CHAPTER NINE
thank you for the venom

"YOU REMEMBER TOO MUCH," Dr Paige tells Violet on their third meeting. Like always, it is Thursday afternoon, the psychiatrist's office is white walls and splashes of colour that don't quite stab you in the eyes. There is a couch pressed against one wall, a potted plant sitting dead centre on the glass coffee table, and a desk fitted against the opposite wall with nothing besides a handful of thick, hardcover volumes sitting erect in a corner.

            Violet lounges with leonine arrogance, not quite ready to melt down all her defences—including her cool exterior, inherited from her father—in front of the dark-skinned woman sitting in the chair opposite hers. Even if she's taken a liking to Dr Paige, whose voice is tempered wind and who says things as they are. The rare kind of candid Violet appreciates. But liking the doctor doesn't mean she has to trust her. Not yet. Not completely. There's still the unspoken question: do you believe my story? Everyone thinks I'm crazy because of what I saw that shouldn't have been possible. Do you think I'm crazy? Do you think I'm just another girl who cried wolf? Dr Paige has done a commendable job of elegantly dodging the inevitable.

              At the moment, Dr Paige has a tablet balanced on her knee, little notes inscribed on the digital page. "You remember your brother's death—"

            "Taking," Violet rectifies. Her posture is one of relaxation, one that takes up the room and makes gravity revolve around her presence. She got it from her father. Years of wanting to be as powerful as he is, years of wanting to make him proud. Now, that want is buried under the avalanche of rage. But she can't shake the conditioning. Her spine remains poised.

           "Taking," Dr Paige concedes, nodding, and jots something down. "But you remember things that weren't there. Like the guilt you've mentioned in the last session. Correct?"

            "It's a little hard to forget your own feelings."

            "Do you think it was your fault?"

             Violet thinks on it. "Yes," she admits, tapping her fingers against her knee in a familiar rhythm. Somedays she felt transparent; a greenhouse filled with ghosts. "If I hadn't insisted on lingering after dark just so I could get my kick flip right, Luka would still be here."

             —IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT THE LEAST YOU CAN DO IS FIX IT—

             "How could you have known what was going to happen?" Dr Paige asks. It's the first time Violet's had to pause. Really pause. Erase any answer she has prepared on her tongue because this was not what she was expecting.

               "I—" Violet chews down on the side of her tongue. The sting of molars digging into the sensitive flesh so hard it almost crushes it sharpens her mind. Her gut lurches. "I don't know," she says, "it just feels right, taking the blame."

          "Why do you hold onto all that?"

          "Where can I put it down?"

          "Here and now," Dr Paige says, her voice a lullaby like the ocean, the hush of waves soothing against the shore. "All this is in the past. Your brother might still be missing, but it is not your fault. That is the first and foremost thing you must remember."

           —YOU'RE GONNA CARRY THAT WEIGHT—

         "I don't know how," Violet says, worrying her bottom lip.

           "We'll work on that," Dr Paige says, and her voice is kinder than Violet thinks she deserves. "You're still a work in progress. Take it one day at a time."

☾

DISASTER DRAWS PEOPLE LIKE FLIES.

           Fear is the most elegant weapon, Violet knows better than to get her hands messy. Threatening bodily harm is crude. Age six and she recalls the first lesson her father has ever taught her after she'd been pushed around on the playground for being the scrawniest girl in school. Power comes from the mind, comes from control. Work instead on beliefs, play insecurities like a piano. Sing your own lullaby for the puppet to dance to. Force anxiety to excruciating levels or gently undermine the public confidence. Panic drives human herds over cliffs. Mark out points to target, pick your words carefully, know your enemy. Unsettle them. Deprive someone of instability and they will ruin themselves for you. Your hands stay clean. Violet made sure, the very next day of first grade, that Irene Morris tore herself to shreds in the bathroom.

            But the woman with red eyes and flaming red hair and a mouth of sharp teeth back in the parking lot wasn't so easy.

           Violet doesn't know why she would think any different now.

           "Grilled cheese, anyone?" Sage asks, shaking a paper bag in an outstretched arm. "Vi?"

