She gave me a long look. “What do you care?”
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “I just do. We’re more alike than you ever wanted to admit. Even if you don’t like me.”
She rolled her eyes and hacked at a branch again, swinging the hatchet down on it and snapping it off. “Why are you so obsessed with people liking you?”
“Am I?” I asked, genuinely not sure how to feel about that assessment. Maybe I was. Maybe all those years of being a pariah at my old school had made me crave approval from everyone, even people who clearly couldn’t stand me.
“What do you want?” Brooklyn asked. “You want me to kiss your ass for bringing Vance his mate, so now he’ll never like me? For saving the wolves, just like you wanted? Maybe try finding my mate. Then I’ll kiss your ass.”
I thought about pointing out that we didn’t get true mates, not like a natural wolf. But she knew that. It seemed cruel to force her to face it if she’d rather live in denial.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sinking onto the log. All along, Brooklyn had seemed prickly and bitchy, but now I thought maybe it was more than that. She was angry, and rightly so, and depressed about what had been stolen from her. She’d been a pretty, popular girl who thought she was attending some kind of special school for exceptional people. Instead, she’d been attacked, turning into a werewolf, and then basically told, “Whoops, our bad. Oh well.”
“You didn’t do anything,” Brooklyn muttered.
“I’m sorry this happened to you. That you didn’t want to be a wolf, and now you are one, and you can’t do much about it.”
Brooklyn sat back and looked at me a long moment. “What makes you think I don’t want to be a wolf?”
I shrugged. “You’re obviously unhappy.”
“So?” she demanded. “Who wants to be stuck like this? It would be one thing if I was important to them, if they treated me like they treat her.” She glared at Lindy sitting next to the fire, Vance gazing down at her like she held the keys to the universe in her hands.
“Yeah,” I said. “I wish I’d known before you were taken, and I could have warned you.”
“It’s not fair,” she said. “I’m stuck as a stupid monster for no reason. If they’re going to change people, they should have a way to change us back if we can’t give them what they want.”
“Maybe there is,” I said, excitement flickering to life inside me at the thought. “Maybe there’s some kind of witch, some magic, that could reverse it.”
Brooklyn stared at me a second, then snorted and started hacking viciously at a bigger branch. “Yeah, right. Where? I used to have friends, to be normal. Now, the witches and other magic people at the school won’t even look me in the eye. Who’s going to help me?”
“There are other places besides Ravenwood,” I said.
The words hung in the air between us. The whole world was full of supernaturals, monsters and dangers I’d thought were only in my head—in my nightmares. Knowing they were everywhere made the world seem like a scary place. Ravenwood was a tiny haven, and though it had its share of dangers, they were somehow small here. Everything was confined in this microcosm of the larger supernatural world. The Wolf boys kept everyone in check, making sure none of the different races clashed, making everyone behave and stay in line so there was no fighting.
Out there… There were no such guarantees.
Brooklyn just shook her head. “You don’t get it. I can’t go out there. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, why you’re not a normal wolf, but it’s not the same for you. You have control of yourself. If I got mad, I’d just rip someone’s face off, and the whole world would know about wolves.”
I snorted at that. “Okay, so my wolf side is easier to control, but the first time someone stubbed their toe, I’d probably pop their foot off like the tab on a Coke can and chug every drop in their body.”
“Ew,” Brooklyn said, her nose crinkling with disgust.
I hadn’t realized I was done with this place until I was talking to her. But now that I’d found my way back to the wolves, I knew that I had to help them. The vampires would be fine without me. The wolves… They needed me. Especially Brooklyn.
Maybe Mr. Wolf hadn’t exactly created us in a lab like Frankenstein’s monster, but we’d been made into wolves alone, just like that unfortunate creature. We could spend our whole lives searching for a mate, a partner, just one person to understand us, just as that monster had. But we’d never find one. We only had each other.
“We’ve all got our problems,” I said. “But I’m leaving. You can come, or you can stay. You know what your life here will be like. If that’s not enough for you, this is your chance.”
Brooklyn looked at me a long minute. “You’re leaving?”
“Yep,” I said, popping the “P” and rocking back on my heels.
“Where are you going?”
“To another supernatural community,” I said.
“And you just happen to know about this community?”
“Mr. Ravenwood told me,” I said with a shrug.
Her eyes narrowed. “The creepy old vampire?”
“That’s the one,” I said, a little surprised that she knew about him.
“Is he going?”
“No,” I said. “Think about it?”
I turned and made my way back to the fire where Alarick and the others sat enjoying the fire on the cool morning. Brooklyn joined us after a few minutes, and I waited for her to tell
