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T he cafeteria was barely half full when we walked inside, and more than a few heads looked up and watched us as we stepped inside. One hard look from Remy had them all looking back down at their plates.

Most students sat where they had before half of our classmates went to the dark side and didn’t return, but conversations were hushed. There was a heaviness to the overall atmosphere around us, a strange prickling of awareness that things were different.

Even at our table, things were on the quieter side. Usually Rhodes and Ryder were joking around and being loud, making us all laugh, but they both were quiet, almost somber.

Remy and I were the last ones at our table. Everyone was already sitting in their usual spots, but this time there was a lot less room between Larkin and Rhodes than a few months ago.

Dante had brought part of the Brooks Ridge pack to our table. Tate sat between him and Ryder. She and Ryder grinned at me while Dante did that stoic nod that was all him.

I frowned, realizing someone was missing.

“Where’s Maren?” I asked as I sat down next to Katy. Remy brushed his fingers across the back of my neck as he went to the line to grab our dinners.

Because I had a boyfriend who did things like get me dinner.

I squashed a stupid, completely girly giggle at the thought.

“Her grandmother died,” Katy said softly, her lips turned down. “She stayed back for another week to be with her family.”

Katy and Maren were inseparable at school, taking the crowns for PDA Queen and Queen. Katy had even gone up to Alaska during winter break to spend time with Maren, no small feat since the Brooks Ridge pack was a small town in Northern Alaska and planes rarely flew in and out. I knew they were both dreading the impending graduation where they would have to figure out where their relationship stood and if one wanted to move to the other’s pack.

“I offered to stay with her,” Tate added, “but she said she just wanted to spend time with her grandfather. They had been mates for over sixty years, so he’s really struggling.”

“Were they bonded?” I asked, my heart aching for their loss.

Tate shook her head. “No.”

Still, it couldn’t be easy to lose someone you spent over sixty years with. I had only been with Remy a few months and the idea of losing him...

I barely reigned in my wolf before she had us jumping up and touching him to make sure he was safe and sound. She whined at me, wanting her mate and I couldn’t fault her for it, but I was getting a little concerned how attached I was getting to Remy.

I knew our bond enhanced a lot of things, but I didn’t know of any bonded shifters who felt compelled to be with their mate twenty-four/seven.

Now that we were back at school, I planned to find Elias and talk to him. The old shifter was insanely knowledgeable about all things in the shifter world, including the true mate bond. He had spent his life collecting information about our kind and even had some kind of medical degree.

He had been working on formulating an idea for why the birth rate of shifters was steadily declining, but I was hoping he could give me insight into this sudden need to be with Remy all the time. He had helped me find out why I struggled with shifting, so maybe he could help me understand my wolf a little bit better.

I let out a slow breath as Remy finally returned, sliding a tray of pasta and salad in front of me before sitting in the vacant chair to my left. Stomach growling, I dug into the carbs first with my fork, my left hand reaching out to touch his thigh under the table, needing that reassurance he was here.

He didn’t give me a weird look or even break the conversation he had started with Dante. He simply slid his hand over mine and squeezed my fingers because he felt the pull between us the same as I did. Sometimes, especially since Cassian’s attack, we needed to just touch the other to reassure ourselves we were together.

That small, simple action relaxed me enough to focus on what was happening around me.

Which was, of course, about the packs who left.

“It will definitely make this year less stressful,” Larkin was saying as she took a bite of her salad.

“But the whole point of the school was to show packs could work together,” Dante reminded her, his deep voice sounding tired and frustrated. “Half the packs leaving shows that a lot of these old divides are still holding true and strong.”

“The divides will always be there. The alliances are what will help us. Now we know which packs we can’t, and shouldn’t align with,” Rhodes mentioned, taking a slow drink of his water. His dark eyes were thoughtful, reminding me there was a reason he was Remy’s beta, his second in command. “But this school wasn’t a failure.”

Rhodes was a jokester and loved to laugh and have fun, but there was also an intensity to him and a mind that missed nothing.

Rhodes gestured around the room. “For decades, Blackwater and Brooks Ridge could only count on each other. Now we’ve more than quadrupled our numbers. Yeah, we lost five packs, but we still have seven here. That part worked. Every shifter in this room is part of a pack that stands with us.”

Remy let out a slow breath. “You’re right. And they’re numbers we’re going to need going into the Summit.”

“You mean votes,” Katy muttered darkly. She flipped her long red hair over a shoulder with a scowl. “Amazing the year we live in and normals have more rights than us.”

Tate leaned back in her chair, her hazel eyes narrowed. “She’s right. It’s ridiculous that the entire Summit is run by males trying to solve a female problem.”

Dante reached over and cupped the back of her neck, making her look at him. “We’re not saying you shouldn’t have a say, sweetheart. You know everyone at this table, hell, every pack in this room agrees females should have more of a say. We’re fighting for that.”

Her hand came up to his jaw, her gaze softening. “I know that, but you don’t know what it’s like to sit back and have to wait for someone else to fight for you.”

“Or not bother fighting at all,” I added quietly, suddenly done with my meal as my stomach soured. I set my fork down, opting to chew my lower lip instead.

