Page 3

When I get to the firehouse the next morning, my body is itching with the torture of confinement.

If you’ve ever worn a pair of shoes that were too tight, felt that infuriating squishing of your toes together, or been forced to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with a stranger on a far-too-small flight, then you know a fraction of the itch to shift.

Since moving to Chicago, this feeling is something I’ve become accustomed to, though it never fully fades into the back of my head.

After getting an apartment here, I only shift when I can get a long weekend away and drive out to a state park.

Get a cabin, wait for low visibility at night.

Sometimes I’ll go to Starved Rock, though that park is smaller and can feel claustrophobic when families are out there on busy weekends.

Mostly, I go to Pere Marquette. It’s a five-hour drive, but if I can get a few good nights out there, away from the city and with the freedom to roam, I’ll feel a little more comfortable in my skin.

The nice thing about Illinois is that there are no local wolf packs, so no chance for me to accidentally upset the natural order of things with the non-shifting variety. The shit thing about that is that I have to make sure nobody sees me, especially when I’m down south near Pere Marquette.

It’s one thing for a hiker to spot the occasional wolf on the northern side of the state, maybe peeking in from Michigan or Minnesota. It’s another for someone near St. Louis to spot me, shit their pants, and run back to their group, claiming they saw a grizzly bear.

“Morning, X!” Peter calls to me the moment I step into the kitchen.

It’s thick with the scent of cherry-smoked bacon and sausage patties sizzling away on the griddle, and Peter stands in the center of it all, wearing a Kiss the Cook apron that none of the other guys find even remotely funny. “We missed you at that party, man.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry about that,” I lie, rubbing my hand over the back of my neck, knowing my voice is likely too flat to even come close to convincing. “Not feeling great over the weekend. Needed some time to recover from that big job.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, though when he glances at me, it’s with that air of suspicion I’ve been noticing over the past few weeks. “It’ll get you. Maybe you need to stop picking up so many damn shifts, huh?”

I laugh along with him, but in all honestly, there’s no reason for me not to pick up shifts. There are no friends for me here in Chicago, and if I’m not shifting as much, I need something to keep myself busy. Let all that energy out.

“Maybe,” I say, wandering out of the kitchen and toward the training room.

They’ll all eat breakfast, then join me in here, and we’ll run through our sets for the day.

Training with all of them is my favorite part.

It’s the thing that reminds me most of home.

Of what it was like to have a crew of my own.

While I’m waiting, I sit down on one of the benches and contemplate doing a few sets, until I feel the consistent buzzing in my pocket.

Even without looking, I know it’s Kalen.

He’s done nothing but text and call me since saying the thing about the house.

I’ve ignored him. I don’t have the heart to tell him that I’m not coming home.

It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I have to draw a line in the sand. A boundary between my old life and my new one. And going back home to recover a house isn’t on the correct side of that boundary.

Still, I slide the phone from my pocket and look at what he’s sent me.

When I see it’s a video, I glance up at the doorway and turn the volume down. The initial noise is loud, with the shifting of a phone camera near someone’s shirt, then the sliding of it as it turns from vertical to horizontal, a quick zoom to the front of the room.

It’s in the Silverville Pack Center—specifically, the meeting room where my father used to hold all his town halls. A space for pack members to voice their concerns, provide their feedback on his leadership.

And now, even through the grainy video, I can see the disrepair there—a water spot on the ceiling, nearly actively dripping. Several of the benches broken or wobbling enough that nobody dares sit on them. A scuffed, dirty carpet and a cracked window in the corner.

What the hell has been going on in the years since I left? What could have possibly happened in that room that would have broken the benches and cracked the windows? Was it from the fires, or something else?

The questions leave my head when the frame zooms in and I get a look at the people at the front of the room.

Declan, of course, lounging on the chair in the center of the council bench like he’s a king presiding over his court.

A thrill of competition rolls through me—the thought that I could eject him from that spot, take it for myself.

I sense my wolf sizing him up and determining, confidently, that I could take him.

I stuff that down, eyes skimming over the others sitting next to him—my brothers, all with the same appearance as Dad and me, but with none of our shared internal constitution.

Dallas is at Declan’s right. The oldest and largest of us, my brother, who never quite honed his fighting abilities, always relying on his size until it no longer served him.

When we were kids, he loved to dominate, would pin us down and make us squirm until he realized we could best him with skill.

