Rejoining the others, we find Dane and Freya have the situation in hand.

Aengus is locked in a pair of irons, chained to a point of his own star, a rag bound over his mouth and guarded by Freya. Nearby, Dane tends to Mathilda's injuries with the first-aid kit he keeps in his car. 

For her part, Mathilda kneels in the grass by Penelope's body and holds her daughter's hand, seeming hardly aware of the man taping gauze to the side of her head.

She's lost both her children in roughly the span of a week, I reflect; but while I'd have hardly guess she even knew Brutus, for Penelope, she weeps.

Aileen sits at the corpse's other side, also in tears, while August stands a few feet away, hugging himself and looking miserable.

"Poor Penelope," I murmur as we approach. "I know you think she was as bad as the rest, but... I think she deserved better."

Ambrose squeezes my hand, but holds his peace.

Spotting us, Dane leaves off his ministrations and strides straight for Julian, catching him in his arms. Then the two speak soft and close, and I hear Dane say something like, "shouldn't have," as he touches Julian's pointed ears.

Julian shrugs self-consciously and mutters, "Would have had to, anyway," and the two embrace again.

A low whistle draws my attention away from them, and I cringe as I turn to find Freya taking in the view.

Ambrose is still on full display. I know she's filing away all sorts of information for my future torment, but when my sister turns her attention my way, her expression carries only concern.

"You okay, little brother?" she asks. I'm a year her senior, but she's been calling me that since she outgrew me at age nine. "What happened? We heard that howl, and then your man there took off like a bat outta hell."

As Julian and Dane join us, we quickly recount our misadventures with Thom.

"A Lycan?" Freya gapes. "Holy shit, Nono. Good thing you had a dragon on your side."

"Good thing he had a Fae, more like it," Ambrose allows. "It was fair Julian who finished the beast."

Freya and Dane both stare, one with surprised admiration, the other with undisguised fear, but Julian merely shrugs.

"I snuck up on him and stabbed him in the back. No big deal."

Ambrose rests a hand on my shoulder. "Nonetheless, I am grateful, and shall be forever in your debt."

Julian shrugs again, looking uncomfortable. "Hey, what's Pack for?" he says, but then he meets my eyes and goes slightly pink.

I blink, and then nod an assurance that I understand.

He'd risked his life to fight at my side, as I had once fought at his, refusing to let me face danger alone. If any part of me had not yet forgiven him for betraying my trust, I forgave him now. 

We were Pack, and that made us brothers, even if we didn't always get along.

"So... What now?" Dane asks, indicating Aengus and the relics, which still rest in a pile on the altar at the center of the seal.

Ambrose sighs and runs his hands through his long, soot-streaked hair.

"I've an idea," he says, "but it's not my choice alone to make."

He nods towards Mathilda, Aileen, and August.

"It's the only sure end to all of this, but it's for them to decide."

"Decide what?" Mathilda asks, looking up at us with weary, grief-reddened eyes. "What is there to decide? You must destroy the relics. Aengus must pay for what he's done."

Blood and tears streak her face, her hair is a mess, her clothes are torn, and half her head is wrapped in bandages. She looks more human than I've seen her yet, and I like her better for it.

"I agree," Ambrose says, "of course. But Ainach did not lie: to take one Gift, he must take all. Furthermore, there must be an exchange. In taking the Gifts, Ainach shall return your mortality."

"So, we will die," Mathilda states, sounding not at all distressed by the idea. "So be it, then."

Ambrose, though, shakes his head. "No. Time stopped for you and the others—save Aengus, of course—the day you made those deals. When you lose your Gift, that clock will start again. You will have whatever remains to you of your natural lives, during which you will age and grow old—as you should have long ago—and then, yes, you will die. What you do with the time between now and then is up to you."

There's silence for a moment, and then Aileen speaks.

"It's more than we deserve," she says. "I don't object."

August, to my surprise, nods as well. "I don't know if I can change, but if you give me a chance to try, I'll take it."

Mathilda sniffs and wipes at her eyes. She still kneels by Penelope, and now she carefully arranges her daughter's hands over her unmoving breast and leans to kiss her death-paled brow.

"My poor Nellie," she murmurs, getting to her feet. "If any of us deserved such a chance, it was she."

