(hello, ty for your time and for reading, i appreciate you greatly :D the little star is very grateful)

(EDITED) (Note to readers: Some chapters ahead may not be fixed to be in line with the new edits.)

There's an inarguable law of the universe about the conservation of matter and energy, in which it states that no matter or energy can be destroyed or added to the universe, only changed. I think about it now. I think about how even the universe itself, down to its beginning and end, will not lose anything, if it cannot gain something in return.

I was twelve, Seoul coated in the crimson coat of autumn outside a window in a home I'd never leave to a world I'd never see. My knuckles were bloody from my brother's face, my body bruised by his own vicious hands, and the scene outside was dismally echoic of the battery staining my own skin; autumn had wormed its way beneath me, bleeding from the inside out.

My father watched me from the doorway of the little attic I and my mother were bestowed. She wasn't there often, and if she was, you wouldn't know it, her days spent sleeping into madness or maddening herself into sleep. The nurses kept her too sedated for her to do anything else with her time. It left me with nothing but the window, and the wolves.

"There's a scale in the world, Echo." Byungho walked towards me, his footsteps light on cotton slippers, his clothes better fit for a sepia-saturated library than a well-dressed prison. He swiped a finger over the windowsill, blood and dust coming back. "It's why there are Alphas, and why there are Omegas. It's why there is Class I and there is Class III. There's your brother and you."

I rubbed at my neck, where the angry marks of a rope had burned into my skin from my brother's grip. I refused to speak.

"Are you angry?" he asked me. "I would be, if I were you. No one likes being a runt." He reached for my hair. He tightened his grip, not enough to hurt me, but enough to tell me he could. "What a pity."

"Where's Umma?" I asked.

He sneered. I'd gotten everything from my mother, from the shallow slope in her nose to the immovable softness in her cheeks to the narrow turn of her mouth. But she'd let slip once that Elias and I had received my father's eyes: dark things, vitriol and substantia nigra, iodine and ante meridiem ice. Eyes like windows, she'd warn. Eyes for a beast.

I saw them stare into me now. "Is that all you want?" he asked me. "I stand in front of you and you want your mother?"

"What would I want from you?" I snarled.

"More than Umma could ever hope to give you," he hissed, his grip tightening. "You're too naive for your own good, Echo."

"Where's Umma?" I demanded. "I want Umma."

He dropped my head. He got to his feet, towering above me, a wolf poised to strike. He walked towards the window. "You've never seen Seoul, have you?" he asked. "You've barely seen Incheon. It's such a shame, really. You've lived in a world you've never seen for twelve years." He glanced at me. "Would you like to?"

I glared. "Not with you," I spat.

He craned his head. "Why not?" he asked. "I could show you quite a lot." Byungho held out his hand to me. "I could give you so much if you just asked, Echo. If you just wanted." His fingers brushed the black hair from my face. "Don't think about what your mother needs from you. What do you want?"

The question wasn't just cruel. It was downright ruthless.

"I want my mother," I whispered.

It was the answer he expected, even if he didn't want to hear it. Byungho dropped his hand. He turned for the door to leave me alone in the autumn glow, as time raced away from me to leave me in the dust.

"Then I hope you're willing to pay her price," he said.

_____________________

Friday brought a San Diego State University match and a bad surprise. The proceedings of which were not smooth-sailing. But this would be a very different story if anything went right for me at any time ever at all—not to be bitter.

Coach had alerted Kane and I after Thursday's practice to report to the Corvidae before we were to leave for the match, saying something or other about an urgent conversation. Two Drachmann Alphas up against a Stirling Omega before noon, as if that was a fair game. Nonetheless it led to me fleeing molecular chemistry a few minutes early with my gear bag over one shoulder and my folders under my arm, where my fate awaited me in the lounge.

Kane was already seated on the wrap-around couch when I got there, clad in a navy wool sweater and apricot joggers, his shoes of the day a pair of tartan-check sneakers. He was flicking through his phone, his hair damp from a shower and limp over his brows. The scent of fresh soap was pungent when I sat beside him.

"Which ones are those?" I asked.

Kane didn't look up from his phone but answered, "Burberry. Cotton low tops." I plucked at his sleeve. Kane added, "Rag & Bone. Sale."

I shook my head. "Are you getting more fashionable with the warmer weather? How many shoes do you have, by the way?"

"Are you getting less? I think I can name off your T-shirts from memory by now," he said. "And that's between my shoe closet and me."

"You're killing an awful lot of farm animals with all that leather."

"And fueling the economy. I thought you weren't one of those vegans."

"Vegetarian, you blueberry."

"Burberry."

"That's what I said."

Kane finally looked up from his phone at that to give me a pointed look. He opened his mouth to retort, but was cut off with a resounding knock at the door. We craned our heads to spot Edwards walking inside, a thick folder in her hands and a scowl across her face.

"Good morning," I said.

"No," she replied succinctly, and slapped the folder open onto the coffee table.