           "Don't mind if I do," Violet says, not sure whether to thank Sage for remembering her favourite food even though it's been four years. In the end, the debate passes unanswered. She takes the bag from Sage and tears into the sandwich, which was still warm even though they'd been hiking through the woods for a good part of an hour. Just to get to a special spot Sage had found a couple weeks back, supposedly where she wanted to throw an exclusive bonfire party for the three of them.

            Wouldst thou like to escape to the woods? live deliciously? Sage had said, in a mocking, sibylic croak, Feast on the blood of men and virgins. So many virgins.

             Just call it an orgy, Violet had deadpanned.

             You're both so gross, said Kit, wrinkling her nose, though she couldn't stop giggling at the other two's antics.

            All the while, as they crashed through the dense underbrush with enough reckless abandon to make Violet tense every time there was a sound that didn't quite match up with their movements, cracking jokes and smacking each other's butts and screaming like little school girls, the iron voice in Violet's head sat silently, a heavy, imposing presence that electrified her nerves. Her fingers tap a rhythmless pattern against a bulge in her right pocket, where one of her knives sat. The others hummed against her skin in their sheaths, strapped to her body under her clothes. Armed to the teeth, a mortal monstrosity. Periodically, she checked over her shoulder for glowing eyes that weren't there or shadows that moved in periphery, refusing to put aside vigilance in the name of fun. Even with both her friends at her side, creating enough energy with their rough banter to power a small town.

               "Do you have the parma ham one on you?" Kit asks, perking up slightly as she gripped Sage's arm and yanked her away from a patch of poison ivy. "I'm starving."

                "Kit, that's your fourth sandwich so far," Sage muses, lifting a brow. Violet bit into her sandwich thoughtfully.

                "Sorry," Kit says, sheepishly, a roseate blush creeping up her neck.

              "Don't worry about it, Muscles," Sage snorted, patting Kit on the arm. She hands Kit another paper bag that the Sage's mom had packed a sandwich into, and done the same eighteen times when she heard they were going on a nice, long hike in the woods until Sage had been crowned their official snack-treasurer. "I got you covered."

             Kit's face lights up, and she rips into the bag like a child and her presents during Christmas.

             Violet narrows her eyes, squinting between the ferns and the trees that tower over them, pillars of silence that looked isotropic no matter which direction she glanced in. There was nothing but green for miles. Dead leaves carpeted the forest floor, and the barest slivers of light fell in silvery streaks between the canopy. Crickets trilled and shrieked, a background symphony to the staccato of snapping branches as birds shook out their wings and found nesting places. Intermittent winds blew their hair around, tripping them up in transient moments of blindness. Kit kept a keen eye out for bear traps laid out in this section of the woods, and with her quick reflexes yanked them out of reach from immediate danger that could've turned this mission south at any second too late.

                "Are you planning on killing and burying us in the woods or are you getting us lost on purpose for another reason?" Violet asks. She'd finished off her sandwich only a couple minutes ago, and had crushed up the paper bag in her hands, not quite knowing what to do with it. Restless, her fingernails dug into the paper, tearing little crescent holes in the bag.

          Sage shoots her a heated glare. "I'm fairly certain we're going the right way."

         A crease forms between Kit's brows. Her lips pull into a frown as a visible shudder slithers down her spine. Out of the three of them, Kit had been dressed the most exposed. Instead of a warm sweater and jeans, like Sage and Violet had put on after dropping off their sleepover items at Kit's house and left for the unmarked trail with only a backpack filled with snacks and a bottle of Prosecco stolen from Violet's father's handsome collection of classy-looking booze, Kit had opted for a pair of running shorts and a loose white T-shirt with a Jurassic Park logo in the middle. Her only reasoning was that it was far too hot these days for pants and long sleeves. Violet had to attest to that. It was always chilly in this area. They hadn't seen summer warmth or sunshine in eons.

          "It's been over an hour, Sage," Kit sighs, crouching on the ground to smile at a small rabbit poking its nose out of a bush. She reaches out a hand, palm-up, to let it sniff her fingers. Hesitantly, nervously, it moseys out of the bush and into full view, hopping towards Kit like a toddler to its mother. "Hey, baby," Kit coos in a voice so soft Violet almost doesn't hear it, face flooding with pure adoration.

