Forever

Sam frowned. “Do what you want with your own body, but I’m not going to mess with someone who can’t give me his consent.”

Cole’s expression was deeply aggrieved. “It’s adrenaline, not prom sex.”

Sam’s voice was stiff. “I am not going to risk killing Beck just to ask him why he didn’t tell me he lived in Wyoming.”

It was the obvious answer, the one that Cole had to know that Sam would give. But Cole had that small, hard smile on his face again, barely there. “If we caught Beck and I made him human,” he said, “I might be able to start him back over, like Grace. Would you risk his life for that?”

Sam didn’t answer.

“Tell me yes,” Cole said. “Tell me to find him, and I will.”

And this, I thought, was why Sam and Cole could not get along. Because when it came down to it, Cole made bad decisions for good reasons, and Sam couldn’t justify that. Now, Cole dangled this tempting thing in front of Sam, this thing he wanted more than anything, along with the thing that he wanted the least. I wasn’t sure which answer I wanted him to give.

I saw Sam swallow. Turning to me, he said softly, “What do I say?”

I didn’t know what to tell him that he didn’t already know. I crossed my arms. I could think of a thousand reasons for and against, but all of them started and ended with the wanting I saw on Sam’s face now. “You have to be able to live with yourself,” I told him.

Cole said, “He’ll die out there anyway, Sam.”

Sam turned away from both of us, his hands linked behind his head. He stared at the rows and rows of Beck’s books.

Not looking at either of us, he said, “Fine. Yes. Find him.”

I met Cole’s eyes and I held them.

Upstairs, the teakettle began to scream, and Sam wordlessly bounded up the stairs to silence it — a glad excuse, I thought, to leave the room. My stomach had an uncertain lump in it at the thought of trying to prompt Beck to shift. I’d forgotten too easily how much we risked every time we tried to learn more about ourselves.

“Cole,” I said, “Beck means everything to him. This isn’t a game. Don’t do anything you aren’t sure of, okay?”

“I’m always sure of what I do,” he said. “Sometimes I was just never sure there was supposed to be a happy ending.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

GRACE

That first day back as me was odd. I couldn’t settle without my clothing and my routine, knowing that the wolf that was me was still lurching around unpredictably inside my limbs. In a way, I was glad for the uncertainty of being a new wolf, because I knew that it would eventually settle into the same temperature-based shift that Sam had had when I met him. And I loved the cold. I didn’t want to fear it.

In an attempt to settle myself into some kind of normalcy, I suggested that we make a proper dinner, which turned out to be more difficult than I’d expected. Sam and Cole had stocked the house with a strange combination of foods, most of which could be described as “microwavable” and few that could be described as “ingredients.” But I found the things for making pancakes and eggs — which was always an appropriate meal, I thought — and Sam moved in wordlessly to assist while Cole lay on the floor in the living room, staring at the ceiling.

I glanced over my shoulder. “What’s he doing? Could I have the spatula?”

Sam passed the spatula to me. “His brain hurts him, I think.” He slid behind me to reach the plates, and for a moment, his body was pressed against mine, his hand on my waist to steady me. I felt a fierce rush of longing.

“Hey,” I said, and he turned, plates in hand. “Put those down and come back here.”

Sam started toward me but then, as he did, movement caught my eye.

“Hst — what’s that?” I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper. “Stop!”

He froze and followed my gaze as I found what had caught my eye — an animal moving across the dark backyard. The grass was illuminated by the light coming from the two kitchen windows. For a moment, I lost sight of it, and then, there, by the covered barbecue grill.

For a moment, my heart felt light as a feather, because it was a white wolf. Olivia was a white wolf, and I hadn’t seen her in so long.

But then Sam breathed, “Shelby,” and I saw as she moved that he was right. There was none of the lithe grace that Olivia had had as a wolf, and when the white wolf lifted her head, it was a darting, suspicious move. She looked at the house, her eyes definitely not Olivia’s, and then she squatted and peed by the grill.

“Oh, nice,” I said.

Sam frowned.

We watched silently as Shelby made her way from the grill to another point in the middle of the yard, where she marked territory again. She was alone.

“I think she’s getting worse,” Sam said. Outside the window, Shelby stood for a long moment, staring at the house. I felt, uncannily, that she was looking at us in the kitchen, though we had to be just motionless silhouettes to her, if we were anything. Even from here, though, I could see her hackles rising.

“She” — we both started as Cole’s voice came from behind us — “is psychotic.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I’ve seen her about when I do the traps. She’s brave and she’s mean as hell.”

“Well, I knew that,” I said. With a little shudder, I remembered without fondness the evening that she had thrown herself through a plate glass window to attack me. And then, her eyes in the lightning storm. “She’s tried to kill me more times than I care to remember.”

“She’s scared,” Sam interrupted softly. He was still watching Shelby, whose eyes were right on him, no one else. It was terribly eerie. “She’s scared, and lonely, and angry, and jealous. With you, Grace, and Cole, and Olivia, the pack’s changing really fast and she doesn’t have much further to fall. She’s losing everything.”

The last pancake I’d started was burning. I snatched the pan from the stove top. “I don’t like her around here.”

“I don’t … I don’t think you have to worry,” Sam said. Shelby was still motionless, staring at his silhouette. “I think she blames me.”

Suddenly, Shelby started, at the same time that we heard Cole’s voice across the backyard: “Clear off, you psychotic bitch!”

She slid off into the darkness as the back door slammed.