 
Faceless

Book One

By Monica Millard

Smashwords Edition

**Faceless**

Copyright 2015 Monica Millard

All rights reserved.

Discover other titles from Monica Millard

<http://analaskangirl.blogspot.com/p/books.html>

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover image from Depositphoto.com

Also by Monica Millard

### Chosen series

### Children of the Gods (A Chosen Novel)

### Chosen – A Children of the Gods Short Story prequel

### The Fall

### The Final Offering

### Entertaining Angels Series

### Entertaining Angels

### Subscribe to Monica's mailing list

~ _For Ted and Grandma._

### You both have taught me so much and enriched my life beyond words. I will miss you more than I can express.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Other Titles By Monica Millard

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Chapter One

"Watch it!" I yell, elbowing whoever is trying to steamroll a path right over the top of me to get a better vantage point on the fight about to happen.

"Ow! Damn, girl. You got some pointy elbows," Sam McKinnon complains, rubbing his ribs playfully. He looks a little sheepish and admits, "Didn't see you there, short stuff."

He ruffles my hair, then ruins any chance of earning my forgiveness when he tries using my head as a chin rest. This time, I mean it when I elbow him.

There's a satisfying grunt behind me. He chuckles and leaves me to find someone else to torture. I turn my attention back to what's happening in the middle of the circle of bloodthirsty piranhas, also known as my high school classmates.

Eli Markam, bad boy, outcast, loner, stands stock still in the middle of the circle, like he's been frozen into a statue, while David Andrews throws insults and generally makes a fool of himself. It's clear to anyone with half a brain that David is sorely outmanned in this fight. Eli has at least thirty pounds on him.

I know I said he's a bad boy, but the label doesn't fit entirely. Eli Markam does everything he can to avoid trouble. He tolerates pricks like David Andrews and his crew without ever rising to the bait, but trouble always seems to find him. I think it's because he's one of the few teenagers in all of existence that doesn't give a crap what anyone else thinks of him.

No one knows anything about his family, but it's clear he doesn't have much. He wears the same worn, used-to-be-white-but-now-they're-almost-gray t-shirts, black hoodies and black cargo style work pants every day, paired with steel-toed work boots.

What I don't think anyone else ever notices, though, is that even though his clothes are faded and maybe a bit dingy from being old and over used, they are always clean. He sits in front of me in English and I can smell the freshly laundered, spring air detergent scent coming from him, mixed with a hint of a woody smell, like freshly cut cedar, like he's just come from woodshop.

David has finally worked himself up to fevered pitch, the adrenaline making him stupider than normal. "Come on, man. You afraid to get your butt kicked?" He stabs a finger into Eli's chest.

Eli's head tilts to the side just a fraction and the muscles in his jaw flex, like he's trying to hold himself back. His nostrils flare and instead of looking at the two-hundred-pound meathead in front of him, Eli turns his head slowly towards the crowd. My breath catches when his dark eyes zero in on me. The intensity in his gaze is too strong. I want to turn away but I can't seem to make the muscles in my neck work.

I feel hot and tingly all over. I don't like being the center of attention, and I usually don't even tell my best friend, Nicky, when I'm into a guy, but right here, right now, for once, I don't even care that the entire senior class is watching me have a moment with Eli Markam.

Then it occurs to me that I have no idea why we are having a moment, and I shake myself out of the trance he's held me in. A hot blush spreads over me from the roots of my hair to tips of my toes. The right corner of Eli's straight-line mouth turns up in an almost smirk.

He turns his head back towards David, slowly, like an animal, like a predator.

David must think so too, because he takes a step back and his whole demeanor changes. He laughs, like it was all a big joke. "Just kidding, man," he says, punching Eli's shoulder playfully like they're buds or something.

Eli looks down at where David's fist knocked him and then back up at David. His feral features slowly transform into a smirk. "Sure." He nods. "Have a laugh at good ol' Eli. I get it."

David swallows and his Adam's apple bobs hard, working the skin of his throat. He laughs again, but it sounds reedy and higher pitched than normal. "I didn't mean no harm. Just playing."

Every single person in the crowd is holding their breath, tensed, waiting to see what Eli will do. He's only ever fought back once and it's been long enough for idiots like David to get comfortable again, but not so long that anyone has forgotten what happened to the senior who targeted the gangly freshman version of Eli Markam.

He lifts one big shoulder and drops it in a lazy shrug, like the whole world isn't waiting for his signal to explode or anything. He turns away, shoving through the crowd just in time to be out of the center of attention when Mrs. Venus's shrill voice cuts through the air, demanding to know what's going on.

"Mack!" Nicky calls.

"Huh?"

She hooks my elbow and drags me away before Mrs. Venus can get her talons in anyone who hasn't scattered. "What was that all about?" Nicky asks, when we're out of the danger zone.

"Not sure what started it. Just David and his friends being idiots, I'm sure."

Nicky has this crazy eye roll thing that she does that can make you feel about an inch tall. One eye rolls all the way up into her head while the other one seems to almost go the opposite direction. The first time I saw it, I thought she was having a seizure or was possessed.

I get the eye roll along with a head shake, then the stare. "I mean, what was going on between you and Mr. Tall, Dark and Brooding? And don't you dare say nothing, because I think my headlights are still on just from watching. That boy looked like he was going to eat you up right there in the hall."

I glance at her chest and sure enough two perfect circles are announcing that either the hallway is a bit nippy or that she has a way better imagination than me. I glance down at my own girls. Not even an outline showing through my thin tee.

Nicky laughs and slaps me on the back hard enough to make me stumble a little. She nudges my shoulder not letting me off the hook.

"He must have been looking at someone behind me. We've said all of five words to each other in the last three and a half years and we've had at least one class together every year."

This earns me a snort. "Right. Maybe it was Jarod Avery or Todd Weatherford he was eye humping."

"Seriously?" I say, shoving her. "If you ever say eye humping again, be prepared for vomit. Perv." I know I've turned a horrible shade of crimson. I try to hide behind my hair, but Nicky reaches up and swoops my hair behind my ears.

"That's such a lovely shade of red on you. It makes me so hot!" She makes like she's coming in for a kiss. I dip under her hand and duck into the open doorway, then swivel around to stick my tongue out at her.

She clutches her heart. "You wound me. I am off to cast myself off the roof."

"Miss Carver, your seat looks very lonely. You should remedy that."

"Yes, Mr. Roberts," I say.

"As for you, Miss Asher," my teacher says, lips pursed to hide his amusement. "I will be very cross if I'm forced to clean your blood off my truck. Please refrain from throwing yourself off things to get back at Mackenzie for spurning you until you are elsewhere."

"For you, Mr. Roberts, anything, but shouldn't you be writing me a pass to visit the guidance counselor's office?"

"Take it up with Ms. Gray."

She pouts. He points. She hangs her head and ambles away like a wounded puppy, looking back every few steps to make sure he means it. His hand is still up, finger still pointed, but each time she looks back he gives it a small punctuating jerk. He chuckles and then turns on me.

"I'm going," I say, hands up in surrender.

"Mr. Markam, how good of you to join us."

I straighten, but fight down the urge to turn and look at him, and continue toward my seat. With his long legs, it only takes Eli a few steps and I feel him behind me before I've made it halfway down the aisle. I hurry, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. He's still right behind me, making my stomach jump.

He slides into his desk and slumps down in his chair. I slip into mine right behind him and have one of those moments where you question everything you know to be true in the world, because it occurs to me that it's possible Eli is slouching so low in his seat, not so he can get a nap or present less of a target for Mr. Roberts, but so that he's not blocking my view of the board.

Surely that's not the case. I shake it off and pull out my book.

The hour goes fast and at the end I realize I haven't heard anything Mr. Roberts has said, too busy wondering why Eli's usual clean laundry and cedar scent is muted by the strong musk of wood smoke. If this was a cartoon, I'd be floating around following a ribbon of scent by my nose.

He's somehow taken all the scents I find comforting and combined them into one overwhelming, intoxicating package. I've never really put too much thought into the creature that is Eli Markam, but today he's all I can think of.

When the bell rings, I take a final deep breath and savor it before glancing at the board for the homework assignment, getting up and following him out into the hall.

Trying to walk and write the assignment in my notebook at the same time is clearly not my smartest move since I don't see Eli stop and I slam right into him. It's a bit like slamming into a brick wall. The force of the impact against his ridiculously hard body deposits me squarely on my butt.

"Whoa!" Eli says, after executing a spin that would make a ninja jealous, or nauseous. I'm betting on the second one. "Swept you right off your feet and I wasn't even trying." His tone is teasing, but his eyes are wide and he's still blinking like he's just as stunned as I am.

I blink back at him for a second and then bust up laughing. Not because I'm plastered on the hallway floor, but because he's funny and I didn't expect that. Nicky wasn't kidding when she described him as tall, dark and brooding. He almost never speaks, and when he does, he says as little as possible. Not to mention the perpetual scowl he wears. Though I don't suppose I can blame him for that one.

After he's blinked for a solid twenty seconds, the shock finally wears off and he offers me a hand. I take it and he pulls me up so quickly that I almost come off the ground.

"Whoa again! You got hollow bones?" He leans over like he's trying to see if my bones are indeed hollow. A light blush spreads across his cheeks and I wonder if that's because he realizes it looks like he's trying to check out my butt or if it's just the situation. "Sorry. Sometimes I don't know my own strength."

I realize then that I'm still holding his hand and it's my turn to blush. "Sorry," I stammer and hope that covers both the plowing into him and the awkward handholding. My fingertips graze his as I pull away. I gasp as images flood my mind.

"You okay?" he asks, his forehead creasing and his lips flattening with concern.

"Yeah. Just static. Got a little shock."

He examines me for a second longer, eyes skeptical. "Okay, if you're sure you're alright then I suppose I better jet. Gotta get to work."

"Thanks," I say, watching him lope off down the hall.

"It happened again, didn't it?"

I yelp and swat Nicky in the arm. "Stop doing that. You're going to give me a heart attack."

"Right, faker. You always know exactly where I am. I've never been able to scare you once. Now stop trying to get out of answering. You did it again, didn't you? What'd you see?"

"I dunno. I'm not sure it did happen again. It was just a quick flash and it couldn't be real."

I get the eye roll again. "What did you see? And stop dodging, I hate sounding like an echo."

I glance around, making sure no one else is close enough to hear. "It was horrible. There was lots of blood and big scary teeth biting and ripping someone's flesh."

Nicky's eyes go wide and she puts her hand over her mouth. Her reaction alarms me, because despite what she said about not ever being able to scare me, she's really the unshakable one. She didn't even blink when I told her the first time I touched someone and saw something I shouldn't have a few weeks back. Of course, that might be because she's a little bit clairvoyant herself, though she'll deny it emphatically if accused.

"You know that's how he lost his dad. He was mauled. By a bear they think."

I shake my head. No way. "That's just another of the stupid rumors that some idiot made up."

"It's true. It's in his file. The guidance counselor had it open on her desk one of the times I got sent there after Ms. Gray watched that documentary on cutters and was convinced that's what was wrong with me."

"That's...horrible..." I shake my head, trying to clear away the images of blood and teeth, turning the conversation to lighter subjects. "You really have to stop tormenting the poor woman. She does realize your father is a psychiatrist, right?"

From the evil grin she gives me, I have my answer.

I push open the exterior doors and we're greeted by a loud bang and a hail of creatively strung together obscenities. We approach the lot and the curser, slowly at first, until we realize the culprit is in front of Eli's pickup.

His truck is a twenty-year-old model, but one that he keeps well maintained. It looks and sounds a lot nicer than a bunch of the newer ones that typically fill up the parking lot. So, I'm not surprised when he checks himself just before landing his fist against the hood. He kicks the sidewalk instead, causing a small shower of crusted ice and snow he's dislodged to rain down around his foot, then he realizes he's got an audience.

"Car trouble?" my smart mouthed friend asks. Her breath lingers, heat clashing with the frosty air. Ethereal wisps of steam float up around her face in a sort of halo, which stands in deep contrast to her attitude, before dissipating

"Yeah. Battery's dead."

"Do you need a jump," I ask quickly, before Nicky can say something to make his mood worse. I wince when she snickers and I realize she could do so much worse with my question.

With his head, Eli motions toward a plastic box full of serious looking wires and gauges sitting on the frozen sidewalk next to him. "The jump box's got that covered if it was just outta juice. It's just finally given up." He bends down, scoops up the contraption and takes it around to the driver's side door.

He locks up the truck and heads back up onto the sidewalk, shoving his hands into a thin pair of mechanic's gloves. "Thanks for the offer." He tips his head a little then starts walking.

"Where ya going?" Nicky asks.

At exactly the same time, I call, "Wait."

Eli keeps walking, but turns around so he's walking backwards. "Can't. Gotta get to work. I'm going to be late already since I gotta walk. No time to talk." He shrugs and swivels back around without ever stopping. I'm a little in awe of his footwork.

Nicky nudges me just as I offer, "I could give you a ride." My voice comes out all high pitched. Probably a little too eager sounding. I'm in the middle of shoving her when he spins back around. He pauses with his mouth hanging open. His eyebrow slowly hikes up. I give the biggest, most innocent looking smile I can give, teeth and all. Which probably makes me look completely guilty. Of what, I'm not sure. Of something though, if the way he's looking at me is any indication.

"You sure?" Still with the eyebrow raised in question.

"Yeah, it's too cold out here to walk and it's really no problem."

He exhales deeply and the fog his breath makes is so thick I can't see his face for a second, then it breaks through. He's smiling. It's crooked and adorable and I don't think it's a look I've ever seen him wear before, not even earlier when I was on my butt in the hall and he was clearly amused. "That would be really cool. Thanks."

I almost forget what we're talking about until he comes up beside me. Then I jolt back to reality and head toward my own truck.

"Call me later," Nicky yells, already halfway across the parking lot, but still somehow able to make her voice sound all sing-songy in a way I hope Eli doesn't notice.

He slides into the passenger seat without any effort, which I find thoroughly annoying since I have to grab the door, and because it's a little slick I have to hold onto the steering wheel too, so that I can boost myself up onto the doorframe and then into the seat. Maybe I'll suggest that Dad gets Mom running boards for Christmas.

My hoody and shirt ride up as I slide into the seat and I let out a very girly squeal when my bare back meets with upholstery that's been in below zero temps all day. I squirm around for a second working my shirt back down enough to provide protection against the seat.

I glance over at Eli and he gives me a wide eyed, amused look. "Sorry. You didn't need your eardrums, did you?"

"What?" He cups a hand over his ear. "I didn't hear that."

"Hardee har."

He taps a knuckle against the windshield. "But seriously, you might want to check your windshield for cracks."

"Okay, comedian, where to?" I reach over and turn the blasting heater down, since it's just blowing frosty air in our faces. Thankfully the sun was out today and I wasn't parked in the shade or I'd have to scrape the windshield. That would probably provide even more fodder for his teasing, watching me struggle to clear off enough of a patch to see while I drive.

"The garage I work at is over by Lucille. Ironic, huh? My truck is broke down and I work at a garage."

"Not really. It's been my experience that it's almost impossible to get a mechanic to work on his family's cars."

"Your dad?" he asks.

I nod. "That's why I'm driving this nice, new truck. Mom lets me take it when she's working from home, since we're both tired of trying to get Dad to fix my old one."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Alternator has gone bad. Supposedly that's a 'super simple fix', but it's been sitting since the first time the temps dropped below zero this year."

He directs me to the next turn. "Do you have the parts?"

"Yep. The deal when I got it was that I pay for everything, including upkeep. I'd take it to a shop, but he keeps promising he'll get to it 'this weekend'. Something else always comes up."

"I could change it out for you. I assume you have a garage?"

My stomach dips as an image appears in my head of him in my garage with a grease smear across his jaw. I swallow and nod a little too enthusiastically. "That would be awesome. I can pay you."

He waves off my offer and my stomach takes another carnival ride style dive.

"This is me." He points to the shop on the left. I pull in and park in front of the building. "Thanks. Walking would have really sucked. Being late would have sucked more."

"Do you have someone you can call for a ride home?"

I can see by the way he's nibbling his lip that even if he says yes, the answer is most likely no.

"I can probably catch a ride home from one of the other guys." He motions towards the garage doors.

"Give me your phone." He hesitates for a second, cocking his head, but he hands it over. I type in my number and then call my phone. "Call me if you can't get a ride. I can't have my new mechanic freezing to death or gored by a moose walking home from work."

He laughs, but it sounds a little surprised. "You make a very persuasive argument and paint a very graphic image."

I shake my phone at him and make him promise he'll call me. Then I watch him walk to the side door and disappear inside before I drive away.
Chapter Two

As soon as I turn onto Church a cold finger of alarm runs down my spine. The morning darkness is interrupted by unnatural flickers of light bouncing off the ice fog that's hanging thick and heavy in the frozen air. The flickers begin to coalesce into blue and red strobes even before I crest the hill and the finger of alarm turns into a fist that clenches at my stomach.

Lakes Charter is large when compared to most charter schools in Alaska, since it's not just a high school, but K-12. It's as big or bigger than many of the local high schools, since the benefactor is a private citizen with more money than ways to spend it. We have all the amenities that are found at the local high schools, like a full sized pool, an outdoor track, as well as an indoor one, and even a football field, but in comparison to schools you see on television, ones that are located in cities that have more people than the entire state of Alaska, it's not very big.

From my vantage point out on the hill above it, I can see no less than a dozen emergency vehicles. There are state troopers, a Fire Marshall, two engines and two ambulances. I pull into the lot following Tommy Silva's pimped out red rally coupe.

Tommy's stopped by a trooper who is directing traffic into the parking lot. He bends down at Tommy's window and a second later a hand sticks out the window producing what I assume is his driver's license. The trooper looks at it, says something into his shoulder radio, then nods and hands the license back to Tommy. The trooper then directs him into the side lot.

The process repeats when I pull up to the trooper. I don't take the spot next to Tommy, but instead go a few spots down. He's kind of a spaz about his car, wouldn't want to ding his door.

Eli Markam's truck pulls in next to me and when I get out, he steps up beside me. "What's going on?" He's kept his voice low and leaned in to ask, lips close to my ear. His warm breath tangles with my hair, spilling into my collar and down the back of my neck. The contrast of his warm, moist breath in the frigid morning air causes goosebumps to erupt in its wake.

I shiver, but in a way that has my stomach tightening pleasantly, with something like anticipation. It takes a moment for me to find my own breath and when I do I want to say something funny, to make light of the situation, but I glance over at the ambulance parked in front of the school and notice a cluster of emergency workers escorting a stretcher from the back lot of the school.

I put my hand out to stop Eli and point. We both stand there watching as they wheel something in a heavy black bag toward the ambulance and then load it. I swallow, but a lump forms in my throat keeping anything from going down.

"Eli Markam!"

We both look over at the sharp tone. The principal, Mr. Edmonds and the gym teacher Mr. Adolfo are flanked by two troopers, and they're heading our direction. Mr. Adolfo's eyes are narrowed, his lips a thin line as they bear down on us. It was his voice that cut so sharply, and the look he's giving Eli gives me shivers in an entirely different way. One that isn't pleasant at all.

"Eli Markam?" one of the troopers asks in a soft voice.

"Yeah," Eli says, respectfully, question and concern in his tone, but I can see him begin to shutter all emotion, turning to stone, just like he does when one of the guys at school goes after him.

"Where were you last night from nine to eleven?" Mr. Adolfo blurts, his face turning an ugly shade of red, accusation in his tone.

Eli doesn't say anything, he just looks back and forth between the four men. I realize he's waiting for something, but I'm not sure what.

"Mr. Adolfo," one of the officers says with a heavy dose of censure. He glares at the teacher. Our gym teacher glares back, neither one speaking, but some sort of mental tug of war going on. There is steel in the trooper's eyes and eventually Mr. Adolfo must recognize it too because he looks away, losing.

The trooper raises a hand and snaps his fingers. Another trooper rushes over. "Get him out of here," the winner of the tug of war, Trooper Kensington, according to his nametag, says to the new trooper.

Mr. Adolfo throws another glare at Eli, but doesn't argue. He lets the trooper lead him away, back towards the school. We all watch him go. Once the school doors close behind him, Mr. Edmonds and the troopers turn their attention back to Eli.

"Elias," Mr. Edmonds says, in a very proper, very regal way. "Would you mind coming with me to my office? These gentlemen have a few questions they would like to ask you." There is a soft kind of warmth in the principal's deep, knowing eyes. It makes him seem much older than his smooth, lineless face implies.

Eli wears this sad, resigned look like he's used to this kind of treatment, has been through it before, often. Seeing him look like that, the cause coming from adults he's supposed to be able to rely on to keep him from having to feel that way, thinking of the way the gym teacher came after him sparks something in me, more than anger, a protective instinct making me bold.

Eli's shoulder slump forward and he lowers his head like he's already been judged guilty even though we don't know what he's being accused of. He starts moving into the middle of the cluster of men, but I catch his arm, holding him back. He glances back at me with weary eyes, but gives a small smile like he's trying to reassure me. I'm not sure if it's meant to tell me he'll be okay or to try and convince me he didn't do whatever they think he did.

"Eli was with me last night," I say forcefully.

The three men all look at me like they just realized I've been standing there, which they probably have. It's a phenomenon I'm totally used to, being only five-foot-nothing. I get overlooked and run over more than I care to admit.

Mr. Edmonds raises one thin, dark eyebrow at me, but his expression is unreadable. "Then I guess you had better come along, too, Miss Carver."

I nod, feeling all my boldness slither away under the scrutiny of the three authority figures, but as they turn back toward the school I swear I see a ghost of a smile appear on the lips of the steel eyed trooper.

As we start towards the school, I glance around and realized half the school is standing in the parking lot, staring at us, whispering and watching. Nicky catches my eye and gives me a look that says I'm dead meat for not spilling about my nocturnal activities sooner. It is only then that I realize what my confession must have sounded like.

Fire licks my face, no doubt turning it the unflattering blotchy color of mortification. Nicky quirks a brow in a suggestive question, eyes darting between me and Eli. I shake my head quickly then avert my gaze to the broad back of the trooper in front of me and keep it there until we file into Mr. Edmonds' office.

Eli takes the seats in front of the principal's thick, wooden desk. The other trooper, the one who hasn't spoken, steps out into the office and retrieves another chair. Both the troopers position their chairs on either side of the desk so that one is facing either of us, sitting so close we're almost knee to knee with our respective trooper.

Strangely, it's Mr. Edmonds who appears to be in charge. He leans forward so that he must be sitting on the edge of his chair and clears his throat, but instead of talking he waits, all three watching us intensely.

"What's going on?" I finally ask, when I can't take it any longer.

Eli lets out a sigh and I glance over at him. He wears a look like I just lost a battle I didn't even know I was fighting.

"Tell me, Miss Carver, is your mother aware of your extracurricular activities last night?" Mr. Edmonds asks, one side of his mouth crooked up and a single brow on the opposite side of his face raised in challenge.

I've never had the occasion to be in this office under his interrogation before and I have to say I am glad. The weight of his gaze makes me feel compelled to spill all my deepest, darkest secrets.

I check the inclination and remember the look Eli wore out in the parking lot. I let it fire me up again and lean forward toward the desk, sliding to the edge of my chair just like Mr. Edmonds did. I narrow my eyes and look up into his dark ones, the color of a thundercloud. "Yes, actually, and I resent the implication that I would be up to something that she wouldn't approve of. Or that Eli would either."

He smiles and leans back in his seat, but both brows rise high on his face, hiking towards the dips of his widow's peak. I expect him to steeple his hands like a super villain in a cheesy movie, but he doesn't. He rests them casually on the arms of his chair.

I swear I hear Eli groan. Clearly he would have gone with another tactic. Brooding silence, probably. While it works for his encounters with our classmates, I don't think it will be helpful to him in this situation. It will only make him look more guilty of whatever they think he's done. And since this time that something might be murder, based on the fact that we watched them wheel a body bag out of the back of the school, I'm not about to keep my mouth shut.

"Please, tell us what you were up to then, Miss Carver."

I take a deep breath and unclench my jaw. He's goading me and I know it. Giving these men attitude will not help Eli's situation. Though I suspect the steel eyed trooper doesn't approve of the tactics being employed, based on the sharp look he's giving the principal.

"Eli's battery was dead yesterday after school. He had to get to work. He was going to walk. It was freezing out there. There was no way I was going to let him walk in that weather, so I offered to give him a ride."

The principal looks from me to Eli and his eyes soften and in them I see something that looks like affection. Eli has his head forward, staring at the wood grain of the desk or nothing in particular. I can't tell, but I can tell he doesn't notice the emotion or the way Mr. Edmonds is watching him.

"Anyway, I offered to pick him up after work since he wasn't sure he would have a ride, but I knew, being a guy and all, that he probably wouldn't call even if he didn't have one. So I called and asked when he was off and I showed up then. We stopped at the school to get his old battery because they charge a core fee if you don't exchange the old battery when you get a new one. Did you know that?" I ask, looking at the principal.

He smiles a tight smile, like he's trying to keep from laughing and shakes his head.

"Me either. I learned it last night. My dad's a mechanic, but he never teaches me this kind of stuff. Eli was really patient explaining everything he was doing last night. We made it back to the school close to eleven. He put his new battery in his truck. He sat in my truck while his warmed up for about fifteen minutes. We talked. Then we left."

The principal exchanges a look with the steel eyed trooper. I remember his name then. Trooper Kensington. It tickles something in my brain, but I don't have time to figure out what.

"Thank you for that recap of your evening, Miss Carver, and thank you for looking after Elias. You have a compassion the likes of which is rarely found in the world. That goes doubly so in a high school."

"Th-Thank you." I look down, blushing at the compliment, but I don't tell him that while I'm flattered I disagree. Maybe it's naivety, or a product of growing up in a home where compassion is encouraged, where putting others first is second nature to my parents, but in my experience people are more good than bad.

He dips his head like a small bow or something. It makes me smile, how formal and fancy he can be.

"You've been very helpful, Mackenzie. You may go. Have the office give you a pass."

I glance up and then over at Eli. "What about Eli?" I ask, losing all the warm fuzzies I was beginning to feel for the principal.

"I'm afraid we've got a few more questions for him." He nods towards the door, dismissing me.

"Not happening," I say, sliding to the edge of my chair again. "I'm not leaving him for you to gang up on. If he's staying so am I."

"It's okay, Mackenzie." Eli gives me an appreciative smile, but one that says nothing has changed.

"No, it's not." I turn to Trooper Kensington. "I'm not leaving."

I see that hint of a smile I saw earlier and then he nods. "Yeah, she stays."

I swear I hear Eli growl and I cringe thinking I've overstepped, but when I look over, he's glaring down Trooper Kensington.

Mr. Edmonds lets out a huge sigh, but gets right back to business. "That's fine, but be warned, Miss Carver, you might hear things you may wish you hadn't." He looks at me expectantly, like he thinks that I'm going to jump up and run away like a scared little girl. I don't miss the fact that I've gone back to Miss Carver rather than the more familiar Mackenzie he called me when he said I could leave.

Instead of running away, I face Eli. "Do you want me to leave? I don't want to intrude if there are things you don't want me to hear."

The hard look in his eyes wavers and for a moment several emotions play out on his face. I swear for a second he's asking me to understand him as I watch him trying to decide what to feel about my question. When he finally decides, it's hurt I see flash in his eyes before he closes himself off again. "I have nothing to hide."

Mr. Edmonds snorts as if he disagrees. Eli turns and glares at him and then Trooper Kensington as if daring them to contradict him. They don't.

"We understand there was an altercation between you and David Andrews yesterday. Can you tell us what happened?" Trooper Kensington asks, giving the principal a look that I can't decipher.

Eli scowls and looks like he's going to continue to remain quiet, but then he shifts in his seat, sinking a little further down. "It was nothing. Just guys messing around."

"That's not what we heard. We were given the impression that it almost came to blows, until David diffused the situation by basically surrendering." The trooper that was previously made of steel is made of something a little more human, more tender now. His gaze remains on Eli for a couple of long seconds, though Eli is oblivious to the kindness directed his way. When it's clear he isn't going to get anything more from Eli, Trooper Kensington turns his blue eyes on me.

He doesn't have to ask. I am more than willing to step in where Eli won't. I can already imagine the wear I'm putting on my back teeth from grinding them to keep from jumping in and putting the record straight. I have no testosterone fueled need to protect his tormentor.

I open my mouth, but before I get a chance to give an accurate account of the almost fight, Mr. Edmonds butts in.

"This is serious, Elias. A witness has come forward saying they saw you last night and is also saying you started the fight in the hall. David's a big boy, but you're bigger by about four inches and at least forty pounds, I'd say. It would have been far from a fair fight. Maybe that's why he picked it, hmmm? I know you don't want to be a rat, but now is not the time to hold your tongue if you were not responsible."

