While I transform back, I can hear Spencer giving orders to the pack to gather their belongings and head home. Galina arrives just as I finish dressing.

"Knock, knock," she says while miming the move on the polyester entry flap. "Are you decent?"

I pull my spare turtleneck over my head before answering. "Yup. Come on in."

"Well, that was kind of bananas," Galina says as she enters the tent and hands me my boots, which were the only things I had taken off before the transformation.

At any other time I would have tried to save both my Irish wool sweater and corduroy slacks, but there was no chance I was going to strip to my undies in front of the whole pack.

"Bananas? Understatement of the year," I reply, taking the boots.

Galina shakes her head as she comes further inside. "Seriously though. Are you okay?" she asks.

"Yeah. Of course," I say without even thinking, realizing too late that ironically, my ingrained need to avoid confrontation and desire to please are probably what led me to this point in my life.

Galina also isn't fooled. "Are you sure?" she asks while stuffing her backpack with her belongings.

"Yes. No. I don't know," I waffle as I pull on a sock. "Honestly, I've barely had a second to process what just happened, so I'll tell you tomorrow, okay?"

She laughs. "Fair enough. I'm here when you need me. Until then, we'll get one of the boys to help break down the tent and then I'll drive you back to Woodhurst."

"She's riding with me," Clayton says from outside the entry flap, startling us both.

Although he demands rather than asks, I get a certain comfort knowing that he wants me near. If nothing else, that strange pairing dance seems to have at least softened my approach to him.

Galina also knows to not argue and after helping me finish gathering my things, she hugs me good-bye.

Clayton and I remain silent as we walk through the dark forest to the remote parking lot, which is fine by me. This way I have a chance to organize my thoughts before our inevitable confrontation about what all went down tonight. I do wonder what's going through his mind, especially whether he's already regretting his decision to kick Gemma to the curb. But even if he is, I know that he'd never admit it.

I'm frozen through by the time we reach the familiar black SUV, but Clayton blasts the heater for the first ten miles, making me nice and toasty again. When he finally lowers the fan speed and it's quiet enough to hold a conversation, I know exactly what I want to talk about.

"Your family used to have a place near the campsite, didn't they?" I ask, looking at him.

His hair is mussed and his shirt collar is crooked, but not being his usual, perfect self gives Clayton an air of realness that he seldom makes public. He really is a handsome man, and now I wish I would have kept quiet to observe him for a bit longer. But now that I've broken the silence, he whips his head toward me.

"How did you know that?"

His defensive tone takes me off-guard.

"I . . . I saw it," I stammer before gaining confidence to continue. "In fact, I even went inside."

Clayton's gaze is back on the dark road, but he furrows his brows. "That's impossible. The only part of that old house that remains is the foundation, if that," he says dismissively. "You're right that my great-grandparents built their first homestead in that forest, but that's long gone. You must have stumbled onto another abandoned property."

His explanation would make sense if it weren't for one detail.

"Okay, but then how would you explain that house having a copy of the same ancestral portrait that's also in your brother's pub?" I ask, anxiously waiting for his reaction.

He scoffs. "I would say that you must have had one too many rum punches by then."

"Ha-ha," I say mockingly, getting irritated by his continued dismissiveness. "I'll have you know that I didn't drink one drop of alcohol until we started playing that stupid game, which was after I had been in that house."

Clayton sighs. "Then I don't know what to tell you. Maybe you imagined it all," he says without a hint of humor.

"Well . . . I wasn't going to say this, but now that you mention it," I hesitantly begin before pausing.

"What?" Clayton prods, glancing at me again.

"It's funny that you'd think that I imagined the house because I kind of had the same though at first," I say, wringing my hands in my lap and wondering if I should even be admitting this. But now that I've started, it's too late to take it back, so I continue. "Uhm, you see after I came out and heard Galina yelling for me, I turned around and poof. It was like the house was never even there."

Although he'd been speeding down the highway until now, Clayton easies his foot off the gas.

"Did Galina see the house as well?" he asks with a newfound curiosity.

"No. Just me," I say, looking at him for answers, but he remains quiet for a moment, as if mulling things over.

"Tell me one more thing," Clayton eventually says. "Has anything like this ever happened to you before?"