The contents of the folder were immediate. Magazines, newspapers, printouts of online blogs and columns. All of which, more or less, containing something of the banquet's untidy Howl Wolf exchange. Including Terri fucking Howards's own take on it.

"A Jackdaw in the Crow's Nest : Corvus's Newest Recruit Shows The Patches in His Plumage"

"Corvus freshman, Echo Yun, tears interview from Howl Wolf Terri Howards apart at the SoCal NCAA Division I Square Racing Spring Banquet"

"Quality over Quantity—a tumultuous interview shows the cracks in Corvus's newest recruitment plan"

"Monkey See, Monkey Do—fans point to King's rocky past as the leading example for Yun's"

"Stirling and Drachmann Tensions Resurface Amidst Following Howl Wolf Interview with Corvus's New Freshman"

"The Caged Bird Sings—Corvus Stirling Freshman Starts a Fight He Can't Finish"

"Muzzle the Mutt : Corvus fans demand Corvus captain and coach control their rowdy recruit"

"Kingdom Fall—why the Howl Wolf interview fiasco finds fault with Edwards and King"

"Corvus captain's, Kane King, muddy history resurfaces following Howl Wolf interview"

The extremely-short-lived peace shattered almost immediately under the headlines and the force of Kane's hand as he slammed the folder shut.

He straightened and sent a blazing look at Edwards. "What the hell, Coach?" he snapped.

She held up a hand, silent and solemn. I reached over, inching the last article from The Lycan out to read the subtitle.

"Corvus captain's, Kane King, muddy history resurfaces following Howl Wolf interview. Many racing fans bring up the rocky past of Corvus's captain following amateur racer, Echo Yun, and his disastrous interview with Terri Howards, crassly calling the two troublemakers 'birds of a feather'"

I folded it up. Kane gestured at the articles, fuming. "When have we given a shit what the press has to say? They've been having field days with our names for years, this is nothing but another bone for them to go gnawing on."

"These are very creative titles. Livid, but creative," I said. Coach stared at me. I cleared my throat. "Have I mentioned I'm sorry?"

"You're out of your mind," Kane sighed. "You left it somewhere and never went back."

"Is it the same place you left your soul?" I muttered, and he shot me a scathing look.

Coach held up a hand to both of us. We went silent. She let out a deep sigh, then looked to Kane.

"From now on," she said, "you're his tracker."

Now, pause mid-scream.

"Tracking" originated in canine education before leaking into aquatic schooling, and was originally meant to imitate the "pack" mentality of canines in their developmental years. It was an organized effort that took secondary schools and universities by storm, before eventually finding its way down into organizations of all species. It typically connected older lycans to a younger one for anything like academic assistance, sports mentorship, or social shadowing. Avaldi's campus Health and Well-being Committee oversaw tracking, but in rare cases, those outside could request it. But, it was very rare.

"What?" we screamed.

Edwards kept her hands up. "I've already registered it on both of your campus and Talon cards as well, so if one of you couldn't go where the other one typically does, now you can. I don't want to see either one of you without each other until the end of this season."

"Season?" we screamed.

She mulled on as if we hadn't spoken. "The headlines are not getting any kinder to us, and you two have shoved yourselves into the brunt of it, whether recently or not. And frankly, I ought to agree with them."

"Agree?" we screamed.

"I think having a tracker will be good for you," she said to me. "You can have someone to rely on, and someone that will make sure you keep your mouth shut before you go and dig yourself into another press hole." She gave me a sharp look. "So, you." She pointed at Kane. "Tracker. And you." She pointed at me. "Trackee. Complaints? Too bad. Don't care. Got it? Got it. Grab your gear, we're in the car in ten."

"I can't be his tracker," Kane protested. "We'll kill each other."

"And I can't be tracked," I added. "I'm a free spirit. A safety hazard, if you will."

"Right now, you're a news hazard. I thought I said 'don't care'. Didn't I say 'don't care'? Because I don't care," she said, then gave Kane a solemn look. "Tracking can be helpful, for both parties. You know that. It might finally force you two to actually get along for longer than twenty minutes. Agreed? Agreed. Car in nine."

He threw his hands up. "What the hell am I even supposed to do, gag him twenty-four-seven? His mouth is the real culprit here, why am I getting punished?"

"You? What about me? I'm not even into gagging."

"What the fuck, Echo."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." Diego waltzed inside the lounge, his slides stuttering in their steps as he assessed the clearly-crazed situation before him. He paused a ways away awkwardly, frowning at us. "Who's not into gagging?"

"Sedate me," Kane muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Sedating who?" Meredith asked, peeking around Diego.

"The gagging one," Diego said.

"Who's gagging?"

Rosalie shoved in past them. She furrowed her brow. "Someone's gagging?"

Diego shook his head. "No, they're not into it."

"Into what? Who?"

Zahir said, "Who's into what?"

"Sedating," Meredith said.

"Someone's sedated?" Diego asked, bewildered.

"I thought they weren't doing that."

"That's gagging."

Zahir said, "Gagging who?"

