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I felt a wave of affection going through me for her.

I had to remind myself of that last day, the day that she called me, the way there was no hint of anything amiss when she spoke to me, even though she was in the middle of planning it out right then, even though she knew exactly what she was doing.

Hell, she had been in heat when she called.

“Hey,” she had said when I picked up the phone, “you said that Damian was on a hunting trip this weekend, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” I had thought she was going to say that she and I should hang out instead.

“Where is he staying?”

“At Jimmy’s family’s little hunting shack, I think,” I had said. “Why?”

“I left my wallet in his car!”

“In Damian’s car?”

“Yes,” she had said, and she sounded really distraught. “And I need it, and I have to go up there and get it.”

“Well, let me text him,” I had said. “Or call. I bet he’ll run it back to you.”

“No, no, I’m already on my way up there,” she had said. “I’m calling from the road. I just wanted to make sure I was going to the right place.”

And I had texted him, thinking that he could meet her halfway, and he had texted me back that his car wasn’t even at the cabin, that Vincent had driven them up there, and that he’d tried to call her and she wasn’t picking up her phone.

I remembered going out to his place, tearing apart his car, looking for my best friend’s wallet, which was never there, because she had just made that up to get the location from me.

And Damian had gone out to intercept her when she hadn’t texted back, because he and I had been in communication through all of this, talking on the phone, worried that she’d gotten lost somewhere where there wasn’t service, all of that.

Just a ruse.

She was in heat.

It was easier for her when they were both in cars all alone on a dirt road out there in the woods. He told me he got out of Vincent’s car and went over to her car, and she had the window rolled down, and that the scent hit him right away, thick and sweet enough to choke him.

I lost it, Leo. I don’t even know.

I can still feel the way it felt to hear that, not to understand her, not to understand how she could have been so convincing, made up that story about the wallet, not to understand how I could have been trying so hard to help her while she was purposefully screwing me over.

Because that was the worst of it, really.

I thought about how I would feel if my wallet was missing, how I would be in a blind panic, and how—whenever I was panicking—everyone else in my life always treated me as if I were simply overreacting and didn’t do anything to help me, just said things like, “I’m sure it’ll turn up.” Opal was my best friend, and I dropped everything to help her out. I treated her the way I wished other people would treat me. That was the kind of person I was, the kind I’d always been.

I had been going out of my way to try to find her wallet and fix everything for her, and she had been fucking my boyfriend.

Maybe I was glad she’d been burned to ash and I wasn’t going to see her body all laid out in a casket. Maybe I would have been too angry to look down at her, even in death.

The funeral took place at Cork’s, which was also called the old town hall. Not because there was a new town hall. There was not. It was just that it was in the old town square. Which, again, not that there was a new town. Old town was town.

It could have just been called the town hall, I guess, except it wasn’t owned by the city of Riverside anymore. It was privately owned. Even so, it was used like a town hall might have been used. It was rented out for all sorts of events—weddings, concerts, dances, charity costume balls, etc.

It didn’t take place at a church or anything, because werewolves didn’t do religion in the same way that other people did.

The werewolf religion was ancestor worship, essentially. Wolves believed that the ancestors were present, all around us, guiding our movements and our choices. Technically speaking, this was supposed to be compatible with whatever other religion you wanted to believe in. The ancestors didn’t have to take the place of a god or gods. You could be Christian or Hindu or Unitarian Universalist or whatever, and still be a werewolf.

But most werewolves weren’t.

They believed in the ancestors and the ancient ways and the old religion. They believed in the pack’s shaman, who claimed to get messages from the ancestors, who could read signs and portents in the clouds and the river’s current and the pelt markings on wolves.