           "Have a little faith, Snow White," Violet drawls, jabbing a thumb at Sage. "Bear Grills here thinks she's got it."

            "I don't think, I know." Sage huffs. "Y'all suck."

            A gust of wind blows towards them, whistling through the trees, unsettling the dead leaves. Branches overhead groan and sway. The rabbit perks its ears up, sitting on its haunches, eyes furtively darting around. Kit, too, seems to sense the same sort of invisible threat camouflaged within the woods, though they seemed to be the only people for miles. She snaps upright, glancing around with her brows furrowed, suddenly on high alert.

            —SOMETHING'S COMING—

             "Guys," Kit says, voice low, and another shudder racks down her spine and for a moment so brief she thinks she might've hallucinated it, Violet sees a flicker of something in Kit's face shift. "We need to get out of here. Now."

          Confusion twists Sage's features. "What? Why?"

           Violet's eyes narrow. There was a strange humming around Kit's form, a different, otherworldly sort of energy that Violet can't quite put her finger on. If anything, it was more unsettling than bewildering. Something was happening to Kit. No, something had happened to Kit and she's different now. She's still the same girl Violet had left behind four years ago on the inside, but what lay in plain sight on the outside was all the wrong shapes. But Kit's changes are not all Violet can think of at the moment. I should've listened to my gut, she thinks, bitterly, eyes sharpening.

             Behind them, a branch snaps.

             In an instant, Sage jumps, and the three girls whip round, hearts beating so loud in their chests every being with ears within a three mile radius could hear.

           Violet's heart stops.

            Standing before them is the caricature of all her nightmares in the past four and a half years. Flaming red hair, ethereal beauty, pale skin like porcelain, burning eyes red as rubies. She hadn't aged a day since Violet had last seen her in the parking lot, standing over Luka's seizing body, his blood staining her teeth, glinting like gemstones in the garish lighting. That was the last time Violet thought she would see that woman, except for when the past revisited her in her dreams, feverish and haunting, engraved in the back of her brain. Now, Luka's taker stands before her, poised like a feline, ready to spring, every inch as terrifying as Violet recalled. Past and present colliding.

            Her jaw goes slack. The world around her vision goes black for a split second.

            "Oh, hello, little one," the woman purrs, eyes glinting with amusement and a little bit of shock, and her voice is the same as it always is; saccharine, predatory, hungry. It's then that Violet realises she's standing closest to the coldblooded killer. Vampire, a frightful voice whispers in her head. The woman cocks her head, giving Violet a slow, syrupy once-over. "Didn't expect to see you around. You're all grown up now. Do you remember who I am?"

             —RUN MOVE DO NOT LOOK BACK DO NOT LINGER—

            For a moment, Violet felt the world lurch, like the floor had been ripped from under her feet and someone had kicked her in the chest, all the wind knocked out from her lungs as she fell backwards into an abyss of past and present blurring together with the impossible. Her mind flies out in a million different directions as her throat closes up. Why now? Why would she come back? Why was she here? Why did it have to be her? In four years, Violet had made peace with the fact that she might not ever get to have her revenge. The only mission on her mind was that she had to expose the truth of this town. Not meet the monster that haunted her every step of the way since the night Luka was taken. The very monster who was looking at her now, with a feral hunger in her eyes, minutes away from striking.

                —MOVE OR YOU WILL DIE A VIOLENT, BRUTAL DEATH, FACE A FATE JUST LIKE YOUR BROTHER'S—

             "Who the fuck are you?" Sage snapped. Livid, Violet slapped her elbow in warning.

             The woman laughed, a shrill, dainty thing. "Darling, I am your end," she said, sultry and hissing, teeth bared, "and you will not take that tone with me."

            —IF YOU RUN SHE WILL CATCH YOU YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD—

           An icy ball of fear sat in Violet's stomach. A second or an eternity passed and she realised she hadn't responded. She wasn't even breathing. Fear is the most elegant weapon fear is the most elegant weapon you do not get your hands dirty blood will callous your fingers and strip you primitive. Nor did she even realise she'd unsheathed a knife until she felt the weight of the wickedly sharp blade in her hand, fingers curled around the hilt, one arm stretched out to keep Sage behind her.