"Probably the sedated one," Rosalie said.

"Who's sedated?" Diego asked.

"I was gonna ask you that."

"I'm talking about gagging."

Meredith said, "Why are they gagging?"

"No, they're not, that's why."

"Why they're sedated?"

"I thought they were gagging," Zahir said.

"Who is gagging?"

"No, they're not into that," Diego said. "I think they're into sedating."

Wynter and Zoe screeched to a stop behind the group. "What?" they exclaimed.

Kenzo pushed past them. "Sounds fun," he said calmly, then glanced to Coach and pointed his messy waves atop his head. "Bad hair day. Got a hat?"

Coach closed her eyes for a long, long moment. She faced us like she was going to say something, then seemed to give up on it, and turned on her heel to head out the door instead. But not before pointing at Kane to cut him off before he could even speak with a decisive, "Tracker," and disappearing out the door for good.

Corvus turned their heads back to us. Rosalie frowned at Kane.

"Tracker?" she asked.

Kane buried his face in his hands. I glanced at Corvus, and grinned sourly with a finger pointed at myself.

"Trackee," I said.

It was a three-hour drive to SDSU. If you think that's not enough time to lose your shit, try doing that in a van with an irritated coach and eight hyper-caffeinated lycans that all can't keep their noses out of anyone's business if their million-dollar lives depended on it.

"Oh, man," Diego cackled behind me. "Oh, cobayo. You couldn't shut up so badly that Coach got you a babysitter."

"Pull this van over," I called. "I can't slit someone's throat with all this damn swerving."

"She hates you so much that she got you a nanny," he went on, throwing his head back to laugh. "You need so much supervision she designated you a twenty year old nanny that's this guy." He tapped Kane's headrest. "This is too good. You're a fucking hazard, cobayo."

"Pull over. Pull over right now."

"You got yourself tracked, and you're not even through with freshman year," Rosalie scoffed. "This feels like a story I've heard before."

"I don't even want to know," I said, glaring at Diego as he continued cackling over Zahir, who was poorly trying to hide his own laughter. "I feel the need to remind everyone this wasn't my idea, or my doing, or my fault."

"No, no," Wynter said. "It's your fault."

"I think it'll help you a lot more than you think," Meredith said. "Tracking can really help younger lycans out, it's someone to rely on. And if have another interview, there'll be someone to...mediate."

"She means 'prevent disaster'," Wynter said. "As in 'what you constantly get yourself to cause'."

"One of those faces," I said, poking my cheek.

"Forget your face, look at King's." Diego reached over and poked Kane's temple; Kane, who was determined to stay asleep as still as a hibernating vampire for the entire ride. "How's it feel, being a tracker? You know, the thing you said you'd kill yourself before you became? Right up there with a McDonald's cashier and an insurance broker?"

He didn't respond. Zoe turned around in her seat to give me a small grin. "You two already spent a good deal of time together. It won't be that different."

I snapped my fingers. "Exactly why any more time together is a recipe for disaster. Coach, I thought you wanted less bickering. How am I gonna maintain those terms with more time together? I've got a thesis to give."

Coach turned up the radio. I gaped.

Zahir shoved Diego off of him and onto Kenzo's lap, who looked immediately disgusted. He leaned over the seats to talk to me. "I knew an undergrad guy that had a tracker," he said. "He said he hated it at first because they used to fight all the time, Eventually though, they got really close. Stayed friends throughout high school even after the tracking terminated. They became such great friends, they moved in together. They even sleep in the same bed. They got their third cat last month."

Meredith and Rosalie gave him strange looks. Meredith said, "You mean Aarush and Jack?" At Zahir's enthused nod, she said, "Aren't they married?"

"What? No, they're just really close."

Rosalie frowned. "Didn't we go to their wedding?"

Zahir frowned. "I thought that was just a family dinner."

"There were ninety people."

"Indian family dinner."

"I'm pretty sure that was a wedding. There was a service."

"They just like long-winded pre-dinner prayer."

"Your cousin was the ring boy."

"Jack likes jewelry."

"They have a shared bank account."

Zahir took a long pause. He pulled out his phone. "I gotta text Aarush."

I wrangled myself to the front, seatbelt be damned. "You have to pull over, Coach," I pleaded. "I can't marry Kane, I'll be eating salad and organic fruit roll-ups and going to sleep at the reasonable ten PM like a well-managed adult for the rest of my healthy, practical, cat-riddled life. A lycan, with three cats. They're trying to kill me."

"Would you all shut up and sit your ass down in your seat before I flip this car over on the goddamn highway?" Edwards barked. "I swear to God I'll never know how you all passed high school."

"I guess it was a little weird they kept kissing at the table," Zahir muttered.

"Dude," Diego said.

"Echo's getting married," Wynter snickered. "Someone release the doves. Or, do you all release crows?"

"Opposites attract," Diego argued.

"That's what Aarush said," Zahir murmured. "Wait a minute."

Kenzo craned his neck. "I'll be the ring boy."

