"There's a lot we don't know about the lichund. What we do know is the turning process is heavily instinctual.  I can tell you that the pain in your stomach will spread," Quentin had told him. "Unlike a wolf, who turns all at once, the lichund transitions from the inside out. Starts in your stomach. Spreads to your lungs."

"So it's like a disease," Jaylin replied with an ache in his stomach.

"We'll be here." Quentin was looking up at him. Though sober now, that strange want moved in his eyes. "I'm here."

All his life, Jaylin had worried. About his mother, from the moment David left to her first treatment, and for every hair that fell from her head after that. He worried about Tisper and every piece of shit she'd ever let into her life. He worried about Olivia, despite how hard he tried not to. And he worried about Tyler. Not about his well-being, but that somehow, one day, he'd find a way to crawl back under Jaylin's skin. He'd find a hole right to his heart, and he'd open once more every progressive scar that had finally begun to callous over.

But when Quentin knelt before him in the light of the moon and nothing else, Jaylin didn't know worry. Worry was a name he'd heard in passing. A forgettable stranger on the street.

Worry was nothing when those hands touched him.

-

The next morning, Jaylin didn't wake to the pain in his stomach. He didn't feel any pain at all. He'd eaten every bite of chicken and it seemed "the hunger" Quentin spoke of was satisfied. What he did wake to was the sound of shifting furniture, dragging across wooden floorboards. Banging and rolling, and loud voices reaching to one another over the raucous.

It was difficult to walk with the bandages on his feet, but Jaylin fumbled out of the room and into the hall, where sunlight saturated the pale walls and stung his cornea like wasps.

"Jay—Oh, Quentin was supposed to take those off."

After blinking a few times, Jaylin could make out the slender shape of Alex, jogging down the hall. His usually curly hair had been trapped beneath a baseball cap, his slim shape clad in a loose tank top and basketball shorts. Behind him, a handful of men dragged an old antique dresser through an open door.

"Did the noise wake you up? Come on," Alex said, "I'll help get those things off of you."

Jaylin followed him past the upstairs bathroom and down the suede staircase, passing by a man in a mover's uniform who had taken a break to fan with his sweaty baseball cap.

"What's going on up there?" Jaylin asked, fumbling down the steps, one bandaged foot at a time.

"We're getting rid of some things." Alex hopped himself up on the railing while he waited for Jaylin to catch up. Once they were on the same step, he loosened his grip and let himself slide down the banister.

They reached the bottom of the stairs and Alex hopped off the handrail. Jaylin followed him into the hallway, where the height of Alexander's childhood-self remained scrawled into the door frames, same as the night he'd found it with Tyler. This place belonged to Alex and Anna. Jaylin felt like such an impostor here.

Alex gave the kitchen doors a shove and Jaylin followed through. It felt like his feet had been dipped in cement, his toes inflexible and itchy. His step was so numb, his legs buckled once or twice on the way in.

"So, you want some more proof, right?" Alex asked, reaching for a knife block and drawing out the smallest of the serrated blades. "Proof that you're not human?" He gave the counter a pat. Jaylin pushed himself up on the ledge and swung his legs over, feet rested in the empty sink. Alex reached forward with the knife and Jaylin flinched as the blade slid down his ankle, breaking the gauze that melded the paste to his skin. Beneath was a lump of green-brown clay—dry, cracked and caked around his toes. Alex gave the faucet a twist and the water rushed out in a single upright stream.

It stung at first—like maybe the clay had tightened even more. Then, slowly, the water saturated into all the cracks and crevices. The clay turned to mud and the mud washed from his skin in sticky clumps. They stuck to the porcelain and in the cracks of his nails, but once the clay cleared, Jaylin was taken back by the flesh underneath.

There wasn't a scratch. Not a nick on his heel, not a blemish on his toes. His feet had completely healed.

"That's all you need right there," Alex said, slicing apart the gauze on his other ankle. "That stuff doesn't work on Mom and I. It's a were-thing."

Washing the last bit of mud from this foot too, Jaylin stared in wonder at his unmarred skin. He let the water rum, flexing his toes against the warmth. "Can I ask you something personal?" he asked.

"Oh, uh...I guess," said Alex.

Jaylin thumbed away a bit of clay stuck beneath his baby toe."What happened to your dad? Your mom said he left, but she didn't explain why."

Alex sighed and slumped sideways against the counter, running his fingers along the cracks in its tiles. "He couldn't handle all of this. The werewolf stuff. Anna. It's not easy to stay in this place, you know. So he left."

Jaylin bit down on his lower lip until he could feel the divots of his teeth left behind. Dads were such shit. "Sorry," he whispered, wiping the last of the clay from the healed pads of his feet. "Just trying to make sense of everything, I guess."