             How do you break a monster?

            The woman grins, a horrible, vicious thing. "Steel can't cut through diamond, foolish child. You'll barely make a dent on me. But you, however..."

            Whatever the woman had to say next, no one would hear. Because one moment, the woman was about to strike, a huge white wolf lunged out from behind them and knocked the woman to the ground. Horror pierces Violet's chest. The white wolf dwarfed the woman easily—though both seemed to have equal strength as they grappled around in the ground, slamming each other into trees and snarling menacingly—almost as big as the black wolf that'd saved her that night, four years ago, if only a tad bit smaller.

            Sage swears violently.

             Violet shoves Sage back just as both monsters crash through the underbrush, the thunderous impact rumbling the ground, unearthing a small bush and scattering a nest of mice. This is four years ago, the whole ordeal in the parking lot again, watching as two monsters of different breeds tear at each other, immobilised with fear. The same two different monsters from her nightmares. One doing the killing and the other doing the protecting. Growls ripped through the air as the wolf's jaws snapped dangerously close to the woman's neck. In retaliation, the woman slammed her palm against the wolf's snout, causing the wolf to rear back, letting out an ear-piercing howl of agony. Canines flashed. Teeth were bared. The woman fought with the grace of a cheetah in the wild, an art to every graceful manoeuvre, slashing with clawed fingers as though she could rip and rend the world to shreds. The white wolf was a formidable force, countering every strike with stunning ferocity, white tail swishing like a weapon on its own, impressive muscles rippling with each surge.

                  Birds shrieked. The world exploded into motion. Violet was rooted to the ground, unable to move, even with Sage tugging on her sleeve with a desperate urgency. Both monsters clashed over and over with frightening speed, landing and exchanging blows with alarming vehemence. Violet watched, but could barely keep up. The two shapes seemed to blur together. The woman went in for the kill, faced with a hindrance rather than a real threat, unlike the night that Luka was taken. The white wolf must've been less experienced, younger, a weaker opponent, though it put up a valiant fight, unrelenting and refusing to give up ground. Until Violet realised what it was trying to do.

           It was defending them.

              But why? What did they owe it?

                The earth seemed to quake beneath their feet, and it was only then that Violet noticed that Kit was missing. Where she once stood, her backpack and shoes lay, and so did shreds of her clothing.

          A great crack split the air as the woman threw the wolf into a nearby tree. The wolf let out a high-pitched whine of agony as it slammed against it and dropped to the ground on all fours, shaking its head. The tree swayed for a moment, and then, with a groan, began to fall.

          —MOVE—

          Eyes widening, Violet tackled Sage out of the way, rolling clear just as the massive half of the tree collapsed over the exact spot they'd been standing in, kicking up a burst of dirt and dead leaves.

          When the dust cleared, Violet sat up.

         Both monsters were gone.

           On the ground, naked, sat Kit, knees drawn up to her chest, face buried in her hands, rocking back and forth. Kit's chest was seizing, her sobs, hysterical. Words blubbered out of her mouth but not one of them was intelligible. Immediately springing into action, Violet and Sage scrambled over the fallen tree to Kit, who was, without a doubt, having a nervous breakdown.

             "What the hell just happened?" Sage hissed, chest heaving as she brushed off the twigs and leaves that'd stuck to her clothes. "That woman, she knew who you were—"

            Mind running on blank, Violet shook her head at Sage, cutting her off mid-sentence, and Sage interpreted the gesture however she liked. For a problem that struck so close to home, Violet surprised herself with how she hadn't yet lost her mind. Perhaps later, in the quiet of Kit's bathroom, she'll have her nervous breakdown in the shower. Now, though, Kit was a priority. That didn't stop the hurricane of her thoughts. Monsters were real, the truth finally kicked into the light—there was no denying it now that Sage had seen, too. Most strikingly, Kit was one of those monsters, albeit, the monster that'd saved Violet and Sage's life. Almost instantly, some of the pieces fell into place. A half-finished puzzle, but a step forward all the same.