"It was David's friend, Foster, Travis Foster," I blurt. I ignore the quick whip of Eli's head toward me and the tight set of his lips. "The guy has doggy issues or something. He got in Eli's way talking about 'how dare a mutt like him look at their girls and he better keep his eyes to himself', though he used another word for girls that I won't repeat." It doesn't escape my notice that the principal and the trooper gave each other a quick look when I said mutt, which is weird.

"Then what happened," Trooper Kensington asks when I pause to watch the way all the men in the room seemed to have tensed up, wondering what I'm missing.

"Foster doesn't have the size to back up his big mouth, not that Eli was doing anything but standing there and taking it. Foster wasn't making much sense, to be honest. But then again the... jocks never need an actual reason to mess with anyone, especially not Eli, because he's always the mature one who doesn't let them get to him. Which I think is why they try that much harder, especially David. He wasn't about to let an opportunity pass. He got up in Eli's face asking if he wanted to go."

Both Troopers and Mr. Edmonds are leaning forward, watching me with serious eyes. It's a little intimidating. I wonder how Eli can stay so cool under their scrutiny, keeping silent and not cracking for them like a piñata.

"A crowd started forming which was David's cue to really start performing. Throwing down every insult he could think up, including several racially derogatory names. He left few ethnicities unturned, Hispanic, Alaska Native, Indian, Chinese and Japanese. Then he resorted to calling Eli a mutt. Seemed like he expected that one to bother Eli the most, threw it out after nearly every word."

I glance over at Eli, but he has his head down, staring at the desk again.

"Eli didn't do or say anything to provoke either guy and he never rose to the bait. He even looked away when David got up real close, right in his face. When he turned back towards David, I guess half a brain cell kicked in and he realized if he had to get up on his tiptoes to be eye to eye with Eli, it was probably a good idea to back off. He claimed he was just joking and Eli accepted the weak excuse and left. The whole thing made no sense from start to finish. Foster's and David's girlfriends weren't even around."

"It was you," Eli says, startling us all.

"Huh?"

"Foster was making rude gestures behind your back. I may have glared at him a second before I glanced over at you hoping you hadn't seen what they were doing. So, I guess in a way I started it."

"You can't be serious?" I say, though my heart has picked up an extra beat thinking about him watching me, glaring at that idiot, Foster, on my behalf. "You are not responsible for those idiots acting like idiots."

"It doesn't matter. They'll find a way to blame me for it anyway. _I'm so much better than all that. I should be the responsible, mature one_ ," he says the last bit in a mocking tone, repeating words that have obviously been said to him probably on a number of occasions.

I turn on the principal, anger flashing in my eyes, ready to tear him a new one, but he's staring at Eli, stunned, the disbelief evident in his expression. His eyes move a fraction, seeing me staring and he quickly schools his features. "I'm sorry, but I have to agree with Miss Carver on this one. It sounds like you handled the situation with more maturity than anyone can be expected to under the circumstances."

"It seems to me your witness isn't very reliable if they told you he started the fight and then they left out the fact that Eli was here, but didn't mention me. Seems like they have been lying to you. Let me guess, your witness is David or maybe Foster?"

Mr. Edmonds winces and I think I've hit the nail on the head, but I keep from smiling triumphantly, because just then I remember the dead body.

The principal and the trooper share a look, both of them seeming suddenly somber, like they too have just remembered the body.

"David was attacked here at the school last night. He was chewed up by something big."

The blood drains from my face and the flashes of teeth and blood and torn flesh flood my mind, like a gory movie clip playing on repeat.

Eli jumps up, his chair slamming backwards and hitting the wall behind us. The impact makes me jump, saving me from the instant replay in my head. Eli looms over Trooper Kensington, breath coming fast and heavy, fists clenched at his sides.

"That's why you're here, huh? To get a bite impression?" Finally, I hear the bitterness in his tone I always expect when he's dealing with the guys who hassle him. It's never been there before today.

"David's dead?" I ask, feeling a little bit light headed. My breaths are coming fast and shallow. Eli spins around, sees me and curses. He takes ahold of my arm. I'm standing, but I'm not sure when that happened. In spite of how worked up he just was, Eli's grip on me is gentle. He helps me back into my chair, pushing it back so he can kneel in front of me.

"Deep breaths," he says, his voice deeper than normal. I feel it in my head and in my chest like the bass in my truck when I have the music turned up too loud. His hands are busy, fingertips rubbing my legs, thumbs drawing circles against my knees. His voice along with what he's doing with his hands is mesmerizing. I realize he's saying something, but I can't figure out what.

I blink a few times and the room comes back into focus. He's just been chanting that it's alright, reassuring me. Then I notice just how long his fingers are and my stomach gives an inappropriate jerk when my brain and my thighs register how far his reach is.

I swallow and ask the obvious question to distract myself. "If David was attacked by an animal, what does that have to do with Eli?"

Eli smiles like the rest of the stuff doesn't matter since I'm okay now and I temporarily lose the ability to breathe, because the boy has gone from mildly attractive and darkly mysterious to, well, breathtaking. He's absolutely beautiful when he smiles the way he's doing right now.

"They're concerned because I have a wolf," he says, all traces of his previous sullen behavior gone.

"A wolf?" I ask, and almost laugh at the dreamy quality my voice has taken on.

He shrugs. "A hybrid."

"Oh."
Chapter Three

"Did you know Eli Markam has a wolf?" I ask Nicky as we watch troopers lead him out to Kensington's car.

"Is that a euphemism?" Nicky asks, holding up her hands in measurement. "Means he's big, huh?" She nudges my shoulder and flashes her eyebrows playfully. "Huh, huh? Or is that what he named it? The Wolf. Sounds intimidating. Were you scared?"

I shake my head. "There is something wrong with you. Does your father know you're this preoccupied with sex?"

She gives me her most evil smile. "It's my favorite form of torture where Dad is concerned. It's called desensitization. When I finally do have sex it won't be a big deal, he'll either not believe me or he'll be used to the idea because I've already talked about it so much. Besides you've seen the lovely shade he turns. Not quite pink, but not completely purple either. Lavender, I think."

"That was David Andrews in the body bag. He was attacked by an animal. Something big, like a wolf," I say returning the conversation to a serious note.

Nicky looks at me then, her skin paling. "You don't think that's what you saw when you touched Eli, do you?"

"No. It wasn't him. I was with Eli when it happened." One look at my friend, mouth opening to suggest something inappropriate and I quickly add, "Changing his battery."

"Is that another euphemism?" She nudges my shoulder again and I just shake my head.

"Aren't you supposed to be in class? Why are you out here?"

I get a sly smile from her. "I had a feeling... This was the place to be right now. That maybe you might need me."

I study her from the corner of my eye trying not to be obvious. She's always had these 'feelings' and they're pretty much on the money, but I've noticed they've been happening a lot more lately.

"Thanks."

"Always." Nicky slips her arm through mine and pulls me from the doors. I let her lead me away, but can't help glancing over my shoulder at the place where they took him away.

"Do you think he'll be okay?" I ask absently, thinking of how upset Eli was when they brought up his wolf. "You don't think they'll take his wolf away, do you? Or put it down?"

"Oh man. You've got it bad," Nicky says, laughing as she does.

I whip around. "What? No. I'm just concerned."

She doesn't contradict me, just gives me a look that says I'm completely in denial and she doesn't know if it's cute or annoying. Yes, I got all of that from a single look. Her face is very expressive.

"Okay maybe he's sort of beautiful when he smiles and he offered to fix my truck."

She gives me another look, this one saying she's ashamed to be friends with someone who would fall head over heels for a guy just because he offered to fix their truck.

"I know it's slim, as far as reasons to fall for the guy go, but you know the way to my heart is through my baby. I love that big blue hunk of metal. Besides, I've been noticing things about him since the incident in the hall that I never saw before. Like how funny and considerate he is."

"Pause those thoughts. I wanna hear them all at lunch." She shoves me toward my class and jets off down the hall, narrowly avoiding the attention of the hall monitor who steps into the corridor, like she knew he was coming.

I slip into class, hand the teacher my pass and find my seat. I pretend not to notice all the kids staring at me. No doubt they've all heard about my confession this morning providing Eli's alibi for last night.

It's hard to say whether David Andrews being chewed to pieces on the track field or Eli Markam being carted away in a cop car on suspicion of being involved is the bigger discussion today. Either way, everywhere I go the conversation stops and everyone stares until I pass.

I'm so grateful for a friendly face when I see Nicky at our table that I practically break into a sprint to get there. I skid to a stop just as quickly when Foster and three other guys from his group of idiots step in front of me.

"Why didn't the dog pound take you away, too? Along with your mutt boyfriend," Lester Charles sneers, getting way too far into my bubble.

"What were you doing here last night with that freak, Eli?" Foster asks, sliding in front of Lester, his voice a menacing whisper. And if Lester was too close, Foster is close enough that when he breathes out, I'm breathing in his polluted air.

There's a high pitched whine in my ears, like when Nicky and I hit the kiddy side of the grounds with the playground and the jungle gym, hanging upside down from the monkey bars until all the blood has rushed to our heads and standing up makes the world narrow down into a dark tunnel for thirty seconds. That's what is happening right now, only the tunnel isn't dark, it's bright like I've been staring at the sun.

Mom said once, that when the panic hits like this that I can be a danger to myself and those around me because of all the adrenaline. She says I don't know my own strength and I'll stampede anyone and anything to get out of the situation.

I try to breathe through it, knowing she's right. I can see that Foster is saying something, but I can't hear him over the whine in my ears. My muscles are bunching, readying to shove him away from me. I'm about to lose all control.

Nicky is up now, yelling and shoving against one of the guys, trying to get to me, but they're holding her back. A fact that only ratchets up the out of control feeling, but instead of panic, it's anger. I want to smash Eric Dylan like a beer can.

I hear a growl and I'm pretty sure it came from me, but then Eli is there and when he shoves Foster, there's no standing his ground. He falls back into his friends and they all teeter like bowling pins. Eric lets go of Nicky and grabs for his friend to steady him.

They're not such big men anymore, now that Eli's here. I still can't hear over the roar in my head, but Nicky's got my arm and she's saying something, rubbing my back.

I shake my head, trying to shake off the noise. When that doesn't work I smack the heel of my hand against the side of my head a few times. That usually works when the tinnitus starts.

"Hey," Eli says, his voice a deep rumble that I feel in my chest like I did back in the office this morning. It somehow cuts through the ringing in my ears. He rubs his hands up and down my arms like he's trying to warm me up.

The principal and the guidance counselor break through the ring of gawkers surrounding us, asking what's going on. Their voices sound far away, but the noise is finally starting to subside.

"Panic. Attack," I pant, keeping my eyes on Eli.

"You're okay," he rumbles, still rubbing my arms, but slower now, the rhythm almost hypnotic. His hands are warm, feverishly so. It feels good, relaxing. My knees give and I slump forward.

"Whoa! You keep falling for me like this and I'm going to think you mean it," Eli jokes, but I can see the concern in his dark eyes. I smile up at him and it takes a herculean effort. So tired. My eyes flutter shut and I sleep.

I wake to the sounds of whispered arguing. I only catch snatches.

"...wouldn't go to this school...was normal."

"...checked with her parents?"

"...go over well..."

"...have to do something... saw the air warping..."

I lay still as a board, watching the principal, the school nurse and the guidance counselor huddled together continuing the most bizarre conversation ever. I'm starting to wonder if I've stepped through the looking glass when Mr. Edmonds glances over and sees that I'm awake.

He clears his throat loudly and obviously. "Oh look! Our patient is awake!" he says with forced cheerfulness.

"Oh! How are you feeling, dear?" Mrs. Kaleak, the school nurse asks, coming over and fussing with a damp cloth on my forehead that I've only become aware of now that she's messing with it.

"Confused," I say, waving off her efforts and attempting to sit up.

"Careful," Mrs. Kaleak says, hands fluttering close in case I eat it again.

"What happened? How'd I get here?"

"You passed out, dear. Flopped right into that sweet boy, Eli's arms. Not that I blame you. If I was just a few years younger, I'd swoon over him too. Picked the right one too. If you're going to faint, that's the one to go for, big and strong like he is."

Mrs. Kaleak is a short, older woman, though her Alaska Native heritage makes it hard to tell just how old. Her skin is smooth and unlined and oddly youthful looking, especially with that quizzical look she's giving me.

"Oh dear! Do you feel faint, sweetheart? Here." She offers me the cloth for my head again. "You're flushed. You better lie back down."

"I think that's a blush, Angie, not a flush. You've embarrassed the poor girl, going on about Eli's big muscles and all," Ms. Fontaine says, sounding far more amused than a school counselor should be allowed, given the circumstances. I just want to bury my head in my hands and hide for the rest of my life. That whole stepping through the looking glass thing isn't sounding like such a bad idea at the moment.

"Speaking of the boy," Principal Edmonds says, raising a brow. He tilts his head toward the open doorway and I can see that Eli is there. It's clear he's heard far more of that conversation than I am comfortable with. I groan and wish a mythical creature would come have me for a snack so I wouldn't have to suffer through this. A dragon would be best, one giant chomp and my humiliation would be over.

"You're awake," Eli says, his cheeks a dusky pink which is an accomplishment with his dark complexion.

"I'm sort of wishing I wasn't." I close my eyes and shake my head before looking back up at him again. "You heard all that?"

He presses his lips together to keep from smiling and doesn't quite manage it. He nods his head slowly, confirming he heard every little, terrible, embarrassing moment of it. "Does that happen often?" he asks, confusing me.

"Uh? Oh, you mean fainting?"

His smile is positively devilish. He strides across the room and kneels in front of me. I'm sure my already heated face flushes several shades darker.

"The panic attacks. You don't have them a lot? I've never seen you have one before." He's looking into my eyes like he can see evidence there one way or another.

I file away the fact that he's noticed me enough to know I've never had one at school. "I haven't had one since I was little. My mom taught me how to recognize the signs that one was coming on and how to breathe through the emotions. I just don't like people being in my space." I motion around the air in front of me. Eli realizes how close he is, that he's in my bubble and starts to back up.

I grab his hand. "It's okay. It's mostly just people I don't know or that I'm not comfortable with."

I notice that the adults are all paying close attention, but trying to act like they're not. Standing half turned away, casting sidelong glances our way.

"So, when Travis got in your face and started threatening you, he set you off."

"Travis Foster threatened you?" Mr. Edmonds' question is so sharp it comes out like the crack of a whip. I flinch.

He softens his expression and comes closer, kneeling down like Eli. "I'm sorry, Mackenzie. We'll make sure he doesn't bother you anymore."

"I-I don't know. The panic causes this horrible ringing in my ears. I didn't hear anything after Lester harassed me about being taken away too and Foster asked what I was doing with Eli."

Mr. Edmonds' lips flatten into a thin line and he glances over at Eli for confirmation.

Eli motions with his head towards the hallway and Mr. Edmonds agrees with a quick nod. They get to their feet and leave me alone with Flopsy and Mopsy, the humiliation twins. I want to be mad at them for treating me like a helpless, hysterical girl, but considering the fact that I was a bit hysterical so recently, I grudgingly let it pass.

Mrs. Kaleak starts fussing over me again and I think Ms. Fontaine asks me something about medication, to which I'm pretty sure I give her an answer, but I'm kind of not paying attention, trying to see and hear what Eli and Mr. Edmonds are saying.

I glare at the two women chattering at me like magpies. Between the two of them talking at the same time a person can't even hear themselves think, and I'm pretty sure that's the point.

"You're not as smart as you think you are. Humming would be a lot more effective at keeping me from hearing what they're saying."

Mrs. Kaleak at least attempts to look wounded, while Ms. Fontaine gives me a smug smile and starts humming.

Luckily I'm spared from her tone deaf rendition of _Mary Had a Little Lamb_ when Eli and Mr. Edmonds return.

"Eli has offered to see you home, Mackenzie. You can pick up your truck tomorrow when you've had an evening to recuperate."

"Oh, uh, thanks?"

We step out into the office and Nicky is there, sitting in a chair watching with a bemused look. Mr. Edmonds steers me towards the exit. I try to object and turn towards Nicky, but I don't get far. Mr. Edmonds is determined to eject me from the school and into Eli Markam's care. I do get turned just enough to see Nicky giving me thumbs up, like this was the plan, and knowing her it probably is.

It's Friday, and every Friday Dad drops Mom off on his way to work so she can collect the truck. I ride home with Nicky and stay over at her house. It's a tradition, or maybe it's a ritual. Either way, it's suspicious that she's here, but Eli's the one giving me a ride.

My phone vibrates. It's the she-devil herself, texting me. _You can thank me later. Text me when the making out is over and I'll come get you. XOXO or wait, that's you and Mr. Broody! =P_
Chapter Four

Eli takes over where Mr. Edmonds leaves off at the door, directing me to his truck with a hand on the small of my back. He opens my door for me and even helps me up and into my seat, with hands on my waist and a boost that startles me and gives my stomach a little jolt. He doesn't help me put on my seatbelt and it's a good thing he doesn't, because I'm still not sure if I'm loving being taken care of or if I hate it, but that's where I draw the line.

Awkward silence fills the interior of the truck as we sit at the stop sign, waiting to exit school grounds. The plinking of the blinker starts to sound louder and louder.

"Oh, sorry. You probably need directions, huh?"

Eli shakes his head, a small curve of a smile appearing at the corner of his mouth. "Mr. Edmonds gave me your address."

I'm not sure why the revelation gives me a start or why Eli's smile now looks almost guilty with the lenses the knowledge provides. Maybe it's because the thought of those two conspiring while I was out cold feels a little shady, even though I know it wasn't like that at all. But now that I've thought it, I can't get the image out of my head of Mr. Edmonds standing over me, back hunched, rubbing his hands together with an evil glint in his eye. Like a cartoon character.

I almost laugh at the image. I don't laugh, because then I'd have to explain how absurd I'm being and I've had enough humiliation for one day.

"Thank you for taking me home. For everything."

Eli shrugs and I can tell it isn't because he's indifferent, but because my appreciation makes him uncomfortable. He's probably no good at taking compliments either.

"You didn't have to give me a ride. I could have caught a ride with Nicky or taken the bus."

"I wanted to." He keeps his eyes forward on the road.

Something that feels a lot like hope seeps into my chest filling up spaces I don't want it to occupy. Places that will hurt when that hope proves to be false.

After a few seconds of silence Eli gives me a sideways glance. His chest rises and remains puffed up for a second before he forces all the air out in one big rush. "You helped me. You have no reason to, nothing invested, but you've gone out of your way for me. I was surprised when you offered me a ride the first time, but then when you made me promise to call if I needed a ride... I didn't know what to think. I hate to admit that it made me a little suspicious. I couldn't figure what your motives were. I thought about it my whole shift, and finally decided maybe you really were one if those mythical creatures I've heard of that are nice to people for no reason. Selfless."

He pauses on that last word, like he's examining it. Then he laughs and it's strange how a sound can convey more emotion than words, because in it I hear both wonder and disbelief. "There was no way I was calling you, even if I had decided your offer was on the level. Especially because I had decided it was, but then there you were, sitting in your warm truck waiting for me, smiling at me like... I dunno, like no one has ever smiled at me before. I was completely helpless. You don't know the kind of power you had over me in that moment."

I can't breathe, listening to his confession. My head swims trying to sort out my emotions, all the while trying to understand what he's telling me. I scarcely believe what I'm hearing.

He shakes his head, like he can't believe what he's saying either. He pulls to a stop in my driveway and I'm stunned. I didn't even notice we'd arrived. He puts the truck in park and then places his hands back on the wheel, gripping it tightly like it's anchoring him, holding him down. Like without it he'll float away.

"It's been my experience in life that people don't stand up for you and they definitely don't stick their necks out for you. You did both for me. You just jumped right in the middle of things and while everyone was watching you announced that you were with me. You didn't hesitate, you didn't stop to think about how it would sound or what people would think. And then you didn't back down when that made you a target first for the police and then for the assholes who are always on my case."

He looks at me, his eyes intense and full of things I can't even fathom. "So, yeah, I did have to, but more importantly, I wanted to. I wanted to be even half as good as the guy you saw when you were looking at me standing outside of the garage. I want to be worthy of the belief I saw in your eyes when I was standing in the middle of that circle fighting with everything I had to keep from tearing into Andrews."

The tip of his tongue peeks out, sliding slowly over his top lip and then doubling back to swipe across the bottom one.

"You had this soft, knowing look, like you could see what no one else could and you thought it was noble of me standing there taking his shit. I started to wonder if maybe you were right. When my mom says that kind of crap it pisses me off, but coming from you... I dunno, for the first time it made me feel strong instead of weak."

I haven't taken a breath since he started speaking and in the silence that follows that confession, I still don't, waiting to see if he'll say more. Pressure against my chest makes me realize I'm straining against the seatbelt, leaning toward him.

I've never in my life wanted to kiss someone more. I open my mouth to say something, I'm not sure what, but he turns off the truck and opens his door before I get the chance. Frigid air rushes in slapping me in my heated face and singeing my nose and throat, breaking the spell as I finally take a big gulp of air.

He comes around to my side of the truck and reaches across my lap, freeing me from the seatbelt. If he'd tried that earlier I might have felt indignant, now I swallow and take tiny sips of air, careful not to breathe too deeply for the fear any movement will bring more of my chest into contact with his. I'm not sure why that scares me, maybe I'm afraid he'll pull away, or maybe that he won't.

Finished, he leans back, but not enough that he's completely out of my space. He gives me a light smile and then reaches in again and this time my stomach does somersaults when his hands close around my waist. He lifts me, holds me a second, close to his chest, the motion stealing my breath, then he sets me on my feet.

He looks down into my eyes, not stepping back. His eyes roam over my face like he's looking for something or memorizing me.

I'm captivated by his eyes. They're beautiful, dark, but light too. I've never noticed before that the middle is the color of teak, softer than the dark I've always thought them, but the darkness is there too, ringing the outer edge.

Without even realizing it, I've turned my face up toward his and my eyelids feel heavy with anticipation.

Eli takes a step back and motions toward the house. I turn my face away so he can't see my mortification. I hurry away from him up the three steps that lead onto my porch. He doesn't let me get away though, to escape into my house where I can die of embarrassment alone and in peace.

He joins me at the door, standing far too near for someone who has no intention of kissing me. I can feel the heat of his body standing so close at my left, his hand finding the small of my back again. I stifle a groan when I realize he's doing what Mr. Edmonds said, seeing me home safely. Nothing more.
Chapter Five

I get the key out of my pocket, but I fumble it a few times, almost dropping it. Then I miss the hole for the lock not once, but twice. Eli reaches like he's going to take it from me, or help me, but I lean away just enough to be clear that I've got it and he gets the picture. He pulls back a little, but doesn't drop his hands.

It's frustrating that seeing them so close to mine can make my pulse jump even while my face still burns with shame.

I get the door open and stumble inside, lending credence to his belief that I'm fragile, or need to be babied. But I'd rather him think that than for him to realize I'm all skittish and clumsy because I'm worked up over how stupid I am, how humiliated.

He follows me in and stands in the middle of the hallway at the entrance to the living room. He looks around, eyes slowly taking in everything.

My mom is so smart. During the day she works for this company going through their contracts and tearing them apart, finding all the places someone could challenge them, making them understandable to mere mortals, but it's afterwards that she transforms into something amazing. On her own time she's incredibly creative. Genius maybe. Painting, drawing, you name it. But one thing she is not is clean.

There is a cereal bowl from this morning sitting on the coffee table, a sketch pad, a wrapper for a granola bar. One of the couch cushions is halfway off and there's a blanket stuffed into the hole it's supposed to occupy.

There's a stack of boxes next to the couch with their guts spilling out from her last rash of purchases. The pile has been there for over a month. Most of it at least, the top two boxes are recent, probably from last night.

My mother does not clean, at least not unless we're having company. Sadly, this, what he's seeing, is actually pretty clean.

I pull an opened magazine off the other cushion on the couch and add it to the mess of them on the coffee table, tidying them into a stack as I do.

"Sorry, my parents are great, they're loving, smart and supportive, but also scatterbrained, messy and not at all interested in impressing people with an immaculate living space."

He pulls his eyes away from a picture of my mother and me from when I was younger. Maybe ten. He smiles and there is warmth in it. "I like it. It feels lived in in here. Like a home instead of a museum where everything is in its place and if you touch anything alarms will sound and a giant metal cage will descend on you. My mom is OCD, like padded room clinical. We've had to replace the bathtub in our house twice since we moved in because she cleans it so often she wears away the enamel. We've only lived there for twelve years."

He says it like he doesn't realize how personal what he's sharing is. The revelation relaxes me, makes me feel less like a complete moron for what happened outside. He's somehow, with those two sentences, transformed from this hot, unattainable guy I want to hide from into a still hot, unattainable guy, but one that's human, that I can relate to and maybe still be friends with.

I glance at his over-washed t-shirt and can't keep my nostrils from flaring as I think of how he always smells clean, like laundry soap and freshly cut wood.

He notices and smiles, but there's a hint of something dark in it. A little sore maybe. "Can't ever have anything nice. I used to try to hide the clothes I liked, but she finds them. She washes everything until it's faded and threadbare. Rather than letting it get me worked up and live angry at her all the time, I just buy cheap white t-shirts and pants that hold up a little longer, besides the look works for the shop I work at too."

"That's a really great attitude. I doubt many guys would be as cool about it. And honestly, I wasn't thinking about your clothes. I was thinking about how you always smell so good, like fresh laundry and cedar shavings."

He grins and I realize what I've just admitted. I busy myself tidying another of my mom's messes to distract myself. This time it's a drawing pad, charcoal pencils and oil pastels.

"You think I smell good?"

I pause in my sorting, but don't look at him. "There is nothing better, for me at least, than the smell of clothes right out of the dryer and I've always loved the smell of wood being worked on, of sawdust, but my favorite is cedar. It's comforting, like coming home when you've been away too long. You smell like both. The laundry scent I get, but cedar always makes me wonder if you come to English from wood shop. Do we even have wood shop at Lakes?"

He laughs. "I don't think we do. Maybe it's my shampoo?" He approaches me slowly, like I'll spook if he moves too quickly. I don't realize what he's got in mind until he's right in front of me and bending down for me to smell his hair.

My gut launches a full scale attack, slamming itself against my rib cage in an attempt to escape. Either that or I swallowed a nest of angry bees while I was passed out. I close my eyes and try to determine if his shampoo is the source of the cedar I smell on him every day. My first attempt fails because I can barely draw a breath. I relax a little, reach up and cup his head in my hands, steadying myself and pulling him down and closer, so I can get a good whiff.

He lets me direct his head to my nose, laughing a little at the fact that he has to lean down lower to accommodate me. It's familiar, the amusement at my height. It helps.

I get a good breath this time, full of something very male and a little bit cedar. I have to fight to keep from embarrassing myself worse than I already have by sighing with contentment. "It might be your shampoo. I'm not sure."

I realize I'm still holding his head in my hands, my fingers dug deep into thick strands of his soft, black hair. I let him go and he stands up, but doesn't move away.

The longer he stands there just staring down at me, and me looking back up at him, my breath is coming faster and heavier. I think I might actually be panting. Which can't be attractive, but he doesn't seem to notice. Or if he does, he's not bothered.

He rocks back on his heels, pulling away enough to break the connection. "I should probably go."

My ego takes another hit, but this time it doesn't sting nearly as bad. "Of course. It's Friday night. Places to be and people to see?"

He laughs and it's a nice sound, one I could get used to hearing. "Not really." He shrugs his shoulders and gives me an awkward, lopsided grin.

I follow him to the door. He stops with his hand on the doorknob and looks back at me. "Oh hey. You have this crosshatch pattern of dirt on your butt."

I spin around, trying to get a good look at my butt and then I see it. My face heats up as I turn back to face him. "I think it's from my mom's truck. I have to jump down and I must have hit the doorframe. It has that same pattern where I step to get in."

His smile is a sly one as he nods. "I noticed the pattern yesterday when you gave me a ride. The mystery was finally solved. I probably should have said something a long time ago, but it's so adorable. I didn't want to tell you and put an end to it."

He opens the door and steps out onto the porch before I can think of a way to respond, but inside there is some sort of joy explosion taking place in my chest.

"Eli Markam, I do declare!" I give him my best southern belle impression, though I am neither southern nor a belle. "You have been checking out my butt." I feign shock, fluttering my eyelashes, clutching at my heart and everything.

He glances back, flashing his eyebrows at me suggestively. I laugh, mostly because I have no idea who this flirty, carefree boy is that's standing in front of me.

I'm thinking there may be hope for me yet when his head jerks up and his body does one of his patented frozen statue things. He steps back into the house, pulls the door shut and turns both the lock and the deadbolt. His eyebrows swoop down, causing a small valley to appear between them. He tilts his head, concentrating, before his eyes flash open wide.