His thick dark hair and blue eyes are so like my own, but his clean-shaven face and sharp jaw make him look pointed. Hard.

To Dallas’s right is Tanner, his long, straight hair falling into his eyes, looking unwashed.

He’s leaning like Declan, but not with the casual, authoritative nature.

Instead, he looks like he would rather be anywhere else than on the council.

In his fingers is a cigarette that he twirls and twirls.

With the state of the room, I’m surprised he hasn’t just lit up.

Sitting to Declan’s left and looking focused on the action is Farris.

The second youngest, older than only Kalen, he has somehow fallen the furthest from our parents’ family tree.

Instead, he looks more like he could be the direct spawn of Declan.

From the slicked, well-groomed hair to the watch glinting on his wrist, his blue eyes shine with something I can only describe as hunger. Greed.

And standing before them—this long line of sneering men—is Seraphina Winward.

Seeing her again triggers that thing inside my chest, like a hook right through my left ventricle, threatening to yank my heart out through my fucking nose if I don’t stand and move toward her.

But she’s just a collection of pixels on the screen. I try to tell myself this, try to get it through to my dull brain, but it still yearns, pitching at the phone like a caged beast only a few feet from its dinner.

Seraphina is the same height as she was in high school, but her blond hair is longer now, falling halfway down her back in loose curls I want to cup in my hand.

From this angle, I can only catch the curve of her jaw.

She was always skinny in high school, and something relaxes inside me to see that she is—if only barely—a little thicker than skin and bones.

Her elbows and knees are not quite so knobby, and her chest has filled out.

I banish that thought—and all the illicit images that come with it—and focus on the shaky footage.

Why did Kalen send this to me?

Glancing at the door to the training room again, I turn the video up and hold the bottom of the phone to my ear, trying to make out what’s being said. The first thing I hear is Seraphina’s voice.

“…for just a little while, until we can get back on our feet.”

Then comes a cutting, shrill laugh I recognize as my uncle’s immediately. Condescending, cold—exactly the same as I remember from being a child, when he’d taunt my brothers and me away from our father.

“Let me get this straight,” he says, and when I pull the phone away, glancing at the screen, I see him leaning forward in his makeshift throne, loathing glittering in his eyes.

Seraphina holds herself perfectly still.

“Jacqueline Smith comes to this council and tells us that you assaulted her child—”

“I saved her child!” Seraphina’s voice is so quick, so solid, that it makes me jump.

The entire room goes still like rodents freezing, hoping the predator won’t see them if they don’t move at all.

And then, as though she doesn’t notice or care about the reaction, Seraphina goes on, “I saved her son, and still the only thing you people care to see about me is—”

“ Silence! ” Declan booms theatrically. You can see from the way he pauses that he loves the attention.

Scowling, he says, with an undercurrent of laughter, “Your request is denied, Winward . We will not be using pack funds to help a little bitch like you. In fact, let’s take this as an opportunity to make it official—you are not permitted in this pack center.

It is for dedicated pack members, of which you are not.

Step foot in here again, we will be sure to make a clear example of you for all other magic users. ”

The video is shaky and grainy, but I can feel through the lens just how much Seraphina wants to say something else. Or maybe I still know her well enough to sense her discontent.

In fact, it seems like there are others in the crowd who are unhappy with this decision, shifting in their chairs uncomfortably, looking around to see if anyone else is going to say anything.

But nobody does. The group acts together, justifying their cowardice through the inaction of others.

And yet, can I blame them, from this far away? When I moved across the country to avoid the responsibility of the pack? The crushing pressure of my and my family’s mistakes?

The video ends with Seraphina turning and walking out of the room, and I stare at it for long enough that I see when the next notification from Kalen comes in.

Kalen: Declan takes the house in two days, X

Kalen: Whole west side of town was taken out by daemonic fires

Kalen: They’re getting worse, and he won’t disperse any aid

I grind my teeth and stare at the messages, just more in the long history of him texting me and me sending nothing in response.

But this time, it’s different. It’s Seraphina. Does that mean her house is gone? Where is she sleeping? Is there anyone to take care of her? I think of her family and shudder at the thought of her going to them for help, if she wasn’t living with them already.

My fingers are moving before I realize what I’m doing, and seconds later, I’ve sealed my fate with the whoosh sound of the text flying out into the void, headed straight for my brother in Silverville.

Xeran: Leaving for FR tonight.