Jaylin curled his fingers through the soft cotton threads of the bathroom rug, watching the way his human hand treated the fibers so tenderly. On the other side of him, his black appendage gripped into the mat with a fierce, clumsy fistful.

No one knew quite where Olivia had gone. Quentin, Imani and Felix had chased her into a thicket of wiry blackberry bushes, over creeks and up dangerously soft and decaying terrain. But at some point, miles in the unforgiving forests of Western Washington, Olivia had escaped.

Jaylin told them her address and Quentin sent one of the Sentinels to post outside of her apartment. The others stayed at the Sigvard Manor. Izzy—the redhead who'd pulled him from the cupboard—explained that each alpha appointed their own people into a kind of infantry organization. They were called Sentinels, a small group of around a dozen wolves assigned to different territories in each Alpha's ruling. Quentin had eight of these militias posted over the entire West Coast. One in Western Washington, one in the East. Two splitting Oregon down the middle and four stationed at each corner of California. They were his paladins; they defended every living being, wolf and human, from external forces. Forces like him.

Izzy explained that there were two main threats the sentinels are called out for, the first being scouts—stray wolves who migrate from the Eastern states, where bounties for abnormalities like lichund were plentiful. Even at times when lichund were onlyword of mouth, the scouts had been known to slip over territory lines. It was the Sentinel's job to chase them back out.

Then there were rivaling forces, other Sentinels mostly, who battle for territory claim. Izzy said that she was grateful for a leader like Quentin, who preferred the peaceful approach. Instead of declaring wars, he scheduled meetings. There was no point in losing lives over a few miles of uninhabited land.

Then there was a third threat, Izzy said. The lichund, like him. They were more frightening than any of the above because Quentin's Sentinels weren't to harm the lichund. It made the process of capturing them so much more dangerous. Sometimes they had no choice, she said. And Jaylin wondered if she was talking about Anna.

He brought his cigarette to his lips at the sound of a rap on the door. It cracked open and Quentin stepped inside, his hair still dewy from his shower, and the stench of blood mingling terribly with the soap on his skin. He plucked the stick from Jaylin's fingers as he passed and tossed it into the sink, taking a seat on the rug beside him.

"Those'll make you sick now."

Jaylin didn't respond, he only watched the purple fibers move under his obsidian skin.

"What is it with you and bathroom floors?"

This time the grin he cracked was too difficult to ignore. Jaylin looked up to him, and then to the beer he offered.

"I came to a party here once with my ex," Jaylin said, taking the bottle and ripping the cap off a little too easily with the sharp talons of his freakish hand.

"Do I know them?"

"Yeah. You were there the night he beat the shit out of me."

Jaylin batted a glance in his direction and regretted it the moment he had a taste of Quentin's expression. He looked conflicted, stuck somewhere in the median between surprise, disgust and a generous dash of realization.

Three things were hitting him all at once, Jaylin thought. One, his pliable sexual orientation—but maybe he already knew that from the night they'd nearly kissed. Two, the fact that he had a history with the same man who nearly left him dead in a cemetery. And three, the idea that through this twisted web of small world who-knows-who's, they were related on a much bigger scale. It wasn't fate that had brought Jaylin into his world. It was a jackass with a whole lot of jilted promises and a pair of steel-toed boots.

Jaylin took a drink.

"I'm sorry," Quentin said, voice warm and low. Jaylin could feel his heartbeat slow as he swallowed down the swig of bitters. "For the way I talked to you. For grabbing you. I was on edge. That meeting with Leo, I—"

"I'm scared of you," Jaylin said. Holding his bottle between both hands, he didn't look at Quentin. He stared straight into the clean indentations of the tiles on the wall. "I'm terrified of you and I don't know why. I feel like I just ran a mile on coke when you walk in the room. And I'm just supposed to feel this way? Is this how everyone feels with you?"

When he looked over, Quentin was gazing into nothing, his arms flung over one knee and his beer bottle hanging from his fingertips.