"Are you expecting your parents soon?"

I shake my head. "No. They go to Anchorage every Friday and stay the night in town. I get a ride with Nicky and stay over at her house. Why?"

He pulls his gaze from the door to look at me, a question in his raised brow that I imagine is questioning why he drove me home when she was right there, but he doesn't voice it. "So, she'll be here soon?" he asks, ignoring my question.

I give another shake, small and quick. "She's unnaturally preoccupied with sex and probably read what she wanted into the alibi thing. I think she was trying to be _helpful_. It's just you and me. She won't be coming until I text or call her." I watch as the line between his brows deepens. " _Should_ I call her? Or that trooper, Kensington, maybe?"

Eli's head jerks again, like he's reacting to something I can't hear. "No time." He grabs me, spins me and while keeping his hands on my hips he steers me through the house to the back door. Like he knew where it was. He wrenches it open, leans close, mouth at my ear and whispers, "Run."

The fine hairs on my neck stand on end, but I don't hesitate or ask why. This time I don't stumble, I shoot down the stairs and rush headlong toward the trees. Following a path I could walk with my eyes closed, I'm swallowed up by the forest. It's a good thing I could travel this path blind, because that's basically what I am. It's so dark I can barely see the ghostly white birch trees before each one appears seemingly out of nowhere, close enough to reach out and touch.

I glance back over my shoulder. I can't see anything. Not Eli, if he's following and not even the lights from the house behind me. I strain my ears to hear sounds of pursuit, either Eli's or whoever it is he sent me out into the woods to run from. I don't hear anything.

The fine hairs renew their effort to maintain an upright stature. This time it's not just the hairs on my neck prickling my skin with alarm and making it difficult to breathe.

The hollow whining sound rings in my ears, filling my head. I don't think, I twist at the waist, my arms flying out to my left. To my utter surprise and then terror, they connect with something big, something human.

There's no exclamation, no cry of pain or even surprise. There's just a thud, then the thump of my heartbeat and the whisper of my feet flying over the snow covered frozen earth.

It isn't long before I have to slow down, or risk slamming face first into a tree trunk or splaying out on the ground after tripping on downed tree limbs or errant piles of snow. Even though I quit running, I still try to keep a fast pace, grabbing and holding onto trees for balance as I pass.

With my slower pace, my adrenaline is also ebbing. In the darkness, alone, with my fear growing, I start imagining who I could be possibly running from, my mind flashing to the description of David Andrews. My mind conjures images of him shredded and bloody, torn into by an animal. Then of course, I start thinking about all the animals that are sharing the forest with me.

I stop, grabbing onto a tree and hugging myself to it as an anchor. I comfort myself with the fact that it's winter and there are no spiders that could survive being out in below zero temps. I glance all around me, not that I can see anything. I try to force my breathing to calm, so that I can listen for anything stalking me, sneaking up on me. It only makes me breathe harder.

I'm about to go into full on panic mode when something touches my shoulder. A scream wrenches up my throat, but before I can get more than a peep out, a hand clamps over my mouth.

"Shhhhh. It's me. Eli." His lips are in my hair close to my ear, his words a whisper, no more than a breath really.

I sag back into him, relief flooding through my body like a drug, making my limbs weak and noodley. He is a rock, his arms sliding around my waist to support the sudden heavy weight. He only gives me a moment to rest against him before he sets me straight, on my own feet.

"We have to keep moving. We're not alone out here, Mackenzie."

He doesn't have to say that we really don't want to meet up with whoever it is that's out in the woods with us because his nearly silent tone, the way his body is so rigid behind me, so alert and tense says it for him.

I don't speak for fear I might be too loud and alert anyone who is listening for our presence, I nod, but only once because the crinkle of my coat makes me still.

Eli takes my hand, his touch gentle and slow, lacking the urgency I feel. I give his hand a squeeze and he returns the gesture, steps around me and leads us deeper into the darkness. He moves almost completely silently, sure footed while I stumble in his wake. I think half the branches in the forest have found their way to the earth, and I swear my feet tangle in every single one, probably announcing our path to anyone who's listening for us within a mile radius.

"Eli." I tug his hand, panting as my chest heaves and my throat burns from huffing the frigid air. "Can we stop for a minute?"

He stops and turns toward me, eyes pinching shut like he's in pain, but he's not even winded. "They have dogs."

It takes a minute for the meaning to sink in. It doesn't matter how far we've run, once we stop running they'll find us. I want to ask who _they_ are, but it's a conversation that'll have to wait. I jolt as something else occurs to me. "They killed David?"

"Probably."

I swallow all my questions and glance around. "I can't keep this pace up much longer."

My confession hangs in the air like my breath. Eli nods once and takes my hand, leading the way again, but at a much slower pace. With my short legs, I'm still jogging, but for him it's a brisk walk. Still, I'm grateful. We're moving quickly enough to keep my body temperature up, but it's slow enough that while my lungs continue to burn, I no longer feel like I'm inhaling ice shards.

We continue on this way in silence for what feels like hours. I occupy the time playing over all the questions I have, but one keeps popping to the front of my mind. The moon is out providing some light, but even with my eyes having adjusted to the darkness, I can still barely see more than Eli's back in front of me.

"Are we lost?" The question comes out plaintive. Even though we haven't slowed our pace, the cold is cutting through the adrenaline and my thin jacket. I haven't been able to feel my feet since we stopped for those couple of seconds.

"We're almost there," he says, hunching forward and putting on a little more speed.

"Almost where?"

He doesn't answer. Instead he picks up the pace even more.

I have no idea how he can know where we are, let alone how we're close to whatever he's leading us to. I'm about to question him on it when he stops suddenly. The trees are thinner here. He points at something in front of him, so I move up next to him to see.

"If we're going to lose them, we need to go through this."

A small, mostly frozen stream with a crack of flowing water in the middle trickles along in front of us. I shake my head. "It's below zero out here, Eli. I'm starting to think our only chance at surviving is being caught, because we're going to freeze to death out here. If we walk through that water, we're dead."

He grabs my hands and rubs them between his. He pulls them to his mouth, blowing heated breath into the shelter his hands make around mine. The warmth seeps into me, giving me a spark of hope where none existed a moment before.

"I promise you, I won't let you freeze to death. This is the only way. We can't keep running. Eventually we'll tire and they aren't very far off."

I look up into his dark, earnest eyes and I want to believe him, but I know that water holds death. My canvas shoes are already soaked, and standing here, all my heat ebbing, I'm acutely aware of what stepping into that creak will do.

I don't need words to prove my point, I just have to lift one foot and show him.

He swears, but I still see the resolve in his eyes. "I'll carry you."

I open my mouth to protest, but he lifts the leg of his pants exposing a thick leather boot that goes far up his calf.

"They're not waterproof, Eli."

"They're waterproof enough." He cocks his head for a second, listening. When he turns back there is urgency in his eyes. "Okay. Here's what we're going to do. There's a pretty big drop off not too far over that way." He points ahead across the stream. "I'm going to lift you across. You're going to go carefully toward the cliff, dragging your feet through the snow."

He roots around on the ground, disappearing from my view for a second. He has a big rock in his hand when he returns.

"You're going to take this and throw it into the water below and then scream, like it's you that fell. Before you drop the rock, you kick around the edge to make it look like you stumbled over the edge. Then you follow your trail back here exactly."

He doesn't give me a chance to agree or protest. He hands me the rock, which is heavier than I expect. He grabs me, steps into the stream and sets me down on the other side. "Go." He gives me a push and I know I can't squander what he's done.

It's dark and without him there to lead, and with the threat of a long drop into what I can only assume is the Little Su, my pace is painfully slow.

I do everything he said, kicking the snow, dropping the rock and then the scream. The return trip is much quicker, following my own path back.

I don't relax when I see Eli's tense face. He's making grabby hands towards me, trying to get me to move faster. He turns around and I practically leap onto his back and we're off and running. I get my legs wrapped around his waist and hold on tight.

He takes me a little ways down the stream and then stops suddenly. I bury my face in his neck to keep from letting out a yelp.

He grabs me and pulls me around in front of him. A feat that I can't even wrap my mind around. He sets me on a large rock that's jutting up out of the water.

"Don't move. I'll be right back."

I'm balanced on the tip of the rock as water pours around it, trying to reach up and get me. The stillness makes me aware of just how long we've been moving for. Or maybe that's just my muscles aching from trying to keep from falling in.

I'm beginning to think Eli's abandoned me when he appears out of the darkness. A black shape moving in the darkness like a ghost. The image makes me wary about our unseen trackers.

Eli bends over this time, allowing me to climb onto his back and secure my arms and legs around him before he sets off again. Even with me on his back, running through water, he's still quicker and quieter than I could ever hope to be. His steps barely make a sound. I listen, but I don't hear any indication of pursuit.

Even though it doesn't seem like we're being followed, Eli doesn't slow down and he won't get out of the water, not even when I ask him to. It isn't until his body goes rigid beneath me and he looks over his shoulder that he finally veers out of the stream.

He weaves back into the trees where it's darker and heads for something big and shadowy. I'm certain it's an animal and I'm about to protest when it resolves into the base of a downed tree that has been ripped out of the ground by the wind, roots and all.

He slides me in behind it and then huddles against my back, caging me in with his body. I don't have to comfort myself this time, worrying about spiders. Between fear of the unknown people searching for us, possible killers, and Eli's body wrapped around me like it was designed just for that purpose, my mind is well occupied.

I watch the area we've come from through a space in between the network of roots and dirt. I hold my breath, only breathing out when my lungs scream and I have no choice and only then, blowing the stream of fogged air downwards so it'll be less visible to anyone who might be watching.

It is silent and still for so long, I begin to think no one is actually coming, but as soon as I think it, I hear something. Footfalls, moving fast. My fight or flight instinct kicks in at high gear, demanding I flee.

Eli tightens his hold on me with one hand while the other slowly makes its way up to cover my mouth.

I'm grateful for his restraining hands, both around my torso and on my mouth when something shoots through the trees a good distance away, but closer than is comfortable. Something big and hairy. Something that even with crushing darkness, catches enough of the moon's eerie light to make more than an outline visible.

The beast comes to a sudden stop. Its head raises slowly, tipping its large muzzle up into the air. I stop breathing, stop shivering, stop everything. Eli tenses behind me and the thing's head jerks like it heard the infinitesimally tiny shift of fabric and skin.

The head swings in our direction, and though the details aren't distinct enough for me to really see the small movements of its nose from this distance, I still imagine the black nose that has been honed into the perfect scent detector through thousands of years of evolution sniffling the air. Its eyes glow in the darkness. Tiny spotlights trying to search us out. They're luminous, gold and terrifying, even from afar.

I try to calm myself, reasoning that the supernatural glow is because they are reflecting the moon's unearthly light, and the reason they appear gold instead of silver is that the reflection from the moon is mixing with the brown of its eyes, projecting a golden illusion. There's got to be a scientific explanation for it, that's all. _Not_ because it is in _any way_ supernatural.

Not that there aren't supernatural things out there. This animal is just not one of them! Damn it!

Something else catches its attention, something in the direction that isn't toward us. Its muscles bunch and then it's gone, moving as quickly and silently as it came.
Chapter Six

I don't move. I barely even breathe. I haven't for an eternity. There is no way I am going to do anything that'll bring that thing, that creature, back this way.

I'm so cold, I may literally be frozen to the ground where my knees have been pressed into the snow and dirt for the last half hour, waiting. I clench my jaw tighter, but the chill finally wins and my teeth begin to chatter.

Eli pulls me down lower behind the stump and turns my face toward his. He swears and maneuvers me so that I'm turned around, facing him. He opens his coat, pulling the two sides wide to form a small tent, which he fits my body into, hugging me tight against his own. I'm too grateful for the infusion of warmth from his body heat to even react to the way our bodies are joined.

"That wasn't a dog," I say into his chest.

"No, it wasn't." His face is pressed up against the top of my head. I feel his lips move and the hot breath that accompanies the words. I slip my arms around his chest, under his jacket, over his shirt, grateful he's not denying it or trying to convince me it wasn't something monstrous I saw.

It wasn't just the inhuman eyes. It was bigger than any dog I've ever seen. Not even a wolf could manage that size. Not to mention it had fur as black and shiny as raven's wings. But what will probably give me nightmares for the rest of my life is the way it moved, faster than is natural, but not entirely like an animal would.

Its center of gravity was off, like it meant to stand up on two legs when it stopped to investigate, instead of remaining on all four.

I shiver at the thought and Eli's arms tighten around me. "We should go. The movement will help warm you up."

I nod my agreement even though I would rather remain tucked into the warmth and safety of his arms.

Once we've been walking for a while and I'm as certain as I can be that the creature isn't going to appear with every twig that snaps under my shoes or crunch of the glazed snow, I chance a question. I don't ask what that creature was because I'm not sure I want to know the answer. Instead, I stick to something a little bit easier. "Who is it that's after us, Eli?"

I don't look at him when I ask, but when silence is my only answer I glance over at him. His lips twitch, the only indication he feels my gaze on him.

"I'm not ignoring you. I'm just trying to think of a way to explain without scaring you."

I want to snort and tell him he's too late for that. I'm terrified, but I like Eli and it feels like we're in the beginnings of something fragile. I don't want to ruin it. I can tell he feels responsible for whatever is happening even though he's taken care of me the whole time. I'm not sure if I would still be alive without him. So, I keep quiet, watching him, letting him have the time he needs.

"There are these people. Criminals. They have been trying to recruit me to join their merry band of misfits for a while." His lips twist into a wry smile. "Seems I have a particular set of skills they value, but I'm not interested. I've told them that over and over, but they aren't very good at taking no for an answer."

I watch him, mulling over what he's just told me in my head. He keeps his head forward and his eyes on the ground.

"You think maybe they got the same idea as Nicky and thought they'd try and use me as leverage? Convince me to convince you, so to speak?"

He nods and keeps nodding, like he's a record that's gotten stuck on repeat.

"You slouch down in English so that I can see the board, don't you?" I ask, changing the subject.

This pulls him out of whatever thoughts have kept his head bobbing. He glances over at me, a smile tugging at his lips. "You noticed that, huh?"

I shrug and smile. "I've started seeing a lot of things lately that I wasn't aware of before."

"It's because of my mom. She's half Korean. She's smaller than you. Four feet ten inches. Being as tall as I am, I've learned a different orbit, living with someone as short as she is."

I examine his face, trying to see the Korean in his features. I can't pick any one feature that stands out to me, but I've never been any good at that kind of thing. I raise an eyebrow and look him over from head to foot. He laughs.

"I didn't get my height from my mom's side. My dad was six-four. I've got an inch and a half on him already. I kind of hope I'm done growing. I'm surprised the jock squad hasn't started in with Sasquatch or Big Foot already."

"Do the racial insults bother you? This might sound ignorant, but I've never really cared one way or another. I've never been terribly interested in finding out about my own heritage. Their ignorance wouldn't bug me, but that's probably just me. I'm sorry, I don't know anything about Korean culture."

"Neither do I. When someone asks me what I am, I say Alaskan. My mom is half Korean, a quarter Nez Perce and a quarter Swedish, but she was raised by her blonde, one hundred percent Swedish grandmother. My dad is half Navajo, a quarter Mexican and a quarter Norwegian. Maybe that's where the Sasquatch genes come in, but none of that means anything to me. Being a quarter Navajo and an eighth Nez Perce means I get free health care at the native hospital through Indian Health Services, but that's _all_ it means to me."

He stubs his foot on the ground purposefully kicking up a shower of snow. "Maybe if my dad was around longer things might have been different, but I doubt it. I remember he used to tell me stories, Navajo legends about the yee naaldlooshi. Skinwalkers. But I think that had more to do with the fact that he was fascinated by old legends about ghosts, vampires, witches, warlocks, chameleons, magic, and gypsies. If it was weird, he loved it. He told me stories that came from legends from all kinds of different cultures."

"Do you wish you had more of a link to your heritage?"

He shakes his head. "No. I'm the American dream. A melting pot for a whole host of different ethnicities coming together to makes something different. A mutt."

I flinch at the word, remembering how David and Foster threw that word out at him like they expected it to really dig deep, to wound.

"Is that why David called you that? It seems a little sophisticated an insult for him to come up with, considering."

"Nah, sophisticated is a nice way of saying he's not smart enough to think that up. He's definitely referring to a dog when he says it."

I get a squicky feeling at the connections my mind is making, but I refuse to let it take root.

As we continue to walk, the silence fills with the crunching of our feet in the snow. Well, only mine really, because Eli seems to move without making a sound. My mind continues to make connections I demand that it not. It keeps replaying certain events and conversations, analyzing and cataloguing little cues I didn't notice the first time around.

Like when Eli flew out of his chair, moved to react emotionally for the first time when he asked if they were there for a bite sample.

And then something even more sinister occurs to me. I watch Eli from the corner of my eye, taking in his features, scrutinizing. He must feel my gaze, the unspoken question waiting to be asked, because he hunches his shoulders forward and drops his head a little.

"Eli, when we were in Mr. Edmonds' office, he spoke to you with a familiarity, a casualness that he doesn't display with other students..."

He relaxes, fights a smile and loses. "He's my uncle."

I'm stunned, so much so, I stop walking and stare over at him. He stops, takes in my gaping mouth and laughs.

"He's your _uncle_? I would have never guessed. I mean... you don't seem..." I shake my head.

"Well it's not like we hang out or have family dinners together, but he's the one who convinced us to move up here. He saved us."

He laughs again, this time I'm sure it's because of my skeptical look.

"After my Dad died, Uncle Marcus came down, packed us up and moved us up here. My dad's death was pretty gruesome. I was five when it happened. He was mauled to death because he was protecting us, giving us a chance to escape. They say it was a grizzly that had lost its fear of humans. I don't remember it, but I remember what it was like after. Mom went a little crazy." He swallows, once and then again. "He saved my life." His voice is thick, his eyes glassy.

I don't say anything, just give him time.

"You remember the enamel of our bathtubs? Imagine what that kind of obsessive cleaning would do to human skin. A child's skin."

"Oh, Eli." I want to reach out and touch him, the impulse so strong my hand makes it halfway to his face before my brain catches up. It hovers there in the air, waiting for me to release it, like it's independent of me, but we're not at a place where touching his face is a right I possess. In spite of that, my desire to comfort him is stronger than my fear of embarrassment if he rejects my touch. Since he's not pulling away and his eyes are soft, looking back at me, I give in to it.

He turns his face into my palm, closing his eyes and I wonder if anyone ever touches him like this? With kindness. To comfort.

I watch him soaking up the tenderness, the gentle stroke of my thumb across his smooth, warm cheek and I forget the rest of the world. In this moment, only Eli and I exist.

He opens his eyes but doesn't withdraw. He keeps his face turned into my hand, his eyes on me. "She doesn't mean to be abusive. She doesn't realize what she's doing is wrong. In her head, in her insane logic what she's doing is actually because she loves me. She thinks she's helping me, saving me...from the germs and the dirt, from being unclean."

I'm completely lost. There's no way I could check myself after hearing those words. I slide my other hand over his shoulder and into his hair, pulling him down and into my neck, hugging him. He lets me, and after only a second of hesitation, his arms come around me, pulling me against him, hugging me back just as fiercely.

I'm learning that everything I've thought about Eli over the years is wrong. I've made assumptions and judged him based on those assumptions. I've always thought he was nice. I had a soft spot for him, but that may have had a lot to do with me thinking he was poor.

The only thing I had right was that he's stronger than anyone knows. All the reasons he's teased, the threadbare clothes, the fact that they aren't trendy or expensive, the dark hoodies that make him seem brooding and distant, all of that is because of his mom.

All those times he never fought back, I thought it was just because he was the bigger guy, physically and emotionally, possibly afraid to hurt them, but also just mature enough to rise above. Maybe some of that is true, but his silence was to protect her. He only ever wavered that once.

"Eli, I don't think I can walk another step," I say, when the holding has changed from comfort and connection into holding each other up and keeping each other warm.

His response is to tighten his arms around me.

"We're lost, aren't we?"

He sets his forehead against the top of my head, the action heavy with defeat and exhaustion. His chest expands as he pulls in a deep breath. When he exhales, his warm breath provides a brief respite from the cold air biting at my cheeks. "Not lost, just low on options. How long before we can expect Nicky to be concerned about your absence and send out the cavalry?"

"I don't know. It depends. If she thinks the night might end with us having sex then we're on our own. If she's having one of her _feelings,_ then we could be rescued any second now. I think we have to assume she hasn't sent out the National Guard. Which means we need to find shelter before we collapse or turn into Eli and Mackenzie popsicles."
Chapter Seven

The search for shelter isn't going very well. We've been walking for a while now, possibly a half an hour, maybe less. I'm not really sure, which is probably a sign of hypothermia. The slowing of mental faculties and all.

Eli's head drops a little and his eyes get squinty. He points. "I think there's something up ahead. Maybe an old, abandoned car."

I don't see anything at first, but then the outline of something indistinct but square slowly becomes visible. The fact that I can see more now, even though it's darker than it was when we first set out, is something I file away for future examination.

I pick up my pace and my heartbeat increases too, but more from excitement. The prospect of shelter, even a shoddy one, makes me light headed with anticipation, or maybe that's the slow shut down of my bodily functions to conserve warmth. Either way, it's sort of exhilarating, or alarming. I haven't decided which yet.

Eli slows down before I do. It takes me a second to see why. Hope flees, and all my energy with it, when I see that the shelter is nothing more than the bones of an old SUV.

I fight tears, only because the moisture will make me colder. If ever there was an appropriate time to cry, this would be it. I press my fists into my eyes to provide a physical barrier to the hot wetness since I don't have the emotional strength alone to hold them off.

Strong hands grip my shoulders and I expect Eli to pull me to his chest, though I fear the battle with the damn tears will be lost if he does. Instead, he stands there holding onto me, waiting for me to look at him. When I finally do, instead of the soft look I expect, his mouth is flat and his eyes are determined.

"This isn't what you're going to want to hear, but we can't use this. There's nothing but metal. Even if none of it is jagged and dangerous, the metal will be colder than taking our chances on the ground."

I don't say anything because I'm not certain if I open my mouth the only thing that will come out will be a sob. Eli puffs up like he's preparing for something terrible, and by the pained look he's wearing, I think he might be. I'm not sure I can handle one more bad thing.

"Look, I know this is going to sound crazy, but if you can trust me, I can get us through the night. Can you trust me?"

I look deep into his brown eyes, whiskey eyes a lady in the school office once called them. There is sincerity there. "Okay, yeah." I bite my lip and wait for him to save me again.

"Wolves have this thing they do. They burrow into the snow and bury themselves. The snow acts like insulation, helping to keep them warm while they sleep." I think he knows he's losing me because his words tumble out quicker and quicker as he speaks. "We'll put down your jacket as a barrier against the ground below. I'll zip you into mine with me. My median body temperature is higher than average, so I can help keep you warm, but we're going to have to get pretty personal... I know it's not ideal, but it's the only way you're going to survive, Mackenzie."

I dip my head in agreement. He pulls me against him in a quick, warm hug, then goes about digging out a small trench in the snow with his hands.

Living in Alaska, growing up in the cold has never bothered me before. As a child, most of my hours were spent outdoors, no matter the weather, playing in the snow, ice skating, riding snow machines and any number of other outdoor activities. I haven't outgrown the inclination. I still love to skate, cross country ski and snow machine. Even the occasional sledding trip is fun.

I often leave the house with a hoody as my only form of protection against the elements. Stupid, I know, but I'm usually only dressed for the walk to and from the door to the truck and vice versa, and I always have a coat, blanket and a pair of boots in the truck. The point is, I'm usually prepared for the just in case scenario, but I wasn't prepared for this, for running out of the house without warning and spending the night in the woods. Even the thought of unzipping and removing my coat is painful.

Eli stands and looks at the hole he's dug. I can't help but think it looks a bit like a shallow grave.

He turns to me and I know my time is up. Gently he coaxes my hands from where they've retreated deep within my sleeves, rubbing them between his large, warm ones long enough to restore a little bit of comfort to them. Then, instead of making me take off my jacket first, he unzips his and drapes it around my shoulders.

"There. Now yours," he says, careful not to catch my skin in the zipper as he unzips me and then slowly removes my coat one arm at a time, while keeping his coat from slipping off me.

I almost forget the cold and the pain while I watch him. The way he's so focused on taking care of me, the small, reassuring smiles he gives me each time he looks up from what he's doing. I've never wanted to be able to hear another person's thoughts before, but the way he sucks in the right side of his bottom lip, a tiny flash of white teeth visible when he's concentrating, makes me wonder what's going on inside his head.

I'm startled out of my own thoughts when he pulls my jacket free. "There, it'll be just a minute and then we can rest." He winks and smooths down my jacket in our makeshift den. He motions for me to come to him and for some reason I suddenly have butterflies in my stomach.

I hesitate only for a second, then step close and follow his directions, dropping down onto the snow and the coat. Getting the coat back around him while keeping me inside takes a little imagination, but pretty soon we're both cocooned inside the thick, insulated canvas.

I'm covered from the top of my head to the bend of my knees. Eli finishes covering us in snow and then looks down into my eyes. "Ready for things to get awkward?"

I giggle and bite my lip, trying not to move too much and possibly knee him somewhere important. "You mean they're not already?"

His eyes spark with something alarming that looks a lot like mischief and I gulp down a nervous breath. "Not even close. I know you've had the same hypothermia classes that I've had. You know where you lose the most body heat from."

"Head, neck, sides of chest, armpits, groin and feet."

He mashes his lips together to hide a grin and I close my eyes. I did not just say groin while my thigh is nestled against his and his against mine. I open one eye and look into his twinkling eyes.

He wasn't lying when he said things would get personal. Without warning, he slips his bare hands under my shirt and shoves them up into my armpits, effectively covering two of the troublesome spots, sides of the chest and armpits. That doesn't keep me from squirming and letting loose a seriously girly squeal of surprise.

He laughs as he shoves his nose into my neck and nestles in.

"If you weren't so warm, I might hate you right now." I repay the favor by wiggling my own cold hands under the hem of his shirt and placing them on his heated flesh. He doesn't squeal or squirm, but he does flinch and give an extra puff of startled breath down my neck.

After a few more minutes of adjusting and readjusting, we finally settle. I have to admit, though probably never to Eli, that the snow below us is probably a lot softer than the metal of that truck or even the hard earth below that tree clump we hid behind. With his body so close and his warm hands against my skin, I'm not feeling the chill like I was before.

"Thank you, Eli," I say as the weight of the day begins to drive me towards oblivion.

"Goodnight, Mackenzie."

I'm almost asleep, and possibly dreaming, when I feel him press a kiss into my hair.

### ~o~

My neck is hot and sticky. I try to move my hands to pull the covers down and realize they are trapped. I jolt awake, panic gripping me because there is a body pressed up against mine. It only lasts a second before adrenaline burns through the fog of sleep and I become aware of my surroundings.

Somehow in the night I've managed to turn myself around so that Eli's at my back, his long arms wrapped around me. Now that I know where I am, I realize how much I enjoy the position I find myself in. It's warm, comfortable and it makes me feel safe. It's a place I could get used to. It's still dark, so I have no idea how long I've been out for, but I could definitely sleep some more. Except my bladder has different ideas.

I get one arm into an empty sleeve and unzip myself. Eli mumbles something about staying and tightens his hold on me.

"I'm just going to use the facilities. I'll be right back."

"Okay." Eli lets out a contented sigh and loosens his hold enough for me to slip away. "Don't go far," he mumbles as I climb to my feet, displacing the snow that Eli covered us with. I glance back and catch a glimpse of skin between the bottom of his shirt and the top of his pants as his back arches in what looks like a satisfying stretch.

His eyes shoot open. "Mackenzie, no!"

His warning comes too late. I don't have time to stop as someone steps out from behind a tree and into my path. I slam into them. They try to grab me, whether to steady me or capture me, I don't know. Either way, I slap at their hands and scramble back.

I hear Eli behind us. He grabs me and pulls me back, stepping between me and the intruder.

There's a loud crack, like bone breaking and then Eli leans forward. He snarls. The sound of it is like something from a movie. He takes a step back, urging me backwards with a hand behind him.

He stops and the hand that was coaxing me back grabs me. Then I hear the low growl behind me. Eli turns his head slowly, shaking it like he's trying to shake off a bout of lightheadedness.

He turns his head just enough to see behind him, keeping most of his face hidden behind his shoulder, but it doesn't mask the way his eyes glow in the darkness.

"Do you really want to force me?" Eli asks, his voice coming out gravelly. There is no mistaking the warning in his question. It reminds me of the few times I've seen the guys back off suddenly while messing with him. It always happened when he got this weird calm, when the muscles in his jaw stopped flexing and his hands opened from their fisted positions.

