Late night walks after scary movies were kind of a ritual of ours. It gave me time to unwind and reassure myself that it was only a movie. We were walking, arms linked, looking up at the star-speckled sky, when Dominic had stopped short and said, “You hear that?”

I smacked him playfully with my free hand and said dryly, “Not funny, Dom.” He gave me an odd look, one that I really didn’t understand, and then started walking again.

One of the things I had always loved about our friendship was that we had never needed to fill the silence with pointless conversation. We could spend hours just being together, doing our own thing without talking. And that night had been one of those nights. It was peaceful and perfect.

“Jade, there’s something I need to tell you,” Dominic said, after we had walked for at least twenty minutes. That was when I had noticed how stiff his arm was in mine, as if I was holding onto a steel pipe.

“Mmmhmm,” I mumbled, hugging myself closer to his side, trying to keep myself out of the chilly fall wind. But instead of holding me closer, he only stiffened further.

I stopped short, looking up at him. A muscle in his neck twitched under his skin, throbbing like a heartbeat. His face was lined with crevasses, branching out from the corners of his eyes and lips like wild vines. “Ray wants me to join the pack,” he blurted, all the words running together.

It took me a long minute to understand what he was saying, but when I did, sweat began to trickle down my back. My stomach sank, and a chill rushed over my skin. For a moment, I thought I was going to be sick. I could taste the sour bile rising, burning up my esophagus. “You can’t. They’re a bunch of jerks, Dom. You can’t.” My voice screeched on the last word, loud and piercing.

“I know,” he said. He hadn’t needed to say more; I understood everything he wanted to convey in those two words. They would eat him alive. They were hard on him now, and we both knew they would be even worse if he was one of them. The pack had changed drastically since Ray became the alpha. They were vicious, even toward their own, and Dom … well, Dom had a soft heart.

But Dominic never had a choice, not really.

The chilly night turned bitter. I remembered thinking that Erika must have been following us the whole time, waiting for the perfect moment to step out from the trees. I heard the crunch of gravel before I saw her. She stood in the center of the winding path with a purely evil smirk. The moonlight casted an unnerving silvery glow around her, making her black jeans shimmer in the light.

“Dominic, you have been summoned,” Erika said. Her voice rang out, splitting through the silent night.

I moved in front of him without thinking, trying to block him from her sight. Thinking about it now, I realized that it would have never worked; he was half a foot taller than I was, but at the time, all I wanted to do was to hide my Dom. “No, you can’t have him.” My voice was strong, giving no indication of the twisted knots in my stomach.

Erika threw her head back and laughed. She locked her eyes with mine, and her skin rippled. Snaps and pops echoed through the cool night, and hair sprouted along her exposed flesh. Her face hazed over, distorting and shifting. Her legs snapped back, her arms extended and thinned. My stomach rolled as another deafeningly loud snap reverberated around me, and she dropped to all fours.

“Dom, run!” I yelled, glancing behind me, but he didn’t move. I shoved him, trying to push him into action. It was as if he didn’t even notice me; all he did was stare blankly at Erika.

A snarl ripped through the air, and I snapped my gaze back to where Erika had stood, just as a white wolf lunged at us.

Dominic hadn’t screamed. He hadn’t made a sound. It had been as if he had known all along what was about to happen. As if he had already given up. Before I could move, her teeth were imbedded in his thigh.

That had been the night that I had lost one of my best friends. The night he had left me stranded. Erika held onto him until her muzzle was stained with red. She let go, and chomped down three more times, before sitting down on her haunches, and staring up at him, his blood dripping from her muzzle. After an agonizingly long moment, she barked once, and swung her head toward the trees.

Dominic hadn’t looked at me. And he didn’t look back while he trailed after Erika, head held high, and shoulders stiff and straight. He left me there, tears streaming down my face, in the dark, alone.

I looked down at the big black wolf, his head still in my lap, and ran my hand along his fur, scratching lightly behind his ears. He huffed, a content kind of sound, and his sad looking, golden eyes met mine. I smiled a little and muttered, “I’m sorry I kicked you out earlier.”

CHAPTER 9

~ JADE ~

Monday came too soon. I wasn’t ready to face Dominic. Not after confessing that I missed him, even if it was true. He always had a way of making me forget my anger, and as it turned out, even after two years, he could still worm his way into my heart. When he had whimpered, looking up at me with those sad dog eyes, I don’t know, I had just … caved. Part of me wanted to run to him and catch up on everything we had missed, but a bigger part of me wanted nothing to do with him. The pack had ruined him, and if I let him in, I was sure they would ruin me, too.