             Wrapped up in herself, Kit seemed bound tight in her little ball of Words tumbled from Kit's mouth in feverish mutters, tripping over one another, though they didn't sound like words Violet knew—or even words at all—until Violet realised that they weren't English, but a different language altogether. Sage rubbed comforting circles over Kit's bare back. Without hesitation, Violet shed her hoodie, aware she only had Luka's old Beetlejuice shirt on underneath, and the sleeves weren't long enough to cover up the scars trekking up her arms to her elbows. The sheer thought of her exposure made her guts twist, but Violet swallowed down the bile and the ball of nerves that made her skin crawl. Skin that hadn't seen sunlight in years because there are worse things than the humidity that stuffs split skin with corrosive infections.

               Even though it was only Sage looking upon the scars in horror, it felt like a million eyes boring into her self-mutilated skin. Her blood turned to slush, but she forced those thoughts into the back of her mind. "Vi," Sage choked out, horror poisoning her tone, terror stealing the warmth from her eyes, unable to peel away from the tally-marks crudely scoring Violet's arms in silvery scar tissue. "Vi, what have you done?"

              Violet ignored Sage, heartbeat pounding like a rabid prisoner's maniacal fist against metal bars in her temples drowning out Sage's piercing stare, so leaden with this horrific sadness that lodged like thorns in her throat and when Violet swallowed, she felt them tear away her insides, bleed her resolve dry. I don't know who you are anymore, said Sage's horror. What have you become? Why would you do that to yourself? How could you?

                "Look at me," Violet said, kneeling beside the trembling girl, whose fingers seemed to be digging harshly into the sides of her face, chest caved in like she wanted to fold into herself—small, smaller, smallest—and vanish from sight. Clamping a hand over Kit's shoulder, Violet pried Kit's fingers away from her face. It took Herculean effort, but Kit's hands went slack in Violet's vice-grip. "Hey, hey, Kit, look at me."

              Kit's hysterics only amplified, words spilling out of her mouth, a cataract of chaos and madness, the universe spiralling on an upset axis. "I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to—It was an accident! Oh my God, Sam's going to kill me—"

               "Kit," Violet seized Kit's chin, forcing Kit to make eye contact as Violet glowered into her teary eyes. Kit's lower lip quaked, but she complied, falling silent. That was when the pure, unadulterated fear pricking Kit's eyes, the dilated pupils, the heaving of her chest, caught Violet's attention. Rage stroked Violet's insides. If Sam's cult had anything to do with Kit's transformation, or if Sam had threatened anything to instil this sort of visceral reaction in Kit, Violet had to know. She had to do something about it. "You're going to be fine. If Sam lays a hand on you, I'll kill him myself. Now, put this on before anyone sees you." Thankfully, the hoodie—like all of Violet's clothes—was two sized too large, and fit over Kit's broad shoulders just fine. Kit's sniffled, swiping at her tears with the back of her hand.

              "I need you to tell me something," Violet said, eyes hardening, "how long have you been hiding this from us?"

             Kit's expression crumpled.

              "You know you can tell us anything," Sage said, swallowing thickly, "right? Whatever Sam did to you and your brother—"

              A bush rustles. Footsteps thundering through the dirt. Someone was crashing through the shrubbery towards them at a running speed. Violet's spine stiffens. Panic slashes at her chest. If anyone saw her scars, if anyone had seen Kit—

             "Move," Paul grunts, a dark anger shrouding his tone, brusquely nudging Violet out of the way as he crouched down before his sister, who was still hairpin-trigger trembling, curled up in a tight ball, clutching her knees to her chest. Paul's expression melted as he took her in his arms, pressing her to his chest. "Hey, Kit, it's okay. I'm here. We'll explain everything to Sam later, alright? You're all good, tiny. You're not in trouble."

            "In trouble with who?" Sage demanded. "What's Sam got to do with this?"

             Paul's eyes flashed with irritation. "You guys weren't supposed to know."

             "We're her friends!"

              "You're not werewolves," Paul pointed out. "Nobody who doesn't phase is supposed to know. It's our tribe secret. You'll get it when we give you a full explanation back at Sam's place."