I can't see his jaw this time, but the one hand that isn't holding onto me is open at his side, fingers all spread wide.

I glance around and notice the creature from last night standing in the distance, off to the right, next to a tree, on two legs. My heartbeat picks up and I take a step closer to Eli. He wraps his arm awkwardly around my back, pressing me closer.

No one else is speaking, but Eli seems to be getting more agitated by the second.

"Let the girl go, Eli. You don't want her getting hurt," a man behind me says. His voice is smooth, his words polished. I think that scares me more than the creature watching us with curious eyes.

Eli's neck jerks to the side, the angle seems unnatural.

"No matter what happens, Mackenzie, please know I won't hurt you. I'll never hurt you."

I can barely understand Eli's words, his voice is so thick, it's almost a growl. I can tell he's fighting something, some kind of change. I squeeze his arm to reassure him. "I know you won't, Eli. I trust you."

He pushes me back a step and then another, but keeps his hand on me. He shakes his head again, this time more violently. There's another of those horrid snapping sounds. He rolls his neck and then shrugs his shoulders. That's when I notice he's growing, his shoulders are widening while he's getting taller.

Something whistles through the air, passing just above my head. Eli must hear it too because he lets go of me and spins just in time to catch it before it hits him in the neck. He holds open his hand and I see a tranquilizer dart on his oddly textured palm.

He roars and I get my first look at his face, only it's no longer his face, but the face of an animal. This is his wolf.

He hunches down, eyes glaring at something behind me, ready to attack, but he doesn't get the chance. Three darts come whizzing through the air. He somehow has enough time to catch two of them even though they were all coming at the same time, but still one finds its mark. It's followed immediately by another and then a third.

He growls, but there isn't much heat behind it. He takes a stumbling step toward me, hands outstretched, but then he stops and sways. One eye is swirling around in his head with panic while the other droops and rolls back in his head. He takes one more step and then collapses.

I try to catch him, but end up just going down to my knees under his dead weight. I don't have long to struggle to keep from being flattened to the ground completely. Several hands, none of them human looking, pull him off me and heft him up between two creatures like the one we saw in the woods, wolf-like, but upright on two feet. They drape his arms over their shoulder like he's just a drunk friend they're going to help home.

"Let me help you, Mackenzie." A hand is offered to me. This one is human and it belongs to someone I recognize.

"Sam?" I stay on the ground, not accepting his offered hand or my coat he must have collected from the ground when I was trapped under Eli. I look between him and the creatures carrying Eli away. The guy at least has the decency to look ashamed. "Hey!" I yell, still ignoring Sam. "Where are you going with him?"

I start to get to my feet on my own, ready to go after them, but Sam stops me with a hand on my arm. I jerk away and try to sidestep around him. He steps into my path. I shove against him, but he doesn't budge, so I shove harder and again. He takes my abuse, letting me continue until I haul back to punch him. He captures my hands, but his hold is just tight enough to restrain, nothing more. I open my hands in surrender and he lets me go.

"They aren't going to hurt him. If they were, they wouldn't have bothered with the tranquilizers. He's okay." He picks up my coat again, having dropped it when he grabbed my hands and he offers it to me again.

"You didn't answer my question." I glare up at him wondering if he's one of those things too. That cute cat video where an adorable kitten goes up against a Rottweiler comes to mind. As is the case with the kitten, I'm probably only still alive because he doesn't want to hurt me.

His shoulders relax and he flashes his brilliant whites. "Down, killer. My ribs are still bruised from the last time I tangled with you. I'll tell you anything you want to know." He motions in the direction the monsters went with Eli. "Come on, we've got a bit of a walk to the truck. It's cold out here. I'll answer your questions on the way."

I grudgingly agree and he holds his hand out for me to go first, like he's a gentleman or something. I stifle the urge to punch him in the shoulder as I pass.

"We're walking. Now answer my question. Where the hell are we going?"

He chuckles at my impatience. "We're going back to our pack house."

"Oh right. Silly me. That clears it all up. What was I thinking, of course we'd be going to the _pack house_. What the eff is a pack house?"

"I know you're a smart girl, Mack. You're probably freaking out a little bit right now, trying to deny what you just saw or justify it as something other than what it is, but deep down you know. You just watched Eli start to shift into a werewolf. That's what those creatures were that carried him away. It's what I am."

I keep walking, but put some extra space between us. He gives me a quick, amused sideways glance.

"So when Eli said you guys wanted him to join your organization, he was protecting me from the truth. That you're _supernatural creatures_ that want him to joint your werewolf pack?"

"Don't sound so skeptical. You saw it with your own eyes."

"Show me," I say, stopping, my hands going to my hips.

"Nah, I'd rather not. You heard the bones snapping when your boy was changing? It gets easier as you get older, but it still hurts like a mother. He must really like you to shift for you. I'm a little jealous. I've never seen anyone change like that. So quickly. It was practically his first time and he didn't even scream."

"What do you mean his first time?"

"Walk and talk," he says, indicating the path with his head. I squeeze my hands into fists to keep from pummeling him again.

"Fine. Now answer the question."

He nudges my shoulder like we're good friends walking down the hall of the school instead of captive and capturer. "Eli refuses his gift. He's only shifted once before. We all have the inciting change, usually at puberty. He swore he would never shift. No matter what we do to try and convince him he's been given something special. That he isn't evil and he won't become evil if he allows himself to accept that part of his soul. It's just a different skin, nothing changes the being within."

I glance sidelong at him, watching the way his face glows with something completely ordinary and yet not at all. He's so animated, so passionate. I almost don't want to ask the question that occurs to me as the one I most need to ask.

"Eli said you guys were criminals. Did you kill David?"

Sam shakes his head. His face pulling into a grimace. "We're not criminals. Well, not entirely. There are a lot of people out there, supernatural and not, that want to exploit those of us that are. Sometimes we have to do things that are a little bit left of legal to protect ourselves. To keep from being made to do things that are a lot worse. We didn't kill David, but I suspect one of those people I just mentioned probably did and tried to frame Eli for it so they could force him into their service. Give him the option of either going to jail or working for them."

He sounds sincere and I have to admit what he says makes sense, but he could be telling me a partial truth, admitting what they did to force Eli to accept their offer.

"Your boy is special. He's not a normal werewolf. He's already a big boy, but when he shifts... He's a Fenrir. Which translated means he's a big S.O.B., bigger than other werewolves, stronger and faster. He can see further, hear better and smell better. We can help him, offer him protection and he'll make us that much stronger for having him, but we would never force him to join us. That's not what we're about. We came here to offer our protection because someone _is_ trying to force him. Someone who doesn't give a crap about him except what he can do for them."

Sam stops and turns toward me. He grabs my shoulders in a grip that lets me know I can pull away if I want. "You really should trust us, Mack, because you've given whoever it is that's after him the leverage they need to force his hand. He shifted for you. I don't pretend to know what you two have going on. I know it's recent. I've been watching. Whatever it is, he's willing to shift into the thing he despises most to protect you. That's power and there are people who will exploit it to your detriment."

"Why would you help him if he refuses to join your pack?"

"I'm not going to lie to you. We aren't here for totally altruistic purposes. Sure, we're hoping helping him will convince him we're not the villains he's made us out to be in his head. Even if it nets us nothing in the way of good will, the reason we're here is to keep you guys from becoming casualties of a war you didn't even know existed and shouldn't have to."

Sam's eyes widen and his nostrils flare. It reminds me of Eli, of how he always stayed ahead of them last night by doing the same thing. I glance around, looking for the trouble Sam is smelling, until I realize he's sniffing towards me.

"Stop that. It's your fault I stink. Chasing us through the forest in the freezing cold in the middle of the damn night."

I expect him to laugh at me, but his eyes narrow. "You're not a wolf." It comes out as more of a question.

"No. I'm not a wolf."

"I've never smelled it on you before, but..." He cocks his head to the side, eyeing me while that nose of his keeps working. "There's a little something now."

"Yeah, I bet there is. I spent the night buried in a pile of snow, zipped into Eli's jacket with him, his hands stuffed up my shirt into my armpits to keep me from freezing to death. I'd say I have a little something on me now. His smell is everywhere on me, in my nose and on my skin."

He doesn't look convinced, but he gives up and leads me through the trees to where there's an SUV waiting.
Chapter Eight

In the back of the SUV, Eli is stowed in the cargo area, curled up. I start climbing over the back of the seat to get to him when Sam grabs my coat to stop me.

"I don't think that's a good idea. We don't know how he's going to react when he wakes up. I don't want you to get hurt."

"He won't hurt me," I say, not letting go of the seat back.

Sam opens his mouth to argue, but the guy in the front passenger seat cuts in. "Let her back there. I think her presence might be the only thing that'll keep him calm if he does wake up on the way."

Sam gives me a worried look and doesn't let me go immediately, like he wants to protest, but he eventually gives in. I scramble the rest of the way over the seat and settle in next to Eli. His head is wedged against the side of the wall at an uncomfortable angle. I move closer and pull it onto my lap. If he can't straighten out, at least I can provide him a soft place for his head to rest.

A lock of dark hair shifts as we go over a bump, falling over an eye. I brush it away and take the opportunity to trace the curve of his cheek and ridge of his thick brow. "He looks so peaceful," I say, more to myself than to anyone in the car, but it still earns me a snort from the guy in the passenger seat.

Sam turns in his seat, head bending over the back of the seat. "He does. It's nice to see something other than a scowl on him for a change."

"Did you know he actually has a smile?"

"I don't believe it." Sam gives me a skeptical look, but his tone is teasing as well.

"It's true. I've seen it." My fingers itch to draw the memory of that smile onto his face. "It's beautiful."

"You're so into him." It's not a question, but I don't miss the hint of disbelief. I look up and am struck by his intense gaze. "You're not scared that he's a werewolf?"

"No." I shake my head and glance down at the face of the boy in my lap. "I trust him."

Sam raises a doubting eyebrow.

"Okay, yeah. I'm totally freaking out right now inside, but not about him. It's the whole werewolves existing at all bit that I'm having trouble coming to terms with."

Sam shrugs a shoulder, his head nodding absently while he makes duck lips. After a second of that, he stops nodding and the focus returns to his eyes. "I get where you're coming from. I've never met a vampire or a chameleon so I kind of have a hard time really imagining they are real. If I saw one, it might take some time to accept."

"You're messing with me, right? Vampires don't really exist."

He licks his lips slowly, making me wait, drawing out the tension. I never noticed before that for a guy he has seriously full, plump lips. They pucker, making the look he's giving me a little devilish, he winks and turns back around in his seat so he's no longer facing me. "If you say so, but yesterday neither did werewolves."

I open my mouth to say something, but what do you say to that? So, I shut my mouth and glare at the back of Sam's head for a few seconds before movement from the unconscious boy in my lap draws my attention back. I think maybe he's waking up, but he stays asleep, bringing an arm up from his side, slipping his hand under the thigh his face is resting against. My thigh!

After a second, he shifts from his back onto his side, nuzzling his face against my leg. I assume to try and get more comfortable, though it's having the opposite effect on me. I know he's asleep, but his face and hands are in a rather sensitive area. I am desperately hoping Sam is done chatting and that he won't turn around and see how flushed my face is.

Eli readjusts again, this time flipping fully over onto his stomach and caging my thighs in with both his arms. I barely hold in a squeak of surprise.

Luck is not with me, because Sam must be concerned with all the movement back here, worried that Eli might be waking up. He glances back, his eyes moving from Eli's new position up to my face. His grin says it all, or at least I hope it will, but we've already established that I'm not lucky. He opens his mouth to make some smart comment, but his attention is caught by something out the back window.

"We got company," he says, turning his head just enough that it's clear he's talking to the guys in the front and not me.

"Yep," the driver says. There is something familiar about his voice, even with only the one syllable. I try to get a look at him, but the interior is dark and it seems like he's making a point of trying not to be seen. I realize they are trying and doing a pretty good job of keeping me from seeing anyone's face except Sam's.

We pull off the road and head down a narrow drive that goes on forever. Eventually, we come to a stop in front of a house. To say it is huge would be an understatement. There are a lot of Russian families living in the area. Some of them live in compounds with large, multi-family homes. Whether for financial or religious reasons, I don't know.

I've been inside one before. My dad has a friend who does work on houses that have been repossessed by the bank. Since my dad is a jack of all trades, this friend often employs him to help. He pays him of course, but not nearly enough. My dad can do just about everything, except say no. Which is why my truck is still not fixed yet.

Anyway, I'm getting off track. I went along with him to winterize this huge house. I got lost exploring the place. That house has nothing on this thing.

There are three large garages, two attached and one detached. The detached one might actually be an airplane hangar, which isn't odd in Wasilla, except I don't see a runway around or a lake.

The driver and front passenger get out and hightail it toward one of the attached garages. The door opens and out come three werewolves, striding toward us on two feet. Sam gets out and meets the creatures at the back hatch.

The werewolves attempt to lift Eli out, nearly taking me with. I squeak a protest and they allow me a second to untangle our limbs. They head towards the open garage with him as soon as we're free. Sam offers me a hand, helping me out of the vehicle. I scramble to follow after Eli and the werewolves, not wanting to let him out of my sight.

Sam keeps up, walking next to me like he isn't bodyguarding the werewolves from me, which I realize he is.

The werewolves disappear with Eli through a door at the back of the garage. As soon as they are through the door, a tall, blonde man steps out of it into the garage, blocking our entrance.

"I understand there was some trouble," the man says to Sam.

"We had a tail."

This doesn't seem to surprise the newcomer at all. He pats Sam on the arm and then turns his attention on me. His eyes narrow as they travel over me, assessing. "Hello Mackenzie. I'm Ezra Weylin, the alpha of this pack. You are welcome in our home, but for the protection of our members, you'll be kept locked in the room with Eli. Sam and I will act as your ambassadors. If you need anything, just let either of us know."

"O-okay. As long as I can see Eli, I'll be no trouble." It's not what I expected, then again I don't really know _what_ to expect, violence maybe, at the very least more aggression. I mean, they are _werewolves_ , for Pete's sake. There should be biting and such. Honestly, I keep thinking I'm going to wake up in the hospital and this is all going to be some fever dream, the product of severe hypothermia or something.

Ezra holds his hand out toward the door like a gentleman, indicating I should go ahead. Again, not the handling I expected at the hands of a werewolf, especially when I saw that one searching for us last night.

I step through the door and find myself confronted with a wide staircase that has a large landing before it switches back on itself.

"Follow me," Ezra says, indicating the stairs up. We go up three floors before he leads me down a long, dark hallway to a door at the end. Sam follows closely behind. Ezra takes a key from his pocket and opens the door. It's made of thick metal, like one you'd find on a ship or in a jail cell.

Eli is sprawled out on the bottom bunk of an extremely large bunk bed. He still looks peaceful. I watch him for a minute before moving to sit next to him on the bed.

"If you should need anything at all, just press this button." Ezra points to a red button on what looks like an intercom built into the wall. "When Eli awakens, we'll make arrangements to return you both home, if that's what you choose."

"Thank you," I say, though I'm not sure what I'm thanking him for, the frozen trek through the forest last night trying to escape his pack members, the near kidnapping this morning or the loss of innocence, of ignorance of the supernatural world. He's just so polite with such a commanding presence, I can't help myself.

He inclines his head and then leaves. I hear the door locking behind him.

"Mackenzie," Eli murmurs, pulling my attention away from the prison door I just thanked the man for locking me behind. I shake off the thought and scoot closer to Eli, brushing my hand gently over his arm.

"I'm here, Eli. Right here." I touch his cheek just to feel the warmth of his skin. He smiles and snuggles closer.

The events of last night and the morning, the trauma of it and the lack of sleep all conspire to make my eyelids feel extremely heavy. Couple that with the heat radiating off Eli's body and staying awake is a losing battle. I pull off my coat and slide down until I'm lying in the thin strip of space between Eli and the edge of the bed. I tell myself I'll just close my eyes for a minute, I won't sleep. Ha!

This time when I wake up there is no panic at having a big, broad body pressed up against mine or strong arms wrapped around me. I turn my face up and let out a squeak when I discover I'm being watched.

"Hi." Not my most eloquent moment ever.

"Hi," Eli says back, the corners of his mouth twitching with barely contained amusement. "How are you feeling?"

I stretch and look back up at him. "Good. Rested. I don't think I've ever slept that hard in my life and I wasn't the one shot with three tranquilizer darts. How are _you_ feeling?"

One of his hands leaves my waist and finds its way to his neck. He rubs at it for a second and winces. "About the same, except my neck is a little sore from the tranquilizer dart." He closes his eyes and puts his head back on the pillow. "I guess it would be wrong to just lay here for the rest of the day, right? I should probably get up and be all indignant that the bastards knocked me out. Took 'em three darts to do it." He looks and sounds very satisfied by the last part.

"I was pretty indignant for you. Not that it did much good, but if it makes you feel better, Sam let me vent my frustration on him up until I tried to punch him. I'm kind of grateful he stopped me. I would have probably only ended up hurting myself."

Eli gives me a quick squeeze and nods his agreement.

The intercom gives an electronic squawk. "I apologize for the disruption. I would not intrude on your time, but Mackenzie's parents will be home soon and wondering where their only child is. So, unfortunately I must beg your forgiveness and prevail upon you to make haste in joining me downstairs."

I slip from the warmth of Eli's embrace and pad to the intercom. "Of course. We'll be right down, but the door?" I ask, while holding down the red button.

"It is unlocked," Ezra says and then the intercom squawks again and I assume that means our chat has come to an end.

Eli is sitting on the edge of the bed when I turn around. He looks a little sheepish for some reason. "No privacy around here. They probably heard our whole conversation."

I blush, even though nothing we said was embarrassing. I think it's more the fact that it was said in an intimate setting, in what was thought to be private and that privacy was breached. Or maybe it's that he seems embarrassed and I'm afraid that's because he doesn't want them thinking there is more between us.

"If anyone should be ashamed it's them...for listening," I say and grab my coat. I hurry to the door so he can't see my face or the tears of humiliation. I wrench it open and am confronted with a sympathetic looking Ezra. I look away, hating all werewolves and their stupid supernatural hearing.

I don't hesitate when he starts down the hallway, thinking I can't get out of this house and away from the lot of them fast enough. I'm just glad I didn't say more and make an even bigger ass of myself.

We end up in the same garage we came in through. The door is opened, but the interior lights are turned off. The only illumination is coming from the overcast day outside and it barely reaches inside the entrance, let alone all the way to the back. We stand in shadow.

Outside, there are a dozen black and gray wolves. This time, they look like actual wolves, not monsters trying to approximate what a wolf would look like, or even something that could walk on two legs.

"Someone's coming," Ezra says, his forehead crinkling with concern. "Stay here, out of sight."

Eli steps closer to me as soon as Ezra is a few feet away. He's so close if I breathed heavily I might touch him. "That comment about them hearing everything, it came out wrong, Mackenzie."

"It's fine." I close my eyes and try again, this time softening my sharp tone. "It's fine."

"No it's not. I hurt your feelings and I didn't mean to. I didn't mean it the way it sounded. I'm not embarrassed by you. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I'm a very private person." He nudges me with his shoulder and I let out a startled laugh. I keep being surprised by this playful, humorous side of him I didn't know existed before a few days ago.

"Waking up with a beautiful girl in my arms... The conversation that follows, that should just be between you and me. I forgot that there is never truly privacy with their kind around."

I turn toward him. "Your kind too."

"I don't change into a monster at a whim." All the lightheartedness is gone. He's as hard as stone.

I shake my head, agreeing with him. "No, you are not a monster, Eli." I know he doesn't take it the way I mean it, or if he does he ignores my meaning as he stares into my eyes.

"Where is my friend?" asks a voice I would know anywhere, with equal parts demand and threat in her tone.

"Nicky?"
Chapter Nine

I rush out of the garage, Eli so close behind me his toes are bumping against my heels with each step. Ezra gives me a look of disapproval when I pause next to him for a second. He doesn't try to stop me as I throw my arms around Nicky and hug her tightly, not realizing until that very second how much I needed normal and stable to provide balance among all the craziness.

"What are you doing here? How did you find me?" I pull back and look at her, holding onto her shoulders to keep her within arm's length.

She shrugs and gets that sly, half smiling, half smug look she gets when she's about to be vague because there is no explanation. In those cases, mystery is better than truth. "I had a feeling..."

I glance at her car expecting her dad to be sitting in the driver's seat, waiting, tapping the steering wheel like he does. He should be pretending not to pay attention to what is going on, all the while watching with a keen eye from his peripherals, but no. Her car is empty.

"You had a feeling... So you just hopped in your car and drove down a creepy, long freakin' driveway that led you into the middle of nowhere in Wasilla, where eighty percent of the population is armed, to confront a bunch of..." I glance at Ezra, swallowing the word werewolves. "A bunch of men you don't know, all by yourself?"

"I know Eli and I know Sam." She gives a nod to someone behind me, presumably Sam. "Besides, you know me. I would have sent out the National Guard if I felt it was necessary." She smirks at me and I realize that her "feelings" must be getting pretty strong if she's not so subtly pointing out that she knows that particular detail from my conversation last night with Eli, when we were discussing how likely it was to expect her to show up.

"Looks like you don't need to make arrangements to get us home after all. We've got a ride." I turn towards Ezra.

"Of course." He turns his gaze on Nicky, his eyes tracking over her in the same way they did over me this morning when we met, assessing. She meets his inspection with her head up, chin tilted back, hip thrust out to the side and her red hair catching in the wind, whipping around her like flames dancing. He does that head nod thing that's like a sort of bow or the tip of an imaginary cap to her.

His attention returns to me and I feel an odd swelling in my chest at the warmth in his eyes. It wasn't there a moment before when he was looking at Nicky. It confuses me a little, but also causes an inexplicable desire to hug him.

"Can I speak with you for a moment?" Ezra's voice is soft with a protective hint to it. He tilts his head toward the garage and I follow him back into the darkened interior. Eli is right behind me again, his fingertips brushing my elbow.

"Your friend, Nicky, the seer," Ezra says, glancing sideways out the open garage door towards her. "Do you trust her?" She continues to claim all his focus, even as he questions me about her loyalty.

"Of course. She's my best friend. I've known her longer than anyone besides my parents." I refrain from questioning what he means by "the seer", because honestly it isn't like I didn't already know that about her. I just never heard it put in such a way, but I suppose if werewolves, vampires and chameleons exist, they probably have a classification for those who know the future, too. And _seer_ sounds a lot cooler than _psychic_.

His attention returns to me and I almost wish he'd kept watching Nicky, because the look he's giving me is sharp, like the point of a dagger held to my ribs. "And how well do you know her father?"

That pulls me up short. I think long and hard about my answer, not sure I'm ready to hear it contradicted. The whole world has tilted since yesterday and if he's about to tell me that everything I know is wrong about a man who feels like a second father to me, I'm afraid the world might shift too far off its axis and leave me spinning adrift.

"Mr. Asher? I know him as well as a kid can know the only parent of her best friend. I've spent every Friday night living at his house for as long as I can remember. Most of the time he's only half with us, his mind elsewhere, but he is a psychiatrist who is trying to solve other people's struggles, so it's to be expected, I guess. What I know is that he's always been kind, not just to me, but everyone. He's compassionate, absent minded and completely unprepared to raise a teenage girl on his own, but he loves Nicky with every fiber of his being. And not just her, me too. I'd trust him with my life, because he'd move heaven and earth for either of us." I pant a little after my diatribe and look back up at Ezra, afraid of what I'll see in his eyes, desperate for him to agree with my assessment.

He and Eli must have gone to the same school of emotional lockdown, because he's completely unreadable. He watches me for a few more seconds, eyes narrowing just a fraction. "Okay, but while it should go without saying that you tell no one about us here, about werewolves living amongst us, especially not a shrink, I am saying it anyway. Just so we're clear." He gives me that razor sharp look again. "Do not tell Nicky's father, or anyone what you saw here today."

"You have my word. Really, I'd kind of like to forget about all of this." I motion all around me. "Not that you've been anything but friendly. It's just the world was simpler yesterday, before you introduced me into this hidden side of it and ignorance is bliss, right?"

Ezra gives me a sad smile that makes my insides squirm and my feet want to run before he can say whatever it is that he's about to say.

"I wish you could forget also, but you can't. You're still in danger. We'll keep an eye on you, but you are going to have to be vigilant." He hands me a slip of paper. "If you see anything. If you feel anything is off. If the hairs on the back of your neck stand in warning, call me. Don't hesitate, don't question if it's your imagination. If you waste those precious seconds doubting that internal warning system that has been honed over thousands of years, it could be too late."

Goosebumps rise on my arms with that ominous prediction. I swallow the moisture that's pooled in my mouth and glance at Eli. I can see the solemn agreement in his eyes. If he trusts the word, the warning of this man he hated yesterday, trusts him with my protection when he was willing to change into the monster he despises to save me from him, then I'll trust him too.

"I will." I offer my hand and he shakes it. "Thank you."

Eli follows me to the passenger side of Nicky's car. He opens the door for me and stands in the doorway after I climb in, his hand holding the door open, his other on the roof.

"You're not coming." It isn't a question, since the answer is clear.

He leans in so his face is close, but not too close, not the precursor to a kiss close. "I'm going to stay behind for a bit. I have a few things to discuss with Ezra. I'll see you...later...at school."
Chapter Ten

Nicky starts the car and we drive away. I watch the house getting smaller in the passenger side mirror. Neither of us say anything until we pull out onto the road and head in the direction of my house.

"You had a feeling?" I ask, incredulous, now that we're alone.

Nicky glances at me sideways and smirks, sly and mysterious for a second before I see a hint of the worry she must have been feeling all night.

"You couldn't have had this feeling last night when I was running through the woods, freezing my butt off in the subzero cold?" I nudge her, trying to lighten the heaviness that has settled around us.

"Ha! I did you a favor. For the price of a little discomfort, you got to spend the night tucked into Eli Markam's tender embrace." She flashes her eyebrows at me suggestively. "Besides, Eli would never have let you freeze."

My face heats at the memory of the tender embrace she speaks of. I roll my eyes and I turn to look out the side window so she won't see my transformation into a tomato. I catch a glimpse of a dark SUV in the side mirror.

"It's your new friends," Nicky says, responding as I open my mouth to warn her. She shrugs when I give her a questioning look. I watch her for a while longer, waiting for some explanation, or for her to open up about her growing powers, but she's quiet. I think I see uncertainty in the set of her lips as she stares out the windshield.

"You know, that's a pretty spiffy trick. Wouldn't mind having a little of that myself."

Nicky keeps her head forward, but her eyes slide my direction and then the corner of her mouth turns up just a little. "It is pretty useful sometimes." The smile slips away. "But it's a little scary, too."

"Yeah. I know. Last night when Eli told me to run and sent me out the back door, it was so dark I couldn't see a thing. I couldn't hear anything above the sound of my own heart beating, but I knew there was someone close, coming for me. Have you ever listened to a song you've never heard before, but somehow the lyrics are there on your tongue? Of course you have." I shake my head for asking such a stupid question of a _seer_. "It was like that. I just stuck out my hands as I ran by and shoved and my palms met with a body."

Nicky doesn't say anything, but her eyes slide my way again. I wonder how much of this she already knows.

"Later, when we'd been out there for a while, it wasn't so hard to see anymore. I can tell myself that my eyes had just adjusted to the dark and the moon was out and almost full, but I don't really believe it. Little things like those keep happening. Strange things. I pretend it doesn't mean anything, but I don't really believe that either. It scares me."

"I'm not omnipotent," Nicky says, her voice barely above a whisper. "I didn't know all of what went down last night. I didn't know how scared you were. I'm sorry I didn't come and save you. I wanted to, but it was important that you meet those people back there and on those specific terms. Your life depends on it. Eli's too."

I blink a couple of times, letting her words sink in. I suck on my lip and then force myself to open my mouth. "How?"

"I don't know. The furthest I've ever seen is a day ahead, mostly it's just feelings about what's around the next corner. Kind of like I've got psychic whiskers that reach out ahead of me. Except the dreams of course, but those are rare. And then there are the feelings, they're harder to explain. That's what it was, a feeling, a knowing assuredly that you were exactly where you were supposed to be. Sorry if that sounds shitty, but it's what I know."

We come to a stop in front of the house. She shifts into park and slumps against the seatback.

"I trust you and your _feelings_ , Nic." I open the car door and wait for Nicky to follow me to the door since my keys are locked safely inside the house.

She pauses with her foot on the bottom step and turns just enough to look behind her, first at Eli's truck sitting in the drive and then at the entrance to the driveway. "Let's wait," she says.

I hear the growl of an engine turning up the drive a second later.

