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I spent several days downtown with Jillian, at least, whenever I got the chance. In the evening, she always promised to take me out on Louise, just so we could read out in the middle of the bay with the water lapping around us, swishing and churning. Even when she worked all day at the book store, she was just as energetic as she was in the morning, and dragged me away from Dad. Some days I spent so much time walking about that by the time I collapsed on the boat, my heels ached and my feet begged to be weightless for once.

True to his word, Dad refused to let me out on night runs until I knew the area. Knowing the area required a lot of hiking, and hours spent out and about burning my calves off my bones trying to climb the steep, mountainous terrain. Stonecroft didn't have a single mountain, but mountains were just as difficult to climb as a ravine was, or the canyon back at home.

Dad had the endurance of a marathoner, and refused to let up unless mealtime came, or if someone called him for this or that reason. Everett rarely ever joined our excursions anymore, especially after the first incident with the "rogue". "I don't want to be responsible for Reagan's death, Dad," he snapped. Dad rolled his eyes and said something about how I wasn't dead, nor would I die—not on his watch anyway. The entire situation was just ridiculous, but I didn't butt in. I was getting kind of sick of Everett's snot attitude, just four days into my stay.

Three days brought us to Wednesday.

I still hadn't gone for a run—at least, not the type of run I'd prefer. I compensated that for runs that made my aching feet all the more agonizing to deal with.

The road to downtown was three miles long, and the way across the bay was another five. I jogged through those neighborhoods, as I had the past several days, and became acquainted with counting the number of homes. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen...

I reached the dead end cul-de-sac, and slowed my pace until I stood in the center of it, surrounded by homes underneath the canopy of massive pine trees. Dad and I hiked through the mountains on this side yesterday, and how beyond those peaks were where the wolves ran wild. I glanced towards the western horizon, where the sun hovered over the water.

Panting hard, I looked down to the watch on my wrist and ignored the time ticking there. My brain went blank, except for the conscious effort to memorize the rhythm of my blood pulsing in my ears, and the effortless way my fingers curved. I traced the hair on my forearm, and slowed my breathing. I pushed outward, searching for that itchy feeling I pegged as Dad's fault—blocking my shift. It erupted underneath my flesh, and red bumps swelled across the surface. I pressed harder, clenching my fist until my nails dug into my palms, and the red rash spread across my wrist, up my forearm, the crook of my elbow, until it overtook my arm. The red bumps erupted in patches of heavy dark hair—fur. I breathed out heavily, and leant over my knees, heaving for air, as if suddenly escaping from the ground.

So the block was just my imagination—certainly Dad had blocked my shift, but I supposed he rarely ever had to block an alpha's shift. Next time Mom decided to block a shift, I knew just how to break the lock.

I stood around the cul-de-sac until the fur faded, and I had to remind myself that Jillian was probably asking around for me. I reached for my phone on the elastic band around my bicep, and sure enough, I had a text from her. I arranged to meet her at her bookstore, and proceeded to run the rest of the way there.

Her store was closed by then, of course. It was nearly eight, but there was a single light on in the far back of the shop. I peered in through the front glass door, at the shadows collecting on the shelves, and the small pocket in the back where the counter was. There was a door behind the counter window, where orangish-yellow light peered through. I knocked on the glass a few times until Jillian arrived behind the counter.

"Reagan! I see you survived yet another run," she commented, hands on her hips as she stood aside for me. I wandered into the shop, gathering my breath to answer.

"Yeah, I guess you could say that. Are we going out on the boat now?" I asked. The cool evening ocean air sounded splendid at the time.

"I'm sorry—a friend of mine called a little bit ago so I have to swing by that way. It's on the way to our house, so I could drop you off if you—" she started, but my mind was already ten steps ahead of her.

"No, no. It's fine, I'll just finish my run that way," I said, waving my hand to dismiss her offer. She glanced back at the window, where the sunlight was fading, before turning her gaze back to me.