Dominic had followed me around as a wolf for the rest of the weekend. He had kept his distance, but I could feel him watching my every move. He had sat at the edge of the woods while Mac and I had lunch at Lucy’s Diner on Sunday, and he was there, waiting, when we had left the boutique. His presence had been comforting and nerve-racking and annoying all rolled into one. Why he felt the need to stalk me as a wolf, I had no clue, but that was exactly what he had done.

My alarm clock’s insistent beeping started again, and I smacked the snooze button for the third time. For a split second, I thought about faking sick, but deep down, I knew that wasn’t really an option. Sooner or later, I’d have to face him, and I figured it wasn’t going to get any easier with time.

Marcy was waiting in the kitchen when I dragged myself downstairs. She was back to her old girly girl self, decked out in a cute, and way too short, pink dress that ruffled around her thighs. She was perched at the island with a jumbo-sized jar of strawberry jam and a plate of toast in front of her. She was giving me an odd look, as if she had something to tell me, but couldn’t decide if she actually wanted to say it.

“You stay here last night?” I asked, too groggy to try to figure out what the look was about. I padded over to the coffee pot and dropped my backpack to the floor. After our shopping trip yesterday, I had hidden in my room, tackling a stack of homework, and frankly, I couldn’t remember hearing her leave.

Marcy, I assumed, had set out my travel mug and prefilled the mandatory three heaping spoonfuls of sugar. I snagged the coffee pot and filled it to the brim with steaming goodness, before switching off the coffee maker and dumping the last little bit down the drain.

“Nope, came in about twenty minutes ago,” she said. She opened the jam, and slathered a thick layer onto her toast and then took a bite. “Mom left while you were in the shower,” she continued after she swallowed her mouthful. “She’s back on mornings this week. Oh, and Dad’s coming home today.”

“Huh,” I said, as I made my way over to the fridge, and rummaged through the crisper. Mom being gone already wasn’t really a shock. Being an emergency nurse at the hospital meant that she often left the house before me. But Dad on the other hand, well, I was dying to know where he had been all weekend.

I glanced over my shoulder at Marcy, and didn’t miss the fidgety way she was sitting. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, and slid the butter knife around; she just couldn’t sit still. Her lips kept parting as if she was about to say something, but then instead of speaking, she shoved the last of her toast in her mouth.

“You ready to go?” she asked, around another mouthful of toast. She gave me an overly bright smile, popped up from her chair, and made her way over to the fridge, putting away the jam.

I snagged an apple from the crisper. “Yeah, I guess,” I said, and shut the fridge. I dragged myself over to my coffee, and snapped the lid onto my travel mug. I shouldered my bag, and with a quick glance around, finding nothing that could delay leaving, I followed her out the door, and locked it.

Not having a car sucked. It wasn’t a bad day outside, but this whole walking to school thing was not for me. I really wasn’t an exercise kind of girl, especially not in the morning.

The air was relatively warm for September, although by no means was it hot. I could already see the small goose bumps popping up on Marcy’s bare arms as we walked against the breeze. The forest was a bit more red than it had been on Friday and a few leaves had already fallen, scattering the gravel path with rich fall colors.

“I talked to Dominic,” Marcy said casually, breaking the silence.

Hearing his name made a vein at my temple throb like a pulse, and I really didn’t know if it was because I was nervous about seeing him, or if it was because he talked to Marcy about me. I cut her a look and said, “Don’t want to hear about it, Mac.”

She grabbed my wrist, pulling me to a stop. “He told me about this Aidan guy.”

I groaned and shook her hand off. “He’s over reacting. I met the guy for like thirty seconds and I haven’t seen him since.” I shrugged my shoulders, and took a deep gulp of coffee as I started walking again. The gravel crunching under my shoes suddenly sounded too loud. “And besides that, Aidan was only trying to foil Dominic’s kidnapping attempt.”

Marcy laughed. Hard. So hard that she actually snorted. “Wow, seriously? And you say I’m dramatic,” she said, and shot me a rueful look. I opened my mouth to snap out a defense, but she threw her hands up and silenced me with a hard glare. Her laughter died instantly. “Don’t even try it. Dom told me the whole story.”

Two years had gone by without so much as a glance from my former best friend, and now this. I huffed noisily. And men said women were confusing. “Why does he even care? If I was into this guy, what does it matter to him?”