"Not exactly, but back in Duchess Hall after Sean Reyes' descension ceremony, I went off to explore a bit by myself and I heard phantom music, as well as giggles when there shouldn't have been any," I say, not having shared this with anyone and curios to Clayton's thoughts about it.

"Those could have easily been coming from outside," he says, having the same initial reaction that I did.

"That's not all," I say. "I got a horrible headache and then when someone—or something—very clearly whispered into my ear, I started the transformation."

"Did it work? Were you able to do it without the full moon?" he asks, focusing on the wrong thing and I can't help, but to roll my eyes.

"I didn't want to so I stopped myself, but yes, I think I could have gone through with it," I say since I know if I don't answer, he'll continue to press. "But you're missing the point. There was something paranormal in that place that communicated with me. What do you think happened? What does any of it mean?"

Clayton takes a deep breath. "I won't call myself an expert on it, but I'm fairly certain what you had sensed both in the forest and in the former orphanage were what we call echoes of the past. Very few have that ability to experience them and it means that you're somewhat special. I always had a feeling there was something different about you, but I guess this finally confirms it," he says.

Oh, great. I'm not like other werewolves. Being even more of an outsider is exactly what I need when at least half of the local community hates me.

"Special as in 'needs to be locked up and throw away the key' kind of special?" I ask, only half jokingly.

He laughs. "No, Barlow. Quite the opposite, which is why I'm now even more convinced that I made the right choice with you."

"To be your new Luna, you mean?"

He nods.

"Why did you do it? Why did you not only take a new Luna, but choose me of all people? You know that just put a huge target on my back for your ex and her father," I say, not wanting to even think about how the Black River pack's revenge might play out.

"I do, and I'm sorry for that. But that's a problem for another day. Tonight, I had to keep you safe from more immediate threats," he says.

I consider what might be a more immediate threat than the rival pack and I can come up with only one answer. "From within the Allegheny pack you mean?" I ask.

Clayton nods again. "Yes."

"You really think that someone like Tim Miller would come after me for rocking the boat by exposing Gemma's misdeeds?" I ask, recalling the guy who'd openly blamed me for causing Clayton's anger at his fiancee earlier tonight.

"There was no love lost between Gemma and the pack, but you have no idea what a truce with Black River meant to us," he says, this time keeping his eyes on the road. "It brought us hope for equality in the administration and leadership of the university, which all of our lives revolve around."

Well, now I'm starting to feel a little guilty. "What will happen now?" I ask quietly.

"You mean regarding the Calhouns? Well, first thing tomorrow, I'll speak with Douglas about how his daughter has been working to undermine his authority. Hopefully it'll be enough to at least get her equal blame in the dissolution of our union," Clayton says, taking an exit off the highway.

He doesn't sound very confident, so I must ask, "And if it's not?"

"If it's not, then the second best case scenario is we go back to the constant jockeying for power and incessant fighting about control that lead to stalemates in decision making and a halt to any progress in the institution that our families have built from the ground up."

So even then, I just undid years—if not decades—of compromise and goodwill that Clayton's pack has worked so hard for.

I'm almost afraid to ask, but I still have to know what's the alternative. "And the worst case scenario?"

"That's easy. Allegheny would be pushed out of Packard University by Black River and our pack would be scattered to the wind, forced to beg for admission into other packs like some common rogues," Clayton says, clearly having considered this option.

I don't even know what to say after that, so as we head into Woodhurst, I keep my mouth shut. Soon I can see the tower of the main university building, which means we're almost home. It snowed here earlier, too, and the empty streets are covered with a soft layer of snow.

Apart from the glow of the streetlights, everything is dark, but the closer we get to campus, the more there is an orange tint to the horizon. When we're just a few blocks away, that tint is muted by thick, black smoke, its acrid smell even entering the car through the vents. From the end of my street we can see fire trucks and police cars with their flashing lights stopped in every which direction as they arrived. Next to them, the first responders hold back a small crowd gaping as the fire crew battle a blaze in one of the cottages.

My first thought is to hope that no one had been injured and then about how horrible it would be to lose everything in such a disaster. But when Clayton drives as far as the barricade will let us, I forget about hypotheticals because it's actually my house that's on fire.