"Are you sure? It's getting rather dark," she insisted, but I reminded her that it wasn't like Redborough was terribly scary at night. As long as I stayed on track back to the Barretto residence, I wouldn't encounter any hunting grounds. "Well, all right. Sorry I had to cancel our plans—I was really hoping on finishing the last bit of The Sound and the Fury," she admitted, pouting at the thought. I reminded her that there was always tomorrow.

I took off back the way I came—across the bay and to the mountains. I hopped onto the path that cut into the woods, and tracked down the clearing Dad showed me—a slanted field where a break in the pines gave a narrow view of the navy sky, and the specks of clothing littered here and there. I panted to a halt, realizing that everyone was already out—they wouldn't notice an extra pile of clothes when they came back at dawn.

I reminded myself about what a miracle it was that fully-shifted lycanthropes didn't bother with human possessions, unless it involved their organs.

It took no longer than two minutes to shimmy out of my sweaty clothes down to my birthday suit. I nearly forgot how cold it got here at night until I was standing bare before the forces of nature, and the dark hollows between the trees. Dark, and shrouded with the Pacific fog rolling through the trunks of pine trees. I wanted to merge with it, and become a single entity with that darkness as it consumes me, envelopes me in the black of night, and the curve of heavyset gloom painted over the ground, stretching away from the light of the moon and the sun and the stars.

The sensation of it combed across my spine, like gentle fingertips tracing each and every curve of my vertebra—curling around my stomach and squeezing it taunt. It gripped my abdomen, slowly, squeezing, and bursting out my mouth in a thrilled groan that rippled across my hands as I tightened my grip on that tickling itch spreading rapidly across my skin. I broke the surface of Dad's lock on me, and it came bursting in tufts of black across my flesh, and overtaking it with intense haste—

My spine curved inward, and I crouched to the ground, my hands braced and my knees hitting the grass. The weeds pulled between my fingers and tore under the sharp edge of my claws as they dug into the dirt, grew in size, and became the foundation of my future run. All that aching from walking and hiking and running vanished as soon as I took off through the trees—

Unknown. I hadn't been around this area long enough to see the wall of rocks naturally unclimbable to me until I pranced and leapt to my hind legs. Dug my claws onto the edge of the rock and heaved myself up foot by foot to the ledge and continued from there, following the scent of an animal trail. Of blood, pumping, rushing through the veins of some furry creature one thing that remained constant was the scent of prey running from predator

And I followed it. I tracked it between the roots of trees and the cracks of rocks until bounding over a break in the incline and finding the creature dashing, weaving, disappearing behind trees my target. I saw it through the branches, sharp and heaving stupid and panicked I tackled it after a single bound, tearing a thin sapling from the ground as i crashed took it out had it in my jaws teeth sinking tasting tearing flesh from its extended throat

a cry bleated out of its jaws left it sputtering with blood and silent once more except for the sucking bloody sound of my canines lapping up hefty meat getting caught on sinew spit it out

lick at the threads of it between sharp teeth

catch the scent of heat and the touch of it fading under my muzzle.

i was done with it and continued there were other creatures rushing around the trees farther down i peered over the edge of the cliff face and saw shadows running focus focus focus see how they run how they tackle attack beasts not like me like empty slates primal instinct not like me not like me i see how they run how they peer up at me in wonder curiosity ignore me as i want them to they don't know me i don't know them we are not one in the same we are different i don't know them who are they why are they here this is mine

it isnt mine

i turn away i run away away from the lights trace the coastline find the water stand in the water unfamiliar in between my paws lick salty tastes strong overwhelming stand on shifty ground stuck on my fur lay in the grass until high moon licking it away get grains stuck between my teeth keep going

keep going

keep going

not here there are people i see people i hear them in their machines moving fast across solid ground harsh rough concrete rock hot under the pads of my paws stand on the yellow line until blinding suns appear in the distance leap onto soft ground my ground mine the trees the land it is mine not— is not— not hisss—

eyes stare at me Eyes stare at me. I see eyes they are not mine they arent They are not mine. They are my kind. Curious, unknowing, approaches me. He approaches me. Refuses to lower his eyes even as he comes nose-to-nose with me. Eyes are. His eyes are white. Black rims. White eyes silver. I pull my lips back and sneer at him, sneer turning into a growl. An infuriated growl that he mimics and lowers to, unrelenting and unwilling to bow beneath my muzzle, completely exposed he knows.