"What happened with Anna?" Jaylin asked, thumbing the smooth curves of the glass. "Really. What happened? From the beginning."

"We met in Paris," Quentin said. "I was performing for a French orchestra—filling in for the first-string cellist. He'd caught pneumonia a week before and I was the first person you call when your guy catches pneumonia. And I'm in this big, beautiful music hall, red velvet seats and warm lights and the smell of champagne. And I remember looking at the crowd and they were all beautiful, beautiful people. Designer dresses and clean-pressed suits, diamonds earrings and Rolex watches—and then there was Anna. Shredded jeans and dirty tennis shoes and a Space Jam t-shirt." Quentin's smirk broke into a grin, his long canines flashing and then veiled again as he tipped his beer back and swallowed down that brilliant smile.

"That was what made her so different. She had all of this, but she never cared. She didn't want earrings and flowers, she wanted midnight road trips—dancing in a fast food parking lots at two AM in the morning. She never put down her fries though. Not to dance. Not for anything."

"She didn't seem—"

"Strange?" Quentin smiled fondly to no one at all. "She was. She was the strangest thing that's ever happened to me."

"You really loved her," Jaylin softened. "I feel like such an asshole."

"You're not wrong for assuming that Anna's behind this. But it's not for the reason you think. I'm not doing this for Anna. I'm doing it because of her."

Jaylin walked his black fingers up the neck of his beer, watching the way his elongated digits moved. "She was pregnant, wasn't she?"

Quentin focused on him for a short moment, but he didn't question Jaylin about how he knew. "Anna was pregnant before she turned. But humans and werewolves can't have offspring together."

"Then how are we born into this bullshit? How was I born into this bullshit?"

"A wolf can be made one of three ways. Our curse is carried through blood; a bite can turn some on the spot, but it can also infect a carrier for life without them ever knowing. When it happens, that curse is passed down from generation to generation, dormant until it finds a proper host. Then it awakens.

"What Anna did was a ceremonial turning. A process that wakens the curse and places it into a host on contact. It's highly taboo. Too dangerous. The process requires a biter, and how Anna managed to get one... let's just say our society has laws that humankind is meant to obey, and Anna broke a huge one."

"What do they call those?" Jaylin asked. "The ones made from a ceremony."

"Idiots."

"And if you're born a wolf?"

"A werewolf. That's all you are."

Jaylin swallowed. His heart echoed in his ears as he asked, "And what if a human and a werewolf have a child?"

"As far as I know, there's never been a child born alive between our kind and a human. It's easy, the pregnancy part, but it's a dangerous prospect. I didn't know that. Not until after..."

"You didn't know it was dangerous until after she was pregnant?" Jaylin asked.

"I thought we should have aborted. It was no question to me; the survival rate was something like one-percent for both parties. But Anna didn't want to. She knew there were other ways. She knew if she turned, there'd be a much bigger shot than one percent. I told her no—didn't want her to go through this. The pain, the hunger. But Anna did. She wanted all of it. She thought it'd make us whole, she thought it'd bring us together. Maybe it would have.

"She found someone to turn her. I didn't know, not until we flew back to the US. Then she started to get sick. Refused to go to the doctor. She wasn't scared—not until the pain set in. The hunger you felt when Bailey found you in the forest, she felt it too. But she was afraid she was losing the baby. Then, finally, she told me what she'd done. We realized she wasn't becoming a wolf at all."

"Were you mad?" Jaylin asked.

"I was terrified. Lichund had existed before then, but since the birth of our society, there had only been a few. There wasn't enough information, Anna became something of a guinea-pig. We had medics over to monitor the baby—"

"Medics?"

"Doctors. Some wolf, some who only knew of them. In return for their services, Anna allowed them to research her. To keep tabs on her change. She went on for six months until the next Bad Moon. Six months of pain and fear and not knowing. She didn't know what this change was; we'd only been told stories. I did my research. I did what a I could. I learned everything there was available at the time. And then—"

"Then the car accident?" Jaylin asked.