The SUV that was behind us appears and pulls up next to Eli's truck. The passenger door opens and a big blonde steps out, his hood is pulled up to cover his features, except the one sweep of blonde curls. He gets into Eli's truck, backs it up and drives away.

Sam hops out of the driver's side and opens the back door on his side. A black wolf and a grayish wolf with black ears leap out and disappear into the trees. Another guy with his face obscured by a hoody follows the wolves out. I swear the SUV is actually a clown car, because another guy hops out behind the last, only this time he's hidden by Sam and the wall of a man that stands beside him.

The last guy shuts the back door and, still obscured by the other two, he gets in the driver's seat and leaves.

It all happens so quickly, I'm only just coming to my senses and questioning why. "Sam?"

"Mackenzie," he says, his voice mimicking the uptick at the end, playfully.

"What's going on?" I hold my breath and look back and forth between Sam and Nicky, trying to figure out what I'm missing.

Nicky holds out the keys as he passes her on the steps. I step to the side of the doorframe, letting him have access.

The key slides smoothly into the lock, but Sam pauses, not turning it and his nostrils flare, scenting something my normal human nose can't detect. He glances sideways at me, holds a finger up to his lips, and then while still watching me, he turns the key in the lock and slowly pushes the door open.

Sam tilts his head back a little, his eyes closing while his nose works whatever supernatural, werewolf mojo it has. "Wait here," he says to me and then turns enough to motion for his hidden faced companion to join him. In the sliver of space his body is no longer blocking, I try to see what's inside, but all I glimpse is the opened closet door. Which wouldn't be odd in my house, except I remember that it was closed when Eli and I were here yesterday.

Nicky must have gotten a better look from her vantage point, back from the door, because her hand is over her mouth and her eyes are wide with alarm. She catches me watching her and drops her hand, but she can't completely hide how spooked she is.

She motions me down the few steps to where she's standing, a little frantically, I might add. Standing next to her, I can see what upset her so badly. Sam and his friend split off, disappearing from the entryway hall. Sam heads upstairs, while his friend steps into the dining room and kitchen area downstairs.

From what I can see, the house has been completely turned over. The contents of the hall closet lay strewn across the floor. The other wooden folding door has been pulled from its tracks and off one of the hinges as well.

It takes a minute for panic and anger to replace the numbness of shock. Someone has been in my home, the one place that is both safety and comfort. I shake my head, trying to clear away the buzzing that's in my ears and the fog in my brain.

Nicky yelps and I realize it's because I'm squeezing her hand. She's struggling to free it from my grip. I release her hand, but as soon as I do, the pressure in my head multiplies. It feels like it's crushing me from the inside out, like I might implode. I stagger and grab the porch railing for support. I drop to my knees, but my hand is firmly grounded to the wooden bar.

White hot stars burst in front of my vision and for a second I'm afraid I've gone nuclear, but then everything quiets. I'm standing alone, in front of my house, just as I am now. I don't know how I know it, but I'm certain it's not my eyes I'm seeing through and it's not today that I'm witnessing.

It's dark out, but I can see well enough to make out that my hands are huge. They're like Sasquatch paws. Whoever they belong to makes quick work of picking the locks on my front door in spite of their ridiculous size.

He's barely inside the door, just standing there, soaking it all in. Then he draws in a deep breath and holds it, like he's inhaled my family and my life and he's tasting us, savoring us. It creeps me out, even as echoes of his emotions filter into me.

He doesn't linger too long, savoring my life. Instead he turns to the closet and begins taking my house apart, slowly. He's unhurried, methodically trashing things. I get the feeling he's doing it not to actually find anything, but to make it look like he's trying to find something.

He stops again, this time outside my bedroom door and does that horrible inhale and savor thing. He puts a meaty paw on my doorknob and turns it slowly, achingly slowly. And now he's relishing me.

He's fondling my things, mauling them, rubbing a silky camisole between his big stupid fingers. He keeps touching things, spilling the contents of drawers, making his way toward the attached bathroom. And for the first time since this vision started I'm not completely nauseous at the thought of what he'll do next. I want to see this bastard's face so I can find him and put into practice a particular move I perfected during that weekend self-defense class I took last year. Maybe render the creep infertile.

I gasp when he flips on the light and I see the face in the mirror. He turns his head right and then left, lifting his chin, inspecting himself. The shock of who it is causes me to let go of the railing, ending the vision, because the face of the creep who sullied my private sanctuary belongs to Eli Markam.

It takes a minute for the disorientation of being ripped out of the vision and slammed back into my own head so suddenly to clear. By the time it does, I find myself frantically slapping away the hands of Nicky and Sam, who are trying to help me up. Nicky holds her hands up in surrender and backs away, giving me space. Sam isn't quite so quick to give up. He's saying my name, just as anxiously, his eyes wide with alarm.

Nicky places a hand on his bicep, trying to pull him back too, but he's a lot bigger and more determined.

"O-okay... I'm okay... Just panic... Panic attack." I splay my hands out in front of me and then hold up a finger, letting him know I need a minute. He finally lets Nicky pull him away.

I flop onto my butt on the ground and Sam makes like he's going to grab for me again.

"No." My hands fly up again to ward him off. "No. I just need to catch my breath and for no one to touch me. Please."

I don't mention that I need the minute to get my head straight because I just watched through Eli's eyes as he trashed my house, because no matter how real it felt I know it isn't true. He only left my sight long enough to distract the werewolves last night, and that wasn't long enough to make it back to my house and do what was done. And even if I didn't know that, I wouldn't believe he did this. He's nothing like the guy who reveled in destroying the closet door or rifling through my underwear drawer before spilling its contents all over the bedroom floor.

Nicky's forehead scrunches up and she cocks her head to the side. "Eli?"

I gasp and then throw my hand over my mouth. Sam doesn't notice because he's laser focused on Nicky now.

"What about Eli?" There is an edge to Sam's voice. "What do you see, Nicky?"

She shakes her head and squeezes her eyes shut. It's all very dramatic and if I didn't know her so well I would have no clue it's all for show. "I see Eli... But he's all wrong. He looks like Eli, but he doesn't feel like Eli." She pops one eye open, the one not directly in Sam's line of sight. She looks at me and her mouth twitches, working to keep in a smile. The other eye pops open then and she gives me a quick wink before turning completely towards Sam and falling into his arms like the whole business has exhausted her.

In any other situation, I'd probably have to fight to keep from snickering.

Sam looks startled at first, like he has no idea what to do with a leggy, overdramatic teenage girl, but he figures it out real quick, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and pulling her close to "steady her".

"That's what I thought too. I couldn't sme—" He cuts himself off before he admits to Nicky that he was smelling for the intruder. "But it was all off, him but not." I realize this last part is probably for me, not Nicky. It smelled like Eli, but not. I don't know what to do with that.

Nicky lurches upright and this time her wide eyes are not for dramatic effect. "Your parents! They're almost here."

I hop to my feet and Sam hands Nicky off to me like she needs to be held up. "We'll be close." Before I can say anything, he and his hoody pal disappear into the trees.
Chapter Eleven

Nicky is staring off into the forest, watching the place Sam and friend went in. "So..... Werewolves, huh?" She turns to me with a brow raised, but her skin is paler than normal, giving away that she's shaken by the knowledge.

"You're a seer. Other supernatural powers shouldn't be a stretch." I shrug, but even having had a day to come to terms with the knowledge, I'm still trying to pretend it was all a dream that I'm going to wake up from any minute now.

Nicky sees right through my nonchalance. She grabs my hand and gives it a quick squeeze. "I won't ask what that makes you, then. Besides, your parents are going to be here any second."

"How much time?"

She smooshes a finger and thumb together, showing no space between them. "A minute max, if that."

I race up the steps and nearly face plant, tripping over one of my dad's bunny boots that's laying on its side inside the door. I pick my way into the living room and grab my keys and cell phone off the coffee table. They are the only things left on it. The bowl, stack of magazines and art supplies I tidied up last night are scattered across the floor. A fresh swell of anger flares inside me and I have to quell the urge to break something.

Mom and Dad pull into the drive just as I make it back to the doorway. So, that is where I wait for them.

"Nic," Mom says to Nicky, aiming the scrunchy face that qualifies as my mother's smile at her. She doesn't just smile with her mouth or her eyes. Her whole face gets in on the action. Her well defined cheekbones suddenly seem pudgy and pinchable, her eyes squint up until they're just a couple of slashes on her face and though she's in shape, she still gets a second chin. I'm not even sure where the extra skin comes from, because she has the type of neck artists itch to immortalize whenever she's not smiling, strong and perfect, every line smooth and taut, outlining muscle and bone.

She notices me and her smile fades, returning her face to its normal, ageless beauty. "Mack?" She has the most expressive features of anyone I've ever met and now is no exception. In just a few seconds, the time it's taken to realize I've only been holding it together until she returned, confusion, panic and then shear momma grizzly protectiveness has played out in them.

"Mom!" I shove open the screen door and run to her. I plow into her chest, wrapping myself around her. She grabs me with the same fervor, squeezing me so tight I'd normally protest, but this time I squeeze her back a little tighter.

One of her arms leaves my side and a second later Nicky is tangled up in our fierce embrace, hugging and crying and laughing too.

"Nan?" Dad's muffled voice comes from behind, confusion evident even through Mom's arms and Nicky's net of bushy hair. "What's going on?"

Mom's head leaves mine and I can tell she's directing him silently, because she says nothing, but a second later I hear his heavy, booted footsteps on the porch. Just as quickly they return.

"Honey?" he says, his hand heavy on the shoulder Nicky's head doesn't occupy. "Can you tell me what happened?" He's using the little girl tone, the one he used when I would come in with a scraped knee or when I slipped into their room at night because there were monsters outside my window.

Our little huddle breaks apart, exposing me to reality again. I take a deep breath and make a decision. "Someone was in our house while we were gone." I let out a single sob and then rein it in. "They've been in every room. They didn't take anything, I don't think, but they trashed the place and broke things."

Dad gives my mom a look over my head. One that makes me wonder if my parents are aware that the things that go bump in the night are real and not just stories.

"Did you touch anything?" Dad is all business now, the soft kiddy tone all gone.

I shake my head. He pulls his phone from his pocket and dials nine-one-one. Mom holds onto my shoulders and we all stand in the cold watching my dad. He hangs up with the police and immediately starts dialing again. This time he turns his back on us and walks away, far enough that his voice is just a cadence of bass in the distance.

"It's going to be a while. Maybe you should head home, Nicky." Mom hits the door locks on her truck key and hands it to me. "Hop in and start her up, please. We might as well be warm while we wait."

"Nice try, Mrs. C., but I'm not going anywhere." Nicky grabs my other hand and pulls me toward the truck.

"At least call your father and let him know what's going on," she calls over her shoulder as she heads over to join my father. She's trying for nonchalance, but for some reason I get the feeling the strain I hear in her voice isn't completely because we've been burgled.

I hop in the truck and start it up. Both Nicky and I watch my parents without saying anything. I think we're both busy mulling over our own suspicions.

"So we're not telling your parents you're being stalked by an unknown entity or that werewolves exist and you've been adopted as a member of their pack in spite of not actually being one yourself?" Nicky turns in her seat so that she's fully facing me, one knee up on the seat, staring me down.

"Why was she trying to get rid of you? What are they hiding?"

She makes a sound of annoyance, rolls her eyes and shakes her head. "We're going to come back to this." She presses her lips together like they're locked and narrows her eyes at me.

"Fine, now spill."

"I'm not a mind reader, you know." She holds up her hands when I glare at her. "I'm not. I see the future, so if you say what you're thinking I'll know before you say it, but if you don't say anything I'll probably never know your thoughts. Your parents are definitely hiding something, and I'm not just saying that because your mother trying to get rid of me when you need my support more than ever was totally suspicious. All this time, how often I've been here, I don't know how I never noticed it before. They're a complete blank space. I can't see or feel anything."

I look out the window at my parents. Mom sees and waves a sad little wave. She nods to something my dad says, but her attention is still on me, and I can't help but notice the lines of worry bracketing her mouth.

A state trooper cruiser pulls into the drive followed by a second and third. I don't know police procedure, but the response seems excessive for a break in call after the fact. I also notice that none of them have their lights on. I assume that if they were concerned the perp was still around, the lights would be bathing our little forest clearing in blue and red.

A familiar figure with broad shoulders and a neck nearly as thick as my torso steps out of the lead car. Kensington. He makes a beeline for my parents. I give Nicky a look. Her mouth makes a straight line, a mix of determination and fighting a smile.

"So this is what it's like for everyone else. I don't like it. Good thing I don't need to see the future to know what's in your head. This sideline crap is crap. Let's go say hi to Gigantor."

"See. I knew you were a mind reader."

She sticks her tongue out at me and then hops out of the truck. I follow and we meet at the front grill. By the time we make it to where the action is, Kensington is already busy directing troopers. He's sending two inside and two to check out the yard.

Kensington turns his focus onto me. "Hello, Mackenzie."

"Hello again, Trooper Kensington."

"Please, call me Tim."

"Tim?" I stare at him, trying to fit the man in front of me into a role where he's someone named Tim, and I can't seem to manage it. If I was guessing his name, I'd say it was something like Tobias or Rhonan, something that makes it sound like he's growling when he's giving it out. You can't really growl Tim.

He must catch a whiff of what I'm thinking, either that or he gets that reaction a lot because he chuckles. "Yep, not what you were expecting?"

"No, sorry." Heat creeps up my neck in spite of the cold.

"I suppose I can forgive you this once. You've had a rough couple of days." He winks and then looks toward the house. "I understand you went inside. What can you tell me?"

"It wasn't like that when I stopped by after school yesterday. I came home today, just before they got here and it was like this. They destroyed our house." I stop talking because my voice is getting deeper and my emotions are beginning to get the better of me again. It makes me feel weak, getting all upset over things, but it's more about the invasion than the stuff. If home isn't safe, is anywhere?

An image of Ezra's compound comes to mind and I wonder how Eli can reject that kind of security. I guess things might be different for someone as big as him, someone who, if he chose to, could turn into a giant werewolf to defend himself.

"You don't really need her, do you?" Mom asks, coming up behind me and putting a hand on my shoulder, a prodding quality to her voice. "Why don't you go home with Nicky? I think that's the best place for you tonight."

Kensington, Tim, doesn't look like he agrees. His eyes narrow and he has a staring contest over my shoulder. It doesn't take long before he breaks under whatever look my mother is giving him. "Nah... But if I have questions later, I suppose I know where to find her." His eyes make a slow journey over to Nicky and he gives her the nod. "Miss Asher."

I really want to argue, but I don't have anything else to offer without sounding completely insane or worse, implicating Eli. Then I remember my secret protection that's lurking in the woods. I try for casual as I glance around at the tree line, searching for glowing eyes, which I realize too late is stupid since it's light out.

"What are you looking for?" Trooper Tim asks, his BS meter already twitching if the look he's giving me is any indication.

"Nothing, just thinking that anyone could be out there watching and we'd never know. The trees protect our privacy, but they could also be providing the same for anyone using them as cover, for good or bad."

He gives me a hard stare, like he's trying to see right into my brain. The hairs on my neck rise because while he turns to scan the trees just as I did, he lifts his head and his nostrils flare. He's so subtle about it, if I hadn't just spent the night running through the woods with a werewolf or watching Ezra and Sam closely today, I would never have noticed it. But I did notice it and suddenly our previous interaction has a new lens to look back on, one that makes a few things seem clearer. Especially the bite impression thing.

Mom gives me a pointed look and her head twitches in the direction of Nicky's car once and again. I think she's trying to sell this as a rescue, a _get outta here while you still can_ thing, but it feels a lot more like she's trying to get rid of us so we don't hear or see too much. Though it could be that my view of the world is a little off after finding out my view of the world was a lot off.

Suddenly the idea of flopping in front of Nicky's television, eating pancakes and not thinking about anything supernatural sounds irresistible.

I give Mom a quick hug and hand over her truck key. "If you find anything out, call me. Otherwise I'll call you later."

She kisses me on the cheek and gives me a shove. I don't require any more convincing. Nicky and I hurry to her car and make our escape. I notice a black wolf standing in the trees at the end of the driveway. We make eye contact as Nicky drives past. I'm not sure entirely, but I have the feeling it's Sam. I give him a quick wave and then slump back in my seat and close my eyes.
Chapter Twelve

Nicky told her dad about what happened, minus the whole supernatural element and the run through the forest with the denizens of this new world I live in. He's watching me closely now, even though he's trying hard to not appear like he is. He keeps opening his mouth only to close it again.

We have an understanding, him and I. He stays out of my head and doesn't try to psychoanalyze me, especially where my panic attacks are concerned, and I do my best to keep his daughter away from dens of iniquity. You'd think that last bit would be his words, but you should have seen his eyes when I said them. He promptly looked at his daughter and shook his head. I think at that point he realized if anyone was to lead the other astray, it would probably be Nicky doing the leading.

"Dinner is ready," Mr. Asher says, and sets two plates of pancakes down on the breakfast bar. He likes to do that, stand in the kitchen and watch us eat and talk. He says it's so he can look us in the eyes. I just think it's impossible for him to sit still.

I plop down into one of the high backed chairs that passes as both bar stool and dining room chairs in this house. They're a blend of wood and wicker and entirely works of art. I've never seen anything like them anywhere. Mr. Asher will only ever say they are hand crafted when I ask about their origins.

I have a personal theory that they were made by Nicky's mother, she who will not be named, but they were so beautiful he couldn't part with them when he burned all her other things. Of course that implies I know he burned all her things, which I don't actually know, but I'm convinced of nonetheless. Mostly I choose to believe this because it means that in spite of being able to solve everyone else's problems, and even with all his schooling and experience, he still doesn't have it all figured out either. Which is a thought that, oddly, gives me comfort.

Nicky grabs for the bottle of pecan toffee syrup at the same time I do and even with her longer reach, she still isn't fast enough. I snatch the bottle away just as her fingers brush the plastic and stick my tongue out at her.

"Ahhh, the resilience of youth," Mr. Asher says, shaking his head and smiling. "If I could bottle and sell it, I'd be...out of a job."

Nicky and I eat in silence, mostly because our cheeks are stuffed full of sweet, flowery, gooey goodness. Mr. Asher doesn't seem to notice, since he's lost in whatever contemplation that last statement of his has brought on. Probably the cure for some terrible affliction one of his clients have. I'll worry only if he takes out a tape measure and starts measuring my skull. I keep one eye on the knife on the counter and the other on him while I stuff another bite of pancake in my mouth.

Nicky snorts a laugh and chokes on her mouthful of pancake. I glance at her and we both giggle because I'm pretty sure in some near future moment I must tell her my thoughts which nearly caused death by breakfast food.

"What movies do you wanna watch?" Nicky asks, after we're finished and washing the dishes by hand at the sink. Mr. Asher doesn't believe in buying machines to do a job humans can do. Mostly that only applies to the dishwasher, because I'm quite certain he has a nail gun, an electric drill and a giant freaking band saw out in his garage/woodshop.

"You pick. I'm going to take a shower before movie night begins."

Nicky gives me a quick sideways look then goes back to scrubbing the crusted on batter out of the mixing bowl. She doesn't voice whatever concern it is I saw in her eyes. Probably because there are ears around that are tuned intently to our particular frequency at the moment.

We finish up the washing and dry the dishes with the only sound being the squeaking of the cloth against the glass plates and the clinking as we set them against each other in the rack.

I don't spend long in the shower, because it's too quiet and I'm alone with only my thoughts to keep me company. Currently, the ones running through my head are not welcome companions.

"All cleaned and sorted?" Nicky asks from the couch when I join her in the living room.

I flop down next to her and give her a look.

"Yeah, me neither, which is why we're going to get lost in cheeseball romantic comedies and forget all about what's out there for the night. Tomorrow we'll deal with the rest."

And that is exactly what we do. We lay with our heads at either end of the couch, our legs crossed over each other's in the middle and we watch movie after movie, giggling and making fun. When there are scenes where we are quiet, it's because we're trying to hide the tears and sniffling from each other.

The only reminder that things aren't okay is Mr. Asher hunkered down in the armchair, several notepads balanced on the chair's arms and in his lap. Or the occasional glance my way. Normally the chick flick marathons send him running for his office or the woodshop.

In the morning, after a hearty helping of scrambled eggs and bacon, Nicky comes along for the ride, but it's Mr. Asher that drives me home. Mostly so he can talk to my parents, turn them into armchair psychiatrists. It's one of his favorite pastimes. Payback, or torture, I think, for denying him the joy of examining my psyche.

My entire house has been cleaned. Everything is in its place. The hall closet door is even fixed. I wouldn't know anything happened here if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. I haven't decided how I feel about it yet. It kind of feels like a wound and they've just patched over the skin, but it's still there just below the surface, untreated, throbbing and angry. Possibly infected.

Okay, I've beat that dead horse, but I think I'm mad at them, which isn't something I'm used to. I'm the rare teen that actually gets along well with my parents. My mom seems like an older sister more than a mother most of the time. And now I feel guilty for lying to her, even if only by omission.

Nicky tosses a sock pair at me that my parents missed in their mad cleaning job. It almost gets me in the forehead, because I've never been any good at catch, but as a result, I'm amazing at duck and dodge.

"He was here for me. He took his time everywhere, but even more in here. And the way he looked at himself in the mirror... It was like he was trying to make sure I got a good look at his face, at Eli's. I wonder if he knows about you, knows you're a seer. If he expected it to be you that saw his face."

My focus turns from within back to Nicky when she doesn't say anything. Nicky without an opinion on anything is a calendar marking occurrence. She shudders and her eyes are dark with worry when they meet mine.
Chapter Thirteen

Monday mornings always suck, but this one may go down in the history books of the worst Mondays ever. My eyelids feel like some evil fairy snuck into my room in the night and glued sand to the insides of my lids. Though I'm not sure when said evil fairy would have been able to accomplish this nefarious task, because my eyes stayed open almost the entire time. There was that one twenty-minute stretch where I either finally nodded off or I had a small stroke. I'm betting on the second option.

I squint as I wait for the oncoming car to pass so I can turn into the school. Their headlights do their best to blind me. I almost flash them, but then I consider it might just be that my eyes are sensitive from no sleep and not actually their brights.

I would have been better off if I'd just stayed awake all night instead of dozing off.

Dad took me out back last night and we spent half the night practicing target shooting. The feeling of helplessness, of being a victim wasn't my constant companion, at least until I was alone with my thoughts as I crawled into bed. Then, the reality set in and I started wondering how effective a bullet would be on someone that has magic in their arsenal, someone who can make you see what they want.

Still, Dad wants me to keep my gun on me whenever I'm home and the knowledge that it's always within reach does provide some comfort. Problem is, it's not allowed in a school zone, so I'm completely unprotected at school. The place where David Andrews was killed, possibly while I was standing in the parking lot flirting.

Speaking of Eli, he's the other reason I couldn't find oblivion last night. About the time I wore myself out stressing about magic and monsters of the faceless variety, Eli's face entered my head and tied my stomach in knots.

He said he'd see me later...at school. Whenever I think of the way he said it, adding that last part with a look, like he was checking himself, I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's kind of like I swallowed a Chihuahua and it's busy gnawing the marrow out of a bone. One of mine.

It doesn't help that I'm already getting dirty looks from other kids in the parking lot and I haven't even gotten out of my truck yet. I'm tempted to just start it back up and drive back home. I'm entitled to a day spent in bed with the covers over my head, aren't I? Oh right, I didn't tell my parents about my Friday night antics. A move I'm regretting at this moment.

"Murderer," someone whispers as I pass. I hurry across the parking lot, trying to ignore the way the kids I've gone to school with for almost four years have turned on me. Then, as I slip through the double doors into the warm hallway, I remember that I'm the good guy here. I'm the one who did the right thing. I stuck up for someone who doesn't deserve to be persecuted just because he's not popular.

I glare back at the people staring at me with narrowed, suspicious eyes or sneers.

"Mutt lover."

I want to flip the bird to whoever behind me said it, but I don't. It won't help. It'll only show them they can get to me. Might even make it worse.

"Slut," a girl says to my right. I bite down to keep from laughing, since it's Jenny Linnely, and she has a reputation for sleeping with any jock who will look at her. Not that I put a lot of stock in rumors, especially when they come from the mouth of David or any of his friends, but the fact that it's her amuses me, even as it stings just a bit.

One of the cheerleaders shoulder checks me as she passes, while I'm distracted, looking in Jenny's direction. I don't see who it is, but I refuse to turn and look. The names and looks annoy me, but the cheerleader making it physical is like a match igniting something white hot inside me. I breathe deep through my nose, trying to calm down. There is a low whine in my ears.

I refuse to allow them to cause me to have another damn panic attack. I haven't had one for so long before the other day, and now two in less than a week. I grit my teeth and fight the tunneling of my vision.

A hand on my shoulder jolts me, kicking up my heart rate a notch and with it I get a fresh burst of adrenaline.

"Don't touch me!" I fist my hands and press them hard against my mouth to keep from yelling again, or just flat out screaming at the top of my lungs. I feel too big for my skin, like I might explode out of it at any second. What I'll become if I do, I'm not sure. Before this weekend I would have thought such a thing was ludicrous, that it's just the adrenaline and panic. Now, I'm afraid to find out what the truth is. I could turn into a werewolf for all I know.

The thought is ridiculous enough that it brings me back down and makes me laugh out loud. Then I realize someone is talking to me.

"Mackenzie?" Sam asks from beside me, concern etched into every line on his face. His signature perpetual smile is missing.

It occurs to me that it was probably his hand that touched my shoulder and I cringe. "Sorry. I thought you were someone else."

He goes from concerned to livid at light speed, leaving me feeling whiplash. "Someone's hassling you?" The growl is unmistakably animal. It seems strange, but I'm comforted by it.

"It's nothing. People are just stupid. After everything that happened this weekend, I just wasn't prepared for it. Thanks for coming to my rescue."

He gives me a smile, but it's somehow different from his usual one. I realize because it's real and not a performance, which I hadn't realized before now that it always has been. "Anytime. You're family now. And I know what you mean, sometimes it's really hard to give a crap about any of this when one of the supernatural criminal enterprises decides they want to poach one of our members. Let me tell you, those guys don't know how to take no for an answer."

This pulls a smile from me.

"What?"

"That's what Eli said about you guys."

Sam rolls his eyes and then shrugs, accepting the statement. "We are persistent, but he really doesn't have a clue."

I nudge his shoulder and then lean in, even though we've been discussing things openly that are probably best discussed where there aren't so many ears. "Am I still family if Eli and I are just friends?"

His eyebrows drop and he looks closer at my face. "You forget it was me that found you all cuddled together in the woods. It's clear the big boy is crazy about you. You don't feel the same?"

I blush and wish I'd kept my mouth shut. "It's just I haven't heard from him since I left your place on Saturday and when I was leaving I got the impression he was distancing himself, that he wanted space. Like getting close to me was a mistake."

He opens his mouth to say something, something that will surely make the hot flush I'm sporting a thousand times worse. So I don't let him.

"Don't answer that. Forget I said anything." I shake my head and wish a hole would open up and swallow me.

"Ezra has protection on you, not Eli. You may not be one of us, but you're a part of the pack now. Nothing's gonna change that."

As if to punctuate Sam's statement, a tall guy in a gray hoody I've never paid much attention to before gives me a subtle tip of his head. He's got a mop of blonde curls that almost rival Sam's afro for halo status. I think back to the hooded figure with a shock of blonde curls that came to the house to protect me and give him a nod in return.

I look back at Sam once we're out of sight and I know my eyes must be saucers. He smiles and says, "See, family."

Even if my mind wasn't completely boggled by what just happened, another werewolf revealing his secret identity to me, I wouldn't have a chance to say anything because we make it to my first class. I realize then that it's Sam's class too.

Sam winks before strolling across the room to take his seat. I take my seat and promptly zone out.

Dad might be a genius when it comes to machines or wood, or honestly just about any skill that requires you to work with your hands, and maybe that's where I get it from, but I'm blessed with the same ability when it comes to schoolwork. It's a skill I often take for granted, skipping homework a lot because I know I can pass with the work I do in class and the tests that I ace.

At the moment it's a skill I'm terribly appreciative of, since Mr. Black is staring at me, looking expectant, and I fear he has singled me out to answer the math question on the board. Probably because he has a sixth sense for when students are sleeping at their desks, which was exactly what I was doing.

"This century, Miss Carver." His perfectly plucked and sculpted eyebrows look like a pair of ravens gliding on the wind high above two very bored looking eyes. I hop out of my seat, scrawl the answer on the board and return to my seat.

"That's...right," he says, hesitantly, like he doesn't quite believe it. He watches me for a couple of long, silent seconds in which I think he gains the attention of everyone in the room, even those who were half asleep themselves. "At least someone's paying attention."

He moves on to his next victim and I work on perfecting my sleeping with my eyes open skills.