Unaware of the rifle pointed at him—at us—at him. Not me. I back away from him and turn to leave—whip back around—he's attacking. His lunge lands a gash to my hip and he grabs hold of my side, my hips torn to the ground. I snarl and turn on him in time to catch a whistle hissing past my ear, nicking my pulled-back ears and drawing blood. I dive for his neck and tear him off me, to the ground, and recoil back as another bullet whistles by, and hits him in the scruff of his neck. She takes off. he runs. He runs—heat swells down my neck and drips from my fur retracting.

My fur retracts and leaves only bare flesh and shaking limbs. I walk a step and collapse, joints weak but refreshed. I land on my bum and gasp at the heat pooling across my neck—God my ear was on fire. I raised a hand up and winced. It was slimy with blood and gore. I swore a flap of my cartilage was hanging by a thread of skin.

"God damn." It took me a second to realize I hadn't spoken. I knew I wasn't the only one here, but I was hoping to escape notice. "I shot you." The tall figure stepped out from the trees, and I recognized that voice. I also recognized those steel-toed boots.

I shifted to lean away from him, showing him by back with my hand disguising the damage on my ear. "I'm fine. Fuck off."

For a second, I was sure he thought I was just a regular lycanthrope, but he seemed to recognize me better knowing that I had the voice of a girl he talked to no more than four days ago, and the body of one too.

By the sound of his rifle hitting the ground, it was almost like he threw it down, muttering curses the entire way. It took a while before a piece of fabric dropped over me and he said, "The fuck're you doing this far out, huh? Your dad know you're out 'ere?"

I shrugged my hands through the arm holes of his jacket and braced a hand on the side of a pine tree. I didn't turn around to face him until I was standing, and had the front of his heavy brown jacket zipped up. When I did finally see him clearly, he had his hands on his belt, and those crooked brows angled down. Those eyes were nearly black, and I half expected to see them blown out like a mid-shifted wolf.

"Who was that?" I demanded, pointing in the direction of the lycanthrope I encountered.

He blinked at me, and leaned back on his heels with his mouth twisted in a way that said he was about ready to bitch me out about this whole ordeal. "It doesn't matter now—it's not like I've been chasing the bastard for over a week and the second I had a shot at 'im you barge in and—"

"Go after him then—I'm going home," I said, an air of finality about me as I turned on my heels and started marching away. The pine needles on the ground did little to cushion my calloused feet.

He spat curses as he picked up his rifle and chased after me. "You have no fucking clue where you are, huh?" he commented, his voice just a few paces behind me. His boots were so fucking loud, crunching around on the ground like that. That ridiculous accent of his even made his cussing sound overly aggressive.

Since I didn't talk, he seemed content mumbling to himself about how idiotic the whole predicament was, how stubborn I was, and how stupid I was. Mainly, the latter two. It wasn't until we reached a break in the trees that I realized I didn't recognize any of the mountains around us, and the only thing that seemed familiar was the fact that I was still by the coast. In fact, we were so close to the coast that the road outlined the edge.

I paused and swayed there on the edge of that precarious road, and how the guardrails jutted out the side of the cliff as if there was no shoulder on the western side. I waited until I heard Griffin's feet stop behind me, radiating heat that sent a shiver coursing across my entire back where his jacket collected the scent and feel of him. It was far too intimate for me to handle at the moment.

"No. I don't know where I am," I confessed softly, blinking as I thought about it. I'd started on the north side of the bay. I had to be north of it. "I'll make it eventually."

"C'mon, I'll give you a ride so you don't 'ave to wait until 'eventually'," he said, and stepped into my line of view so I could see his air quotes and scowl at them.