"Let me give you some advice," Alex said, twisting the faucet off. "There are a lot of things in this world to question, but you're not going to like every answer. Take them as they come. That's what Anna taught me."

"Then, just one more question?" Jaylin asked, watching a man struggle past the kitchen with a top-heavy lamp. "What exactly are you getting rid of?"

Alex took a kitchen rag from a drawer beneath the sink passed it to Jaylin. There was a sadness in the way he eyes settled on nothing in particular.

"Quentin wanted you close," Alex said. "We had to clear out the room beside his. But that was where we kept...all of Anna's things. That's why Quentin's not around. It's just too much."

-

All day, it echoed in Jaylin. Over and over it echoed. That's why Quentin's not around.

The guilt was unbearable, and for hours Jaylin let it swell in him—but eventually, it was alleviated by the luxuries of a seventy-inch flat screen and professionally prepared food. For the rest of the night, he watched television with Alexander. He ate steak with fancy garnish, curled beneath a blanket on the couch, and fell asleep to the cartoons playing on the screen. Then he'd wake up an hour later, eat another, and the cycle would repeat itself. It seemed, no matter how he ate, that pain came back in time. 

He tried to portion himself, but the less he ate, the hungrier he was and the harder that pain struck him. Eventually, Alex grew tired of watching him wander to the fridge, and instead ordered the maids to put a platter of steak out for Jaylin to pick from at his choosing.

It was nearly nine by the time Anna's things had been emptied from their temporary storage upstairs. Everything was loaded into trucks and carried off of the Sigvard property and the things too precious to give away were placed in the attic. It's probably for the best, Alex told him. But if that was the case, Jaylin wondered where Lisa Sigvard had disappeared to. Why Quentin hadn't come home.

It wasn't for the best. He'd disturbed the air here and he prayed Anna not haunt him for it.

Eventually, Alex fell asleep to the whispers of an eighties comedy, and Jaylin escaped the couch and tiptoed up the stairs. Hunger still panged in him, but his curiosity was far more insatiable. He found himself in Quentin's room, admiring the photos on his walls. Photos of Lisa with prize-winning flowers. Photos of Alex at his high school graduation. Photos of an older woman with an apron and a tiny Quentin Bronx at her hip, covered in flour and donning oven mittens two sizes too big. Even Mr. Sigvard was present in Alex's graduation photo. The only face missing was Anna's.

Jaylin turned to the remainder of the room—impeccably clean, but for Quentin's sheets and a half-empty spirit on his nightstand. It felt cold and lonely and he wondered if Quentin actually enjoyed sleeping in this place—a room where the exterior wall was made of bricks, where the curtains were so thick, it probably looked like night during day. He wondered if this was the room he shared with Anna, or if this was only where he escaped to after she died.

He waded through the neon Oldsmobile light while his eyes adjusted to the black decor, stopping when he felt the soft cotton of Quentin's duvet under his fingers. Sitting atop the sheets was a black laptop, slick and sheening, and part-way hidden by the ruffled duvet. Jaylin's heart doubled at the sight of it. He'd had no contact with his mother or his friends in days, and as he clamored onto the bed and cracked open the screen, his first instinct was to sent Tisper a message via social media. His fingers hesitated at the log-in screen.

For all they know, you've been abducted by aliens. We've got to get our story straight before we drop you back down on Earth.

He probably should've shut the screen and scurried back to his room after that, but Jaylin hadn't accounted for the comfort of Quentin's mattress, or the curious smell of him. Like sweet eclairs. Stale liquor.

Wet roses.

He relaxed back against the headboard instead and wiped the dust from the keyboard. His mother was probably worried sick. Tisper too. He'd ask tomorrow, about calling them—just those two. Everyone else could think the worst, but his mother, Tisper, they had to know he was okay.

For now, Jaylin had a world of knowledge his fingertips and he hungered for answers. He stretched his fingers out, and letter by letter, typed out the word L I C H U N D

The page flickered to rows and rows of search results. Most of them were written in different languages, and none of them shared any reference with werewolves. He searched through photographs next, but again, nothing. There wasn't a word—not a word written about the lichund.

"You won't find anything." A graveled voice swept the room and Jaylin snapped the screen shut in a start.

He hadn't seen him enter, maybe blinded by the light of the laptop. But there Quentin was, leaning against the door frame, shuffling through his pockets for his wallet. He dumped it in a basket on his dresser, as well as his car keys, and a jacket from his arms.

Jaylin didn't even remember shutting the laptop, but the screen was down, the light was gone, and his search results still lived on in cyberspace—or wherever computers went when they slept—ready to glare in the face of the next person to wake the machine.

