At the end of Julian's long gravel driveway, where the narrow lane rejoins the main road, I stop my car, shut off the engine, and sit in the sudden stillness, staring through the windshield at the patch of ground illuminated by the headlights' dim beams.

My whole future seems to be lit and visible in that wash of weak light, and just as limited.

I know that what I'm doing is the definition of stupid—self-destructive, even—and that if Thom doesn't end up killing me, Dane probably will.

Only hours earlier I'd promised him I'd stay out of danger, and now I'm about to drive right into it.

As I listen to my heartbeat in my ears, I try to convince myself that I'm not just being reckless, and that I have a good reason for what I'm about to do.

It isn't just for Ambrose, or Dane, or the case, I remind myself. It's for me, too. One way or another, I will break Thom's hold on me once and for all, and I will be free of him; because if he thinks a few naked photos are enough to scare me, he's wrong.

Sure, no one wants naked photos of themselves floating around on the internet, but neither Dane nor Freya are in any kind of position that would be seriously damaged by such a thing. The pictures could be misconstrued, of course, but they weren't incriminating. If anything, they just make Thom look like a creep for taking them in the first place.

If it wasn't for the fact that the photos of that night—the night Brutus died—might hold something far more valuable, I'd have told Thom to do what he liked with the pictures, and fuck himself on the way.

Of course, it's possible that the photos contain nothing, and that I'm doing this for nothing—but if there's a chance I might do some real good, I can't let that chance go.

Taking a deep breath, I pull my phone from my pocket and make one final call—a call I know won't be answered, but which I have to make nonetheless.

When it goes to voicemail, I don't give myself time to think, and just force myself to speak, and to say what needs to be said.

"Ambrose...it's Noah. I... I'm going to meet Thom tonight. I know you told me not to see him again, but... well, if you still care, I think he has some important evidence, and..."

I stop myself and take another deep breath.

"Anyway. I know you might not hear this. Maybe you'll delete it without even listening. Maybe you did make a mistake, and maybe your feelings have changed. I don't know. All I know is that mine haven't. You made me love you, and I love you still."

Pausing once more, I shut my eyes and say the last of it.

"I love you. But I need the people I love to stop hurting me. So... one way or another, I think this is goodbye, Ambrose Thorne."

Then I end the call, restart my car, pull out onto the empty, moonlit road, and drive east towards the pass.

~ ☾ ~

Thom's is the only car parked at the overlook, which isn't surprising, given it's nearly midnight.

I park my own on the opposite side of the pullout and study him through the glass before getting out.

Leaning against the hood of his car, on which rests a large manila envelope, he's wearing one of the cable-knit sweaters he favors—maybe even one of the nice Irish wool ones I'd given him for Christmas last year—and smoking a cigarette.

Thom only ever smoked when he was stressed out of his mind about something, which isn't a good sign.

There are plenty of times and places he might've chosen to meet and discuss how he intends to blackmail me, after all—midmorning at a park bench, afternoon at a nice café. That he's chosen the middle of the night at a great place to dump a body tells me he intends to ensure, one way or another, that things go his way.

As I get out of my car, he straightens, drops his cigarette, and scrubs it out beneath the heel of his leather shoe, and I take a moment to examine our surroundings.

To one side, the old railroad bridge spans a deep gorge, through which the river tumbles on its way to the valley below. At our backs loom the rocky, black peaks; before us, the broad vale. The lights of the town shine on one side and the wild meadows and woods lie dark on the other, all awash in the silvery light of the nearly full moon, riding high overhead in a clear, cloudless sky.

It would be a wonderful place to watch the sun rise, if I live to see it.

"Noah," Thom greets me with a nod, glancing behind me at my car. "You came alone, then."

He sounds relieved, and I realize he hadn't asked me to.

"Thom," I return coldly, stopping a few yards in front of him. "You have the pictures?"

He nods at the envelope. "Copies only, of course. The originals are digital, and all safely backed up and secure."

"Let me see." I hold out my hand.

He watches me but makes no move, maybe considering whether he ought to relinquish his advantage so soon, not knowing that I don't really care what the pictures show—only what clues they might inadvertently contain.

