Three states away, south of Kensington, a camp stood near a forest line. Among the tents and bonfires people milled about with a hush.

The darkness of night that befell over the camp meant much more to them. It brought with it a tension, baited breath, and unease.

Two gentlemen, rough from traveling and the weather, sat near each other next to a bonfire on two logs drawn from that same deadly forest behind their backs.

"Do you think she's going to let him run tonight?" One with a receding hairline and a grey beard asked the other.

The other man, younger and blinded by ignorance, leaned his elbows on his knees. "Does she have a choice?"

The answer came in the form of silence.

After a while, the grey-bearded man hit his fist into the log he sat on. "It's not fair. This...this disease damn well takes away their free will."

"I heard Tom's niece is showing the same signs Dominic did at the beginning."

The old man cursed. "I've seen what this does to people. It rips them from their right mind. These beasts need to be taken out."

"Shh." The younger man glanced over his shoulder. "You want Selene to hear? She'll rip you a new asshole. And then you can forget all about your crappy reward."

Further into the heart of the camp, a woman with long blonde hair paced in front of a card table serving as a desk. She tapped a calloused and work-worn finger to her bottom lip. "I don't get it." She whispered to herself.

Highlighted Articles, notes, and journal entries all sat on the card table. Spread out among the numerous papers rested a crudely drawn plan for a microchip.

Frustration boiled in her veins. She'd been on this ridiculous hunt for years now without any luck. It should have never taken this long. It should have never been this damn difficult!

"Ma'am?" A teenager stuck his head through the flap that served as a door. A cool breeze followed him in.

Temperatures were dropping and it made for a cold night. Her troop would have to buckle down hard tonight.

She should've just rented out a block of hotel rooms. Except, making up reasons for the huge travel group was beginning to get harder and harder with people asking questions and wanting to know more and more. It was much easier to rent out a campground and call it a day.

"Get in here, Brad. You're letting the heat out."

Brad, most likely the youngest of her troop, quickly stepped in. "Sorry ma'am. I just wanted to let you know...the group you sent to Harper corporations has returned."

The lack of even a spark of hope in her chest was a testament to how long she'd been doing this. Hope became harder to come by the more time that passed. Reality was beginning to set in.

"Well? Send them in here."

"O-of course ma'am."

Not two minutes later, Blackthorne stepped in followed closely by the two of his crew he handpicked to join him on the infiltration project. "Selene."

"Blackthorne." Selene half-sat on the card table, her arms crossed. "What have you got?"

Blackthorne sat in the single fold-out chair in the tent. He crossed his legs. "A whole lot of crap. Our favorite doctor worked with Harper in the eighties. He barely even conceived the idea for his research at that point."

"You checked the archives?"

Blackthorne raised a single eyebrow. "I'm not an amateur." He said. "That corporation lives in the stone age. All of their files are in a file room in the basement. And they're all paper. Took almost the whole damn night. "

Selene's spine straightened. "You have nothing for me? Nothing?"

The hiss of the lady's words had Blackthorne raising a hand. "Now hold up. You didn't let me finish."

"I'm losing my patience here, Blackthorne. You know what happens when I lose my patience."

"Yeah, yeah, cities burn down, earthquakes take out most of the western hemisphere—I've already had that whole spiel."

"Blackthorne—" Selene snapped.

Blackthorne gestured to the surprisingly composed woman at his shoulder. "Marla, can you please give our wonderfully glorious leader the file?"

Selene swiped the file from Marla's hands and scanned the contents. A frown made its way onto her face. "What use could I possibly have for an obituary?"

Blackthorne, in the process of lighting up a smoke, rolled his eyes. "I'm going to cut you slack, because anger makes me fuckin' blind too." He puffed out a small cloud. "Harper might live in the stone age, but they keep their files pretty up to date. Did you ever take the time to read our Doc's obituary?"

Selene snapped the file closed. "Why would I do that? He's dead. We made sure of that."

Another cloud of smoke drifted from Blackthorne's spot. "We never made sure everyone was dead."

Selene read over the obituary once more. "'...survived by his daughter, Harley'—what use is the girl to me? She was a child at the time."

Blackthorne gave a cough and waved away some of his smoke pollution. "But she is a possible lead. Who knows what she's seen or heard?"

Selene was ready to strangle Blackthorne. What use could a child be to her? No wonder her search has taken her so long. Her troop seemed to be comprised of idiots. "Well, now that we've wasted our time with that endeavor..." She threw the file on the card table, sending papers scattering to the floor, and headed to the door.

"Where the hell are you going?"

Selene barely resisted the urge to flip him off. "To let Dominic out of his cage for a run." And with that, she left, the flap of the tent waving behind her.

~

Harley

The next morning, Harley gripped her butterfly necklace tight in one hand. "Bailey? I don't think this is a good idea."

Bailey, knee deep in water, waved the comment away. "Don't worry about it, darlin'. I do this all the time." Her eyes, which flicked left and right, never moved from the clear water below.

After some major convincing, Bailey managed to wrangle Harley into what she called "exploring". But Harley wasn't too sure that Bailey's definition of exploring was the same as hers. To Harley, exploring meant discovering new places and walking paths that one had never before.

To Bailey, exploring meant looking at her favorite places in the trees...and trying to catch fish in a creek.

"I've almost..." Bailey's eyes followed something gently swaying back and forth. Then her hand shot out like lightning. "Got it!"

A dull gray fish flapped between her fingers. It couldn't have been longer than her pointer finger, though what it lacked in size it more than made up for in the effort department. Harley could almost feel the panic radiating from the fish.

"Ha ha!" Bailey laughed with glee. "Would you look at that? I caught one!"