I hear the echo of my earlier words and swallow the ache in my throat as I understand that what Penelope had said was true: the Oakfields and Thornes hadn't set out to be awful.

Even Aengus had good intentions once, though he'd used them to pave his own road to hell.

"What you're offering is a Gift in its own way, though what happens to us hardly matters now," Mathilda continues. "As long as this is done, and over for good, then I don't care. Do as you will."

Aengus makes a strangled noise of protest and pulls at his bonds, but Ambrose only shakes his head at him.

"I know what you would say, Aengus Thorne, and it will not sway me," he says. "I will do what I must. I am free of you now, and I will hear you no more."

Aengus glares, but goes still, acknowledging the futility of his struggle.

Then Ambrose turns to me.

"Little wolf," he says, taking my hands in his, "how do I love you so? We've not known each other long, but I know well enough I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Just as sweet raspberries were my favorite treat as a lad—picked ripe from the banks of the River Tay—and are my favorite still, and shall be my favorite, I'll wager, for as long as I live; so I know that my love for you shall remain as fresh as that very first, tart taste of pleasure. And I know that you would say the same," he continues cutting off my attempt to speak, "but you must understand that while my love for you is constant, I, as you know me, am not."

"Ambrose—"

"Just let me finish," he says, cutting me off. "I know you would give yourself as my anchor and my heart—willingly, readily—because it is your nature to give what others need. I'm asking you to wait. Let me do this, and then... Well, then it shall be your choice. You shall see me as I am, Noah Hunter; and then, if you still want me, I am yours."

I raise my eyes, see the open, honest pain in his, and nod.

"Alright, Ambrose Thorne," I say, trusting what I see in his eyes. "Do what you must. Then, dragon or man, you'll know what it is to belong to a Wolf."

He nods, his eyes flaring with a heat of love and desire that sears me to the bone, and kisses me so I taste fire on my tongue.

Then he pushes me gently to the edge of the seal, where Freya wraps me in her arms, before turning his attention to the relics piled at the center of the nine-pointed star. 

Mathilda, August, and Aileen take their places around the edge, and Ambrose meets each of their eyes in turn receiving a final nod of consent from each.

Then he raises his arms high and ignites in a pillar of flame. Above him in the air, the fire spreads and grows, seeming to take on a life of its own and assuming a new form as Ainach manifests.

The dragon's shape is reptilian, gracile, and thin, with four limbs, a long tail, enormous wings, and a mouth full of bladed teeth. He looks down on us with catlike eyes of yellow flame as he writhes in coils of fire and smoke. 

As terrifying as he his, I understand that he isn't really there—not physically, anyway. What I'm seeing is a projection of Ambrose's soul—just as he might see a wolf, if he really looked at me—which he's opened as a kind of window to that other realm, where Ainach's greater nature resides.

So, I lower my gaze and focus on the man himself—wreathed in flame, naked, inhuman and wild—and meet his eyes through a veil of fire.

I love him, still, and offer him what I can in a smile.

Something in his expression eases, then, and as he lets his head fall back, his dragonfire flares, and in that burst of incandescence, the relics are consumed.

As they burn, spectral mists emerge from each, and take shape at the empty points of the star.

I see a man with curling auburn air—much like Ambrose's own—whom I assume is his grandfather, Rowan Oakfield. Beside him, Brutus stands with his blustery expression gentled to a bewildered calm, and then there is Thaddeus, looking about him as though lost in a wood.

Finally, there are two more: Penelope, who smiles with restored innocence, and a beautiful young man with dark, long-lashed eyes, a slightly curved nose, and toasted brown skin—Jack, who would have been Shanti's human brother, and Aengus' son.

At last, only one relic remains: a gold watch with a broken face.

As Ambrose's hand hovers over it, he hesitates and lifts his gaze to each of his living relatives and to the shades of those who have died. His eyes land on his cousin, last, and Jack's shade gives him a wink and the crooked, knowing smile of a partner in crime.

He was Ambrose's only friend, his hero, and—I realize, with a twist of irrational jealousy—probably his first love, as well.

Ambrose returns Jack's smile, then shifts his gaze to me, and I offer him a smile of my own.

Jack might be the best memory he has of his past, but I am his present and—I hope—his future happiness.