Quentin looked to him, something puzzled in his brow. Then it was like all the scattered bits of his mind clicked together and let out a breath. "Is that what they told you? A car accident?"

"It wasn't?" Jaylin asked.

Quentin shook his head, drinking from the bottle in his hands. "You wanted to know about the Bad Moon. I can only tell you what I experienced with Anna. Turning will be long and it will be excruciating. But we'll do everything we can to make you comfortable."

"But, Olivia," Jaylin started. "When she turned, it was quick. Like watching you."

Quentin tucked his brows in and his eyes swept to Jaylin in query. "Was she in pain?"

"Sounded like it, but it was over fast."

"Then this wasn't her first change. Anna took eight hours to turn. And we had no idea she'd be so powerful. So dangerous."

Dangerous. When he turned he'd be dangerous. As dangerous as Anna was. As dangerous as Olivia was. Something gripped his chest and suddenly Jaylin felt like sobbing. He never wanted to be dangerous—he never wanted to hurt anyone.

Despite his fear, he asked, "What exactly is the Bad Moon?"

"It's a super moon," Quentin said. "Blood moons and blue moons, flower moons and harvest moons. They're known as Bad Moons, because they tease the wolf in us. Make us hungry to run. But for lichund, it's a trigger. The moment where you break from your chrysalis and you become—"

"Dangerous," Jaylin whispered. "Just like Olivia."

"Trying to tell you this has been one of the hardest things I've ever done," Quentin said. "That's why I held it off for so long. I didn't want you to be afraid, but in a way, you should be. The Bad Moon is four weeks away. I don't want to be unprepared this time."

Because like Anna, I could try to kill someone I love.

Jaylin sucked in a sudden breath. "We don't have to talk about this." He looked down at his beer, knowing he wouldn't be able to stomach another sip. He finally had access to all of the answers he'd wanted. And yet, he couldn't handle them.

"Okay," Quentin complied. "We'll do this later. When you're ready."

Silenced stagnated the room, just long enough for Jaylin to take a breath. The single lungful of air that would bring him back down to earth. Back to the here and now. The here was Quentin. The now was four weeks from the bad moon. Four weeks to figure out a game plan.

"I think I should take you to see your mom," Quentin said.

Jaylin looked to him, and for the first time all day, he felt an emotion besides fear creep into his chest. "Really?"

Then Quentin reached for his fingers. He took the monstrous hand in his own and Jaylin felt so unlucky in that moment. Why did it have to be the hand he couldn't feel with?

"Just need to figure out what to do with... this," Quentin said, giving the fingers a gentle squeeze.

But for a breath, he lingered there, tracing the rough, black skin. The warmth of his fingers weaved between Jaylin's and he felt them in a spark of sensation before all went numb again. Jaylin curled those monstrous claws around them just to see if he could.

They stayed there like that, neither one acknowledging the way their fingers laced together.

"I like you better when you drink tequila," Jaylin said to kill the silence.

Quentin laughed. "Tequila turns me into a drunk-kisser."

Then there was a pause. Jaylin remembered the terrible stink of vomit that night, and Quentin must've recalled something too, because both at once they separated from one another's hand.

It was an awkward, restless beat of silence before Jaylin said, "So who have you tried to kiss?"

"Mostly Felix, which is why he won't drink tequila with me anymore."

Jaylin laughed. For the first time all day, he truly laughed.

Quentin gave him a sidelong glance and that gorgeous grin of his widened. "So what are we going to do about your hand?"

All Jaylin could do was look to the wicked fingers. There was no hiding this. No matter how badly he wanted to see them—there was just no way. "Nothing," he said. "I don't want to risk it. If I hurt my mom or Tis, I... I want to stay here, I think. I think that's best."

Quentin lifted his gaze to the bathroom lights, looking just the way he did that night they ate éclairs. "We'll call them."

"We'll call them," Jaylin said.

-

That night, Jaylin ate upstairs in Alex's cluttered room, watching from a spare chair as he played horror games on his oversized desktop.

