I waved them off and regained my breath. “Now, would you like to tell me what the hell you’re doing in my bedroom?”

“Oh great, now she’s lost her mind,” Brent said.

Ryan shoved him away. “You’re not in your bedroom, Miss Grace. We helped you home last night, and you fell asleep on your porch swing. We stayed to protect you. Don’t you remember?”

I opened both my eyes now and gave them a few seconds to focus on my surroundings. Brent. Ryan. The top branches of the walnut tree. Purple early-morning sky. Porch swing. And apparently, that thing jabbing me in the back was my cell phone, which I must have fallen asleep on top of. A vague recollection trickled into my brain, and I remembered following Daniel’s howls into the forest, then attempting to limp home on a newly rebroken ankle. I’d given up about halfway through the forest and allowed one of the two wolves who followed anxiously at my side to carry me home—only to discover that I’d locked myself out of the house. I remembered sitting on the porch swing with the intention to call my dad for help, but I must have fallen asleep before dialing the number.

Asleep.

Truth hit me like a smack in the face as I realized—once again—that the time I’d spent with Daniel in the Garden of Angels last night had been just a dream. It was the same vibrant memory that played in a loop in my head every time I’d allowed myself to sleep since we’d escaped from the warehouse: Daniel and me in the Garden of Angels about six months ago. Before Jude came back. Before Caleb and Talbot. Before Daniel became trapped as the white wolf. It felt like heaven.

Last night, the dream had kept me warm as I slept in the frosty November air. But now I felt colder than even before, realizing all over again that Daniel hadn’t really been there to wrap me in his arms.

And he may never be able to again.

“Did you two stay out here with me all night?” I asked.

Ryan and Brent were the youngest of the five of Caleb’s boys who had chosen Daniel as their new alpha. Ryan couldn’t be more than fourteen. Brent was probably almost sixteen, but he had a boyish roundness to his face, and he pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose often enough to make me wonder if he’d worn glasses before he’d been turned into an Urbat. And there was something just plain ironic about “Brent the Werewolf.”

In fact, it was hard for me to imagine either of these two as part of the vicious werewolf pack that had tried to attack me at Caleb’s command. I couldn’t help thinking of them as a group of lost boys. Like in the Peter Pan play my mom made us put on at the parish when I was ten. The way they’d never really grow up. And how they lived in that warehouse next to the Depot club. I’m sure it was all fun and games—until the killing-people part started.

Ryan nodded. “Your safety is our first priority. It’s what he wants.”

I sat up and scanned the yard. If Brent and Ryan were here, I wouldn’t be surprised if the other three boys weren’t far off. They were a pack, after all.

Zach and Marcos sat at the base of the walnut tree, but Slade stood so far down the street that I wouldn’t have noticed him without my sharper-than-average eyesight. While it was hard to imagine Brent and Ryan as bloodthirsty werewolves, I had the opposite reaction to Slade. His ripped arms were painted with tattoos of flames that extended from his wrists to shoulders. He had a steel bar in one eyebrow and ten other piercings in his ears. And he almost always had a lighter in his hand, which he’d flick to life just to watch the flame dance for a while before singeing off the hair on his arms—seemingly just for fun. But it wasn’t Slade’s appearance that made me shiver in his presence. It was the way he looked at me. I was almost certain he had been the large gray wolf that had sunk his venemous teeth into my leg when I was attacked by Caleb’s pack in the warehouse, because every once in a while I’d catch this look in Slade’s eyes, like he’d tasted my blood—and he just might want more.

I glanced away from Slade. Unlike the other boys, I couldn’t help questioning just how devoted he was to Daniel as his alpha. Or whether he might be a danger to us all.

“Who wants you to keep me safe?” I asked Ryan.

“Alpha.”

“You mean Daniel?”

“The great white wolf. Your safety is to come first and foremost.”

I smiled slightly at the idea that Daniel still cared, in some way, about me.

“We only left you for a while—to change back.” I knew Ryan not only meant to transform back into human form, but to also change back into their clothes. That was one of the difficulties of the werewolf transformation—clothing usually wasn’t optional.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, glad not to wake up in a yard full of naked guys. That definitely wouldn’t go over well with the neighbors if anyone were to look out their window this early in the morning. And I was glad they weren’t hanging out in their wolf forms anymore, either. With all that howling last night, it wouldn’t be safe.

“I’m just glad you didn’t die while we were gone,” Brent said. “He’d be so pissed. And you know, you’d be dead. So that would suck.”

“Thanks for the concern. I’m pretty sure I’m safe on my front porch, though.”

“With all due respect, Miss Grace, our father—I mean, Caleb—and the rest of the Shadow Kings are still out there somewhere. You should be more careful.”

I nodded. “You’re right.” It really had been stupid of me to drop my guard like that. That was “rule number one,” as both Daniel and Talbot used to tell me. Caleb was still out there, and it was impossible to predict what a madman like him was capable of doing next. Considering the state of my stupid ankle, I wouldn’t have stood a chance if I’d encountered him or any of his still-loyal boys last night.

I stretched forward and concentrated my healing powers into my throbbing ankle until the pain subsided into an uncomfortable ache. Then a thought hit me. “How do you know what Daniel wants? Can you … can you talk to him when you’re in wolf form?”

A trill of hope ran up my spine, and I no longer cared about the soreness of my ankle. Maybe I could get one of the boys to talk to Daniel for me. Tell him…

“No,” Brent said. “It’s just like we know what he wants. And we do it. That’s how it works with an alpha.”