               "How long have you known?" Violet asked. Her voice is firm but steady. Steadier than she could've bargained for considering what they'd just witnessed. But only just barely. She doesn't know if it's the shock or if she's still processing, unable to come to terms with meeting the monster that haunts her at all corners of her vision and in the subliminal space of her thoughts. When Paul doesn't answer immediately, Violet curls her hands into fists and doesn't dare look down at them, just incase they're shaking, just incase it makes the scars on her arms more prominent in the feeble daylight. "Paul," Violet snaps, a bright slash of anger cleaving through her body, a knife spinning in her stomach, cutting up her insides, filling her like a reservoir. "Answer me. Now. How long has this been going on? How long have you known? I'm not leaving without answers."

              Paul doesn't even look at Violet as he helps Kit to her feet. "Not now, Vi."

               "Hey!" The dam broke. Fury carves a volcanic path down her nerves, burning through her body like magma. Violet seized Paul by the wrist in a vice grip, forcing him to face her. Annoyance flickers in his eyes as he glowers down at her, a sun god about to vaporise her within a blink. The rage in her eyes clashes against his with equal ferocity. "What has Sam done to the both of you, huh? You told me that day on the beach that these things don't exist. You fucking liar. I want my answers, Paul. You're going to give them to me now."

              Holding her furious glare, Paul considers Violet for a second. "No," he grits out, standing his ground. "I said not now, and that's final."

            He shakes off Violet's grip brusquely. Without a glance over his shoulder to see if they were following, Paul heaves Kit down the path he'd cleared in his mad dash towards the three girls. Stunned, Violet gapes after them, unmoving from her spot. Shock blew a hole through her lungs and sucked all the air out into the world. All her life, Violet had gotten her way without compromise. Nobody had told her no before and got away with it. To have this sort of refusal coming from Paul... Humiliation melted her organs. It metamorphosed into anger. White-hot and whetted by indignation.

             A soft bundle of cloth pressed into her hands. Violet snapped out of her malevolent reverie, only to find Sage nodding at the yellow bundle in her hands. Sage had taken her sweater off, left in only a purple t-shirt and jeans. She looked a little pale in the face, as though she was five seconds away from unravelling at the seams.

              "Just incase you wanted to hide your..." Sage trailed off, blowing out a puff of air. She couldn't even bring herself to say it without getting sick. Then, unsolicited, Sage presses a hand against the small of Violet's back and gives her a nudge forward to follow after Paul and Kit, who had cleared a measurable distance ahead already, and didn't look like they were slowing anytime soon.

          Pursing her lips, Violet tugged on Sage's sweater wordlessly, only feeling her chest loosen as the sleeves slipped over her arms, burying her scars. A heavy silence settled between the four of them as they trudged through shrubs and avoided tripping over roots.

           Twenty minutes of walking evanesced into a million thoughts flying through Violet's head. The wild shrubbery tapered off into a well-worn trailblazer, and flatter hiking ground. Ignoring the way her legs burned as she missed the familiar ease of a skateboard cruising on tarmac, as birds screamed into the gloomy skies and the leaves blew into her hair, Violet fervently hoped Sage wouldn't bring what she'd seen up. Not while they were in the presence of Paul and Kit. Just those two, oblivious to Violet's affliction, but two too many even though there wasn't anyone else for miles. At some point, they had to address it, just not now. Not when there were more pressing matters at hand. But as they dwindle by the edge of the woods, emerging into a grassy plain holding up a humble house with a woodsy front porch and a semi-deflated soccer ball sitting limply and dejectedly on a patch of barren soil at the bottom of the porch steps, Sage hooked her pinkie finger through Violet's and lowered her voice into a whisper at Violet's ear, "can I ask—what are you counting?"

               Violet couldn't answer. Without a doubt, every individual tally mark meant something. One slash for feeling too little, two more for remembering too much, and a fifth slash diagonally bisecting the other four for a million different shades of darkness. Hundreds of personal ghosts and shadow monsters buried in a boneyard of mutilated flesh and tombstones of scar tissue. Not a single explanation in the universe could make Sage understand. And so Violet gave her silence instead.

