I pass the day in a sort of haze, unable to clear the mental fog that's come to settle in my mind.

Julian and Dane give up their office room for me, Julian unrolling an old futon he'd had stored in a closet, and then I spend the rest of the morning drying and ironing my rain-dampened clothes.

The ever-thrilling life of a werewolf, you know.

In the afternoon, Dane leaves to 'take care of some stuff,' but I know he's headed for Ambrose's house, to try to talk to him. When he returns, I'm sitting on the back porch, grooming Dougal, but I can hear what he says plainly enough through the open door.

"Any luck?" Freya asks. She'd stayed all day, working on her laptop and phone and generally taking over Julian's house.

"No," Dane answers, sounding unhappy. "The creepy girl answered the door, but wouldn't let me in. Said Ambrose, 'wasn't taking visitors.' When I pressed, she admitted no one's seen him since the day before. He's locked himself in his room and given orders not to let anyone in the house. Even Mathilda's staff have been turned out."

"Why didn't you just bust your way in? That's what you usually do."

"Thought about it," Dane admits, still keeping his voice quiet. "Decided it wasn't likely to be worth the effort. Instead I told creepy-girl to give him a message."

"Lemme guess. Was it, 'you hurt my brother and I'll tear your heart out and make you eat it?'"

"No, he's heard that one already," Dane grunts. "I said... Well, I said that when he's ready for help, we'll be there."

"Oh. That's...nice of you."

I can imagine the skeptical lift of Freya's brow, and it almost makes me smile.

"I can be nice," Dane returns neutrally, "when it suits me."

"Ooh, so it's a strategy, then?"

There's a pause, and then Dane speaks in an even quieter tone, probably thinking I can't hear. He always did underestimate my ears.

"More like...an act of faith," he says.

"Faith? In dragon-man?" Freya scoffs.

"No, in Noah," Dane answers and pauses again for one of his long, deep-lunged sighs. "Whether we like it or not, he's made his Choice; and for better or worse, that Choice is Ambrose Thorne. The best we can hope is that Thorne makes it out of this mess alive, and that he's not a murderer or a monster by the end of it. For Noah's sake, if I can help him do that, then I will."

A few seconds pass in silence, and then Freya speaks in an equally soft voice.

"You're a good brother, and a good man, Dane. A good Wolf, too. But you have a bad habit of taking on other people's problems and making 'em your own. Like you did for me."

Dane starts to speak, but Freya goes on.

"Just listen. I'm grateful. You saved my life, and you know that. But that was years ago, and you're in a different place now. You've got a Mate who needs you and—from what I hear—you might have a rare shot at something more. Now, like you said, this is Noah's choice, which makes it his responsibility. Not yours. You've got to let him live and learn from his own mistakes, whether or not Ambrose Thorne is among them."

I wait for Dane to answer, but after a few minutes, in which my heart and lungs feel increasingly too large for my rib-cage to contain them, I realize he isn't going to, and I get up and start walking.

I'm not angry at Freya, or at Dane, because Freya is right. Dane's protective, alpha nature is exactly what I've been relying on; instead of finding my own strength, I've been letting him shelter me with his, and suddenly I hate myself for that.

As I walk out across the meadow, my shoes squelching in the muddy grass and my emotions burning a hole in my chest, Dougal tries to follow me and suddenly I can't stand the sight of him—of his happy, trusting nature and his stupid, sweet face.

I spin and point back towards the house. "No, Dougal! Go on—you stay!"

He stops, head tilted and ears perked, his tail waving with a small, uncertain wag. I've never spoken to him in this tone before, and he's confused, which—insensibly—makes me even angrier.

"Go!" I yell. "Go home!"

At that, he gives an excited bark, plants his front paws forward in a playful bow, and then takes off.

He doesn't run towards the house, though. Instead, he heads around the side of it and out towards the gravel drive, where my car is parked.

Realizing what he's thinking in his stupid dog mind, I follow him, my anger vanishing like smoke.

I find him sitting, like a good boy, beside the back door of my car, and I don't know if I want to laugh or cry.

"You dumb dog," I sigh, and kneel to pet his head and give him a hug, scruffing my hands through his soft fur and leaning my head against his side. "We can't go home yet. I'm sorry."

Freya's right. This was my Choice. I ran away from Thom and from what he did to me. I hit a dog with my car in the middle of the night on a lonely stretch of road. I fell in love with a man who may or may not be a monster, and who may or may not love me in return.

My Choice. My responsibility. My heart.

My life.

I can't let anyone else risk theirs. Least of all Dane, who has so much to live for.

~ ☾ ~

That night, I can't sleep.

The futon is old and lumpy, and no matter how I arrange myself among its hills and craters, I can't get comfortable.

Across the narrow hall, I can hear Julian and Dane talking quietly in their room. After a while, they fall silent, and at first I think they're asleep.

Then I hear other sounds.

It's obvious they're trying to be quiet, but after the second time I hear Julian say 'harder,' I've had enough.

Rising silently, I let myself out the back door, careful not to rouse Dougal as I do.

Outside, the stars are veiled behind high, thin clouds and the air is cold. For a moment I stand, staring up at the stretch of the Milky Way, imagining other worlds and other lives, and then—without really making a conscious decision to do so—I strip out of my clothes, fold them neatly in a pile, and Shift.

On silent, padded feet, I strike out across the meadow, nose to the ground.

I don't have a clear destination in mind, and simply run where my feet take me, weaving in and out of the edges of the woods, tracking over open fields and slinking across roads. I fall into a kind of trance as I run, not thinking, living entirely in my senses and enjoying the relative peace and simplicity of my wolf's mind.