Bailey celebrated her catch a bit more, then threw the little guy back into the creek.

On the shore, Harley sat with her arms around her knees on a large muddy brown rock. The sun shone high and bright in the sky and danced along the slow moving water.

Bailey had led Harley through quite a bit of forest to get them to this spot. It had taken Harley all the courage and strength she had to get through the tangle of trees. Luckily for her, the area by the creek wasn't as dense as some of the other areas. Harley could see the wispy white clouds in the sky and as far as thirty to forty feet around her, which made it a whole lot easier to talk herself out of a panic attack.

So far, she'd barely avoided two on their way over here. Bailey wasn't an idiot, she more than likely heard every time Harley's breath changed, but she hadn't said anything about it.

Harley was grateful for that.

"Alright girlfriend, your turn." Her friend wiped her hands on her jeans.

"I think I'm good."

With no effort at all, Bailey leaped straight onto Harley's rock and sat down. "Come on. It's really not that hard. I'll show you the trick."

"Thanks, but it's not really my kind of thing." Harley rested her chin on the top of her knee and slowly felt the familiar grooves in her butterfly necklace with her fingertips.

Bailey leaned back on her hands. "I can get that. Not every one is one with nature. Take Jamie, the Alpha's daughter, for example—you can't get that girl near anything that comes out of the ground."

"I like nature." Harley assured. "I just...it's better if I observe." If she got too close to anything, her mind ended up finding all of the similarities between now and thirteen years ago.

The wind took that moment to brush through the trees and Harley shivered as the breeze tickled her back. Instead of providing a relief from the hot sun, it reminded her of how exposed she was in this forest. Vulnerable.

"It never goes away, does it?" Bailey tilted her head to the side, a wolf-like action.

Harley frowned.

"The past," she clarified. "You can never really forget it, can you?"

The resigned tone told her that Bailey knew a lot more about rough pasts than she let on.

Harley squinted up at the sky, following the brown hawk that smoothly glided through the air. "Sometimes I worry that no matter how much you resist, the past becomes a piece of you."

At that Bailey shrugged. "Maybe. But that doesn't mean it has to define you."

Her new friend fixed herself so she sat cross-legged and turned towards her. She took a breath. "Jamie is my half-sister."

The sudden statement caught Harley off guard.

"My mom had an affair with Alpha Mark. " She curled a barely long enough brown strand behind her ear. "To be fair, it was right before the Alpha met his mate, Catherine. My mom had a moment of weakness, I guess, and then here I was nine months later.

"My step-dad was super pissed though." Bailey stared off into the creek, and Harley let her drift off. "To be honest, I think he might still be...but he loves my mom, so he still treats her well. Me...not as much."

"My brothers knew about it." She continued. "I think that's why they roughhoused with me all of the time. There was always something more than just wrestling, I could feel it."

"Do your parents live with the pack?" She couldn't say she'd ever even heard someone mention Bailey's parents.

Bailey shook her head. "Nope. My mom and step-dad decided to stay with his family's pack after the affair. I don't blame him."

"Why aren't you with them?"

Another shrug, her focus still on the water not far away. "I couldn't really take it after awhile. Everyone in my family knew I didn't belong, and the only one I felt really wanted me there was my mom. So...I came here."

Harley sent Bailey a sympathetic smile, though she wasn't sure if she caught it.

The two girls listened to the quiet rush of the water and the warning cry from the hawk who'd flown out of sight.

Harley liked the gentle silence. Somewhere deep she knew Bailey wasn't expecting a response, just an ear to listen. Nothing Harley could say would make the situation better. There wasn't any advice to repair the damage, yet her friend knew she was there.

"I can't play hide-and-seek anymore." Harley admitted. She traced random patterns into her kneecap. "That's what my brother and I were playing when—"She broke off, then tried again. "I can't watch other children play it either. The kids in elementary school hated me because of it. I just couldn't ever get myself to...and I have a hard time in forests. They remind me of it."

"Must be hard being a wolf and—" Bailey winced. "Sorry."

This time it was Harley's turn to shrug. "You can't really miss what you've never had."

"Do you ever feel anything though? From your wolf side?"

"Not really. I always want to though. I want to run with the pack. I want to feel the sun in my fur."

"Has it ever gotten close?"

Harley shook her head. "No. It's kind of like...my 'wolf' is sleeping."

Bailey's fingers tapped against her knee. "Okay, I have to admit something, darlin'." She chewed at her lip. "I may or may not have told Will you were latent."

Harley would be lying if she said her heart didn't beat faster at the thought of Will knowing. Not having a wolf in a wolf pack was a recipe for ridicule. It meant she was missing a key aspect needed to truly be a part of pack life. She'd always be on the sidelines, wanting to join in, but she'd never have the skills to perform.

And now Will knew just how much of an outsider she would always be.

A little part of her wanted to be mad at Bailey for spilling to Will. And yet, the damage was already done. He already knew. The only thing she could do from here was move forward.

"What did he say?" How did he react?

Bailey slowly slid down the rock and picked up a pebble from the ground. "He was confused at first. It's not too often you hear of a latent."

"Then?"

Bailey tossed the pebble in the creek. It sunk with a watery bloop. "He said he wants to help."

Harley frowned and rubbed at her forehead. "Help? There's nothing he can change."

"Maybe not, but he's looking into it."

The idea of Will researching for her should have made her feel better. Instead, she grew anxious at the thought of someone digging into her weakness.

If she wanted him to stop though, then she had to approach him about it and that thought almost seemed worse somehow.

Harley and Bailey spent a little more time by the creek before heading back to the pack house. To Harley's relief, the sun was still relatively high in the sky when they returned.