Blondie is in my next two classes. I spend both classes studying him, since he sits in the front in both. I try to see anything that would give me a clue he's hiding a wild animal beneath his skin. I don't find any.

On the way to lunch, my blonde shadow close by, I spot Eli down the hall. I start to call out to him, but I only get the "E" out before he turns the corner. By the time I make it to the hall he went down, he's long gone.

I turn and look at Blondie, and decide I better get his name soon so I can stop thinking of him as Blondie. I ask quietly, so that even those around won't hear. "Eli heard me, didn't he?"

One corner of his mouth turns up in a regretful way and he barely nods his head. In the next second, Nicky rounds the corner, snags my arm and starts dragging me away, forcing me to walk backwards through the hall so I don't end up on my butt.

"Who's the hottie that's been tailing you all day? I need details, stats, relationship status. Spill!"

"Uh, you mean Blondie? Aren't you the seer?"

She gives my arm a sudden tug for spite, almost laying me out on the hallway floor. I stumble to keep my balance and catch up. "Yes, the blonde behemoth who's been stalking you all morning. I find those blonde, corkscrew curls irresistible. I just want to shove my fingers deep into that mess and lick him!" She lets go of me so she can mimic what she's just described, her hands are rounded like claws which are embedded in imaginary hair as her tongue flicks out to lick the air in front of her.

"You wouldn't have any idea what to do with him if he were standing here. Besides, I'm pretty sure he can hear every word you say."

Her eyes go wide and she slowly turns her head toward me. "I know the future, how did I not see this coming? I think I'm going to go lock myself in the women's bathroom and stay there for the rest of my life. Or at least until after graduation. Why didn't you stop me sooner?" She glares for a half second, then shrugs, looks over her shoulder at the object of her fascination and licks the air again, like it's him.

Boy he was red before, busy trying not to look at us, but now... Now, he resembles a hot chili pepper.

"If you really like him, you should go talk to him. Otherwise stop torturing the poor guy and let's go to lunch. I'm starving."

Nicky looks back at me, and I'm struck by the rare moment of vulnerability. "You don't mind? You'll be okay?" Her eyes sparkle and I swear she's holding her breath, waiting, always thinking of me, even at the expense of her own wants.

"Of course. I'll be fine. Go. I only ask that you get his name for me, so I can stop calling him Blondie in my head."

"You're sure?" She glances around. "I mean, there is a real creepy stalker who might be after you. You might need one or both of us."

"We're at school, surrounded by hundreds of people. I'll be okay. I promise." I give her a shove and don't look back as I head off toward the cafeteria.

The second I step through the doors, I try really hard not to regret sending her after Blondie. If it weren't freezing outside, I'd go sit in my truck and eat.

"Where's your tail?" Sam asks, stepping up beside me as I get in line for a slab of cardboard pizza. The best kind. My stomach growls as the smell torments me. It's so close but still so far away.

"He got sidelined by a rabid squirrel."

"What?" Sam's laugh is musical, even the snorting part is pleasant.

"Nicky," I say, watching him to see how he reacts. I thought I saw something on Saturday. The way he avoided looking at her, like he was trying too hard. It was just a feeling and maybe I imagined it, but I could have sworn there was interest there.

"Did she see something?" The concern from this morning is back. It's weird seeing him like this. It's weird seeing him this much in general. Before Saturday, I barely talked to him. We've had a few conversations, but they were all superficial and looking back now, I think he's always just been blending, play acting at being a teen when in reality his life must be full of a lot more responsibility than mine ever has been.

"A cute boy."

"Oh." He plops down a twenty to pay for my pizza.

"I got it." I start to dig out my wallet, but a hand on my arm and a shake of his head stops me. "Thanks, Sam."

When we sit down at a table with a bunch of guys, I wonder if any of them are pack. Then I notice Eli standing at the back of the room. He sees me too, I can tell, but he doesn't meet my eyes. I drop my hand back onto the table that was going to motion him over.

"He'll figure it out." Sam's voice is soft and his lips are close to my ear, maybe to keep Eli from hearing. Still, I notice Eli's eyes narrow and his scowl deepens.

"It's fine. This is standard boy behavior, right? Spend the night with your hands buried in a girl's armpits, then spend the next week pretending she doesn't exist."

I can tell Sam sees through my attempts at humor, but he smiles anyway and gives me a nudge. "Maybe it is for those who aren't pack, but we'll never treat you that way." He glares in Eli's direction. I swear I hear a low growl coming from the back of the room. I look up in time to see the back door slam against the wall. Eli's no longer there.

A girl at the front of the room shrieks, startled by the bang. There is silence for about ten seconds. The kids at her table bust up laughing and then everyone goes back to what they were doing.

Blondie finds me after lunch, a shadow in the background of my life. He blushes when he meets my eye for just long enough to make sure I see that he's there, before he goes back to blending with the crowd and looking bored. I'm not sure if it's my imagination or if his lips actually look a little swollen and abused.

He's in my next class and Sam is in the following. I sit in the final class before English and try to remember if they've always been there, or if they pulled some kind of pack mojo to get placed in all my classes.

Neither of them are in English, but I guess they assume I'm safe with Eli only inches from me.

He comes in after I'm already in my seat. He doesn't make eye contact and I try not to let it get to me, but when he slumps down low in his seat like always, I can't help the twinge I feel. Knowing he's doing it for me, a small seed of hope plants itself in spite of the fact that he seems to be giving me the brush off.

Mr. Roberts is busy setting up the TV screen to play the movie adaptation of the book we just finished reading. He's getting pretty excited, talking, mostly to himself, about the differences we should be watching for from the book.

If he was any other teacher, I'd say he was phoning it in by showing a movie the week before Christmas break, but he's not any other teacher. He gets all excited whenever a new movie comes out based on a book. He gives us extra credit if we see them and turn in at least one page on the differences between the book and the movie and how it affects the story. It's the only homework I enjoy doing.

I've already seen the movie, so I plan to take the opportunity to sleep. Instead, I stare at the back of Eli's head for the first ten minutes. When I can't stand being in my own head for another minute, I give up on staring and half pay attention to the movie and the other half of my attention I give to doodling in my notebook.

At some point during the period, I completely zoned out, because when the lights come back on, I jolt out of my stupor to find I've filled a whole page. The word monster is written all over the page with a question mark after some and an exclamation point after others. But what's really alarming is the lifelike image of a creature slavering and drooling, its maw opened to devour. The thing is tearing through the page, trying to leap out. It's a werewolf. The kind in the movies and nightmares.

I slap the cover shut and glance around, hoping no one saw. I shove the evidence into my bag and stand up. Eli picks that moment to give up ignoring me, standing and turning around to face me.

"I heard what happened at your house." He watches my hand as I run my fingers over the back of his chair, instead of looking at my face.

"Yeah?" I shrug and pull my hand away from the chair and drop it to my side. "My parents had everything cleaned up within hours. It's like it never happened at all."

"It should never have happened," he says under his breath.

"The valley is pretty safe, but crime happens everywhere. Even in safe places."

He gives me a look. One that says we both know it wasn't just some random break in. I meet his eyes and don't look away, even when it gets uncomfortable. I'm not the one who's running away from what happened between us. He made the mistake of making eye contact, he's going to have to be the one to break it.

Eventually he does. He glances away, down to his right. "Look, I appreciate you helping me with my truck...and with the cops, but I think it's best if I go back to just being the guy who sits in front of you in English. Nothing more."

"Oh." I blink at him for long enough for the back of my throat to burn and the pressure to build behind my eyes. "Yeah. Okay." Now I'm blinking and nodding, like an idiot. "Sure."

He looks like he's about to say something to try to make it better and I know I won't survive that. I point toward the door, past him. He rocks back on his heels, pressing his lips together, regretful and maybe a little hurt. I'm not sure, I don't have any idea what goes on in the head of teenage boys. He nods and presses himself back, flattening so I can slip by.

I almost make it out of the door before I'm seized by that stupid stutter breath thing that happens when I cry.

"Mackenzie," he calls after me, more regret in his voice.

I'm shaking my head and holding up a hand behind me as if that will ward him off if he really intends to follow me and make this worse. "It's fine." I step up my speed, not that I could ever dream of outrunning him. Stupid short legs.

I shove through the exterior doors and the cold slaps me in the face, stealing my breath. I'm grateful for it. It freezes my tear ducts, delaying what had been inevitable, giving me a chance to fight them off. I click the door locks and haul myself up into the driver's seat. I hurry up and lock the doors, but don't start the engine. The cold is the only thing keeping the emotions at bay.

I sit in my truck with my eyes squeezed closed, trying to keep the tears from spilling. My phone vibrates. There's a text. From Eli.

I'm sorry I'm being such an ass. I don't wanna be. It's just...

I stare at my phone, the seconds ticking away into eternity. Those three stupid dots keep blinking, indicating more is coming.

I'm sorry

That's all this time. It's no explanation and nothing more is coming. So, I start the engine, put the truck in reverse and back out of the parking space. It's not until I'm on the road and focused almost solely on maneuvering home safely on the icy streets that the world goes hazy and the tears I was fighting before fall in a torrent. I should probably pull over. I keep driving, praying there are no moose that step into my path because that'll be the end of me if there are, I won't see them in time.

When I pull into my driveway, Nicky's car is parked in front of my house. I park next to her and hop out. She's standing with her arms open wide when I make it around the front grill. "I had a feeling," she says. I step into her embrace, throw my arms around her and sob on her shoulder.

"Let's get you inside. It's freezing out here." Nicky takes the keys out of my hand and leads me up the steps with an arm around my shoulder. The movement, her taking care of me dries up my tears.

Stepping inside gives me a disorienting case of déjà vu. It was only two days ago that this same scenario played out, but in a way that knocked me completely off balance. The house is all clean. Cleaner than it usually is, even after my mom cleans it up because company is coming. So, while it isn't still trashed, it's still just as disconcerting.

I lock the door behind us and retrieve my gun.

"Is it strange that I find it totally hot that you're packing heat?"

I giggle, it's thick with left over emotion from the crying, but it ends the possibility of any tears returning. "There is something seriously wrong with you."
Chapter Fourteen

If there are history books or an award for the worst Tuesday, this one will definitely go down in that book as well, or win the award. Between the not sleeping and the crying, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm suspected of having pink eye. I look that bad.

Steam is beginning to fog up the mirror, but still I stare, liking the blurred version of me better than the one I was just looking at. This version doesn't have red ringed, puffy eyes, or a thousand yard gaze.

You'd think I would have slept like a log after no sleep the night before and the crying, which is totally draining, but you'd be wrong. When the lights went out and the world was quiet, my brain made up for the lack of noise. Something about the break in has been bothering me. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but I've been worrying at it like it's a sore tooth I just can't keep my tongue off of.

I feel like something Sam said was important, if I could just remember what it was.

I suppose the fact that there is steam filling the bathroom means the water is warm enough, and I should shower, but I feel like I'm on the verge of finally grasping the answer to, or even the question that's been plaguing me all night and I don't want to move and lose it.

The alarm on my phone goes off, chasing away whatever answers my subconscious was busy working to figure out. Gone, like displaced steam as I strip off my clothes and step under the spray of hot water.

I float through the rest of my morning routine. Completely on auto pilot. I don't remember any of the drive as I pull into the school parking lot and slip into a choice spot.

Blondie is waiting for me by the front door of the school. His name is Daniel. I learned this last night from Nicky. It was one of the few pieces of information about him she was willing to part with. When I asked about his swollen lips, she just narrowed her eyes and asked what all happened during my night alone with Eli. Neither of us came away from that showdown with more information than we'd started with.

Even though I know his name, I still can't help thinking of him as Blondie. Though Daniel does suit him. His mouth pulls up into a quick smile for me, which vanishes just as suddenly as it appeared. He's good at subtle. No one would even suspect him of smiling at me, since he rarely even looks directly at me.

"Can I talk to you?" Eli asks, startling me since I didn't see him until he spoke. I blame the sleep deprivation. It makes me jumpy and easily startled.

"Sure."

He rests his hand on the small of my back, using it to guide me through the main doors, acknowledging Blondie as we pass. He leads me off to a secluded doorway, stepping up to box me in with his big body. He looks down at me with those dark eyes of his, taking all of me in.

"Eli?" I ask, when he keeps looking at me. It's getting hard not to get lost and confused by the look he's giving me and the way he's pressed up against me. We're touching every place from my knees all the way to my chest.

"It wasn't fair to you, the way I treated you. It doesn't change anything, but I wanted to explain. No one has ever treated me the way you do. It confuses me, makes me want things I can't have. I'm sorry that I hurt you. You of all people don't deserve that. Who I am, _what_ I am... It's... It's not safe. I'm just... I can't. I'm sorry." He shakes his head, dropping it low. Then, abruptly, he turns and leaves me standing there against the wall, my skin cooling where his no longer touches it anymore.

"What was that about?" Sam asks, slipping in next to me as I finally peel away from the wall and head for my locker to retrieve my math book.

"I'm not really sure." I'm still looking in the direction Eli left, still trying to understand what happened myself. "I think maybe that was him trying to protect me, and apologizing for it." I stop at my locker and Sam leans up against the one next to it. I put in my combo and then before I open it, I turn and look at Sam. "Boys are complicated."

He gives me a devilish grin. "Not most of us. We're pretty simple in fact." He flashes his eyebrows at me suggestively.

I roll my eyes and swing my locker door open, stopping it just an inch from his face, blocking him with the door. This earns me a chuckle. Sam is good at his job, not only does he play the part of bodyguard, but he's good at distracting me from all the crap going on. At the very least for a few minutes.

The warning bell rings and we make a mad dash towards class.

Mr. Black is sitting on the edge of his desk, one leg folded over the other knee, looking very proper and annoyed as he tosses one end of his scarf over his shoulder. I shake my head and head to my seat. I've always thought scarves on men were weird and I've also always been jealous of people with legs long enough that the whole crossing them like that works. It sure doesn't with my stumpy little legs.

"Do you plan to stay awake today, Miss. Carver?"

And I loathe the man even more than normal. I slowly turn around and take my time sitting down and setting out my book before I look up and answer him. "I was awake yesterday, I just had my eyes closed so I could focus on the math. And it worked. I got the question right, didn't I?"

His eyes narrow and his nostrils flare. I have a moment when I wonder if he's a werewolf too, but it passes quickly. There is no way this shrew of a man is a werewolf, at least I hope not, but the thought unsettles me. Am I going to wonder every time someone takes a deep breath or their nostrils flare?

Anyone could be a werewolf, or something worse. Maybe Mr. Black is a vampire. That would seem to fit more. Except being out during the daylight bit. Though Alaska would be the place for one to hide, at least in the winter. I think we've seen the sun twice this year.

I glance at the blackout blinds that are drawn closed on the classroom windows. It'd be dark when he comes to school and dark when he leaves. I swallow and watch his mouth closely for the rest of the hour, trying to see if his canines look sharper than normal.

He doesn't call on me again today.

When I get to my second class, I notice I have a text I didn't feel. It's from Nicky.

You okay? Had a feeling, but I was already in the darkroom.

Nicky is really good at photography. I wonder if that has something to do with knowing the future. She's working on a project for a big photography contest. The winner gets a scholarship and a spot in a very coveted photography program over the summer.

I type back a quick answer. _Not really sure how to feel. I'm okay though. Fill you in later._

The rest of the morning is pretty uneventful. Lunch finds me sitting at Sam's table with him on one side of me and Nicky on the other. Blondie is at a different table, but I notice his eyes on us a few times. I want to tell Nicky to go sit with him, but I'm selfish and need her comfort. Mostly though, I'm not sure if that's kosher for the whole pack being a secret and the protection thing.

"What are your plans for after graduation?" one of the guys at the table asks, and I realize he's looking at me expectantly. I try to hide my shock, which is hard, especially since he's one I have pegged as pack.

"I usually help my dad in the summer. He works with a friend on fixing up, winterizing or de-winterizing houses that have been repossessed by the bank. I like learning skills that will be useful no matter what I choose to do with my life. My mom would like me to go away to an art camp, but I'm not sure I want to jump back into classes so soon. I'd like to do some traveling, but that depends on if my traveling partner is otherwise occupied with a photography program or not." I nudge Nicky and she looks up from her phone, looking guilty, not to mention the splash of magenta that's spreading across her face. No one blushes like Nicky.

"Wow!" Ray says, eyes wide. Impressed, I think. "Well if you're still around and you want to try something else, I know a guy who's got connections. He could probably hook you up with an internship somewhere cool, like the crime lab."

"Really?" I glance away from the guy, I'm pretty sure his name is Ramiro, though I think he goes by Ray. Sam is pointedly not looking at me, though the corners of his mouth are quirked up like he's trying to keep from smiling.

"I noticed you're kind of a whiz in science class. I just thought it might be something you'd be interested in."

It's exactly something I'd be interested in. Sounds way more fun than playing with glycol all summer, but my suspicion bone, sort of like the funny bone, but less painful, is twinging. All of this attention, the protection, now offers of dream internships. Nothing comes without a price, and so far no one is asking for one, but what happens when I'm too far in? What will they expect from me? Eli's face comes to mind.

"That would be cool. I'll give it some thought. Though I think you're giving me way more credit than is due. I wouldn't ever call myself a whiz. I'm pretty sure you've never set your lab partner's hair on fire."

Bits of today's mystery meat spray back onto Ray's plate as he laughs. "Margo had that coming. Graver kept warning her to put it up. At least we know the sprinkler system works."

"That was you?" Sam swats my arm, enjoying the way I squirm now that everyone is looking at me.

"You know it was. _Everyone_ knew it was me somehow before we even got out of the school. Probably because of the video someone posted and then emailed the link to everyone. Margo screaming and running around the room with me chasing her, trying to douse her. If she'd just held still she wouldn't have had to go all butch."

The bell rings, cutting off whatever smart comment the kid next to Ray was about to make. Never have I been more grateful. I think I cried harder than Margo after the fire was finally out. Mr. Edmonds took one look at me and pawned me off on the guidance counselor. I'm also pretty sure he must have threatened the entire student body, because the only person who ever teased me about it was Nicky. Boy, did she have fun with that one.

She only relented when I commented about how similar her hair was to Margo's. She turned whiter than normal, which is a feat for her and wore her hair in a tight braid for a month. She would flip it over her shoulder to the opposite side from me whenever we were together. Her hair is like a separate being that's attached to her, one she couldn't live without, like a conjoined twin or one of those purse dogs celebrities carry around everywhere.

When the last period rolls around, I'm not sure what to expect after this morning. Eli strolls in right as the bell rings. His eyes find mine as he starts down the aisle. They skitter away so quickly I don't have a chance to smile.

He slouches down in his chair like normal, but his shoulders are rigid instead of relaxed like usual. I'm grateful for both of us when Mr. Roberts turns out the lights and puts the movie on.

Eli doesn't linger this time when the lights come back on. In fact, I think he actually sprints out of the room, which is completely unnecessary. He could probably power walk like those women at the upstairs track at the sports center at the end of Church Road and I wouldn't be able to catch him at a dead run.

Instead of calling Nicky when I get home, I lock the doors and check all of the windows, before I grab my gun. Once I'm satisfied the house is secure, I crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head.

### ~o~

I wake up in the dark to a silent house. I pad downstairs and see signs that my parents are home and had dinner without me. I notice the clock on the stove. It's just after three in the morning. Normally I'm a light sleeper.

My parents pulling up should have woken me up. I'm a little alarmed that not only did I not wake up then, or when they came in the front door, but I know Mom checked on me, she's like that, and I didn't even wake up when someone came into my room.

A lot of good a gun does me if I'm unconscious when the occasion comes that I need it.

I take a shower, then make myself a bowl of cereal and sit on the couch, flipping through the sketchbook Mom has left out on the coffee table. It's one I haven't seen before. The drawings are good, better than any of hers I've ever seen before.

Most of them are done with charcoal, but one that catches my eye is done with colored pencils. At first glance it's a night sky filled with stars. There are streaks and swirls of northern lights dancing with the pinpoint lights. There is a figure on the ground below, almost entirely in shadow, but her breath is escaping in a fog that mixes with the swirling lights, giving the impression that she's breathing the northern lights into the sky.

When I look closer, the stars are eyes, but not just any eyes. These are like the ones I saw out in the dark, when I was tucked behind the downed tree with Eli and one of Ezra's wolves was out there, searching for us. They are tiny, glowing spotlights.

When I pull it away to try and see the beautiful night sky again, to banish hundreds of werewolf eyes staring at me, I notice that the sky, the whole picture is drawn over a woman's face, the stars are thickest where her eyes should be, spilling out from there to fill the night sky.

I toss the pad away from me, pull my legs up and hug them to me. It doesn't help. The picture taunts me from the edge of the coffee table.

I nudge the table with my foot and the sketchpad tips and slides off onto the floor. I can still see part of it through the glass top of the table and in between the wooden legs underneath it. The fall flipped it to another page, one done in charcoal.

The hairs prick to life on my arms, quickly followed by the ones on the back of my neck. I rub my arms, but goose flesh breaks out in the wake of my hands. I swallow and lean just a little bit, hoping I'm wrong, that my mind is seeing things that aren't there. The more of it I see the less I want to see.

There are trees in the forest, tall and dark with an opening in them, just wide enough for someone to be standing in the middle of. Their breath fogs up the air. The moon shines down, lighting the area close to them, but casting them in shadow.

The features are off, arms too long, legs also, shoulders too wide. Before I realize what I'm doing, I'm standing and leaning far enough to see around the end of the table.

My breath catches. I kick the cover closed on the pad and back out of the room, like it can get me if I turn my back on it.

My mom drew a man, but no man I've ever seen has pointy ears and proportions like those. I'd be blind if I didn't admit it was a man who was also a wolf, standing in the shadow watching the artist draw him.

I turn around to run up the steps, but instead I run smack dab into my mom. I gasp and stumble back before she catches me by the shoulders.

"Mack?"

I know I must look like a crazy person, which isn't strange since that's exactly what I feel like. I play it off though. "I'm late," I say, sounding as frantic as I can. Not exactly a stretch at the moment. I try to push past her toward the stairs, keeping up the routine. "I have to get dressed."

Mom tightens her hold on me. "It's four in the morning, Mack. You're not late, you're really early."

"What?" I scrub my hands over my face and pull the one eye squint I always do when I'm half asleep and trying to avoid opening my eyes completely.

"Maybe you should go back to bed for a bit, sweetie. I'll make sure you're up in time to do your hair and get to school on time."

"Okay," I say, feigning drowsiness. She runs her hand over my forehead and makes a sound in her throat, but she doesn't say anything. No doubt it's hot to the touch. My whole face feels like it's flaming, but I'm generally a hot sleeper. Hopefully she'll think it's just because of that or the shower.

She steps out of my way, but keeps a hand on my arm like I might stumble. So I do just that. She steps closer like she's going to help me up the steps.

"I got it," I say, shooing her hands off, then grabbing the railing for effect.

It's only after I'm up the stairs and behind my bedroom door that I realize the treacherous sketchpad is waiting to rat me out, flopped over onto the floor. I can only hope she thinks I knocked it off in my half awake, hazy state, not that I saw a sketch book full of drawings of a hidden world, one it seems she's been hiding from me my whole life.

I think of my dad, all the hours we've spent alone together shooting guns or working on houses. I wonder if he's been lying to me this whole time too, or if he's being lied to as well.
Chapter Fifteen

I bolt upright in bed, but it isn't the knocking or the light spilling into my room from the open door that woke me. It was an answer to a question, one that has been plaguing me for the last couple of days. It's a question I can't put words to, and the half formed answer is now slipping away, back into the hazy world of slumber.

"You awake?" Mom's features are soft in the light filtering in around her from the hallway, but I can see the affection in her eyes. It makes me feel a little guilty for the thoughts I had before I fell back to sleep while staring at the ceiling.

"I'm up." It sounds clipped, but only because a yawn cuts anything else I might have said short. That last hour of sleep did me in. Now all I want is to climb back under the covers and chase whatever it was that felt so urgent a few seconds ago.

"Only a few more days and you'll be free for two whole weeks."

"I'm counting them down. So, does this mean you'll be home early Saturday so we can set up the tree and decorate, finally?"

The sympathy flees her face and is replace by a rumpled forehead and a cockeyed brow. "You sure know how to piss in my cereal."

"That's me, Grumpy Elf, spreading Christmas dread and doom wherever I go."

"Get up, or you're going to be late. For real this time." With that, she shuts my door, leaving me to stumble to the switch in the dark.

My mom is weird about Christmas. She loves the holiday. One of my favorite things growing up was when we'd get in the car and drive around all night, looking at other people's Christmas lights, but she _hates_ decorating, like with a passion. I think it's because it's too much like cleaning, like a chore, and then another when it's all over and you have to take everything down and put it away. She's not big on cleaning or chores, in case you hadn't already noticed.

I run a brush through my hair and decide today feels like a braid type of day. Of course, that might have something to do with the numbers glaring at me from the clock. I grab my bag and run down the stairs, grab a homemade granola bar out of the fridge and panic when the truck keys aren't on the table where I left them.

"It's already started and warmed up for you," Mom says, leaning against the entryway.

"Angels do exist!" I give her a quick peck on the cheek as I rush past. "Love you, but don't think this gets you out of decorating duty."

"You're a rotten child. I knew I should have given you back to that troll when he came to collect you. Think it's too late now?"

"Hardee har." I shut the door before she can promise me to an ogre or sell my kidneys on the black market for revenge.

When I was younger and I'd beg to decorate for the holidays, she'd try and convince me I wasn't her real daughter, that I was a replacement, a changeling left by the fey after they kidnapped her actual child. When I asked how she knew I wasn't her child she'd say that no daughter of hers would ever want to decorate only to have to clean it up a couple of weeks later. She told me she was going to find them and give me back. It always made me giggle, but it also scared me a little, too. It's the reason I demanded a room on the second floor when we moved into this house. I figured it would be harder for the fey to reach me in case they did come back, looking for me.

I slam on the brakes a little too hard at the end of the driveway and skid for a couple of seconds until I come to a stop at the bump right before the driveway lets out into the road.

I'm breathing hard, but not from the ice skating incident. It's just hit me. The answer to the question! The changeling. The man that was in my house playing like he was Eli. He was looking in the mirror, maybe because he thought someone would see, but more to get a look at himself as this new person.

I don't think it's a faerie. I doubt they really exist, at least I hope not, but I know of something else that can change its appearance, something I've recently learned does actually exist.

For the first time in my life, I can't wait to get to school so I can talk to Sam. It's a chameleon! That has to be it!

### ~o~

"Why are you shaking your head?"

"It's not a chameleon," Sam says, not smiling or doing any of the things that would indicate he's joking or messing with me. In fact, he looks far too serious. It's still a look on him that's going to take some getting used to.

"It has to be. It explains everything. Why it looked like Eli even though it couldn't have been him. Because it was a chameleon being his doppelganger."

"That's not how a chameleon works, Mack. They are closer to the amphibian they are named after than what you are describing. They can blend with their environment, essentially disappear, but they can't change their shape or the way they actually look. I don't actually know the science of it, but I think they bend light or some crazy shi—crap like that. But..."

He purses his lips and tilts his head one way then the other, like he's having a conversation with himself in his head. Finally, he shakes his head again and the focus returns to his eyes.

"What? What is it? I saw those gears grinding."

"It's nothing. I was just thinking about a story I heard once, but it's not possible. It's just a story, it isn't real."

"Dude, seriously? Five days ago werewolves were a story. Yet, today I'm standing here having a conversation with one."

His eyes widen and he glances around, for the first time seeming to be concerned about the subject matter which we have, up until now, so openly discussed in public.

"Fine, but first off not every story about fantasy creatures or the supernatural is true. So, with that little disclaimer, I have heard _stories_ about shapeshifters that aren't limited to one form like us. Supposedly they can manipulate their shape or possibly their entire makeup to mimic another person, but unlike vampires and chameleons, who are known for a fact to exist, and in great numbers, no one to my knowledge has ever seen a shapeshifter. More than likely, it was a spell, because witches and warlocks do exist and they could pull something like that off, if they are powerful enough."

"Okay, fine. I'll bow to your expertise, since I have no choice, really. Has anyone told Eli?"

From the look Sam is giving me, I don't need him to tell me the answer is no.

"You've got to be kidding me, Sam. You don't think it might be a good idea to share with Eli the fact that someone could be running around with his face?"

He holds his hands up. "Hey, I just do what I am told." He punctuates the last three words with a shake of his hands as he says each one.

I can feel the heat moving up my face and turning my ears red. "And you've been told not to tell him?"

He doesn't answer, but the truth is there on his face and in his silence. I storm away, fuming, mumbling to myself under my breath. Probably looking like a crazy person, if the wide berth people are giving me is any indication.