Kane finally shot awake with an erupting, "For fuck's sake, no one is marrying anyone, sleep is essential for your brain's functioning, there is nothing wrong with my fruit roll ups, you're not even allergic to cats, and Jesus Christ, Zahir, that wedding was two years ago, there was a freaking priest, get a goddamn gaydar."

Kane slumped back in his seat and rubbed his temples. Zahir looked the most mildly offended of all of us, although Diego looked absolutely delighted.

Meredith cleared her throat. "There was a priest."

"Well," Zahir said. "You learn something new every day."

I paused. "What's a gaydar?"

Kane groaned loudly next to me, and the chaos returned tenfold.

The match between us and SDSU was to occur around eight PM, leaving us with around six hours to kill beforehand. After dropping off our things at their stadium's locker rooms, Coach had had quite enough of the team and ordered us to spend the day elsewhere in the city in order to give her time to "recuperate some hope for our futures as functioning adults". We didn't argue that.

Diego was keen to drag Zahir with him to some sort of shopping mall near the university to buy a new video game, and Kenzo and Meredith were fine to tour downtown while Rosalie, Zoe, and Wynter fled to a tourist-friendly aquarium. I had half a mind to go with any of them, but Kane intervened the conversation before I could decide.

"Let's meet somewhere for dinner in town," he said.

"Where are you going?" Rosalie asked, frowning.

"There's an anthropology museum I want to see," he replied. "Text me where you decide on."

I made a move to leave. "See you."

"Nice try," Rosalie said, snagging me by the back of my shirt. "Trackee, remember?"

I turned on Meredith. "Save me here."

She rubbed my arm. "Sorry, Yun. Tracking rules. Coach already told us she'll be checking. But anthropology museums are really interesting, I promise you'll have fun." Zoe and Rosalie gave her doubting looks, but Meredith shooed them away. "We'll see you for dinner." She pointed at Kane. "And it'll be a delicious dinner."

I turned to Zoe and Wynter with pleading eyes. Wynter raised a brow. "Museum about the pitfalls of humans, or food, drinks, clothes, and jellyfish," She pretended to weigh the options between her hands. "I'll pass."

Zoe sucked a breath between her teeth. "Yeah, me, too. Sorry, King. Humans are great though."

"Are they?" Wynter muttered.

"Be nice, they're cute."

I turned on Kane, who looked about as excited to spend the next four hours alone together as I did. "Downtown's not so bad," I tried.

Kane sighed, exasperated, and turned on his heel. "Keep up," he said.

"Good luck," Wynter assured. "We'll buy you a magnet."

I watched them walk away. I huffed, then turned on my heel to follow Kane. I glared at his back with a mocking gesture.

"I can see you," he said, not turning around.

I gawked.

It would be a long day.

San Diego glowed with the afternoon sun, its streets bustling with zipping cars and boisterous college students filing through storefronts. Red tile roofs, cream white walls, Spanish windows and walkways lined the innards of the avenues. It had a certain elegant age that remained in its bones, untouchable by the cosmopolitan year.

The last time I'd been near San Diego was at sixteen, with Mercy and the Bengals. I'd only driven the surrounding streets, never seen the heart and lungs of it, and certainly not for enjoyment. Going out at all for anything that wasn't for the Bengals or for races had never even been a consideration. Doing so felt like I'd gotten away with stealing.

Kane slowed in front of a bus stop just as the vehicle itself pulled up for us with a slow, aching screech. As we boarded, Kane asked, "Have you ever been to San Diego?"

"Once," I admitted.

"Did you like it?"

I shrugged. "Don't remember," I lied, then, "You really go to museums for fun?"

Kane raised a brow. "It's a shocker, I know," he deadpanned.

"History buff," I deduced. "I didn't know athletes really liked their majors."

"You don't?"

I shrugged. "I'm good at it," I said, because they weren't the same thing. "So, what's so great about this museum?"

Kane shrugged. "Guess we'll see. What do you have against museums?"

"Nothing. Can't hate what I've never seen."

Kane paused. We took a seat in front of a window, knee to knee.

"You've never been to a museum?" he asked. The bus creaked left and our shoulders collided, the scent of cotton hitting my nose. I stole a glance at the black threads climbing up his throat.

I cleared my throat. "No." I turned my eyes to stare out of the clouded windows, San Diego a smudged painting passing us by.

"No parties, no museums, what have you done?" he quipped.

I pursed my lips. I shrugged. "Nothing, I guess," I replied.

Kane eyed me. He opened his mouth to say something, then decided against it, turning his head to face the front of the bus instead.

"First time for everything, then," he said.

The Museum of Us was a culture anthropology museum about everything human, from warfare to love affairs to Victorian ghosts to neolithic phenomena. Lycans might rule their kind with an iron fist, but at least humans had the decency to be creative in their meantime.

I digress.

