Branches and thorns slashed my exposed legs. My thigh ignited in pain, and with failing balance, I skidded down a muddy incline. I rolled my ankle but rejected the idea of letting my pace drop. I tore through the forest, my heart pounding like a war drum in my chest.

The branches above formed a tangled canopy, casting eerie shadows on the damp earth beneath my feet. I gasped for air, my breaths coming in short bursts as I sprinted past twisted trunks and gnarled roots, driven by the desperate need to escape.

The trees thinned out, and I stumbled. Carlyle's van came into view. The keys were in a vice-like grip in my hand. With three keys on his chain, I fumbled, cursing under my breath, trying the first in the lock, followed by the second.

A howl echoed around the forest, followed by a set of angry growls. Although the voices seemed familiar, the people no longer were. The last key went in, turned, and I flung open the door. I cranked the engine and headed straight for the town. There must be someone who could help me.

My dark corkscrew curls clung to my sweaty face as I drove. Lucille's legacy already weighed heavy on my shoulders; I couldn't bear the thought of becoming lost out here like her too.

Making it into town, its cobblestone surface gleamed under the pale moonlight. It was eerily quiet, as though life itself had been sucked away, leaving nothing but the hollow shells of buildings. There were no cars parked along the curb, and no pedestrians walking down the sidewalks. I'd entered a ghost town. I pulled up and parked.

Where was everyone? I scanned the deserted storefronts. Panic bubbled up inside me, threatening to choke me. I needed help, someone – anyone – to save me. I began to search the buildings one by one, driven by desperation. I tried the door of the bakery first, but it was locked tight, and the windows shuttered.

Next, I moved to the small grocery store, hoping against hope that someone might be stocking the shelves. The door gave way under my shaking hand, but the store was as empty and lifeless as the street outside.

As I approached the next building, the bar, now so unfamiliar in the dark, the sense of being watched fell like a blanket around me. My heart raced as if it were trying to break free from my chest, and my breaths were shallow, barely providing enough oxygen for my burning lungs, but I refused to give in to fear.

The door to the bar creaked open, its rusty hinges protesting my hurried entrance. My eyes scanned the dusty, dimly lit room, searching for any sign of life. The vinyl booths sat unoccupied, and the bar remained barren, the stools void of customers.

Think, Dana, think. And then, like a beacon in the darkness, it came to me—Paul's dad's cabin. Running no longer mattered because they all knew where I was and where I would go, which was why I needed to hole up somewhere new, and unexpected until I could comprehend what I just saw and how I could leave Benton for good. It wasn't far from here, hidden among the trees on the outskirts of town. With luck, I could reach it before they caught up to me. Desolate, sheltering with the enemy, and all memories of my visit were wiped by morning. It could work for now.

My lungs burned with each ragged breath, but I couldn't afford to slow down - not when freedom was so tantalizingly close. Back at Carlyle's van, I wasted no time pulling out.

The vehicle flew through the brush and back down the forest lane. With the main road in sight, I spun the wheel and loosened my grip, taking the corner at speed and touching down on the tarmac. When the highway ahead straightened, I floored the gas, and the van thundered to life.

Paul's dad's cabin was on the other side of town. I pulled into a secluded spot shrouded in brambles and killed the engine. The kerosene lantern was the only source of light as I trudged up the porch steps.

My resentment toward Lucille and Benton was building into epic doomsday proportions. I should congratulate her. No one else had wreaked this much havoc and destruction in my life before.

Even the death of my parents, although shocking, was natural in the order of things. There was nothing normal about Lucille or this situation. Not for the first time, my eyes squeezed shut, and I wished my dad was here to guide me.

Is this the reason they'd left town all those years ago?

With those words echoing in my mind, I threw open the cabin door and slammed it shut behind me, my heart pounding with a mix of fear and defiance. He had forgotten to lock it again. For now, I had escaped, but I knew all too well that the battle was far from over.

The moment the door clicked shut behind me, I felt a temporary respite from the nightmare that had become my reality. My trembling hands fumbled with the lock on the door, securing it and buying myself some precious time. The ancestors' unrelenting pursuit of me, desperate to force Lucille's presence upon me, drove my need for safety, and the cabin offered a fleeting sanctuary.

The flickering light from the fire cast eerie shadows across the walls, but the familiar sight of Paul's baseball cap hanging from a hook near the door brought a small jolt of fear.

"Hello?" I called out. There was no answer. The log cabin creaked from every corner, forcing my eyes to scan across the room. The armchair was facing the log burner. I cleared my throat. The portable oxygen smacked and rolled on the floor as he was startled.

"David..." His name fell from my lips like a prayer. Did he know how much danger I was in? "It's Dana," I said. I moved where he could now see me, picking up the tank and placing it back on his lap.

"You made me jump." His eyes narrowed. "What's got you spooked, missy?"

"Your sons. This town." It was impossible to keep my tone short of blunt, and I didn't know if he was deserving of it, but I knew my instincts about him were spot on, and he wouldn't hurt me. His presence felt the same as the first day I met him, which is more than I can say for his son.

"You'll be safe here. The pack wants nothing with an old man on his deathbed. But that sanctuary won't last past sunrise."

I perched on the couch and shrugged off my jacket. "Will you tell them I came?"