After the weirdness at lunch yesterday, I am not sure I can entirely trust the motives of the pack, but I do trust Sam. He's been honest with me as far as I can tell, and he was honest with me just now. I can appreciate his position, but I'm under no obligation to Ezra. I will not hold my tongue. I have no idea what class Eli has first, so it might have to wait until lunch or English, but I intend on warning him.

I start to look around, wandering as I do, when the warning bell rings. I'm tempted to ignore it, but that won't do me any good if he has no idea I'm searching for him and goes to his own class. Besides, we're on weird ground and getting him a tardy isn't going to help my chances.

I skate into class just as the final bell rings. Mr. Black stands up from where he's leaning against the desk, nearly sitting on it, and glides toward me. He shuts the door behind me, with his usual dramatic flair, pressing one hand to the door and the other smoothing over the spot where the door and the wall become one.

He turns around and flattens his back against the door. "You're still there." His eyebrows are up as he stares down his long, pointed nose at me. And sure enough, I'm still standing there like an idiot, exactly where I was just inside the door when he passed me, distracted by his dramatics.

His comment jolts me back to life and I hurry down the aisle to my seat. Sam catches my eye when I sit and there is some question he is trying to convey, one he expects me to know, but we're not familiar enough for silent communication yet.

I give him an exaggerated shrug, hands and all, hoping he gets that I have no idea what he's asking. He seems to understand and gives up, probably more because he realizes our interaction is not going unnoticed by the evil math demon at the front of the room.

After class, Nicky makes a beeline toward me as soon as I step out into the hall.

"What's up?" I ask when she's close enough, but I'm not really sure I want to know if the thundercloud expression is any indication.

"I have a bad feeling." She bites her lip and looks at me, almost expectantly.

"A bad feeling about what?" I know I'm cringing, but those words are ominous enough in any circumstance, but nothing good has ever come from her speaking them.

"I'm not sure exactly. I just have a general, all around really bad feeling. Scratch that, _bad_ isn't a good enough description for the sensation of foreboding I'm experiencing." She doesn't move her head, but scans the area around us, not once, not twice, but three times and then shudders. "Something is seriously wrong, but I couldn't tell you what or why. Stick close to your stalkers."

"Okay," I say, a little more defensively than I mean to when she gives me a sharp look like a scolding parent.

"Right. Okay, I better get to class. Just... Keep your eyes open and your ears attuned for anything that seems out of place. No matter how small it seems." Her eyes narrow and she does the scanning thing again, but this time it looks more like she's glaring down our classmates.

I take her advice for the rest of the morning, but nothing is off. At lunch, however, I abandon her and her admonition in favor of hunting Eli down. I give up after spending half the time searching for him and only being frustrated and hungry to show for my efforts.

Nicky scowls at me when I sit down and begin wolfing down my mushroom and parmesan raviolis in alfredo sauce. She's a seer, she should have known what I'd do. Maybe her _sight_ is off today, or whatever is giving her the bad feeling is blocking everything else out. I shrug apologetically, though I'm not completely sorry, and stuff another ravioli in my mouth.

The bell rings before I'm finished, so I shove the last three raviolis in my mouth all at once, toss my tray and book it to class. Blondie is hot on my tail, though you wouldn't know it by his slow gait. Stupid tall werewolves with their long legs.

Blondie bumps into me, accidently, on purpose, nudging me playfully as he passes, making me retract the "stupid _"_ in that last thought. I like this one, even if the other werewolf at lunch yesterday sort of creeped me out and cast a suspicious vibe over the rest of the pack in doing so.

Why is it that if you have something you're looking forward to or waiting for, that time seems to move at a pace designed to keep you from ever getting there? I keep looking at the clock and I swear it's actually going backwards. The next class goes pretty much the same. I retain nothing and may have actually developed a tick that goes in time with the movement of the second hand of the clock.

Finally! The bell rings and only one more class left, only this one will be spent staring at the back of Eli's head, almost certainly replaying what I'm going to say to him in my head a thousand times.

Eli is trying to avoid me again, waiting until the last second to skate in. He can't help that one quick glance again, though, before his eyes skitter away, looking anywhere but at me. Ha! Little does he know he has no choice come the end of class.

It doesn't look like he's been sleeping well. There are shadows below his eyes and a shadow of another kind on his jaw, the five o'clock sort. His eyelids look droopy. His disheveled appearance kindles something soft and feminine in me that I'm not used to feeling. I want to reach out and touch him again, like in the forest when he accepted my offer of comfort and affection, turning into me, instead of away.

I want to hold him and tell him everything is going to be okay, and to somehow make it truth. He's so big and strong, but I have this urge to protect him.

When the bell rings and Mr. Roberts dismisses us, Eli jumps up prepared to make his quick retreat, but I'm ready for him today. I'm around the desk and slipping past him before he even gets out into the aisle. I don't even give him a look as I merge with the other students and slip out the door.

I step out of the flood of bodies and press up against the wall just outside the door. I pluck at his sleeve when he comes out of the door. "I need to talk to you."

His eyes narrow and he glances down at my hand still holding onto the sleeve of his right hand. I drop it, but I refused to blush or be intimidated.

"It's important," I say in a low voice, leaning toward him to further the feeling that it's not only important but sensitive info. Whether that's what he gets out of it, I'm not sure because he gets that adorable line in between his eyebrows, one part scowl two parts concern.

It's his turn to lean closer, lowering his head so ours are closer together. "Don't you get it? All that stuff that happened to you this weekend, the whole being chased through the woods in the deadly cold, being kidnapped and locked in a room with a guy who only minutes before had turned into a monster, not to mention having your house broken into, vandalized and your sense of security burglarized. All of that is because of me, because you were trying to be my friend. Imagine what could happen if whoever is behind it thinks you're something more."

"You're not a monster, Eli." I inch closer so I can look into his eyes and see what he's thinking better. "And it's not kidnapping if you go willingly. Those guys are my friends now."

He snorts and gives me a sharp look. "Friends? Your new friends might not be familiar enough with you to have noticed the way your voice dipped when they made you that offer yesterday, the way it kept getting deeper the more uncomfortable and suspicious you got. They might not have picked up on the way you changed the subject to keep from having to answer, choosing something self-deprecating to distract them from realizing you weren't agreeing to the internship. I wonder if that might be because you're starting to question their motives?"

I start to answer, but have to stop and take a breath. His dark eyes are so focused and intense, staring down at me, into my own. I'm trying really hard not to let what he just said affect me. He doesn't even realize what he's revealed. "Maybe a little, but none of that matters. We're getting off track. I came to tell you that the person who broke into my house, it was you."

He cocks his head to the left, his lips rising as his tongue slips over his front teeth. It's a move I've seen him do when one of the guys says something to try and bait him. I never realized how hot it is, the way it gives his mouth a little pucker before smoothing back out.

"Okay, I didn't mean it like that. It obviously wasn't you, but it was someone that looked exactly like you. Sam thinks it was a spell or something like that. I had the big idea it was a chameleon, but apparently I know exactly zero about the supernatural world because that isn't how they work. I just thought you should know there could be someone out there wearing your face and it seems no one else thought so. I thought you already knew or I would have told you sooner."

His eyes widen, betraying his calm demeanor. The tip of his tongue peeks out to wet his lips. "I guess I'm to blame for that. Hard to keep me in the loop when we haven't really been talking. I'm sorry." Carefully, he pushes a stray hair off my cheek and back behind my ear. I don't move or breathe, waiting to see what he'll do. It's possible my heart has stopped too.

"I bet Sam didn't tell you there is something that could have actually done what you were thinking, did he?" Eli asks, his eyes narrowing.

I shake my head. "He told me about a story he heard about a shapeshifter, but he says they aren't real."

"They are. I've seen one before. They can change themselves to look exactly like another person. They are so good, it's like they are a copy, except everyone has their own smell, even these shapeshifters. They can't hide that. You, for example, wear that melon scented lotion." His nostrils flare wide, his chest expands and his eyelids flutter, closing for a second. I'm grateful that I didn't skip the shower this morning.

"You wear some kind of light, scented oil too. Your friend Nicky sometimes wears the same lotion as you, but even if she wore the lotion and the oil, I could never mistake her for you. You have a smell that is entirely, uniquely you. Even with the lotion and the oil, they don't mask your unique scent, it combines with them to make something that differentiates you from anyone else. Same with a shapeshifter, they can mimic a person, but they can never duplicate their scent, even with lotion, perfume or soap."

We're standing so close now, one of his feet are between mine and the way he's leaning up against the wall, caging me in, his knee is almost touching the outside of my thigh. It all feels very intimate. I imagine it looks that way too. I could lift up onto my tiptoes and kiss him just now and the desire to do so is strong, but I don't want to make things worse. I won't give in to the temptation and risk a moment of pleasure ruining the trust between us.

He must realize how it looks at the same time, because he blinks a couple of times and straightens, taking a step back from me. He looks around, wearing a look of confusion which quickly transforms into something a little darker. "Where is your friend? Nicky?"

I'd be a liar if I deny the flash of jealousy that hits me, seeing the concerned look on his face. It is gone just as quickly, replaced by something just as unpleasant, shame, but it wouldn't be the first time a boy has gotten close to me just so they could gain access to Nicky. She's tall, has a perfect body and she's gorgeous, inside and out.

I'm not one of those girls who is secretly a hidden faerie princess with the face to prove it, despite my mother's claims from my childhood of fey origins. But I'm also not one that often cares about such things. I've got an okay face, average probably, but I'm a goblin in comparison to Nicky. Everyone is.

I realize I haven't answered Eli and shrug. "She probably headed home already." I pull my phone out and check it for messages. There are none. "I'll give her a call on the way home," I say, holding it up as proof.

He nods, absently, looking distracted, deep in thought or somewhere else altogether.

"See ya." I give him a small wave which he doesn't notice and I slink off in the direction of the parking lot.

It's amazing how one encounter with a boy can run you through the whole gamut of the emotional spectrum. First there is feeling amazing because he's revealed just how much he notices me, enough to not only know the scents of my moisturizing routine, but also enough to know the tone of my voice when I'm uncomfortable and how I avoid responding when I don't want to say yes, but don't want the other person to realize I don't. Then, even though I was thinking it, a little bit rejected by the way he backed away from me after realizing what our conversation looked like. Then a trifecta of terrible, in quick succession, jealousy, shame and finally feeling completely invisible.

After all that, I'd rather not talk to anyone, but true to my word I pull up Nicky's name in my recent calls and unlock the door to my truck. It's strange that she didn't stick around, after her doom and gloom feeling. I can see that, now that I'm not so focused on my own pity party.

"Hey, Mackenzie."

I glance up to find Sam at the back of my truck. I give him a half-hearted smile and wave. "Hey, Sam."

He motions me over. "I need to talk to you," he says, his voice low and his tone urgent. My skin prickles with alarm, I shove my phone into my pocket and hurry over to him.

He wraps his arm around my shoulder, leaning in close. I turn my head to give him better access to my ear, and that's when the cloth covers my mouth. My instincts are much quicker than my brain, because immediately I hold my breath. It's good, but I already got a hefty dose of whatever it was on the cloth.

I struggle, pulling at his hand and kicking and stomping, but he's really strong and I'm already feeling the effects of whatever he's using to try to knock me out. My muscles feel sluggish. Still, a burst of adrenaline allows me to wrench out of his grip on my shoulder. I get turned around, facing the school and see Eli and the real Sam coming out the back doors of the school.

I open my mouth to scream, but instead I get the cloth shoved back over my face. This time instead of air, I get a big lungful of chemicals and my limbs go from heavy to dead weight, though I can still see.

I'm hefted over the imposter's shoulder and dumped without any care onto a hard surface. The last thing I see before fake Sam shuts a sliding door is Eli's head tilting up into the air like he's smelling something. I want to call out, to scream, something to alert him, but it's like I no longer have control of my own body. It's a feeling that fills me with terror.
Chapter Sixteen

Pain jolts me awake. I try to reach up to cradle my cheek, which is throbbing, but my arms aren't obeying me. I'm greeted with a toothy, smiling Sam. It's not his normal, performance smile, but it's definitely not the nice, real one he's shown me a few times since I woke up surrounded by his pack, the night everything went all to hell. There is nothing human in the way this Sam copycat is smiling at me.

"Welcome back." He looks me over and that's when I become aware of my surroundings and the contraption he's bound me in. It seems like something from a horror movie. I'm inside a cell of some sort, strapped into a smaller, human body shaped cage. It has metal bands corded around my legs, my torso and arms. Two more thick metal bands make up the shoulder restraints that lock to the body piece, holding me trapped inside, but my head free.

"You like? It's an invention of my own design."

I stare at him for a few silent seconds before I can't stop myself anymore. I slam myself against my prison, trying to force the metal to give and let me free. He watches with interest, almost like a scientist watching a doomed lab specimen.

"Let me go!" I give in and finally respond to him.

"Oh no," he says, shaking his head theatrically. "I have big plans for you, little Mackenzie."

"What do you want with me?"

He tilts his head, gives me a smirk and actually bats his lashes at me. "Well, I hadn't actually planned to use you in this way. I was just going to play with you for a bit, lure that big hunk of brute force, Eli, away as you, but you threw a stitch into that little plan."

"I'm sorry my love life is such an inconvenience for you." Fear is tearing holes in my gut and choking me on the blood, but his words, the condescension are causing a spike of rage that's making me stupid.

"On the contrary, at first I was mad at you for alerting Eli about my presence, thought I might come back and leave you a souvenir to remember me by, but your interference actually saved me from making a terrible, possibly fatal mistake. See, I had no idea Eli could tell the difference between me and my alter ego. His father sure couldn't." His eyebrow rises in challenge, but I refuse to be baited.

"Really, I should thank you, but you've also caused me far more trouble than one little pixie like you should be able to, so... I figured why not make my last night in this frozen hell a little fun, take out some of my frustrations while I still have the chance, since I am _never_ coming back to this desolate, waste of a place again after I'm done here tonight. I mean, is it too much to ask for a little bit of civilization to make the biting cold bearable?"

"You're blaming me for the state of Alaska being cold?"

He chuckles and leans back on his heels, giving me another once over. "No, I guess that would be insane, but I can blame you and punish you for speaking up and giving Eli an alibi for the nice frame job I did on him for Andrews' death, or getting him to accept pack help. He used to chase off the guard dogs, now he gives them nods whenever he passes. That's all your doing and it's made my life more difficult. I could have wrapped this whole thing up a week ago and been sipping drinks poolside somewhere that doesn't require arctic gear to go outside."

He seems most upset by that last part, and I wonder if he realizes that you never truly escape Alaska once you've come here. Even if he does make it out of this, he'll be back whether he likes it or not. It's the strangest phenomenon, but it happens a lot.

It takes a second to strike me as odd that I'm wondering about how annoyed he'll be when he finds himself back here in five years, when I should be concerned about the gruesome cage I'm locked into or the fact that he said he was going to punish me for the things that have pissed him off.

"Enough stalling," he says, like I'm the one holding up whatever show he's got going. Another thing that should alarm me, but I'm finding it hard to feel anything at all.

He walks over to my coat hanging from the hinge of the cell door. He reaches into the pocket and pulls out my phone. "Aha! Let's get this party started." He holds up the phone like it's magic. He turns it on and slides the screen up and makes an irritated noise. "What's the password?"

"You can't be serious?"

His lips curve into an unpleasant sort of smile, one that makes my skin crawl. "You're right. Stupid question, but it's okay, we'll wait. Your beau has been calling you every two minutes like clockwork. It was getting on my nerves so I turned it off. He's due any second now."

No sooner than the words leave his mouth does Eli's ringtone spill out to fill up the tiny room. He lets it ring once, twice, three times before he slides the screen up and hits answer. "Hello!" He sounds so cheerful it makes me want to vomit.

"What have you done with her?" Eli's voice is angry and steadily sounding more garbled and less human with each word that issues from the phone.

"I have her right here. Would you like to see?"

My stomach drops. Not a voice call, a video call. The imposter Sam walks back over to me and pulls a little stand over off to the side, but still with a good view. He sets the phone on the stand. He rips off a piece of electrical tape and secures the phone to the stand with it.

Eli looks terrified, his eyes are wide in the tiny image showing on my screen. "Has he hurt you? Are you okay?" His eyes drop down and I can't imagine what he's thinking looking at the contraption surrounding my body.

I shake my head, but all the emotions I wasn't feeling a few minutes ago are slamming into me now, with brute force. I try to fight them, but hot tears fill my eyes and make the world a watery, double imaged mess. I can't speak for the heavy lump that's filled my throat.

My abductor pops his face around in front of the screen, blocking my view of Eli. "She is, as of yet, unharmed. I saved all the fun for when you could join us too. And now that we're all here..." He pulls away and lifts something off a tray that's sitting on a small table I hadn't noticed before. It has several frightening instruments and two guns. One of the guns is not a kind I've ever seen before. I don't think it shoots bullets, though I'm not sure what ammo it might shoot.

I keep examining the gun, then the walls and the floor with its exposed boards and scrape marks like he ripped up the carpet with his fingernails. I refuse to look at whatever it is the monster has selected and is coming towards me with. I also won't look at Eli. I think I might break down completely if I do.

Faux Sam is so close now, standing directly in front of me, legs spread apart on either side like he's bracing for something, and I can't help seeing him even though I try not to. He holds up a large spike. It looks like a brand new, shiny railroad spike. I want to close my eyes, to pretend what is about to happen isn't. I don't. I won't give him that power over me.

I do, however, look away as he draws his arm back. And then I scream like I've never screamed before, and then choke and cough on the tears I couldn't hold back if I tried. At first, when the spike stabbed into my shoulder there was just a sickening feeling, for a split second, a wrongness. I think my heart stopped after that and I died for a fraction of a second and the pain that followed was me being shoved back into my brutalized flesh.

I hear Eli's roar over my own. I open one eye and try to see him, but everything is a blur of tears and the darkening halo bleeding in around my vision.

The thing slaps my face and then shakes it. "Stay with me, now. That was just the beginning. There is lots more fun to come." He lets go of my jaw and I slump forward, unsure if I'm grateful for the bars holding me up or not. My knees have buckled, but I have nowhere to go.

He comes back with a wicked looking mallet and I lose control of my bladder.

"I'm. Going. To. Kill. You." Eli's voice is still deep, but it's clearer, not so mouth-full-of-rocks sounding, and calm.

The creature that still looks like Sam, but cannot possibly be a human or have a soul, props the mallet over his shoulder and turns to face the phone again. "You can make all of this end, Eli. I know you can find me. That uncle of yours has more than enough resources to locate the GPS signal in this phone and find me. The sooner you get here, the quicker this stops."

He swings the mallet off his shoulder and slams it into the spike, driving it in further into my shoulder. If I didn't die the first time, I'm certain I do this time, because everything becomes clear as a bell. I must be having an out of body experience, because I hear Eli saying he's coming. The phone clatters against something and the image on the screen is no longer Eli's face, but a ceiling.

A second later there is another image, a face. Mr. Edmonds, Eli's uncle. He holds his finger over his mouth and I realize I must not be dead if he can see me watching him. He's getting into a car now and setting the phone on the dash.

The creature has gotten what he wanted, and is paying no attention to the phone. He's saying something, smiling and waving his arms, but for some odd reason I can't hear a single thing he's saying. Doesn't matter, I don't need to hear what he's saying to understand when the mallet swings at me.

My head tilts back and the lights go out. I'm floating and then I'm screaming again.

"Lost ya there for a second, I think." The creature is in my face again, his eyebrows lifted like he's surprised or maybe impressed. I'm not sure which. I've never hated anyone in my life, definitely never wished anyone dead, but given the chance I'd kill this thing with my bare hands, and I don't think I'd even feel a second of remorse about it. At this moment I'm desperately wishing I had the power to call down a lightning bolt.

"Let's make it easy on him. What do ya say?"

"I say, I hope he kills you slowly." My teeth are gritted so tight against the pain, I'm not sure my words are intelligible, but I think he gets the general idea because he throws is head back and laughs heartily.

"Feisty, even with a railroad spike driven through your shoulder. It's a shame I'm going to have to kill you fairly quickly. We could have a whole lot of fun if I had more time." He sets the mallet down and opens the door to the cell wider.

I'm not sure what to think when he picks the mallet back up and takes it into the room outside the cell. When he starts pounding on the exterior wall, I can't help the way I flinch every time he swings the mallet.

I close my eyes to keep from seeing, because each time I tense up it sends a shockwave of pain out from my shoulder. The pain is so overwhelming I feel like my bones might all shatter into dust. It's better with my eyes closed, but each impact still sends a small ripple through my body.

When frigid air floods in, I open my eyes. He's opened up a hole in the wall and the success fuels him to attack the wall at a manic pace. It doesn't take long for him to expose us to the elements with a hole big enough for a huge, angry werewolf to fit through.

He stands back and admires his handy work. He wipes his brow and then heads back into the cell.

I watch him carefully, hoping he has other home improvement projects to attend to, rather than playtime with me. My heart drops when he moves towards the tray of terror. Instead of selecting another instrument of torture, he lifts the entire table up and takes it with him back out of the cell.

After he finds a home for it, just outside the door to my cell, he picks up the weird gun and holds it up so I can see it. "I hope you didn't think I only had presents for you. This little guy isn't my own design, but it's still a lot of fun. See, your beau is a big boy and werewolves already have really intense metabolisms without being the behemoth he is. Makes it hard to take them down. Period. This little beauty fires sedative darts of a much higher strength and without the pesky single fire problem that would leave me completely vulnerable."

I don't tell him I watched Eli grab three of those suckers out of the air, two of which were fired at the same time from different directions. I'll let him find that bit out himself.

"It won't be long now," he says, bubbling with a sickening level of glee that fills my gut with dread.
Chapter Seventeen

He wasn't lying. I'm having trouble focusing through the spots that have begun to pop in front of my vision, because I'm shivering so bad it's rattling the bands of my prison and jolting my wound mercilessly. Even with all that, I can still see the black shape bearing down on us. It's a wolf on all fours, but no one would ever believe it to be natural. It's massive.

"Showtime, folks!" the sadistic impersonation of Sam howls, sliding the arm with the tranq gun behind his back.

The wolf, Eli, is close. He rears back, rising up from four feet onto two and his body changes before my eyes, shifting to a creature that is both man and beast at once. He lets out a roar that chills my blood and charges forward bending low so he can clear the top of the opening the monster created for him.

The tranquilizer gun swings out and a whole magazine of panicked shots are fired. I'd revel in his underestimating Eli and panicking at the last second when he realized what he was up against, if Eli wasn't stumbling. He managed to catch four of the darts, but four others met their mark in his neck, chest, abdomen and thigh.

"No!" I scream, the hope I have been holding out from the beginning collapsing with him as Eli staggers forward, drunkenly takes a swipe at imposter Sam, catching him in the arm. Then he drops to the ground. The impact makes a thunderous crash, kicking up a cloud of drywall dust and debris.

The creature spins around and regards me with triumph in every stupid feature. "Whew! That was exciting. He's a little more than I was expecting. A beautiful specimen. My employers will be pleased."

He sets down the empty gun and turns back toward Eli, rubbing his hands together like he's about to have cake or something.

"Don't you touch him!"

"Don't worry, we'll have plenty of time to play before I leave, you and me, but first I have to secure the prize. Wouldn't want him getting away again. He was a slippery little fish, but I've caught him again and this time I'm not letting him go."

He sets to work trying to maneuver Eli, first attempting to lift him and then trying to drag him. It would be amusing if it weren't so horrific. Besides, I'm too busy trying to keep my head from exploding.

The ringing in my ears started about the same time I watched Eli succumbing to the effects of the beefed up knock out drugs in those darts. A word keeps playing in my head. I'm not sure if it's the source of the whining or if the whining is trying to drown it out, but this once I hear it and I'm not afraid. I'm not fighting it. It's a chant, a calling, a title and a truth. The word it's saying is _Monster_ , and finally, I accept.

Turning my right hand, the one not attached to my impaled shoulder, I grab the bands and the frame of my personal prison. They groan under the pressure and then slowly they begin to give. It takes a lot longer than I'd like to pull them open slowly enough that I can escape without making them shriek and rat me out, but a little patience now will pay dividends in the end.

The imposter isn't paying me any attention, too busy grunting and cursing, trying with very little success to get Eli moved.

I finally have the cage opened enough that I can slip through, but first the really tough thing needs to be done. I wad up the shoulder material of my shirt and shove it in my mouth to bite down on, and then with the unnatural strength that has always been inside of me, I yank the spike out of my body.

There is only so much a body can take, even one that is made up of things supernatural. I let out a sob and try to stifle another unsuccessfully. The imposter doesn't even look in my direction, still too engrossed in his own herculean task.

I take a couple of deep breaths and then twist and contort my body until I'm finally able to slide free of the torture chamber. The gun on the table is my destination. The real gun with real, lead bullets. I watch the imposter, making sure he doesn't notice me as I tiptoe across the floor.

He finally notices me at the last second and makes a dive for the table where the gun sits, but I'm closer and more determined. I leap and snatch it out from under his grip, landing on my undamaged side and unloading the magazine with precision aim from years of practicing with my dad on the range.

Problem is, he isn't riddled with holes, lying on the floor bleeding out. He was thrown back, but other than that, there are no signs that a single bullet hit the mark. I roar my frustration and glance around for another magazine, but there doesn't seem to be one.

"Funny thing happens when you become the go to guy for what my employer considers dirty jobs. Which is saying a lot since pretty much everything they do is dirty. Anyway, you get shot at a lot and if you don't learn to adapt, you die. I got my share of bullet wounds, until I got fast enough at shifting to let those suckers have a nice open path through me."

"Looks like you aren't quite fast enough." I point at his chest where a small blossom of red is expanding on his blue shirt.

He can't hide his irritation as he glances down at the blood. "Yeah, you nicked me. It's nothing serious and I'm a very quick healer." The sickening smile is back. He glances at the cage and then back at me, like he's just realized I'm free. "Guess you're not as vanilla as I thought. You're hiding a little bit of special under that skin of yours, too."

He takes a step away and then another, backing away from me slowly, and then quick like a viper he swipes his finger through a smear of blood on Eli's fur where the dart hit him in the stomach. He sticks the finger, blood and all, on his tongue and then turns his head, shaking it like Eli did when he was changing.

Sure enough, the bastard starts growing, shaping himself before my eyes into a demented copy of Eli. Pure unadulterated rage floods my system, twisting and changing me too.

Fake Eli shifts from his human exterior into the half man, half animal creature that is laying on the floor. His bones even make the same snapping, breaking noises that Eli's did when I watched him start to change. As he continues to shift and grow, that same wicked smile remains.

I suck in a deep breath and then shake my head too. His eyes widen with what I like to imagine is fear.

He leaps at me, claws slashing and teeth snapping. They sink into my shoulder. The same one he drove the spike into. I scream and then I do the one thing I've always feared I would do if I let the power free. I explode. My transformation isn't slow like his or even like Eli's, mine is instantaneous. One second I'm little, pixie sized Mackenzie, bursting with power that wants to get out and the next I'm a Fenrir wolf the size of this creature in front me, maybe even a little bigger.

I slash at him with my own claws, trying to dislodge him from my shoulder. He's not giving up easily, in spite of the gash I've opened in his side. I have to give up attacking to keep him from raking his razor sharp claws across my face.

He lets go of my shoulder only to go for my neck with speed that is breathtaking. Luckily, my reflexes have always been faster than my brain. I slap his snout away and snap my jaws down on his bicep. He roars and jerks back, breaking free from my grip, but not without giving up something in return.

I spit the mouthful of gore out and only have a second to react as he leaps at me again and we collide. The force pushes me back, tripping me over the raised bars in the entrance of the cell. I tumble to the floor, but I'm back up with lightning speed.

He doesn't give me time to recover. He's attacking like the monster he is, jaws snapping and missing as I swing the cage door at him. Instead of my flesh, he meets the bars with jaws and teeth. I yank the door back, pulling him toward me and aim my teeth for his shoulder, hoping to repay a little of the pain he's caused me.

He's adapting to the fight, because this time when my teeth meet his flesh, though my mouth is around him, my teeth meet each other through air. The same trick he did with the bullets, only he's dodging each tooth in that same crazy way.

Like the dog I'm patterned after, I shake my head, ripping and shredding the surrounding tissue as I do. He screams and lunges for my neck again. This time I'm not quick enough to come away unscathed. His teeth graze my flesh, spilling a wash of hot blood down my neck and shoulder. It's not blood I can afford to lose, if the dizzy feeling is any indication. That may be his plan, keep fighting me until I collapse from blood loss.

I have to end this now, but I'm not sure how. He adapts too quickly to any attack I make. I allow a moment of distraction, glancing over at the real Eli to remind me of the stakes. Dying isn't small potatoes, but I'm not the only one at risk here. I don't know what they want with Eli, but if he's rare like Sam said, he'd likely spend the rest of his life, however long that might be, as a lab rat. I shudder at the thought of the horrific tests he'd be subjected to, or worse. He could be made to do horrible things like this creature here.

