Chapter 2

The Cedar Ridge liaison office in Halford was two rooms above a dry cleaner's. I'd walked past it a hundred times and never once gone up.

The wolf behind the desk was old enough to be my grandfather. He read my doctorate certificate, then my pack card, then looked at me over his glasses.

"You're going back?"

"Yes."

"With a doctorate."

"Yes."

He set the papers down and didn't speak for a while. When he did, his voice had gone rough.

"I've been sitting at this desk fifteen years. I've stamped papers for more Halford doctors than I can count. Most of them go to Silvercrest. Some go further than that. The ones who come home..." He shook his head. "I could fit them all in this room."

He brought the stamp down hard on my return request.

"Welcome home, kid."

My eyes stung. The morning I left Cedar Ridge at eighteen, my dad walked me to the bus and pointed down the main road. "Remember how it looks now," he said. "Come back in a few years and see how much it's changed." He never asked me to come home. He just wanted me to know there'd be something to come home to.

I folded Dane's petition into my bag, unsigned.

Dane was on the couch when I got in. "Did you send it?"

"I turned it in."

"Perfect." He pulled me down next to him. "Once we're settled, I'll take you around the Institute. You wanted to study there so badly. You and Silvercrest, I swear it was always going to happen."

I stood up.

Six years ago, Silvercrest Institute had accepted me into its wolfsbane research program on a full scholarship. I was halfway through packing when Dane sat me down. Cedar Ridge needed doctors, he said, not people locked in labs. General pack medicine would actually help someone back home. When I hesitated, he'd looked at me hard. "Unless you don't want to go home anymore, Maren?"

That was the end of it. I switched programs.

Now I understood why he'd needed me to stay. Sienna was in Silvercrest, and he didn't want the two of us anywhere near each other.

I went into the bedroom and started packing.

Photos ended up on the floor. Matching T-shirts from some fun run. The framed picture from our mating ceremony at the Halford courthouse, both of us squinting into the sun. I swept it all into a garbage bag.

Dane leaned in the doorway. "You're throwing all that out?"

"It's old stuff. Time for new."

He frowned, but he didn't move until I tied off the bag and carried it toward the door. Then he took it out of my hands. "Maren, that's our ceremony photo."

He was waiting. For me to explain, to apologize, to smooth things over like I always did.

"Keep it, then," I said. "If you want it."

The send-off party was that Saturday. Every year the Cedar Ridge students in Halford rented the back room of the same bar. It was the room where Dane had once stood on a chair and told us all to go home.

He didn't need a chair this time.

"Silvercrest!" Someone clinked a bottle against his. "Man, congratulations."

"Research post at the Institute, plus a house on the water," Dane said. People whistled.

"Maren, are you going too?" a girl from my year asked.

Before I could open my mouth, Dane's arm was around my shoulders. "Of course she's coming. We're mates, and mates share a pack. Right, babe?" He grinned at the table. "She turned down Silvercrest Institute for me once. Trust me, she'd follow me anywhere."

Everyone laughed. I smiled, because everyone was looking at me.

His phone buzzed on the table. Sienna's name filled the screen with a video call. He answered it right there.

"Dane?" The voice was soft and a little hoarse. "I feel awful. I think I touched wolfsbane at work. My hands won't stop burning."

His whole face changed. "What did I tell you about wearing gloves? Stay put. I'm coming."

He hung up and looked around the table like he was giving a speech. "Sienna's sick, and she's got no one out there. She's basically my little sister. I have to fly out tonight." He turned to me. "You're not going to make this weird, are you?"

"Go."

"Can you deal with the house? You're better at that stuff than I am."

I took the sale contract out of my bag. "It needs both our signatures."

He signed it on the bar table, between a basket of fries and somebody's beer, without reading a single line. Twelve people watched him do it.

He kissed my forehead. "What would I do without you?"

Then he was gone, and the whole table was looking at me.

"He'll come back for you, right?" the girl from my year asked.

I finished my drink and went home.

That night my phone lit up with a friend request from a number I didn't know. I accepted before I thought about it.

Photos started coming in. Dane on a beach I'd never been to, sunburned and laughing, a dark-haired woman in his lap. Dane asleep in a hotel bed, her lipstick on his neck, right over my mark. There was a date in the corner of every one. March. June. September. Every weekend he'd told me he was at a conference in Silvercrest.

Then a message came through.

Hi! It's Sienna, Dane's little sister ;) Figured you deserved a welcome gift.

One more photo. Then one last line.

I can't wait to finally meet you, Mare.

He'd told her what he called me.

I blocked the number.