Alex seemed to know a lot about computers. When something didn't feel right about the graphics, he'd click through a series of windows until suddenly everything was different. Jaylin didn't understand it, but he enjoyed watching—especially the jump-scares that had been programmed into the game. The instances where Alex would venture through a dark hallway or between the haunting shapes of pillar-like trees, and suddenly a beast would swallow up the screen with its thrashing claws and its banshee scream, and Alex would jump so high he'd spill his soda. Two sodas so far.

He'd offered Jaylin a turn but he could hardly hold the mouse or click the keys with his oversized fingers. It was after he'd finished dinner, while he was watching Alex explore an abandoned farmhouse, that Quentin burst through the door and the both of them launched from their seats.

"Jaylin," he said, "we have a problem."

Quentin helped him up and Jaylin gripped at his shoulder, much too tall for a suitable crutch, and wobbled beside him on numb footing. If the curse hadn't taken over the feeling in his leg, the wound from Olivia's hulking claws had ripped out all sensation from the knee down. And though he'd nearly fainted, watching Mrs. Sigvard treat the gaping wounds left behind, the attention form Quentin wasn't so bad.

Quentin led him from the bedroom with a strong grip on his waist, stopping at the banister of the stairs. On the floor below, seated on the Sigvard's large Victorian sofa were two awkward bodies, and one pissed off, long-legged woman.

"I said touch me again and I'll be scraping your entrails from my heels. And if I knew it was going to be that kinda day, I'd have worn my red Valentinos," Tisper snapped, shoe in palm and ready to throw.

It had to be eleven at night. What the hell were they doing here?

"Caught 'em in the bushes out front," Felix said, sneering at Tisper as she swung a heel in his direction. "Thought they'd take a good look through the window. Like what you see?"

Tisper chucked her shoe at his chest, then scrambled to tear off the other.

Jaylin let himself free from Quentin's support, gripping the railing instead as he took in the situation below. "What the hell, guys? What's going on?"

"I dunno, Jay," Matt spat back. "What is going on? Where the hell have you been?"

"Do you know how terrified I was?" Tisper shouted, pointing that shoe in his direction. She looked so angry, and somehow also like she wanted to cry. "I'm going to kick your ass!"

"I remembered, Jaylin." Sadie stood from the couch, rubbing at her arms like she did when she was angry or sad—or when there were just too many curious eyes. "I remembered the library, the wolf,"—she pointed a finger to the banister where Quentin stiffened—"and him. I remembered all of it."

"She dragged us out of bed," Matt said, pointing to his moose-print pajama bottoms. "Said she knew where you'd be, and she was right. So is it true or not, huh?"

Jaylin contrived a laugh but it sounded itchy and it stuck to the walls of his throat. "Sadie, what are you—"

"It's okay." Quentin took him by the wrist, slung it up over his shoulders again. Jaylin felt off kilter by his difference in height as he was helped down the red velvet staircase. "What was your name again?" Quentin asked as they'd reached the last step and planted heel to the hard floor below.

Sadie looked hesitant, scared even. And for a moment, Jaylin was thankful he wasn't the only one.

"I'm... Sadie," She said with a pause. "This is Tisper and Matt."

"Sadie," Quentin said, slowly unhooking Jaylin's arm from his neck. Jaylin froze as he felt the hard sternum of Quentin's chest brush against his shoulder. Then his warm fingers, ghosting against his nape. "Tisper," he said again, slowly. "Matt." His fingers curled into the back of Jaylin's sweater, and he felt a strike of fear in his heart as Quentin ripped the fabric down from his arms. The black, warped skin exposed in all its horror.

Matt threw himself back in fear. Tisper cupped her hands over her mouth and every pigment of color drained from Sadie's face as they all gazed upon an arm, much too long, much too frightening, much too inhuman to comprehend.

And beside him, Quentin stood, calmly folding the gray hoodie over in his hands like a tidy matron, passing briefly over the faces in the room, but evidently ignoring the horror in them.

"So," he exclaimed with a breath of fresh air, "how about some éclairs?"