When I finally snap out of it, I'm home.

Not back at Julian and Dane's.

Home.

Just like Dougal, this is the only place that the word 'home' conjures in my mind: Ambrose's rambling old mansion, with its half-dead gardens, peeling paint, lonely windows, its strange angles and steep, many-gabled roofs.

My home, where my Mate is waiting for me.

Stealthily, I slink across the street, but stop at the low stone wall that encircles the property on the other side. I could jump it easily, or circle around to the back where I know there are gaps in the fence that borders the strip of woods on that side.

A single scent stops me—something I know from description alone, but which is unmistakable nonetheless.

Wolfsbane.

It's all over—the oil sprinkled and spilled over the stones of the wall, spread in a ring I know circles the whole yard without having to look.

Wolfsbane—aconite—is extremely poisonous, though not only to wolves. In Wolf culture, though, it carries a special significance.

It means stay away.

It means unwelcome.

It means enemy.

Ambrose must have spread it out here after Dane's visit. Where he'd gotten such a thing, I didn't know, but this was Spring Lakes, after all.

The local herbalist (one of them, at least) probably had a back room or something.

That he would have done so hurts enough.

It hurts twice as much given what he'd told me of his own thoughts on poisons—that they were among the cruelest weapons of all.

What really strikes me, though, are the few leaves tacked to the door. A little spray of dried wolfsbane, like a sprig of holly, but with nothing like a 'holiday' connotation—at least to me.

My wolf's mind registers it, though not with the same clarity that I know my human mind later will, and I pace back and forth over the sidewalk before the gate, a low whine in my throat as I detect the poison splashed liberally over the ground and along the path.

A car drives past and slows, the driver probably wondering whether I'm a lost dog or a very large coyote—wolves not being local to this area—and after it's gone I recross the street and take shelter in the densely wooded parkland on the other side.

I sit in the thick layer of fallen leaves and gaze up at the house across from me. A feeling rises in my chest—unstoppable as a bubble rising in water—and I throw my head back and release a long, keening howl.

The lonely song of a solitary wolf, it carries far on the cold air, high and shivering, and I know that it will be heard.

I don't care. Let whoever hears it talk and speculate. As long as Ambrose hears me, too—hears every note, and every ounce of pain and longing that it carries—then it's worth whatever talk of 'wolves in the area' that it might inspire.

A wolf's song has a life of its own. It rises from the heart as a need to be expressed, lifts to the instrument of the throat, and then floats from the open jaws like a ribbon of sound, carried high and free as an offering of the soul.

I don't know if Ambrose will understand, from this wordless wail, but I'm offering him all of mine.

I hope he'll take it, because I'm losing it either way.

~ ☾ ~

By the time I return to the cottage, the first light of dawn is tinting the eastern sky with tangerine and cream, and as I Shift and dress myself in my clothes—now chilled and misted with night dew—I realize that the ache in my throat and head isn't just from howling and a lack of sleep.

As quietly as I can, I sneak back to my room and lie down, knowing, even as I'm falling asleep, that I'm also falling ill.

The next time I wake, a damp cloth is pressed to my brow, and then Dane forces me to sit up and drink some kind of bitter herbal tea that makes me choke; and Chloe is there, giving him instructions on how often and how much of various teas, tinctures, and tonics I should have.

After that, things get hazy and confused, and I don't know how much is real and how much I dream. At one point I half-wake, wrapped in someone's arms, and for a moment of pure light, I think I'm back in Ambrose's bed. Then I realize that the massive arm encircling me is too big and the wrong color, and that Dane is using his impressive body heat to keep me warm.

When I return to full consciousness at last, it's quickly apparent I've been ill for several days, and that I've caused my family and friends some considerable distress.

Later, I sit wrapped in blankets by the fire, eating a bowl of chicken soup prepared by Grace, while Chloe explains that a combination of mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion coupled with a simple cold had knocked me flat.

"It's mostly your temperature that worried us," she tells me. "You had a bad fever the first night, but since it broke you've been...cold." She glances at Dane.

"Did anyone..." I swallow around the raw feeling in my throat. "Did anyone tell..."

I find I can't even say his name, and study the chunks of carrots floating in my soup.

"I tried," Dane says. "I called him, texted him... I went to his house but, uh..."

"Wolfsbane," I whisper. "I know."

"How...? Oh, Noah, you didn't..."

I nod and shut my eyes, because if I don't he'll see the tears in them.

"Shit. I'm sorry."

I feel his hand on my shoulder, and for a moment he doesn't speak. Then he lets go and gently takes the half-empty soup-bowl from my hands.

"He... He doesn't know what it means," I say, with more hope than real conviction.

Dane hesitates and keeps his hand on my shoulder as he speaks, his voice nearly as raw and cracked as my own, though considerably deeper.

"I wish that were true, but I think he does, Noah. I think he knows exactly what it means, and whether it's to protect you or not, and whether you're willing to give him up or not, I think that he's given up on you. I'm sorry, brother, but no Wolf would do that to another Wolf he loved."

I can't manage an answer either way, and he releases me with a gentle squeeze.

"Hey, just rest for now," he says. "Get strong. Don't think about it, okay?"

I nod, and everyone makes a careful effort to talk about other things, but my mind won't leave it alone.

Because besides, stay away, unwelcome, and enemy, there is one other meaning of wolfsbane—at least to Wolves.

If, for some unthinkable reason, a Wolf should wish to separate from a Mate, hanging wolfsbane on the door is the traditional way to go about making sure everyone knows it—but especially the disfavored mate.

To them, the meaning is always clear.

To them, it says, 'this isn't your home anymore.'