He chugged out a laugh, the notable wheeze in his chest crackling. "Will make no difference. They aren't who they are right now. Who would I be telling?" He shrugged. "Flip a coin. Could be any of them."

"Can you read my mind?"

He smiled. "I can't read my own anymore, sweetheart. You got no worries with me."

"How do they do it?"

"Higher level of consciousness. It's a muscle, just like any other. Exercise it, don't. Some are better than others." He tapped his head. "Years of it darn screwed mine up. Spend too long in the heads of others, and you'll start to lose your own. It's nature's way."

So that was how a man in his prime deteriorated to the extent I had seen when I first came. "Who are they?" I asked.

"Family. And family comes first, my grandpa always said. It's not good to have unfinished business, missy. Certain things keep you coming back."

"Did Lucille have unfinished business?"

He smiled again. "The Bentons built this town from the ground up. Immigrants, most of them."

"That's not what I was asking." I shook my head, the frustration pounding at my temples, but he carried on anyway.

"My grandpa Thomas and his brothers flocked to the steel mills. He learned his trade. The town became famous for it."

I paused, unsure if I had just stumbled onto something significant. "What's your last name?"

"Benton, honey."

I blinked and then blinked again, refusing to let the emotion from his last words spill from my eyes. "You are David Benton? As in D. Benton? Luke and Paul are Benton's?"

Benton Motors. How did I miss the family link? Why would Lucille make a man on the verge of losing his mind and his life the executor of her last will and testament? I let the notion bounce around my head. When it clicked, it was so sudden and obvious, perfect even. With his mind and health deteriorating, he could never divulge the secrets of an Alpha, and if he tried, he might not live long enough to spill them all.

"David, did Lucille give you any paperwork, deeds, or instructions?"

"She's dead, honey. I'm so sorry." He reached out and patted my hand. "The boys read her obituary in the newspaper. Lucille was going to make everything right again."

"Make what right again?" I gripped his hand.

His brows narrowed, his gaze fixed on one spot in contemplation, then it moved to another. "I had it a moment ago." He sighed through his nose. "Paul would say my brain is Swiss cheese, full of holes.

Paul's attempts at explanations were becoming clearer; in his own way, he had been preparing me to understand what was possible before the truth shattered every concept of the normal world I believed.

David yawned. "As much as your company makes an old man like me feel special, I'm going to have to hit the hay, missy. Help a man to his bed?" He extended a hand.

I lifted him up with an arm hooked under his. He pointed to a door in the kitchen. There was a larger free-standing oxygen tank by his bed with a mask. He slunk onto the bed, unbuttoning the first two buttons of his shirt. I unpeeled the tubes from his face and set them down on his bedside table, replacing them with the mask. The air hissed and spluttered as I turned it on.

He smiled, reached forward, and picked up my hand. "He cares for you, honey. " He grinned, rolling his shoulders until he found comfort in the thin mattress.

I pulled up his covers, tucking them in around him. "I don't think he does anymore."

"He's no more at fault than I am. We do what we do because family comes first."

"You mean the Pack. I can't live that way."

His smile slipped, his expression became neutral, then his lips lifted in the corners. "Thought I'd see you. What's got you spooked, missy? I'm just about to take a nap."

"Rest," I said, leaning forward and placing a kiss on his head as Paul would have done. I could repeat this cycle until morning. Until then, I would tear through every inch of his house while he slept. There must be some evidence she left behind. Whatever her unfinished business was, she needed to get it over and done with so I could leave Benton for good.

As soon as David's wheezing sounded less laborious, I went back to the living room. Besides the kitchen, armchair, and log burner, there was a single antique oak dresser. The upper section had a molded cornice above a three-shelf rack back, with hanging hooks on the underside of the top shelf. The lower section was an arrangement of three drawers over two, each with decorative brass drop handles.

The drawers were locked. This was strange for a man who never bothered to lock his own front door. The unit looked aged. Like most things in the cabin, it had been left to fall into disrepair. I walked into the kitchen, opened the drawer below the sink, and pulled out a butter knife. It was nowhere near as thin as a letter opener, but it would still afford precision. The mechanism on older locks was predictable.

Back at the dresser, I rocked the knife up and down, moving it in and out of the lock. It didn't open. The knife slipped, slicing my finger. Almost certain I'd drawn blood, I sucked the tip and cursed myself. "Figures," I muttered.

I restarted the process again before the rotational force allowed the pins inside the lock to drop. There was a click.

Inside, letters and scattered photos sat disorganized. I sifted through the piles. There was a photo of a boy no older than ten in shorts and a t-shirt, grinning like an idiot with an ice cream in his hand. The shorter blond boy next to him was in a Batman suit, eyes welling with tears, an empty cone in his hand, and a spattering of ice cream down his chest. I grinned, knowing these two boys now that they had become men.

I set the photo aside, digging through the mounds of irrelevant paperwork until I came across a letter. The intricate handwriting on the envelope read, ′To my dearest Dana.′

Sitting on the couch, the weight of what might be inside made my fingers tremble. The corners of the envelope had been roughly torn. I unfolded the paper inside. My eyes closed. The sender's name crinkled on the page as I balled it in my fist.

There has been an uprising within our Pack.

If I am no longer safe in human form, neither will you be, my child.

When the time comes, find me.

I will know it's you.

Lucille