A courtyard led us into the dome and accompanying towers, where every doorway or awning was plastered with so much intricate stonework that simply trying to take it all in for what it was would've held me up for an hour or more. It could have been Atlantis above water if I didn't know better. If the whopping twenty bucks I'd paid for the ticket meant anything, it better have been.

"Wow," I breathed, staring up at it past the invading sunlight.

Kane went for the entrance. "Come on."

We headed into the halls of humans.

The world inside was white. Ivory walls, pillars like bones, archways like teeth. I stood on the honey hardwood to drink it in like ice water. Kane stood beside me, eyes glowing under the museum's chromatic ceiling. He looked stunned, sort of dazed. Reverence, maybe? It was an expression I'd never seen. That was the archeology of his personality, I suppose: nothing would exist until you bothered to dig for it.

He headed for the first one on his right. I followed Kane when he stopped at a set of children depicted in stone statues. I cleared my throat. "What's this again?"

"Keep your voice down," he murmured. "It's an exhibit on racial history. Read the signs."

"Hey, never been to one of these, have some sympathy," I snapped.

I turned on my heel to head for a stand about porcelain dolls. I glanced behind me at a large sign, a photo of a dozen men and women lined up in white T-shirts. Above them, read a multi-colored HOW WOULD THE U.S CENSUS HAVE COUNTED YOU?

The laugh from me was difficult to withhold. How? Not at all. You didn't count a ghost.

Kane stood behind me. "You grew up in America, right?" he asked.

I paused. "Yes," I said. "It's all right."

"You've never wanted to visit Korea?" he asked.

I shrugged. "I barely know it." Which wasn't entirely a lie.

"More reason to see it."

"I wouldn't know what to see," I said. I pursed my lips. "Do you like it better?" I asked. "Korea, that is."

Kane hesitated. He frowned. "It's familiar," he said. "It's more peaceful, in some ways."

I couldn't help myself when I asked, "Would you ever go back? Permanently?"

The question seemed to catch something in him, his face going terse like I'd pressed on a bruise. "No," he admitted. "I...don't think I could."

Neither of us dared to ask more.

I suppose it was a bit strange to walk into the great big empires of Ancient Egypt condensed in plaster walls and tiny boxes and little plaques with cartoon writing that said shit like DID YOU KNOW? and DON'T TAP THE GLASS. Demeaning, if you will.

"Ah," I said, and spread my arms out to a glass case displaying a large, cracking clay pot. "The pyramids' era."

"That's the Old Kingdom," Kane snapped. "This is from prehistoric Egypt."

"What's the difference?"

"3000 years."

"The pyramids were probably scattered around there, right? Somewhere around the Nile. There's always the Nile."

"There weren't big cities yet. And that's Naqada."

"That sounds like a bad word."

Kane shook his head. He brushed past me towards a projection of great carved pillars and archways. It illuminated his back, cast a shadow over his face and the wall.

I said, "Is this one the Hotep guy's doing? I still remember some of my old history class in high school."

"Stop insulting an entire empire," he muttered. "Neferhotep was in the earlier Dynasties. This is from Ramesside time."

"How you remember any of this, I'll never know," I muttered. "Who's Ramesside? Sounds violent."

"I'm gonna ignore you now."

I shrugged, waltzing around the rest of the sandstone and adobe. They had a few things for the harpies and vampires of the time, detailing a few creature pharaohs and their fun with the throne. Of course, the sphinx got all the attention, those catty little bastards.

I sidled up by Kane. "Hate humans yet?"

He shrugged. "They build some beautiful things." He gestured at the pillar before us, scrawled with symbols. "Give humans some credit for being creative."

"They're helpless," I said.

"You get creative when you're helpless," he replied.

I snorted. Kane squinted as the exhibit dimmed again to project the photo on the wall for another several minutes. He stared down at the floor, then back up, then reached his rings out until they hit wall. When we walked, the sound of them scraping softly on the plaster was nearly enough to make me sick.

I thought of the black threads. Of the silver sheen. A statue approached. I told Kane, "Oenjjog."

Kane paused. Then went left around it.

"Why do you like history?" I asked him when he stopped in front of a pharaoh bust. 

Kane pursed his lips. "Because," he said, "it's what you make of it." When I was silent, he went on. "Everyone has history. But I like that it's never over." He tapped the glass once with a ring. 

I watched the pharaoh's eyes. I watched Kane's reflection overtop it. King to king, history made to history maker. Centuries between two crowns.

Standing beside them, I realized my reflection had been washed out by the blackness entirely, my face nowhere to be seen.

Maya Peoples. Hey, some humans weren't so bad after all.

We entered the exhibit like walking into a mural. Colors exploded off of hanging canvases and lit up the surrounding white walls. I stood before a painting, a young girl grinning in front of a sky and sun, her mother grinning behind her. My chest ached almost as much as my side.

Kane said, "It's pretty."

I hummed. "I guess humans can be creative."

He laughed, low and raspy. I glanced up at him. "Is this why you like museums?"

"What, for the humans?" he quipped.

"For this," I said, gesturing around us. At the paintings.

