I stumble as I emerge at the edge of the packhouse’s balcony. Somehow it’s night again and we’re a hundred stories in the air, at the very top of a Manhattan skyscraper. I clutch the metal handrail atop the balustrade, all that’s keeping me from a steep drop to the sidewalk below. Wind blows and messes my hair. Behind me the tent is gone and all that’s left is an empty patio, the building is dark, no lights are on inside. Jasper is watching me.
“Why did you bring me here? What is this?”
Jasper steps forward to my side and stares out across New York.
“This is what we can build together.”
I turn to look out across the city.
Fires…everywhere. The city is ablaze. Smoke rises in all directions, from too many buildings to count. Lights are out across whole blocks. The acrid stench of ash and destruction catches in my nostrils. Below, fire engines and ambulances whir by, sirens wailing. Desperate cries ring out into the night.
“This is…the city—it’s destroyed. What happened?”
“War. The pack and the rogues tore the city apart.”
I stare at the side of Jasper’s face. He isn’t blinking, he doesn’t even seem concerned, when the world is on fire.
“Shouldn’t we do something?” I ask. “Shouldn’t we try to help?”
He turns to me with a sickening grin on his face. “Help? But Max, this is what you wanted.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I never wanted this. I never…”
“Where are you going?” he asks, a hand raised, as I back away. “You can’t run from me. I’m your mate.”
“You’re not him. You can’t be.”
His grin stretches wider, his fangs on show.
“We’re meant to be together,” he says, and as he does fireworks shoot up right in front of the building, too close, too bright, and too loud.
“Stop this!” I shout, unsure if I’m talking about the fireworks or the weird look on Jasper’s face.
“You can’t escape fate, Max!”
“I won’t let this happen. I can’t!”
All of a sudden Jasper’s expression changes, his eyes shoot open, and his hands clutch at his stomach. There under his touch a bloom of red blossoms, spreading and staining his pristine white button-down. I glance from the wound to his face and back again. His mouth falls open in pain and a trickle of blood runs from the corner of his mouth.
“How could you do this to me, Max?” He sounds like himself again, only weaker, panicked, like he knows the wound is fatal. “How could you?”
He holds out his bloodstained hands so I can see the red liquid marking his skin.