My arm is still on the cage door, mostly to hold me upright. I decide it's now or never and go after him with my teeth. He jerks out of my way and then plunges forward, growling and frothing, slobber dripping from his jaws.

He's taken my fake, and I'm pinning all my hopes that he'll pay for it as I use all the force left in my body to slam the cage door shut on his head, pinning it between the door and wall of the cage.

It connects and the reverberations flow up my arm and rattle my teeth. The sound of bone cracking makes me cringe, even in spite of who it is, when his head hits the cell wall and is trapped between the two sections of metal.

His eyes flutter closed and he slides down the bars, so I let the door go and he collapses the rest of the way.

I know I said I wouldn't have any remorse if I killed him, but that's not true. I feel sick to my stomach, watching his body transform back into whoever he is when he's not playing imposter, unsure if he's still alive.

He's an unassuming man, who is almost peaceful looking in his vacant state.

I want nothing more than to be out of this cage, away from him, checking on Eli or collapsing with ache and exhaustion, but I can't. I can't step past him or even look away. I can't stop hearing that sound, the one his skull made when I hit it with the door.

It's stupid. I know. I've seen enough horror movies and thrillers where the killer isn't really dead and I was screaming at the screen for the main character to hit him again, or run or something other than standing there blankly, staring at him. I'm now that character I'd be screaming at that they're stupid, but still I can't move. I almost wish it were me instead of him. Almost.

I have the sudden stupid thought that I should move him off the raised bars in the doorway because the way he's laying over them can't be comfortable.

A noise from the direction of the opened hole in the wall catches my attention and I'm not sure if I hope Eli is waking up or if I hope he isn't so he can't see what I've done. But it's not Eli, it's Mr. Edmonds, his uncle.

He's standing at the edge of the broken wall, half his body inside the room and visible and half outside, hidden by the wall. He's looking at me like he's unsure. "Mackenzie?"

I realize I'm still all wolfed out and I sag back down into my tiny, human body.

Mr. Edmonds steps fully into the room then and looks down at his behemoth of a nephew, still all giant, hairy Fenrir, looking peaceful in his drug assisted slumber.

"That's him?" he asks, stepping over Eli and coming toward the cage and the shapeshifter.

I nod and look back down at his body, holding in a sob.

Mr. Edmonds kneels down next to the shapeshifter and it occurs to me I don't even know his name. It can't be okay to kill someone you don't even know what name they answer to.

"He seems too small and too young to have caused so much damage."

"I think I killed him, Mr. Edmonds." Tears burn my eyes, trying to escape and take me down with them, so I squeeze my eyes shut to keep them from falling. It works after a few deep inhales of frigid night air.

Mr. Edmonds is watching me when I open my eyes. "No, you didn't, sweetheart. But even if you did, it was self-defense. You not only saved yourself, but you saved my nephew from horrors you can't even imagine. Why don't you sit down? It looks like you've lost a lot of blood. An ambulance is on its way, but I don't want you passing out in the meantime and hurting yourself worse."

"I'm not sure I can. I don't think I know how to anymore."

"Sure you do. You're just in shock. Hold onto the bar for balance and try for me, okay?"

I get a hand on the bar and I look down at the ground, I look back up to tell him I can't again... Only he has his hands around the shapeshifters head and he's twisting. It's not like in the movies, sudden or quick. He's really wrenching on it. I gasp, when that terrible cracking sound comes from the man on the floor, the monster that terrorized and tortured me, the creature that wore my friends' faces. The nameless dead.

Mr. Edmonds looks up at me and there is kindness and sympathy in his eyes, but not remorse. "He couldn't have been allowed to live and go back to his superiors with the knowledge of what you are. I saw everything on the video."

I glance over to where my phone was taped to the platform. It's been tipped over and is laying on the floor facing this direction. I wonder when that happened and if he did actually see everything. Did he see the way my skin started to glow before I got control and channeled all that energy into something useful, like escaping?

"You're special, Mackenzie. If I'd known, I would have protected you better." He glances at his nephew and shakes his head. "I would have tried. But I know now. If I'd let this man go back with the knowledge of your existence, you would be hunted to the ends of the earth. They wouldn't give up until they have you. I know you've been through a lot tonight and I hate to scare you, but you should know and it should scare you. What happened here is nothing compared to the things they'll do to you if they get their hands on you."

"Who are they?" I sway and go down to my knees. He moves like Eli, fast, too fast. He's got me by the elbow, helping me to the ground.

"I think that's a story for another day, but I promise you'll have your chance to ask me all the questions you can think of, when you've been treated and gotten some rest."

"The ambulance! Eli." I grab at the bars again, trying to pull myself up. "He's still a werewolf. They'll see him."

A hand on my shoulder keeps me down. "This is a special ambulance with friends who know all about our kind, they are our kind, too. Supernaturals. Like you and me."

With that bit of reassurance, I no longer have the energy to hold my own head up, let alone stay upright. I slump down and Mr. Edmonds eases me the rest of the way to the ground, letting me use his thigh for a pillow.

His touch is gentle as he strokes my forehead in a repetitive, comforting way, lulling me into letting go. It doesn't take long for me to give in to the call of darkness, of oblivion.
Chapter Eighteen

"Nicky!" I try to sit up, but I'm restrained again and a panicked scream wrenches up from my chest. A figure appears on my left and I think I wet myself again, but something isn't right there. There's no warm flood of liquid down my leg.

"It's okay, Mackenzie. You're safe. You're safe." It's Mr. Edmonds. My parents appear in the doorway in front of me, their faces awash with fear.

"Mom?" I barely get the word out before sobs wrack my body. She runs across the room and kneels down on the floor next to my bed on my right side, taking my hand into hers.

"I'm here, baby." She hasn't called me baby since I was a little girl.

I just want to have her hold me and tell me everything is going to be okay, but I woke up for a reason. "Mom, where's Nicky?" I have to stop and take several breaths just to get the words out. "She didn't save me, Mom. She wouldn't have let this happen to me if she..." I can't say it, can't put to words the fear in my heart.

Mom doesn't answer right away. Instead she looks up at Mr. Edmonds and I can see it on her face that she's confused that I don't know and she doesn't want to be the one to tell me. Dad comes closer to the hospital bed. He stands at the foot of the bed and takes one of my feet in his hands. He squeezes it like he used to when they were putting me back to bed after one of the monsters had been outside my window.

"No." I shake my head, refusing to hear them tell me she's dead. "No, Mom. No."

"Sweetie, she's alive, but she received some severe head trauma. They've put her into a medically induced coma to reduce the swelling and allow her brain time to heal. She's here. You can see her when you're a little bit better. You gave us quite a scare yourself."

"How? Was it...the same guy that grabbed me?"

Mom shakes her head and then nods. She looks down, avoiding my eye. "Later, sweetie. We'll talk about it later."

Mr. Asher's head appears in the doorway. I hiccup and sniff back more tears, nearly faint with relief at the sight of his smiling face.

"It's not a hallucination. I did hear your beautiful voice." He comes fully into the room and takes a few steps toward the bed. He's wearing his usual light blue dress shirt and slacks, but they're all rumpled, wrinkles everywhere and even what looks like a coffee stain on his shirt.

He tentatively takes the position next to my dad at the end of the bed, like he's unsure if he belongs here or not. "Hey kiddo. I'm so glad to see you awake. When you can, when it's okay with the doctors and your parents, it'd mean a lot if you stopped by and visited her. I think she'd really like to hear your voice, too. Do you both some good."

"Of course. I can't wait to see her." I look at Mom.

"Not yet, sweetie. You've only just woken up. Give yourself some time." She gets choked up and looks away.

"We thought we lost you, kid," Dad says, squeezing my foot a little harder. "You might be ready to jump out of bed and take on the world, but give your old parents a little time first, okay?"

Dad wraps his other arm around Mr. Asher and squeezes him too. I'm not sure if he's trying to hold him up or keep him from running away, either way, it works because Mr. Asher's shoulders slump and he leans on my dad, accepting his support.

A few minutes later a nurse comes in and shoos everyone out, telling them I need my rest. I learn the reason I didn't feel any warm moisture when I wet myself is because I have a catheter. She changes out the bag and checks that everything is good, before she injects something into my IV and sends me back to sleep.

The next couple of days are a blur of groggy, panicked awakenings which are quickly ended by a nurse and more drugs. I get a few lucid periods when the doctor examines me and my parents insist on at least fifteen minutes to visit with me.

Mr. Edmonds is always present. I find his presence comforting, except that first time of course, when I thought he was the shapeshifter come back to life to finish what he started.

On day three after whining continually to the doctor and refusing to answer any questions until she agrees to let me see Nicky, I'm allowed into a wheelchair and escorted next door by one of the kind, but militant nurses.

She pauses inside the door and leans down next to my ear. "I want you to be prepared for what you're going to see. We had to do surgery to stop the bleeding in her brain. She's going to look a lot worse than she is. She needs you to be strong for her. No panicking and no crying, okay?"

"Okay."

She wasn't lying. I haven't been allowed to look in a mirror, so I know I must look pretty bad, but Nicky is a train wreck. I'm glad she warned me. I'm not sure how I would have reacted if I weren't prepared. It's hard enough not to cry now.

She wheels me up next to Nicky's bed. "Fifteen minutes." She taps her wrist and gives me a quick look that says she means business before she leaves me alone with my friend.

I carefully take Nicky's hand. She's so wired up and monitored that you'd think she was a robot, not a human. I close my eyes so I can't see the damage the shapeshifter did to my beautiful friend. "Hello there, Nickle Belle. You sure like to steal the show don't you? I get a ten-inch spike driven through my shoulder and should be the star of the pity party, but no, you have to one up me by having brain surgery."

One of the machines gives a chaotic series of beeps and then relaxes again. I hold her hand a little tighter, sure that's her way of telling me she can hear me and feel me.

"I have a lot of things I need to tell you about so you have to hurry up and get better, already. Oh, and next time you see a black storm cloud hanging over the whole day, we're calling out the National Guard, or at the very least sitting at home with a gallon of ice cream and avoiding every possible thing that could be dangerous. Deal?"

I get another series of accelerated beeps and I worry the nurses are going to come in and cut what little time we have short. I haven't done what I came in here to do.

I glance over my shoulder to make sure I don't have an audience. The door is open, but there is no one in the room or outside the door. Mr. Asher agreed to get some coffee with my parents and give us some time alone.

Satisfied, I close my eyes and take a few deep breaths, drawing from something deep inside myself. When I open them the veins are glowing on my right arm, the one holding Nicky's hand. I watch as the light travels down my arm, through my hand and into Nicky. It disperses quickly once it's inside of her, fading out from a light greenish blue back to a normal, pale hand.

The equipment all goes haywire for a second and then they settle back down, but the pink scrub squad has already invaded and I'm being cast out as a result.

My escort wheels me back to my room and gives me an upraised eyebrow once she's helped me into bed. She doesn't say anything, but she watches me with a suspicious look. I'm relieved when a frantic Mr. Asher pauses at my door for a half a heartbeat, stealing away her focus, before he rushes past to his daughter's room.

My parents are right behind him, but instead of pausing, they swarm around me looking more harried than I expected. "What's happening?" Mom looks between me and the nurse.

"I don't know. Her machines went all nuclear mode, and they kicked me out." I look at the nurse like I'm hoping she can provide answers.

The eyebrow twitches, but she turns her attention to my parents. "I'll give you an update as soon as things calm down in there." She nods like that's the final word and slips out of the room.

I yawn and press back into the pillows. This time I don't even need the drugs to knock me out.
Chapter Nineteen

My room is empty went I wake up, except, I realize, for Mr. Edmonds who is standing in the corner, bent over a table full of flowers, balloons, and cards.

"From your friends and classmates."

"You didn't let them in here, did you?" I feel my face and down my neck, my hands rubbing over several large patches of gauze, where thick scabs cover healing wounds and deep gouges from the claws and teeth of the shapeshifter.

"You have nothing to worry about. The hospital is very diligent about keeping people out of here. I've had to pull in a rather large favor to be allowed unfettered access myself."

"Where are my parents?"

"You'll be starting some difficult treatments soon. I thought it might be a good time for some of those answers I promised you before you begin."

I notice then that the door is shut, which explains the dark, empty feeling I had initially. Mr. Edmonds sits down in the chair to my left and scoots it closer to the bed. He watches me patiently, waiting for me to ask him something, anything.

I open my mouth a couple of times and each time I close it again without speaking a word.

"Maybe it would be better if I started by telling you a little about myself and what it is I do." He runs a hand over his pant leg, smoothing away non-existent wrinkles.

"Yeah, that might help."

"Well, you already know you go to a special school. The literature all says it's a school that is made possible by a rich benefactor who prefers to remain anonymous. I'm that benefactor. I fund the school, along with donations from several other sources, such as Ezra Weylin, whom you've met."

I never took Mr. Edmonds for a fidgeter, but now he's picking imaginary lint off the leg of his slacks. He notices me watching and folds his hands over one another in his lap.

"In a different life I was something a bit closer to the men that sent that boy to retrieve my nephew. I was head of a very powerful company called Cypress Energy. One day I met a little girl who could do incredible things. She was a lot like you, only she was raised to embrace her gift. She walked up to me and told me it was alright, she forgave me. I had no idea what she was talking about and when I asked, she looked up at me and she said that the good I would do would outweigh the bad. Turns out, the two men I sent to her house to try and convince her parents to let us test her, took liberties with the definition of convince."

"What happened to her?"

"You've met Ms. Fontaine."

"The guidance counselor?" I know I'm giving him a look of utter disbelief because he laughs. And like his nephew it's surprising and spreads a pleasant balm over me, like the first sip of hot tea on a cold day.

"You'd be surprised to know that all of your teachers, all of the staff, are like us? Supernatural creatures of one origin or another. Vampires, witches, warlocks, chameleons, elementals, seers and werewolves. There are others, but they aren't so easily classed into the traditional mold, like yourself and my adopted daughter. After that incident in my office, I quietly changed the course of my company, letting go of the elements that didn't share my new vision and collecting those who saw a future where our kind could grow up safe, without the worry of being forced into a life of service, being tested upon and tortured or being killed. I envisioned a world where supernaturals don't have to hide, especially from their own kind just to live the life they choose."

He glances at the door, possibly hearing something above my normal hearing range. It makes me wonder if I have the power to turn up that hearing range.

"You're living in an early stage of that vision. Most of the students at Lakes are there because their parents share that vision. Most are supernatural and they know it. Some are regular students that just live closer and have been thoroughly vetted, others I allow to enroll because it serves my interest to have their parents indebted to me. A judge, a police officer, the owner of a wholesale food company. You get the point. I'm very much a politician, who is working behind the scenes to change the landscape here in Alaska and Wasilla in particular, so that one day it won't just be Lakes that offers protection to our youth, a chance to decide for themselves what they want to do with their gifts, if anything."

"Do my parents know the truth?" I ignore the sting of betrayal that still pricks at me like a burr.

"I've spoken with your mother. She doesn't quite trust me just yet, but she did confirm that she is supernatural, a type I've not seen before. She can sense the intent of others and tap into some kind of power to defend herself. She says your father is just the average, ordinary kind of gifted. A genius who prefers to get his hands dirty rather than his soul. I'm not sure what that last bit is about, I can guess maybe he was a scientist or something who didn't like the direction his research was taken?"

I shake my head. "I don't know. Not that I ever heard about, but I think she's wrong about him being like us. Even as a genius, there is something supernatural about the way he always knows how to do things, knows what the problem is and without training he can fix it. He's a jack of all trades which usually means an expert of none, but not so with him. If he tries it, he can do it. I got that from him. It's what I do with classes, but it's more than that. Now that I think about it, I see things when I'm with Nicky, things I can't know. When we were running from Ezra's people in the woods, I think I picked up a few of Eli's traits eventually, like seeing better, further and in the dark and hearing more. I think I can become like the supernaturals I'm near."

"That may be," he says, but the way he's pressing his lips together like he did in the office with Eli, makes me think he has theories of his own that he's not sharing.

"You don't think so?"

"I think you are selling yourself short. I don't think you need them to be near once you've figured a power out. I think you could access them at will if you chose to, with some practice of course." He glances at the door again. "Our window of time is closing. Is there anything else you'd like to know?"

"I've always relied on others to protect me, to save me. Nicky with her sight, Eli with his strength and his protective instinct. I wasn't really scared that I might die, not even when the shapeshifter drove that spike into my shoulder, because I always knew Eli would come, he would save me. It wasn't until he collapsed with those four tranquilizer darts treating him as a pin cushion that I knew I wasn't getting out of there alive unless I saved myself. So, what I really want to know is if I could have stopped Nicky from getting hurt if I hadn't been so afraid of becoming a monster? If I'd just accepted what I am, would she be lying in that bed still?"

His head lowers, his eyes fill with sympathy and I think I know the answer he's going to give. I think I already knew the answer, but I'm not sure I can stand hearing him say it. "They're taking her off the drugs today. They're waking her up. Did you know that?"

"No."

"It seems she has taken a sudden turn for the better. They are calling it a miracle." He raises an eyebrow and his mouth curves into a smug smile. "Strange isn't it?"

"Yeah. Strange. Can I—"

A knock at the door interrupts my question. The door cracks open and my mom sticks her face in the space. "You have some friends here to see you. They're in the waiting room. I could help you clean up if you're feeling up to visitors?"

"Who are they?"

"A few boys. Elias Markham, Samuel McKinnon and Daniel Aegus."

I shake my head and then realize she must know something is off by the way I'm shaking it so quickly and still I can't stop. "No, Mom. I'm... It's too soon. I'm..." I look at Mr. Edmonds, not sure what to say, not sure if she knows.

He gives me a barely perceptible nod. Mom looks between us, confused and growing alarmed.

"They're..." I'm having trouble breathing just thinking about seeing either of them. "The shapeshifter, he was Sam when he grabbed me and when he used the railroad spike on me. And then he turned into Eli and he attacked me, biting into my shoulder and... He was relentless. I know it wasn't them, but... I can't. Not yet."

"Okay." She backs away and lets out a startled yelp. The door yawns open and in the hall are the two faces of my nightmares.

"Maybe facing them is the first step in learning to save yourself. Facing your fears, but also trusting in others to support you." Mr. Edmonds stands up and pushes his chair back.

"You're right."

"We'll be just outside if it's too much." He pats Eli on the shoulder and joins my parents in the hall.

Sam steps into the room first and I can't help that I watch him like he's a wild animal, tracking every move he makes, every muscle twitch. Eli is still in the hall watching me watch Sam, his dark eyes taking everything in. That's something that sets him apart from the image in my head that was branded there by the shapeshifter.

He takes a few careful steps closer, moving through the threshold of the door. It slowly swings shut behind him, blocking us in together.

We all stare at each other. No one saying anything or moving.

You would think by the way they are both pressed up against the back wall of the room, as far away from me as they can get that I'm the one who looks like a sociopath that attacked them, not the other way around.

I try for a smile to lighten the mood, but I can't make it stick. Each time my muscles lift my mouth, they slip right back down.

"Are you okay?" I ask Eli eventually, when the silent staring is more than I can take. "The drugs didn't cause any damage or side effects?"

He's nervous. I've never seen him nervous before. He plucks his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger. "No. I'm okay. Is regret a side effect? Because then yeah. I have a pretty severe case of that," he says, still messing with his lip.

I don't know what to say to that. I want to reassure him, I want to comfort him like before, but I also don't want him to come any closer, which would make that pretty difficult.

"None of this is your fault, Eli. Really bad men sent a monster after you. They are the ones whose fault it is. We all made mistakes, choices that could have changed how this played out. If I'd told my parents instead of keeping quiet. If any one of us had informed your uncle. If I hadn't told you about the guy in my house looking like you. The shapeshifter didn't know you would be able to tell it wasn't me based on smell. He heard us talking and changed the plan. What I'm trying to say is that any number of small decisions could have changed the outcome for the better or worse we'll never know. What's done is done. Feeling bad isn't going to change that and I don't want you to feel bad, Eli. Or you, Sam."

"You might not want us to feel bad, but there's no way around it. You're terrified right now. Even if I didn't know your face well enough to see the way you flinch each time one of us moves even a little, your eyes snapping to the movement before returning to almost, but not quite looking at my face, I could smell it on you."

"I don't want to be scared of you, of all people. You're going to have to give me time though, because while I know it was the shapeshifter that attacked me, he was wearing your faces. What I saw was you drive a spike into my shoulder, Sam."

I stare to the left of Eli's face because I can't bring myself to meet his eyes. "And your smile well and truly left its mark on me. Forty-two marks to be exact, if a Fenrir has the same number of teeth as a normal wolf. I looked it up, but there isn't a lot of legit info on mythical creatures."

He doesn't seem to appreciate my attempt to lighten the blow if the way his shoulders stiffen is any indication.

"The point is, my subconscious is having a hard time separating what I saw from what I know. I know it wasn't you that did this to me, but it's not the shapeshifter's face I see every time I close my eyes, or that will probably haunt my dreams. I know that's not fair... to anyone. I'm sorry. But the only way to fix it is by changing the image I see. Slowly. Very slowly, replacing the bad with the good. Can you do that? Help me? It's going to take time, but I need you to help me fix what that creature broke inside of me. Both of you."

"Anything," Sam says.

Eli takes a tentative step closer and then another, letting me adjust to his proximity, watching me carefully before he takes another step. It takes longer than you would think in such a small space, but eventually he makes it to the side of my bed. Of course he'd know to come up on my right side. He's so observant and considerate like that.

Slowly, even more slowly than the inching he did across the room, he reaches out toward my hand and grazes the tips of his fingers over the back of my hand, barely a whisper of a touch. I'm proud that I almost don't flinch.

He notices of course, not the almost part, but the flinch part. He stills, but he doesn't pull away, waiting for me to relax before he slides his fingers around the edge of my hand into my palm. He gives a gentle squeeze, holding my hand for just long enough for me to miss the warmth of his skin as soon as it's gone.

"I'll come back tomorrow. We'll figure this out together, every day."

My heart melts into a simpering puddle in my chest. I hold in the tears until they are out of the room and hopefully down the hall, out of earshot.

I want to hate the shapeshifter for what he's done to all of us, but at the moment mostly for what he's done to Eli and I. I want to hate him for adding another set of enormous hurdles to what was already a hard sell, but he's dead and even if I didn't actually kill him, it's because of me that he died. After everything he did to me, I feel sorry for him and I realize just how important what Mr. Edmonds is trying to do here. Maybe if he'd had the chance at a normal youth, not one filled with learning ways to manipulate his body so that when he got shot, the bullets didn't have a chance to kill him.

Speaking of Mr. Edmonds, he peeks his head into the room. I swipe at my eyes as best I can with my one good arm.

"Plan another time for questions?" I ask, trying to seem all together.

"Nah. Your parents are just checking on Brandon. They've stopped the drugs, so Nicky should be waking up soon." He steps fully into the room and looks at the chair he's pretty much taken up residence in since I woke up, and probably before.

I motion with my head at it and he smiles. "I have another question."

He folds himself into the chair and looks up at me. Always so proper and put together. "I imagine you'll have many and I'll be here to answer them. I think it'd be good if you saw Kaitlyn too. My daughter, your guidance counselor."

I ignore that tidbit for a moment, but give him the eye. "The shapeshifter said something I wanted to ask you about. I just remembered when Eli was here. It was something he said before Eli called. He said he didn't know Eli could tell the difference between him and the person he was copying based on their smell. He said that Eli's father couldn't tell. He also said he didn't want to lose Eli again. What did he mean?"

He leans forward, elbows on his knees, that serious business principal look on his lineless face. "It doesn't leave this room. Not even to Nicky."

"Okay. I promise."

"He did find Eli once before. And like he said, Eli is the prize. His father was a werewolf, but so is his mother. Female werewolves are rare. Most werewolves are married to normal, non-supers and not all children produced from the coupling are supers either. Of those that are, somewhere close to eighty-five percent are male. We have no idea why. Anyway, to find a male and female werewolf that have mated and produced a child that is also a super... Well let's just say there were a lot of people who were interested. My brother was a hardheaded man. He wouldn't hide. Carleen, Eli's mother, has always been a bit obsessive. I'm not sure how much he told you?"

"About the cleaning. I know. He said you saved his life."

"Well I don't know if it was the cleaning products or if Eli's nose is just that strong. The shapeshifter attacked Miles looking like Carleen. Miles escaped and when he saw Carleen a few seconds later he thought it was the shapeshifter. He wouldn't believe her when she tried to convince him she was really his wife. He shifted and attacked, trying to save his son. I think if she'd just shifted and fought back he would have realized it was her, but she wouldn't. She hated that part of herself and she was a lot stronger than him as a wolf. Eli was forced to change at five, to fight off his father in order to save his mother."

"Oh Eli." I put my hand over my mouth because I don't know what else to say.

"A Fenrir isn't something you become through heredity. They are rare and only happen when a wolf is little and is forced to shift early for their first time, possibly in order to protect themselves, but after Eli, I have a theory that it's more likely it only happens when they have to protect someone they love. They explode into this huge beast, bigger than the threat. He didn't have any idea of his own strength and his father was crazed. He didn't mean to kill him, and he repressed the whole thing. We told him it was a bear that killed his father and he accepted it, replacing the memory in his head with the story."

"I think he might know. At least partially. He's the one that told me there was such a thing as a creature that could mimic a person. He told me he could tell the difference. I don't know if he knows why, but he remembers something."

"Thank you for telling me." He pats my hand and images fill my mind.

There is a man in a poorly lit room. Mr. Edmonds walks toward him, holding the body of the shapeshifter. He tosses the body one handed. It lands at the man's feet, tumbling a little so that it ends laying splayed open, exposing the young face, peaceful in death if you can ignore the odd angle of his neck.

" _You broke the treaty when you sent that creature after my nephew. Be warned, any attempts to come after my nephew again or any of the kids in my care will be met with the same response. In fact, if I so much as catch a whiff of_ _Ailanthus Pharmaceuticals_ _sniffing around here, I won't just defend my own, I will hunt you down and I'll exterminate every last one of you."_

He gives me a strange look when I suck in a huge breath to clear my head of those images.

The door swings open and my mom bursts in. "She's awake. Nicky's awake and she's asking for you."

"We'll talk again soon. I'll bring Kaitlyn by, but for now I'll find you a nurse with a wheelchair."

They're back in no time and I'm wheeled in to see my best friend. She cries when she sees me. I guess the nurses didn't give her the warning first.

When the nurses all leave, I ignore the protests of my mother and crawl onto the bed next to Nicky.

"Careful of my shoulder," I say, winking.

"Careful of my head. All of my hair is gone." She pouts and I try not to notice how her left eye didn't quite get in on the action fully.

When the parents start talking amongst themselves, Nicky leans close. "There was something on the other side pulling me, calling me home, but then I felt you there in the darkness too. I had a feeling you needed me." She holds up her hands in a _ta da_ sign, like her being here is the result of a magic trick. It certainly feels like it is to me.

### ###

### Back to the Top

If you enjoyed Faceless, won't you please take a moment to leave a review at your favorite retailer?

Want to know what happened while Mackenzie was knocked out? Love Sam and wish there was more of him? Click Here to subscribe to my mailing list and receive Helpless, an exclusive behind the scenes look at the events that happened while Mackenzie was out, seen through Sam McKinnon's eyes.

### Acknowledgements:

I'd like to thank Jodi for always being there for me. As always, you are the best!

Thanks to Amy for your time and your invaluable feedback. You rock!

Thanks to all my advanced readers.

This year has been a tough one. I just want to thank my family and friends for their support, for holding me up when I needed someone to lean on. Thank you for your belief in me.

Ike, Glados and Congressmen, without your unfailing devotion I would be minionless. My life would be a sad echo of what it is now. At the very least it would be far less entertaining and my feet would always be cold.

And especially to all who have taken a look and kept reading! Thank you!

About the author:

Monica was born and raised in Alaska. She doesn't own a dog sled team, but has worked in a place where there are buildings with caged exterior doors to keep employees from being eaten by polar bears.

She lives in Wasilla, Alaska with all her critters, some four legged and others that stand on two. She writes Science fiction, Fantasy, and Paranormal for young adults.

Want to be notified when I have a new release,

be the first to hear about giveaways and receive subscriber exclusives?

Click Here to subscribe to my mailing list.

### Connect with me online:

Twitter: <http://twitter.com/#!/MonicaEmme>

Facebook: <http://www.facebook.com/MonicaMillardAuthor>

My blog: <http://analaskangirl.blogspot.com/>

Pinterest: <https://www.pinterest.com/emmeandemme/>