Kane looked up at the mural. "I like what it hopes for. Some history never got told."

"You should be a poet in your next life."

Kane shook his head. He turned on his heel to head for another painting. "I like to think I race better than I talk," he said.

The laugh that left me was light like sky.

We sat on a bench adjacent to the courtyard, where the stone under our feet was cracked but the trees were so green you thought someone painted them. San Diego rustled around us, a distant echo that made the wide open space feel almost intimate. I practically felt toe to toe with Kane on the little bench. Perhaps that's what came with hanging out. The last time I'd "hung out", well. I hadn't.

I suppose if there was anyone to owe so many firsts to, it was Corvus.

"Why did you move schools so much?" Kane asked. The wind pushed his hair back, revealed a mole by his brows, the silver earring by his jaw. "When your file finally came in, it had three different high schools on it."

I hesitated. I'd spared enough truth for the day, likely more than I should've since crumbs only made you want to find the cake. Nia and the witches were the only one who knew anything about my past, even if it was slim. I chewed my lip, trying to think of a solid enough mixture between the truth and a lie that I could stand on.

"My family's job required us to move a lot," I said. "They couldn't stay in one place for too long, so we shifted around."

"What's your family do?"

"General shops," I said. "It's mostly my father's doing. He picks up business and leaves it fast. Something about the taxes. He never told me. Makes him sound cooler than he is. He just takes money where he can get it."

"What about your mom?"

My chest clenched. "Complicit to the beast, I guess," I muttered. "I try not to think about her too much."

Kane's stare burned holes into my temples. "Do you still see them?"

"I try not to. Being at Avaldi keeps me away, which is nice."

"Did they want you racing?"

"Pretty sure they have my face on a dartboard. It makes me a bit of a liability," I said. "But there was money in racing on the streets and it kept me from having to ask them of much. I used it for a place in the Splinter."

"Is that why you joined Corvus?"

"You got a lot of questions for someone who doesn't like answering them himself," I said, tossing a snap pea at him.

Kane dodged it and frowned, almost...sympathetic. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to." He shrugged. "I thought you'd talk about your file more, but you don't really talk about anything before Avaldi."

I cocked my head at him. "Took you a while to ask."

"I figured you'd say something on your own if you wanted." He craned his head to me. "Do you want to?"

I blinked. I didn't know if I was taken aback or curious at the question. It wasn't a question I got, nearly ever. "Wanting" wasn't vocabulary in my world. I chewed the inside of my cheek. "I wasn't really much of someone before Avaldi," I said. "I just got by, did what I could. I just got used to doing things on my own, is all."

He didn't reply. I tugged on my collar. I said, "How'd you know I used to do street racing?"

Kane paused. "The moves you used," he said.

"But how'd you know it was street racing?"

Kane considered that for a long moment, leaning back on the bench and staring out at the courtyard ahead of us. I glanced at the blackness shadowing his neck, just barely there, like the hint of vines on a cobble wall.

"I used to street race," he said, slipping into Korean. "When I was younger, and first came to America. Someone introduced me into it. It made money, and it helped me learn to race. Got me into some trouble every now and then though, so I stopped."

"You street raced," I repeated, and gaped. "I'm impressed. Is that when you were a troubled kid?"

"Who said that?"

"Nia's got a big mouth."

Kane waved that away. "Freshman year is its own story," he sighed. "Do you still do it?"

I shook my head. "Don't need to, what with Corvus," I said. "I don't know if there's ever a moment where I'm not thinking about racing now."

"Stressful?" he asked.

I could almost smile. "No," I said. "I sort of love it." Kane glanced at me. "I'd think you get tired of it every now and then, though."

He shook his head. "Racing's my life," he admitted. "Sort of feels like a limb now. I don't really know how to function outside of it."

"I think that's sad in some world," I scoffed.

"Then, in this one?"

I leaned back against the bench. I shrugged. "I get it," I replied. Because, in some strange way, I did. "I'd think, to be as good as you are, it has to be that way."

"Was that a compliment?" he mocked. "In broad daylight?"

"You're the best racer in the NCAA," I said. "It's not a compliment. It just is."

"You're all right."

"A compliment? In broad daylight?"

"You're a pain in the ass and you've got an attitude issue," he added pointedly, "but we wouldn't have kept you on the team if you weren't worth it." He shrugged. "You always talk like you're still in the tryouts."

I blinked. I tried to find a reply. "You're a king," was all I managed. "I might as well be."

Kane stared at me. He looked confused, almost stunned for all of a moment, before it dissipated into something almost gentle.

"I'm not," he said. "And you're far past tryouts." He got to his feet, and tilted his head back towards the museum. "You've got a whole year, after all."

We left the secrets in the grass at our feet, outside of history's reach.

The last stop was an exhibit of what made every human a human: secrets.

"What kind of depressing-ass exhibit is this?" I muttered. "If I wanted a stranger's secrets to sob over, I'd hit up Tumblr from the 2000s, or ask Reddit what they think of baby lycans mid-shift."