"We aren't allowed to write about it publicly," Quentin said, stepping slow across the floorboards. "What you're looking for is private information. You won't find it on the internet."

Jaylin fumbled for purchase on the downy mattress and shoved himself to the edge of the bed. "I didn't know—Alex said you wouldn't be home tonight."

"Wasn't planning on it," Quentin said, struggling with the buttons on his shirt. Eventually, he gave up and tried to rip it off over his head. The tie was still tied though, the neck too tight. Quentin fell back onto his bed with a bounce, his arms trapped in awkward, bent angles, and his face lost in the tangled fabric. "Jaylin."

Jaylin couldn't help but laugh. He took a seat beside Quentin and freed him button by button until the front fell open and he laid there with his arms splayed above his head, his expression foggy and the world visibly whirling behind his dark eyes. "I drank too much," he said.

Jaylin sat there crisscrossed, watching the intoxicated look on his face. Wishing he could kiss him. Wishing he hadn't screwed it up the first time.

"You ever considered...not drinking?" asked Jaylin.

Quentin laughed. Pushed his head back against the sheets and laughed until the laughed bobbed his throat. And he watched Jaylin with that grin and those full lashes. The dark eyes, glinting beneath them. "Why would I do that?"

Jaylin brought his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. "Aren't you supposed to be protecting me?"

And like it was news to Quentin, his grin faded, and he said with a cracked, drunken voice, "I'll make Felix do it."

"I don't want Felix to do it," Jaylin said. "Where were you today? I tried texting you."

"Was out with Lisa." Quentin rubbed his hands up his face and grunted. "Mom. I mean... Alex's mom."

Jaylin watched his chest rise—the dark, bare skin lit blue by his neon sign. The broad ribs and the slight dip below them. The muscles of his stomach, the hollow of his hip bones. He took his gaze away from it all and fixed them instead on those dark, drunken eyes. "I'm sorry. About her room."

"We all agreed on it," Quentin said. "It's not your fault."

"You still could have answered my texts." Jaylin tucked his chin on his knees. "You're happy-drunk tonight. Why?"

Quentin stretched his arms over his head. His muscles shifted. Jaylin blanched at the blue-lit curves of his naked torso.

"Tequila," he said.

Jaylin thumbed the duvet. "You're different when you're drunk."

Quentin's lips stretched into a grin and air rushed through his nose. Those kitten teeth glared at Jaylin. "Maybe I'm just different when I'm sober."

"I hope not," Jaylin said. "I like you better sober."

"You don't like me now?"

"This you isn't bad. I just wish I knew which one was the real one."

"None of them," Quentin said—and God the way he looked, then. Hair mussed and eyes heavy, bare chest flaunted in the dark. Jaylin bit his lip just to bring feeling to it again.

This drunk Quentin was different than the drunk Quentin from before. Maybe this was the window Jaylin had been waiting for—the opportunity to ask what he needed to know. The big question.

He shifted a little, fingers curling into the pant-leg of his sweats. "Quentin...why are the scouts after me? Why do they want the lichund?"

Quentin took in a deep breath and sat up—with much effort—to face Jaylin. He swallowed noticeably in return. "The East has bounties out for lichund," he said. "The same way bounties go out for noxious animals. That's why you're here. Why we're keeping you safe."

"But why are you doing all of this for me?" Jaylin asked. "Because you think I'm some kind of prophecy?"

"Because you belong to me."

Everything went still after that, the silence producing shivers on Jaylin's arms. He could no longer hear to wind howling or the owls in the spindly tree outside. All he heard was Quentin's breath, passing slowly, steadily through his lips.

Quentin reached forward and Jaylin jumped as he felt his chilly fingertips press just beneath the angle of his jaw. Then Quentin captured his hand brought it to his own neck, guiding Jaylin's fingers in place just over the warm pulse of his throat.

There was the thump thump thump his own heartbeat, drumming in his ears. Then Jaylin realized, it was one in the very same. For every time his own heart drummed slow and heavy, Jaylin could feel Quentin's pulse against his fingers, just as hard, just as quickly. They shared a metronome, synchronized in every way.

It was impossible. To share a heartbeat—it was impossible.

Alex's voice echoed on in his head. Take them as they come.

So Jaylin swallowed down his doubts and listened to his own heart. And as he listened, felt the joining A cappella of Quentin's beating pulse. In his ears, in his fingers, in his chest. He felt Quentin's heartbeat down to his bones and in every vein in his body.

"Do you see now?" he heard Quentin say, thick, dragging with liquor and sleep. Verging on the state of consciousness. His fingers drew down slowly from Jaylin's pulse, over his Adam's apple and down to the hollow of his throat but never leaving him completely. "You are mine."