"Thom—let me see," I say, with a firmness that earns me a lifted brow.

"Alright," he agrees, picking up the envelope and holding it towards me. "Go ahead. See."

I take it and pull out the stack of prints. The moon is bright but even so my human vision can barely make out details by its light. Turning away from Thom, I Shift my eyes, quickly flipping through the photos until I find the set that interests me.

Those taken the night that Brutus died.

On top is the one I've already seen—of me and Ambrose—followed by shots showing Dane and Freya's arrival, but it's what happened earlier in the night that matters.

I try to sort the pictures chronologically. The earliest, as far as I can tell, shows Brutus standing on the lawn in the early evening, staring up at the second-floor windows as though trying to puzzle out something that doesn't make sense. Then there are a few shots of Ambrose and I arriving home after dinner with Julian and Dane, and then several of the empty street and darkened house.

Glancing over my shoulder, I frown at Thom. "When the fuck did you sleep?" I ask. "And why were you lurking out there, taking pictures of my—of Thorne's—house, anyway?"

"It was actually only the second time I'd stayed overnight," he answers. "I knew I'd catch you, eventually, but I admit I didn't think I'd get lucky so soon."

"What do you mean, 'catch me?'"

I turn my attention back to the photos, pausing as I see one of a woman dressed in loose, flowing clothes crossing the street. She has bare feet and long, dark hair.

"It's certainly not what I expected to find," he says. "I have a hard time believing it, even now."

"That I found someone else, you mean?" I scoff.

Not that it had turned out particularly well, but I feel something like vindication at the thought of Thom having seen me with Ambrose; having seen that I was, or at least had been, wanted in that way.

Thom doesn't reply, and I look at the next photo, which shows the woman re-crossing the street in the opposite direction, leaving the house.

"Do these have timestamps?" I ask.

"On the original files," Thom asserts, though he sounds hardly interested.

I nod. Another shot shows Brutus emerging from the front door. From the distance it was taken, it's hard to tell, but he looks like he's struggling—one hand outstretched, the other grasping at the rail.

In the next he's nowhere to be seen, having fallen, and another figure stands over the spot we'd found him, fire-poker in hand. He wears a tartan robe and has long auburn hair and pale skin.

"Did you... did you see what happened?" I ask, glancing at Thom.

He shrugs, still eyeing me like he has more interesting things on his mind than the evidence of the murder he'd managed to capture.

"Looked like your pale lover struck the heavy-set fellow quite a blow," he says. "He went back in, came out again a while later and stood over the body, as though he'd just discovered it. Then—"

He nods at the photos, and I look at the next. It shows me approaching Ambrose, hand outstretched.

"I thought he might kill you, and almost revealed myself, then. Fortunately, I held myself back, deciding to let it play out as it would. Otherwise, I'd have missed the real money-shot."

"The real...?" I look through the rest of the pictures, but I don't get what he means. There's me—as a wolf—crossing the street on the trail of the thief; me—as a man—coming back. There's Freya and Dane, and then all of us grouped around the body with Penelope.

Then my attention snags on something I'd almost missed—my Wolf's eyes being so much less sensitive to color, and the photo being just a low-quality print. Rifling back through the stack I pull out the picture of Ambrose standing over Brutus and compare it to the one of him with the rest of us.

There are differences—I'm almost sure: differences in the pattern of the robes, and in the length and color of the hair. Most importantly, on the raised hand of the figure standing over Brutus' slain form, I see a glint of light on a gold ring.

Ambrose, I've noticed—having a somewhat intimate acquaintance with his hands—wears no rings.

Blinking rapidly, I Shift my eyes back to my human form and turn towards Thom.

"The originals—will you send them to me?" I ask, thinking that if I could just zoom in, I could verify what my admittedly imperfect vision is telling me.

Thom narrows his eyes. "That depends," he says. "If you give me what I want...well, then I guess we'll see."

"Fine. What do you want?" I ask, refocusing my attention on him and the situation at hand. I'd become so distracted by the pictures I'd almost forgotten why I'm here.

He smiles, leaning back against the hood of the car and recrossing his arms.