              "They're back!"

           The moment Paul and Kit stepped into view of the house, four bare-chested boys in black sweatpants burst out through the front door, which shuddered in its hinges, followed by Sam Uley, and a brown-haired woman with tan skin whom Violet didn't recognise. Jared was the first to reach the Lahote siblings, worry etched across the creases in his features. Embry, Quil, and the fourth boy—the one Violet had met on the way to Sage's house on Thursday, who'd been so afraid of Sam's watchful eyes he confided it to a girl with brown hair and pale skin while they watched the wolves cliff-dive into the unforgiving waters—hung back when Jared wrestled words out of Paul's tight mouth that would give no further explanation. The woman whose name Violet didn't know, frowned in concern, dark eyes flooding with relief. Though Violet had never seen her before, the way she clung to Sam's side so surely they both held a gravity of their own checked off a few of the connections Violet made in her head.

               Taking Kit into her arms, the woman pressed Kit's face into her shoulder, let her crumble into the embrace, absorbing the quaking in Kit's body whilst rubbing soothing circles into Kit's back. Even though Kit easily dwarfed her, she was still an immovable force, something solid to lean against. Jared, having given up on Paul's stubbornness, moved on to Kit. With a worried but soft smile, he took over from the woman, who shot him a knowing look. When the woman glanced over at the new arrivals, lingering like ghosts not the sidelines, uncertain of how they fit into the family equation, Violet forgot how to breathe. Slashed across half of the woman's face were brutal scars, as though a set of heavy claws had raked the skin to shreds.

            Slowly, the woman's lips lifted into a friendly grin. Even though the gesture was slight, the scars moved with the pull and stretch of her facial muscles.

             Sage pinched Violet's side. Pain shot through her body, sharpening her mind. Snapping back into herself, Violet let her father's smile slip over her mouth.

              "Hello," the woman said. "I don't think we've met before. I'm Emily, Sam's fiancee."

            "I'm Sage," Sage responded, a shaky smile flickering over her lips. "Nice to meet you. We're, um, Kit's friends.."

            "Violet," Violet said, coolly, but offered nothing else. Because Emily could give Violet not an inch of what she wanted. Violet wanted answers. She wanted to know why Paul had lied to her. She wanted to know why that vampire had come back, and who she'd come back for. The surprise that'd flickered across the woman's face—though brief, though a passing shadow that'd been quickly replaced by the sadistic, bloodthirsty smirk that haunted the darkness in the back of Violet's eyelids every time she closed her eyes—was enough to draw such a conclusion. She had been out hunting for someone else.

              "Well, you girls have been through a lot today," Emily said, a touch of sympathy softening her tone. "Why don't we all go inside for some lemonade and muffins?"

              The fierce urge to lash out curled Violet's gut. Lemonade and muffins wouldn't grant her what she wanted. Lemonade and muffins derailed all focus from the point of their being here. But she kept her mouth shut. Kept her hands and knives to herself and buried her anger with in the monstrous roar of her heartbeat in her ears.

               When they were all settled around a dining table piled with a generous spread of baked treats and jugs of chilled lemonade that glistened with condensation, a silence fell over the mismatched group like a weighted net. The boys gathered around Kit in a protective circle. A blue blanket was settled over her shoulders, courtesy of Emily. Violet took a seat next to Sam, while Sage dragged out the chair next to her. Emily filled their glasses with lemonade.

              "Explanation," Violet snapped, the first to break the silence, pinning Sam with an icy glare. "Now."

           Nodding in understanding, Sam met her derisive glare with a steady look. "Kit kept this from you for good reason. I'm sure Paul's already given you the brief rundown of our tribe and what blood flows in our veins."

           "Werewolves," Sage breathed, as though the sheer thought was so unfathomable, so surreal, she expected to wake from a dream in a few seconds.

