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I took it back and kind of surreptitiously massaged it, because it still sort of hurt.

“It will be your responsibility to make sure nothing happens,” said the cyning. “Her father can help. Your brother can help. I think that perhaps maybe Opal can help. Two omega scents, they may sort of cancel each other out.”

“Opal, uh, doesn’t like me,” said Damian.

“She’ll be relieved,” said the cyning.

That confused me, but it would all make sense later, when I met Opal. Sure, maybe she became my friend because her dad forced her on me, but we were still friends. And Vincent was there with all of us a lot, too, because he was older, and he was trying to protect his brother. The four of us, we were thrown together a lot over the next four years.

“Can’t you just keep them apart?” said Vincent in a low voice.

“I really wish it would be that easy,” said my dad. “But since they’ve scented each other, they’ve already sort of, uh, imprinted on each other, I guess, you might say?”

“That’s a good word,” said the cyning. “They need regular contact or it will be uncomfortable for them.”

“But I don’t live here,” I said.

“Every few months should be adequate,” said the cyning. He looked up at my dad. “You can bring her here?”

My father nodded. “Definitely.” I remembered my parents arguing about this cabin. It was for sale, the owner said. The owner was open to a rent-to-own arrangement and my father wanted to do it. He said that I was going to need places to shift, and this would be ideal. He said that we should have this place, this place in wolf country, and I could tell that my dad had suppressed a whole side of himself to be with my mom. And I could tell that my mom wanted him to keep suppressing it, that she didn’t want things to change.

But things were changing. And no one could stop it.

I remember Damian’s expression, how serious he got, the way he looked at me with reverence all over his face. “You can trust me,” he told me. “I promise, I can handle this. I’ll take care of you.”

I remember just smiling at him, saying, “I know you will.” Because I felt it, there near him, there feeling him, there with the muted scent of him all around us. He was safe. He was everything. He was mine.

THAT SUMMER, THAT was when my parents argued more and more, and it was always about me.

My mother was appalled. “You don’t give your youngest daughter over to some wolf tribe and say they get to all have sex with her and get her pregnant. She is thirteen years old!”

“It’s not the whole tribe. It’s one guy, and he’s her age, and they’re not having sex anytime soon. Besides, he’s going to be the cyning of the pack, do you get that? Our daughter is going to be the cwen.”

“This is not the Middle Ages, Andy. This is the twenty-first century. She should get a say. She should get a choice.”

I heard conversations like this at least three or four times a week, floating out of their bedroom in the cabin, or sometimes at the dinner table, in front of everyone.

My sisters were on my mother’s side. They told me that I did not have to change my life for a man. They said that I was way too young to decide who I was going to spend the rest of my life with. They said this was misogynistic bullshit, and that I should fight it.

My sisters had never paid much attention to me before, not like that. Mostly, my whole life, it had been them noticing me to complain about how I was following them around or how I kept trying to play with their toys or how annoying I was, that kind of thing.

It was kind of nice to know that they cared.

And if the draw to Damian hadn’t been so strong, I would have probably done what they said, because it all made sense, and I agreed with it. It was insane for me to decide who I would mate and marry and have babies with at thirteen.

It was only that he was… Damian.

Everything between us was easy. He would come over every day that summer, usually with Vincent in tow, and we’d get in their canoe and row down to Opal’s dock, tie the canoe off and get in her dad’s boat, a real nice expensive boat with an actual motor, one stocked with coolers we would eventually sneak beer onto, one that we would cruise down the river on summer nights, one that we would pack full of other younger people, blaring music, dancing, smoking weed, being kids.

There wasn’t as much drinking and getting high the year we were thirteen, of course. That came later.

But when I was with Damian, we were in sync. We’d be focused entirely on each other, and even when we were talking to other people, if we were in the same room (or on the same boat) we had an awareness of each other. I always knew where he was. He always knew where I was.

I remember he and I having a solemn conversation on the boat one evening that first summer. Vincent and Opal were sitting up front with two girls (Vincent was flirting with both of them) and with a guy named Walker, who would eventually end up dating Opal, but that wasn’t saying much. Opal had a revolving door of boyfriends through all four of those years. The five of them were laughing and singing along with “Hey There, Delilah,” at the top of their lungs.

Damian and I were sitting in the back of the boat, which was anchored down, and we had our legs dangling in the water, our bare thighs touching. It must have been a few weeks after we found out we were scent matches.

“We don’t want to rush it,” Damian was saying to me. “Do you know what I mean about that?”