"I want the same thing I've wanted all along, Noah, though I couldn't admit it to myself; I want what I didn't know I'd miss until it was gone," he says. "I want you, of course."

I barely manage not to gag on the bile that rises in my throat and treat him to a sneer.

"Don't worry—I know it's impossible, now," he goes on. "When I first followed you here, though, that was the truth."

He runs a hand through his thick gray hair—a hand that shakes a bit, I notice—and blows out his breath.

"I never missed any of the others, you know, but I missed you. I thought I'd be relieved not to have to pretend anymore—to act as if I enjoyed touching you, or that I cared about your vapid concerns—and yet I looked for you whenever I got home and was disappointed not to find you waiting there. I'd start speaking of some new book or article I'd read, thinking it would spark some brilliant idea in you, only to find myself talking to the air. I reached for you in the empty space beside me when I slept, and thought of you when I... Well, let's just say it seems you made more of an impression than I gave you credit for."

An awful tangle of pain and anger, laced with a sick trace of happiness, chokes me and I can hardly breathe. His words are the words I want to hear, but the last thing I want to hear from Thom. Like a ghoul belching forth its last meal, he's exposed in all its gory detail exactly what drew me to him, and what kept me there: my need to belong somewhere and to someone, my soul-deep desire to be loved, and his ability to take advantage of that in every possible way.

"You're a monster," I breathe.

He shakes his head and smiles, though it's the smile of a man prepared to kill everything he loves for the sake of the one thing he thinks he needs.

"No," he says, "I'm no monster. I might not be a good one, but at the end of the day, I'm just a man. You, on the other hand, are the real monster, aren't you?"

He reaches for something in his pocket and I back away, but what he draws forth is not a weapon.

Not in the usual sense, anyway.

It's a book.

He tosses it to me, the pages flapping like the wings of some demented bird, and I catch it by reflex.

"Found that in the funny bookstore where you work," he says. "I went in one day when I knew you weren't there, just to see what the place was, and of all the books in that place, this is the one that literally jumped out at me."

I stare at the cover, able to read the silver-embossed text easily by the light of the moon.

On the Were-Wolf, and How He May be Recognised.

"Let's see," Thom says, as if reciting from an important text for a class, "'Honest, trusting and loyal by nature, the Werewolf places high value on familial bonds; will readily sacrifice personal comfort and advantage for that of a mate or sibling; shares gifts and abilities freely while expecting little or nothing in return' —oh, and my favorite— 'Often carries a pleasant, wild scent, as of winter evergreen boughs wet with fresh rain, or of toasted wild grass beneath a summer sky; or that of an animal—the musky aroma of clean, dense fur."

He stops and laughs to himself.

"Now if that isn't you to a T, Noah, I don't know what is. God, if I haven't missed that smell. Nothing else like it in the world, I think."

I stare at him.

"Y-You're insane," I say, though even I don't sound convinced.

He shakes his head.

"I thought so, too, at first. Werewolves, of all the ridiculous..." He wipes his hand across his mouth and laughs again. "But then, the more I watched, the more I learned, the more I came to believe. And then, I saw it: a wolf goes one way, a man comes back. Then your brother and sister did the same—again and again, every night since. And now... Well, now I'd like to have proof."

He reaches behind his back, and this time he produces a small, six-chambered revolver. Almost casually, he examines it, checks that it's loaded, flicks off the safety, pulls back the hammer, and aims it at me.

"I don't know if I could shoot a man," he muses. "Not one I'd... Not one I'd known, anyway. But an animal... Well, I suppose we shall see."

Looking me up and down, he tilts his head to the side in the thoughtful manner he used to affect in front of a class when demonstrating a difficult philosophical problem.

"So. Show me, Noah. Show me what you are. Give me proof, and I'll make sure those photos never see the light of day."

A tremor runs the length of me, but otherwise I don't move.

Thom smiles, and when he speaks his voice is almost gentle.

"Come now. Show me, and I'll delete them all. You have my word of honor as a man, and as a scholar."

"You're no such thing," I spit, but then—though I'm already shivering—I begin to undress.

He wants to see.

Fine.

I'll show him.

I need those pictures, and I'm faster as a Wolf, anyway.