             "Yes," Sam said, "to keep this brief, we don't kill humans. We're not your protectors either, so we can't use our abilities to interfere with a mugging, but if other forces—such as vampires—become a threat, we're well within our jurisdiction to protect who we can. Vampires have been our natural enemy for as long as we've existed. A surplus of vampires may cause some of us to phase. The universe's way of keeping the balance, I suppose. Today shouldn't have happened for many reasons. For one, we should all have been there as a pack to take that vampire down, but the fight was over before we even realised that Kit needed our help.

              "I'm not saying that Kit isn't capable of holding her own against a vampire, because she is, but we usually do this as a pack. I can see why she would be afraid. Especially with this vampire in particular, who's stronger than most that we've faced. It's a blessing she made it back in one piece. I know I almost didn't."

             "You're saying you've faced this vampire before?" Violet asked, lifting a brow.

             "I have," Sam said, a shadow passing over his features. For a slip of a moment so brief Violet thought she might have imagined it all, pain contorted Sam's expression, a knife of memory twisting in his ribs. But it was gone when she blinked, and he'd schooled his face into perfect composure once more. His eyes, however, contained the barest trace of wariness. "You were there."

              Violet flinched so hard she almost knocked her cup of lemonade over. Like a bullet ricocheting down an endless tunnel, those three words rang loud and clear in Violet's head, touching a darkness she'd entombed within an unreachable location within her. The iron voice growled. A quick glimpse of the others' reactions to the news told her everything. Judging by Emily's hesitant curiosity, the pack's sudden alertness to Violet and Sam's conversation, their stunned gazes drilling holes into Violet and Sam's faces, nobody else had known of the night at the parking lot. None of them knew about Sam's interference, quick enough to prevent Violet's immediate death, but not quick enough to save Luka's blood from being spilled.

            Out of shame or self-preservation, the revelation weighed heavy on Sam's tongue.

           "You—" Violet's hands shook. Her skin blazed with an itch only a razor could excise. Her nerves begged for a nicotine hit. Nightmares descended upon her mind like the jaws of a wolf closing in on the neck of its prey. She blinked, and saw the darkness oozing into the parking lot, saw Luka and shadows that moved in periphery, saw red eyes and a flash of teeth, saw blood bubbling from a gaping hole in Luka's throat, saw an enormous black wolf lunge out of the shadows seconds before another disaster hit. She remembered the quaking ground as the monsters clashed over and over and over as Luka's screams tore through the night, tore something inside her that couldn't be fixed in the next four years.

           "I'm sorry," Sam said, the tiniest of cracks showing in his armour as his voice wavered. "I'm sorry I wasn't enough."

           No no no no no—

           "Hang on a second," Embry blurted, a look of complete, utter bewilderment shrouding his features. "What the hell are we talking about here?"

            "My father sent me away, four years ago, to California where all the best psychotherapists had offices in fancy buildings," Violet began, fingernails digging into her thighs. Bitterness bit at her tone, a knife's edge pricking at her tongue. Dragging razors across her gums would be less painful than this. A vicious curse hissed out of Paul's mouth. She felt his gaze sear into the side of her face. "A week before that, a vampire attacked my brother and almost killed me in a parking lot where we were just skating. A wolf interfered before that vampire could touch me. I called the cops, gave my statement. But, apparently, werewolves and vampires don't exist. Nobody believed me. They called it hallucinations of the mind under major trauma. I'd just watched my brother get murdered and taken away, after all. Why wouldn't I go a little mad? The press had a field day reporting my story. You can search it up. It's still out there somewhere, I'm sure. Anyway, I ended up dumped far away from here to become someone else's problem.

            "That wolf in the parking lot," Violet said, swallowing down the sour lump that'd formed in her throat. She slanted Sam an indecipherable look. "That was you."

               "I couldn't save your brother," Sam said, and there never sounded anything so melancholic. Sam blinked. "Saving you was the next best option. I couldn't let him down a second time."

                "You knew Luka."

                 "I loved him," Sam said, guilt dogging at his voice. "I'm sorry I couldn't tell you the truth at the cemetery. We met at the beach, and he started coming down here more frequently once we got to know each other. I told him not to tell anyone because nobody's particularly inclined to treat two boys who're more than friends well around here. But that was a lifetime ago. I had to make peace with the loss. The only question I have now is, have you?"

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
we have a Turning Point in our story