We hiked the side of the road for about a mile. It was past high moon, and I knew it was something like three in the morning. I didn't feel like asking Griffin for the correct time, and I was thankful that I was walking behind him this time. I wondered briefly if that entire time walking through the forest was spent with me being blissfully unaware of his eyes on my ass—just barely covered by his jacket. It wasn't like he was awfully bigger than me anyhow.

We came to a sightseeing point on the road where his vehicle sat—at least, I assumed it was his vehicle. It was the only car around, and as we crossed the street to reach it, I realized that it was a pickup truck with the bed covered.

"Hang on a sec," he told me, holding out a finger to keep me in my place. As if that would do anything. I still went to the passenger's side while he fished around the back for something, and waiting at the door until he got into the driver's seat and tossed a towel over the seat. I rolled my eyes, but realized it'd be pretty nasty having my bare ass on his leather seats.

I slammed the door shut after me and reached for the window button. It turned out to be a crank-window, so I rolled it open before sitting back and buckling up. "Thanks. I guess," I said, patting the towel with my other hand.

He scoffed, and other than that, he didn't answer.

I stared at him for a while while he made a Y-turn and started south. His hair wasn't pitch-black like mine—contrary to the lighting that early, early morning. It was rather brown, and shaved short on the sides and around his ears. Overall, it wasn't entirely unkempt or overgrown, but I thought his scruff was a little over the top.

After a while, I noticed his jaw tense and how his lips pulled up in a sneer. "I'd appreciate it if you'd stop staring."

Even though I blushed, I still managed to bite out, "Sorry. It's not every day I see a monkey driving a car."

He scoffed. "Real mature, Reagan. It's Reagan, right? Not Rose—What's her name?"

"Rosanna. And yeah, it's Reagan. And you're Griffin. Nice to meet you—now that that's all over with." I turned away and stared out the window, my point made clear with silence.

He tsked and through the reflection in the side mirror, I saw him lean an elbow against the bottom of the window and raise his fist to his lips. He glanced at me, and the second he did I shot a glare at him.

The drive back to Redborough was thirty minutes long. I couldn't believe how far I'd come—I rarely ever strayed from the territory bounds in Stonecroft, but I'd just doubled that distance in the course of only a few hours. Of course, I got distracted easily by prey, which explained the dirt and gore still staining my mouth and teeth. The entire drive I held my hand to my ear, grateful that it was my right ear so Griffin didn't need to see it. I hoped he'd forgotten about the whole ordeal, but I wondered if I'd be able to hide the fact that I was missing a chunk of my ear from Dad and Everett. That little punk Everett would surely catch on fast and make some snarky comment about it. He'd probably say something like, "Gee Reagan, when did your ear sprout a red fountain?"

I really didn't want Griffin to drive straight up to Dad's house, but I didn't feel like talking so I didn't correct him when he drove over Dad's gravel road and parked by the trees.

"Let me see your damn ear," he said as I turned to thank him for the ride. I ground my teeth together, my hand still covering it. When I finally pulled my hand away, I found it soaked with blood, and oozing between the fingers. "God damn—be lucky it was a clean shot otherwise it would've taken off the entire damn thing. You won't need stitches."

"Gee, thanks oh-mighty-sniper," I muttered sarcastically, retracting and jerking open the passenger door. It got stuck a little, but I managed to stagger out and grab the towel. He stared at me until he realized why, exactly, I was pulling down the zipper of his jacket.

He didn't argue when I tossed it at him and replaced it with the towel. "Barretto's gonna rip you a new one," he said, shaking his head. "Good luck."

"If he does, I'm blaming you," I said, and slammed the door shut. I ran the rest of the way to the silo, and took great care in opening it as silently as possible—which was impossible, considering what sort of household Dad had. So, I went for speed.

I hurried up the spiral staircase and shut myself behind the guest bedroom door. A great whoosh of air escaped me when I realized my room was empty. Dad wasn't waiting up for me as I anticipated once he realized I wasn't coming back from my usual jaunt with Jillian.

I doubted Jillian covered for me anyhow.

. . .

