The year before, I’d always gone home before morning when I ran with the wolves. This time, I woke up next to Alarick. He stood and stretched out each powerful leg, arching his back to stretch his shoulders before nudging me and then trotting toward the cabin. I followed, and when we reached the door, he shifted into human form. I did as well, trying not to gape at the enormity of his perfect, muscular body.
“We’ve got some extra clothes in here you can wear,” he said.
“I know where I left mine,” I said.
“Okay.” He looked down at me, then reached out and pulled me into his arms. I inhaled the familiar, wild scent of him, and relief melted over me. I was back where I belonged at last.
“Get a room,” Brooklyn snapped, stomping past us, into the cabin, and slamming the door behind her.
“What’s her problem?” I asked, drawing back from Alarick.
“You’ll come back?” he asked. “After you get your clothes?”
“Of course.” I stood on tiptoes and looped my arms around his neck, giving him a quick peck on the lips.
“Are we getting a live show this morning?” Adolf asked from behind me, walking by and swatting my bare ass. “Because I’m here for it.”
“Rein it in, Moon Moon,” I snapped.
Alarick growled and glared so fiercely that Adolf visibly shrank back, holding up both hands. “Sorry, sorry,” he said, grinning and ducking his head.
I decided it would be a good time to shift back into a wolf while they hashed things out, so I went for my clothes. I found them where I’d left them, crumpled at the base of a towering pine. I pulled them on and then started back, realizing the benefit of being a vampire. I no longer had to jog through the woods as a slow human. I could streak through them every bit as fast in human form as in wolf form.
I arrived back at the shack a few minutes later, not even out of breath. So, being a vampire was pretty badass, despite my misgivings about the vampires themselves.
The Wolf boys and their posse, a pack that now numbered eight if you counted me, sat on well-worn logs and stumps around a small campfire. The smell of roasting meat filled the air, and they filled the morning with their murmuring voices and quiet laughter. I spotted Lindy, who was tucked under Vance’s arm, a dazed smile on her face. I didn’t blame her. Her transition to Ravenwood had been abrupt. She hadn’t had a whole year to find out about the Wolf boys. She’d been instantly accepted—almost forcefully—into the most prestigious, feared, desirable group in the school.
“Hey,” I said, sitting down beside her on the log.
“I didn’t know you were a wolf,” she said, looking at me with that blank, inscrutable expression she’d always worn.
“It’s complicated,” I said. “So, how are you liking it? Being a wolf?”
“It’s good.”
That was the last—and lamest—way I could imagine anyone describing this experience. But Lindy was anything but expressive.
“Did they tell you before they turned you?” I asked, unable to help it. I’d spent so many years standing up for Lindy when she wouldn’t do it for herself. If in the end, all I’d done was lead her here to be turned to a wolf against her will, I was going to… I didn’t even know. I was too pissed to think that far ahead.
“Yeah,” Lindy said. “It was a little hard to believe at first, but obviously, now I know it’s all true.”
“Did you agree to it?” I asked. “To being turned?”
“Of course,” she said. “They need me. I’m saving their race.”
“Well,” I said. “I’m glad you’re happy with it.”
She smiled blandly, staring at the fire, where meat cooked on spits over the flames. A minute of awkward silence passed.
“So, you’re a lone wolf?” Lindy asked.
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “You could say that.” I kind of liked that. It was better than saying I was a loser with no friends, as I’d been at home, or that the wolves had let me go because I had no purpose.
Suddenly, I understood again why Brooklyn had been so jealous the year before, when I’d been added, and she’d thought I might be the one they’d been waiting for. I felt pretty damn extraneous now that they had Lindy. What was the purpose of keeping me and Brooklyn around? She’d been right. There was none.
They were responsible for her now, which was nicer than saying they did it out of pity or so she wouldn’t spill the beans to the human world. Being a lone wolf was better than any of that, though in truth, I didn’t know if I really was the lone wolf type. I liked to do things my way, but I’d never chosen to be a loner. I suspected that I’d always been a pack animal, even before I was a wolf.
I looked around for Brooklyn, wondering how she was taking all this. I spotted her near the hunting cabin, hacking the little branches off a fallen tree. Stopping a few paces off, I waited for her to finish. I wasn’t sure I’d trust Brooklyn with a hatchet on the best of days.
“What do you want?” she asked, not looking up.
“How are you doing?” I asked my former roommate. “We haven’t talked this year.”
“Because you’re a bloodsucker.”
“I’m also a wolf.”
“You were never really a wolf, though, were you?” she asked, sitting up on the log and pushing hair off her forehead. “And you must not be a very good vampire, either. You still smell human, and they definitely don’t.” She wrinkled her nose at the thought.
I shoved my