"Good thing you're not a poet," Kane said, and pushed me inside.

We walked into a room of paper.

Clipboards of postcards, columns of filed pages, shelves on shelves of colored paper. Paper murals. Paper pictures. Paper crafts. The room was highly flammable with all that fuel; the ink and the intimacy.

"It's just...secrets?" I asked.

"Just secrets," he said.

We filed up and down, peering into strangers' hearts and heads like looking at fish in an aquarium. Pastors next to lawyers, doctors next to students, children next to parents, teenagers next to the elderly. Some were fearful and some were sad. Some were pleasant. Some were promises. Many were broken ones.

I stopped in front of a postcard, a butter knife on its cover.

I'm afraid I'll never be like my brother.

I thought of my brother's smile, the same one on my father, both looking down at my mother and me. It was hard to say if I would feel any heavier if there was stone in my blood instead.

I stared at it for a long moment. Kane came beside me. When a minute passed, and neither of us moved, I said in a quiet voice, "Who's Poppy?"

It sucked the very life out of the air. I could feel it drain right out of Kane, head to toe. The reaction was so quiet, yet so visceral, I didn't know whether to immediately regret it, or wait. I thought he'd walk away altogether, and pretend as though I'd never spoken.

Kane remained perfectly still. He kept his eyes on the note in front of him, not daring to move. I thought of Nia's words, the shift in her face when I asked, like the name was a bad omen, some sort of trap everyone avoided like it'd grown spikes. But it wasn't how Poppy died that was the mystery. It was why.

"Old friend," Kane finally said. "Corvus."

I stared at the writing in front of me. "What happened to her?" I asked.

More silence. It could fill the ocean. It could hollow out the core of the earth.

"Something bad," Kane settled on.

"Something bad?"

"Why?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "You never talk about her."

"Why would I?" He didn't say it with venom, but with genuine question.

"It just seems like something people talk about."

"It's been talked about." He finally moved, heading away from me, his face shifting into something frustrated. "She was the captain before me."

"I'm sorry."

"Why? It's not a secret."

"Guess not. Still. No one talks about her anymore."

"What?" He turned, the frustration bubbling in his eyes. "What are you talking about? Did someone ask you something?"

"What? No, I just...I saw it somewhere, is all, I was curious," I tried.

"Where?" He took a step towards me, a strange urgency in his tone.

I took a step back. "I'm sorry," I said.

Kane paused. He bit his lip and regressed. He turned back around and headed for the exit. "Don't be," he sighed. "It's complicated."

I took that as and off limits, and followed him through the remaining sections. Secrets on secrets on secrets, all plastered to the stone like they were waiting to be spoken aloud and never would be.

I'm afraid I'll lose.

I stared at it, and so did Kane. Corvus was an iceberg I barely touched the edge of, its body in dark waters that I'd never swim to see. It didn't strike me like an uppercut, but consumed me like a sandstorm. People thought lies ate you away. At best, they chewed at your heels. Truth swallowed you whole, and coughed up the bones.

I realized, with a severing bite of reality, that museums were not for me.

As we left the exhibit, I spotted a lonely sticky note at the bottom corner of the wall, its body pale purple, and it script in deep red.

I'm afraid that I'll disappear.

___________________________

Speaking of secrets, it happens like this.

Ramos didn't need to snitch. Everyone else did it for me. Kane had foregone any and all versions of the world where he spared me, and stopped in front of me at the bench a chunk of minutes before the match was to begin, his helmet under his arm and the remnants of our excursion in San Diego extinct from his blank stare.

"Ramos is gonna do a quick check-up on you," he said.

I stopped, my cleats half-way to being done. I sat up. "What? Why?"

"Because you're a week out of looking like human roadkill and Coach doesn't want to take any chances," he said. "I told you to go see her earlier."

"I did."

Kane cocked his head at me, perturbed at that blatant lie. "She'll be quick."

"I don't want to," I hurried.

"It's a check-up, not surgery, calm down." He turned around before I could protest again. "Come out when you're done."

"Kane."

"She's your nurse, too," Kane drawled. "You're gonna have to see her the whole season, better get comfortable. Match starts in fifteen." With that, he left, leaving me to the stark light of the locker rooms, and Ramos standing in the other aisle.

She smiled at me, her med bag in her hand. "Echo," she said. "He's right, I'll be quick. It's just precaution."

I bit my lip. "I'd rather you not." The pants of the racing gear weren't high enough to cover my hip. If she asked for me to take my shirt off again, there'd be no hiding the mark. "Edwards is paranoid."

"She just wants to make sure you're all right, they all do. I promise I won't ask. Echo." She set her bag down, and held her hands up like reassuring a cornered animal. "If I made you feel uncomfortable last time, then I'm very sorry, that wasn't my intention. I only want to make sure you're okay. You're my team. I won't ask."

She would if she saw. There'd be no universe she couldn't ask.

But I knew there'd be no way Edwards or Kane would let me race without being cleared, and I'd lose my head if I was barred from another race, let alone allow the press to theorize about it, too. Perhaps I was cornered.