The next morning, I woke up to the sight I expected to walk into last night. Dad was waiting for me, sitting by the windowsill. I heard him come in, but I waited until he was settled to actually get up. I shuffled up into a sitting position, my back against the headboard.

"What I want to know," he started, "was how you broke the block."

"What makes you think—"

"It's not like blocks are poof and I forget about them," he said, staring me down like Mom did whenever I did something wrong. A bad grade. Stayed out too late. Pissed off a teacher. "I can tell whenever someone's blocked, which makes it just as easy to tell when one of those individuals goes missing. So what I want to know, is how you managed it."

I reached up and pulled at my hair, covering the bandage over my right ear. It was rough work, but it stopped the bleeding last night. Besides, it wasn't like my shoulder was perfect now. The shift certainly helped, as shifting usually did when it came to healing, but I didn't want to stress it.

Raised my shoulders before slouching again. "I dunno. I just tried harder than usual to shift," I confessed, dropping my hands to my lap as Dad raised an eyebrow at me. I scoffed and rolled my eyes. "It's not like I snapped my fingers and it was gone, Dad."

He stood up and strolled across the room, towards the door. "Well, maybe next time you might have the courtesy of warning me. Whenever Everett makes a preemptive attempt at rebellion, I always sniff it out. But you just flew off my radar—I don't know how Emma manages to keep you two in order not knowing what to expect."

"Well, it's not like you've lived your entire life with us," I confessed, and I hadn't meant it as a jab. His silence said otherwise. "That wasn't an insult, it's just a fact," I added, lowering my gaze to my hands. "I'll let you know next time."

"Good."

He left then, and I felt weak with guilt.

How does he manage to do that?

After scarfing down a bowl of cereal and chugging a bottle of water, I feebly asked Dad to accompany me back to the shifting grounds. The main reason being that I didn't want to walk all that way again, and he had a car. So he drove me there and walked with me down the trail as if to make sure I didn't explode into a puff ball of fur and run off again.

"Jillian was really worried when you didn't come back," he said, and when I scoffed, he gave me a serious look that told me it wasn't as funny as I thought. "She thought you might have gotten attacked again."

"How'd she know that happened?" I knew the answer before he even said it. Everett had a big mouth and enjoyed gossiping more than the regular human.

"Everett and Jillian are close," he explained, and paused in his walking while I strolled ahead and across the green of the clearing. He observed while I picked up my jogging clothes, the watch, the elastic band, and my phone inside. At least it managed to keep the dew off my phone. "Were there any problems? Did you run far?" he asked, and I knew he wasn't talking about the fact that I was carrying my jogging clothes from yesterday.

Yes. "No, I stuck around. I don't remember much."

Liar.

But Dad was used to hearing shit like that, just as I was. Hardly anyone remembered anything beyond puzzled dream-pieces. Rosanna and I had particularly good memories, when it came to both dreams and wolfish experiences. Of course, there were bits and pieces that made less sense than the rest of it.

"Well, I'm glad it wasn't too disastrous. I imagine being in a different place makes it hard to keep track of where you are," he said as I came back, staring down at my phone. With the little batter left, I saw the ten missed calls from Dad and Jillian.

I looked up from the screen and pocketed it. "Sorry for worrying you—that wasn't my intention," I confessed, and he offered a small smile, patting me on the back.

"Maybe if I was your mom, I might be able to punish you. How does house arrest sound?"

"It sounds awful."

"Okay, we won't do that." It took me a second to realize he was joking, and I burst out into giggles. He laughed along with me, and gave me a sideways hug. "Well, I have one way to bore you to death. You're coming with me to a meeting at Brickley."

I'd been to Brickley three times since arriving. It was a building in downtown Redborough where his colleagues gathered, and older folks bickered, and I first met Dad's Beta. But for the most part, I sat outside the conference room on an uncomfortable bench until Dad came out to tow me around elsewhere.

"Will I have to count the number of bricks outside the room this time?" I asked.

He chuckled under his breath as we arrived at the end of the trail, and back to civilization. "Oh no, it's even better than that."

Dear Lord, save me.