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“Well,” I said, “if I let Vincent bite me—””

“He’s biting you now?”

“I just mean, that would cut it off, the scent match.”

“When Damian bit someone, it didn’t cut it off,” said my dad.

Well, I guessed that was true. I thought about all of my years of being alone and sad and the way I had craved him. I thought of all the bite marks on my body, the way we’d stayed together, and the way I’d fought the bond sickness and…

But that was all on my side.

For him…

“I think it cut it off for him,” I said softly. “Just not me.”

My dad nodded. “You want to do this as revenge, then.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I don’t want him to hurt.”

“I’m taking you back to the city, Leo,” said my dad.

I opened my mouth to argue, but nothing came out.

I WAS BASICALLY packed up, since I’d been on my way back home when I went into heat. I texted Vincent and told him that my dad thought I should go home and that he was taking me there.

Maybe I should try to take a beat, I said.

I think that’s definitely a good idea, Vincent texted back.

I peered at the screen. I typed out, Do you regret what we

And then I deleted it, watching as the words were all eaten up as I hit the button to backspace them all away.

I typed instead, We should try to make good decisions and be responsible adults, I guess.

We should.

But I’m going to have to come back to Riverside to deal with the inheritance, I typed. We’ll see each other.

Of course, he typed back. After all, we’re practically brother and sister.

What the fuck? Why would he say that? I tried to think of something to say that would encapsulate perfectly how I was feeling, that I did not want to close the door on whatever had happened with Vincent, but that I was still trying to figure everything out.

But I couldn’t think of anything, and then too much time had passed, and then I didn’t say anything else at all.

I didn’t text Damian.

Damian didn’t text me.

I felt a bit curious about that. What had he been doing while I was running off the heat in wolf form? Had he been forcibly kept back from me or had he voluntarily managed to stay away? Why was Vincent the one who was watching me, not Damian?

In some ways, it made it easier for him to have turned his back on me. In other ways, it was a fresh betrayal.

I let my dad take me back to the city.

I couldn’t find Opal’s manifesto anywhere. It had been in my car when I’d driven home, and then it must have still been in my car when I went into heat, but I couldn’t find it later. My father and I turned the rental car upside down. It wasn’t in it, not anywhere.

Eventually, I had to let it be. I wondered, though, if it were somehow wedged in between the seats in a way that we hadn’t looked (and we’d looked) and now the manifesto was being rented out by people who were driving Opal’s words up and down the east coast.