I sighed. "Fine."

She set her bag down and sat beside me. She pursed her lips, and said, "I...do need you to take off your shirt."

"You're kidding."

She held up a hand. "No questions."

I greeted my fate and tore off the undershirt, letting it drop beside my hands. Ramos did a once-over of me, humming. She reached for the more recent wounds, the ones still lined in pink and dotted with red, some mid-healing and some just nearly there. She frowned at one puckered wound where the bullet had grazed me too close. If she knew its culprit, she didn't say, simply reaching into her bag to retrieve some ointment.

"Some of these need a little more time," she said. "If you're ever injured too seriously, Echo, you should come to me. If something becomes infected, you could—"

"Infection, septic shock, the works," I said. "I got that."

Ramos pursed her lips tight. She opened her mouth to add something, then looked down, and stopped cold in her tracks.

Mercy might have gotten rid of my Drachmann brand by searing the Stirling one overtop it, but she'd left my birthmark as there was no way to erase and rewrite that. It looked much like a stork bite, dusty cream and not entirely decipherable unless you knew what you were looking at. But all lycans knew the difference, even if the shapes weren't the most accurate. If you knew, you knew.

Upon looking down at my hip just to see the mark of an Omega, I could tell Ramos knew.

The entire room went deathly quiet. I felt the museum fall over me again, dense with a secret spilled like black oil over pale granite—a permanent ruination. My heart thudded and burned in my throat.

"Echo," she breathed.

I had to breathe. I had to fucking breathe or I was going to scrape everything off the table and take a damn one-way train to the Splinter. I needed to either get on the track or get as far from the stadium as I could. The world wouldn't spin right. The walls squeezed to an impossible thinness.

"No," I breathed. "Just...don't. Please."

I stared at the ground even as her gaze begged for mine. If I looked at her, I'd become even more nauseous than I already was. There was no way Ramos would let me out of this school with Corvus attached to my name. Coach would cut me the moment we returned to Avaldi, none of members would speak to me again for not only causing all this chaos in the press, but for lying about my subspecies along with it. A Stirling Beta was bad. A Stirling Omega was unforgivable.

My mind was spinning so badly I hadn't even realized Ramos was finished with the ointment until she gingerly placing the tube back into her bag and zipping it up. My fingers were sore from how hard they clung to the table, and they shook when I yanked my shirt back on as fast as possible. Ramos stood a ways away from me.

I didn't even know if there was an argument to be said that could save me. If there was, I wasn't eloquent enough to say it right. All I could muster was my stillness, the calm before the storm, and wait for her to slice me to shreds.

Ramos said, "I think you're all right to race, but take it easy, you don't want to aggravate anything or wear yourself out more." She brushed herself off. She smiled. "Next time, come to me, okay? I'm here for all of you, no matter the time or reason."

I blinked. Ramos blinked back.

I tried to speak, failed, tried again. "You're not mad."

She stared. "No, Echo," she breathed. "I'm not mad."

"But...I lied."

"You did."

"You...if you tell Coach—"

"Patient-doctor confidentiality is non-negotiable. Nothing that happens between us goes beyond us unless I think it's an immediate danger to you," she said, then gave me an almost amused look. "Being an Omega is not an immediate danger, or a danger in general, of any kind."

The statement out loud slapped me clear across the face. I flinched. "Ah."

Ramos took a deep sigh. She came towards me and rested her hands beside mine. "I understand why you lied," she said. "I don't think you should've, but I understand."

"How?" I breathed.

Ramos's smile was gentle. "You're talking to one, aren't you?" she replied. I hung my head. She said, "Now, I know it's the last thing you want to talk about, but since you are an Omega, I want you to talk to me about any injuries you have. You heal a lot slower than the rest of them, you need to be more careful. Racing injury or not." She tightened her grip. "But you need to watch out for yourself more, okay?"

I said, "Thank you."

Ramos patted my hand. She gestured for the door. "Come on. We can watch the first half and let your coach know you're cleared. I have to make sure the rest of your team doesn't get themselves killed, too."

I didn't know if I was relieved or paranoid, or simply guilty. The same thieving, stealing feeling returned to me and broke open my veins. I felt the capitates of my hands snap, all the bones of the carpus falling apart with the sheer weight of it.

I said, "How can I repay you?"

Ramos took a second to realize what I meant. When she did, she said, "I told you already. Watch out for yourself. That's more than enough."

"But—"

Ramos placed her hands between us, half a pause, and half in solidarity. Her grin was soft like cotton and evening; it was entirely foreign and chillingly unfamiliar. My heart rested on my tongue.

"More than enough," she repeated. "Go wash up, Echo."

As she walked away, I wondered if my hands would ever recover, and doubted that they'd have the chance.

(lots of talk in this chapter, hope that's not terrible, and a very long chapter, which seems to be happening to me a little too often, haha. thank you for reading, i'm very appreciative, and the little star bows its little head :D )