As his eyes lock with mine, his expression shifts from nostalgic fondness to pure desire and he ignites, releases his full fire, and turns Aengus' relic to ash.

In the air above, Ainach's form spreads wings that cover half the sky and burns with a brightness that makes me shield my eyes.

Then, like a burst firework, or the petals of flowers falling in a spring breeze, he comes apart.

The deals are undone, and he is free.

The Oakfields and Thornes, too, are free.

Aengus shrieks as his body falls to blackened ash and dust, as it should have long ago, and the gathered shades rush towards him as one, and carry him off into the night air, where all dissolve as mist below the glare of the moon.

Then Ambrose's fire dims and diminishes to the glow of coals, gleaming along his veins and in the depths of his eyes, as the living heave a sigh of relief, and at last the night is still.

Ambrose still looks a little wild, and a little lost as I go to him, drawn by instinct like a moth to his flame.

"Hey," I whisper, carefully joining my hands with his. "It's over now. It's okay."

"Over?" he echoes soundlessly, looking about him at Aileen, Mathilda, and August where they kneel in the grass around the points of the star, and at the lumpy remains of Aengus' blackened bones and empty clothes.

I nod as he completes the circuit and meets my eyes again, and then he slumps, exhausted, and I barely catch him before he falls.

Then a much larger arm than mine slips around Ambrose's shoulders and takes his weight.

"Hell of a show," Dane says. "You okay?"

"I think so," I answer, though I watch with concern as fire continues to flicker fitfully beneath Ambrose's skin. "The others?"

"Seem to be," Dane grunts, nodding towards Mathilda.

"I'm all right," she says, climbing to her feet, "though I don't feel much different, to be honest."

"I do," Aileen says, dusting grass from her knees. "I feel better, I think."

"Me, too. Better," August echoes, blinking through a watery smile.

"Ambrose?" I ask, as he hasn't answered, though he's regained his balance and shifted away from Dane to lean on me once more, his arms at my waist.

"I'm all burnt out, little wolf," he whispers raggedly, kissing the side of my head. "But I'll be alright, with a bit of rest, I think."

Fire continues to flicke in his veins, though, and I'm not completely reassured.

As I examine him, Freya walks over to kick at Aengus' remains with the toe of her boot. 

"What now?" she asks, directing her question at Dane. "We got three bodies on our hands. Your cop friends gonna be cool with this?"

Dane shrugs. "We'll tell the truth—mostly. Though..." he looks at Mathilda and the others, "...we'll need some help."

"We will take care of it," Mathilda says, surprising me. "We will say that the man, Thom, killed Penelope before attacking me." She touches the side of her bandaged head. "And that August killed him to save me."

Dane nods.

"Chief Coleridge knows not to ask too many questions," he says. "It should work. As for the rest of us..."

His eyes to go Julian, who's wandered off a bit and stands staring up at the moon, clearly inhuman and looking as if he hardly belongs in this world.

 "Well, I guess I understand why Shanti saw us at the Standing Stones tonight." He sighs, watching as Julian hums to himself and literally reaches for the stars.

"What? Why?" Freya asks, glancing around for some new threat.

"Because it's where we're going, now," Dane answers quietly. "Julian and I, at least, and I guess you'll all want to come along. I thought we'd have more time to think things through, but..." He sighs again, watching Julian smile at the moon. "Anyway, Shanti saw us there because—"

"Because tonight time is steady between many worlds," Shanti herself answers, emerging from the shadows at the edge of the yard and making us all jump. "What passes in one realm shall pass in another, equally; it is one reason Aengus chose it for his ritual. Things are in rare balance, tonight."

"Wait... are you saying Juju's gotta go to Faerie-land, now?" Freya asks.

Dane nods unhappily. "Using his Fae abilities, on top of it being the full moon... He can't stay like this. Not here, anyway. He needs his own kind," he adds, grudgingly.

I look at Julian, at the way he shimmers with ethereal light, and realize that Dane is right. 

"At least one of you won't have to bear being apart longer than the other," I say, taking a bit more of Ambrose's weight as he leans on me. 

Shanti smiles. "Is it not better, after all, when there is a burden to bear, to share it equally?"

I agree, but also feel a little thrill of unease; because while it seems she's speaking to Julian and Dane, her eyes are on Ambrose and me.