2

It was stupid to go running alone. Though the moon was slim, full-blood Rares still lurked. The most recent death was evidence enough of that. But Lexie needed silence. She needed peace. She needed her treehouse.

As she climbed the stoic cedar, the nausea of an eager sob clung to her insides, awaiting release. The dark blue night fogged her vision, and the scents of memories glowed in her brain like ghostly beacons. She snuffled them out of her nose like dust.

Lexie resisted the urge to inhale deeply, to take in any lingering particles of Archer that clung here. She soaked in the silence and explored the tiny differences of the space since her last visit. Frost covered every surface, including the undersides of the cedar’s needles. She reached her fingertips to one spine. The frost warmed and disappeared beneath her touch. She turned to the tree trunk, wrapped her arms around it, let warmth and wood seep into her. After a while, Lexie knew she felt it hugging her back. It was the most touch she had known in a while, but she was willing to make do with a hug from a chilly, seasonally-lethargic tree.

Lexie circled to the far side of the platform, not ready to approach the sheepskin that lay abandoned in a gray, sodden lump at the center. Instead, she sat at the edge of the treehouse and faced inward. She wanted to pray to Archer, as though she were a ghost or a god. But she was neither of these things; she was merely gone.

Lexie picked at splinters on the platform, trying to figure out what to feel. What would it be like, to see a pair of mismatched eyes looking back at her? Archer left. Archer gone. Archer driven away.

Tears would be appropriate, but she felt immune to their charms. Tears she’d had enough of. She was done with them for now. What then? Fear? Resentment? Despair?

There was something clawing at Lexie’s insides, but it was none of those things. Her upper lip quivered with the realization. It curled into a snarl. The fury of betrayal seized her jaw. Lexie was fucking angry. She wanted to growl, to howl, to shout and rage. She wanted to curse Blythe’s arrogance that demanded allegiance before cooperation, the same arrogance that led to the deaths of three boys at the jaws of Renee. She wanted to curse Blythe’s ego and her death and the tailspin it caused in everyone. Lexie wanted to curse her own passion for Archer, her willful ignorance of Archer’s fraught connections to the Pack. She wanted to tear Archer apart for thinking she knew better than anyone, and for the unceremonious way Lexie learned of her own mother’s death. But she saw herself from the outside and felt foolish. All that was in the past, and everyone seemed to have moved on. Except for Lexie. She bit her tongue until she tasted blood.

She thought this would be different, college.

A rustling in the branches pulled her attention outward. Nestled in the lowest branch, one that Lexie’s hands had once gripped in passion, was a nest. Two fluffy birds clung to each other, sharing warmth. Beneath them, Lexie saw the merest curve of an egg. A new family was repurposing this lonely place.

Lexie pulled off her shirt, the winter air slithering against her skin. She leaned back against the tree trunk, pressing back into its coarse touch. She squirmed against the velvety rough edges. Bits of wood skidded across her flesh, while other, smaller bits splintered off to lodge within it. It all felt like touch to Lexie. She couldn’t discern pain from pleasure anymore. She scratched harder, until strips of her flesh peeled away to be replaced by the tiniest shards of her tree. A moist connection followed, her bleeding skin sticking to the tree’s bark. She scraped harder, grateful and angry at the cedar for hurting her so.

She sneered at the birds’ nest. Her claim to this territory was stronger than theirs. She fell to her haunches within reach of the sheepskin. She wanted to rub it against her bloody back, to stain it with the rest of the story. She didn’t. She sat in silence, her bloody back drying her to the tree. Then, she jerked herself away, ignoring the tiny stings of reopened wounds, and climbed down to the forest floor.

She walked with eyes cast downwards, following her own scent trail back to the Den. A different scent on the breeze made her stop. She reached for her blade. No growl followed the shadows. Lexie stood still, trying to track the creature’s intent.

But there was no stalking creature to match the scent, just the odor’s own presence, clinging to the trees like sap. It smelled like power: musk and earth and stone. Vertigo assailed Lexie. The scent threatened seduction, willing her to lose control.

She ventured into the shadows, where thick boughs kept even the starlight from finding its way to the forest floor. She inhaled deeply to make up for her weak eyesight. The scent told a story of strength and solitude. She wanted to bathe in it, to take some of its essence as her own. It was ennobling and intimidating all at once.

Logic struggled against instinct—take it, flee it. She gave in, pulling it inside her, holding her diaphragm out to keep it in. She fought dizziness and euphoria. The darkness around her filled with colored shapes, as though her eyes were squeezed shut even though they were wide open. Lexie was getting high on this scent, this invisible seducer that carried her from anguish to bliss in the space of a few breaths.

A breeze cut through the brush and boughs, tugging away Lexie’s invisible intoxicant, carrying it off into the night. The thieving wind brought a new scent to replace it: sickly and strong, half putrescence and half sugar-sweet.

Lexie dropped to all fours, the sobering scent knocking her brain back into working order. She resisted taking it in, wishing to savor the last delicious remnants of the scent that teased her to this place, but the new scent bullied its way up her nose, tinny and saccharine at once. This odor she could trace back to its source, at least.

Lexie stalked the scent, letting it dance a ribbon across her face as it drifted downwind. The sugary odor expanded, becoming a lake rather than a rivulet. She knew she was close—close to the scent, and close to the Den. She crept around tree trunks and found the source in a clearing.

A crumpled corpse lay sprawled in the clearing. Lexie stared at it in ambivalent shock—run to it, or run away? She crept toward the body. It had been a quick and efficient kill: one swipe across the throat and another across the belly. The girl’s pale skin reflected the meager light of the stars and the new moon. Her tongue poked between her lips, a slice of still-pink beauty among the wreckage. Lexie leaned toward the girl’s face and recognized her. Her name was Bree Curtis, a classmate of the straight-A, squeaky-clean variety. She wore eye makeup, smeared and running from dried tears, and a heavy coat as though she had been preparing for a long night outdoors.

The fresh death fascinated Lexie more than it repulsed her. She reached out to the gash that nearly severed Bree’s head. She reached, but didn’t touch. A tickle of a sound just beyond hearing shocked Lexie’s brain back into wariness. With one last glance at Bree Curtis’ blue, bloodless face, Lexie ran.

Nobody followed, but Lexie ran as though all the Rares in Oregon were after her. She ran from an invisible foe and the dark reality of this life. Bree Curtis had been killed by a Rare. Another dead girl. Twice in as many weeks. Lexie’s present and future, laid out before her in the form of a girl’s corpse.

Lexie stopped at a dark and lonely gas station on Red Hill Road and called 911. She muffled the receiver with her hand and gave as many details as she could without giving herself away.

When the dispatcher started asking her questions, Lexie hung up the chilly receiver with a clunk. The interplay of treehouse, memories, and desire was gone; all that was left was Lexie’s shame and one more corpse. She threw it all into the cage behind her heart, feeding it to her dormant, silenced wolf. And when it was gone, she brushed herself off and ran home.