Remy’s arm was around my shoulders, tucking me into his side, before I even finished my statement. His lips found the side of my head. Now it seemed like he was the one reassuring himself I was still here.

“Your pack was a bunch of assholes,” Ryder spat. “What they did…” He trailed off, shaking his head.

“Has there been any word about them making waves at the Summit?” Dante asked Remy.

Remy nodded firmly, his jaw set. “Nothing concrete, but it’s coming. Odds are they’re lining up their allies the same way we are.”

“And they definitely aren’t the only ones who think females should be... controlled .” Katy’s lips curled in disgust around the last word.

“Look at what happened to Skye,” Tate agreed. “To me . Females are becoming some... commodity to be used for breeding rights and then, if we’re lucky, sent to live out our days quietly like good little shifters. Females who can’t—”

“—or won’t ,” Katy cut in.

“Or won’t,” Tate added with a nod, “do their proverbial part, are shunned or banished from most packs.”

“In Long Mesa they were forced to mate,” I said slowly. My packmates knew this. I had shared with them, and Tate, about what happened to lesbian shifters or shifters who couldn’t reproduce or refused to take a male mate. But from the horror on Dante and Ryder’s faces, Tate hadn’t shared those details.

“ Forced ?” Ryder choked out, coughing hard as the food he was chewing caught in his throat.

“Yeah, and Long Mesa wasn’t the only pack that thought that way,” I answered honestly. “Females are supposed to produce a child, either by choice or by force.”

Both guys looked ready to drive down to my old pack and kick some ass after a trip to the bathroom to vomit all the food they had just eaten. I didn’t bother adding that frequently those forced matings included multiple males to ‘increase the likelihood of conception’.

And that it also happened in public. A warning of sorts to other females.

I shuddered at the memories and felt, rather than heard, Remy’s low growl as it vibrated in his chest.

Katy slammed a small fist on the table. “See? This is the shit females have to deal with, and we get zero say in what happens to us. We just happened to luck out that our packs believe in equal rights. But even with the packs we’re aligned with, we’re still the minority.”

“But, historically speaking, women did get the right to vote,” Ryder added pointedly. “They got all sorts of rights, which is what we’re all fighting for.”

“Yeah, but that was after centuries of oppression,” Katy snapped. “So you’re saying we should just sit back and wait for Shifter B. Anthony to take up arms?”

“They also weren’t dealing with their species dying off,” Larkin chimed in softly, tucking a lock of dark hair behind her ear. “Females are becoming increasingly rare. Four males are born to every one female. It makes sense that the males would want to control the limited population there is and figure out the best way to keep the shifter population from dying out.”

Katy opened her mouth, and Larkin held up a hand to silence her.

“I’m not saying it’s right,” she added quickly, “but it’s where we are. Entire packs have died out. But now, a lot of Alphas are making decisions based on fear. Fear of their pack numbers dwindling, pack lineages ending... Until they start looking at this objectively, we’re stuck in a cycle no one will break.”

Rhodes lifted a hand after a second of silence. “I vote Larkin for President.”

We all laughed. It was the break in seriousness we needed, something to crack the tension that had us all wound up.

With a roll of her eyes, Larkin swatted a hand at him that he simply caught and pressed to his mouth. I smiled watching Larkin’s eyes go soft, watching as Rhodes tugged her mouth to his next.

My friends were happy.

The fact that I could use the words ‘friends’ and ‘happy’ in the same sentence was a testament to how far I had come in the last few months.

As if sensing my mood, Remy nuzzled his nose against my neck. I bit back a giggle at the way it tickled when he breathed deeply against me.

“You guys seriously suck ,” Katy griped, but she was smiling under her glare. She was happy that we were happy.

The world might be chaos around us, but here, in this space, we were safe and we were together.

Which is of course when a scream rose up from the hallway that had every single shifter in the room jumping to their feet as a girl with pale hair ran into the room like the devil was chasing her. She looked around with wild eyes until she spotted who she was looking for, her face crumpling.

I vaguely placed her as a shifter from the Dubonne pack in Michigan.

She never broke stride as she ran full speed at their pack campus alpha, who was now standing with his pack. He caught the hysterical girl in his arms.

“Jane, whoa, hey!” His arms banded around her, his eyes lifting to survey the room. I watched them land on each pack alpha. The other six alphas in the room, Remy and Dante leading the way, went and joined them.

The rest of us crowded close, but Jane seemed too damn hysterical to make much sense. She clung to her alpha—again, I really needed to learn the names of our allies—and trembled.

“Jane,” he finally said, taking her by the shoulders and pushing her back a step. He only had a few inches on her and was definitely one of the younger alphas on campus. “Jane, you need to tell us what happened.”

“She’s gone!” Jane wailed, her head dropping forward.

A hushed murmur rose up amongst the shifters and I noticed the faculty joining the gathering.

“What do you mean gone ?” The Dubonne alpha’s tone shifted subtly, but definitely enough to know he was giving an alpha command to his pack member.

Wiping her eyes and nose, Jane looked helplessly at him. “Kit. She’s gone .”