15

The moon waned until only a fingernail sliver remained. The girls sat on their hands for a week, waiting for Sharmlaee to heal and for the Pack to regain their fighting strength. But Sharmalee wasn’t healing, not as fast as she should’ve, anyway. The waning moon had sapped whatever healing strength she had, and she was forced to rely on purely human functions. They all hoped the sliver of the waxing crescent, when it finally came, would help pull things in the right direction for them all.

Mitch was sulking even harder than usual. Late the next evening, Sharmalee finally told Corwin about the attack. She had been in the woods alone, armed with a simple blade for cutting herbs, collecting for Mitch. She’d been gathering goathead weed and snakeroot, the natural testosterone Jenna had been talking about. She had already gotten a few sprigs of each. She was excited, she had told Corwin, to put what she was learning in biochem to practical use. Then the twelve Rares attacked, and she had no hope of shifting. The next question everyone wanted answered was the one that no one could ask.

“Sharm, you can tell me. We’ve been there together. It’s not your fault.”

“I know!” Sharmalee snapped.

Hazel, Jenna, Lexie, Mitch, and Renee all leaned around the kitchen island, listening through the floorboards to the girls speaking above. Mitch chewed on his nails. Hazel played with the ends of her hair. Lexie tapped each finger silently on the linoleum, and Renee stood straight, arms crossed over her chest, staring softly ahead. A single pool of golden light illuminated a bowl of apples, their red reflection glowing withing everyone’s irises.

From upstairs, Corwin said, “But … ?”

“They weren’t like the Rares we’ve caught,” Sharmalee replied. “The half-blood, men-types or whatever. It was like being attacked by twelve really smart, really huge, wild animals. I don’t know what brought them together; they didn’t seem to work as a pack. But there were just so many of them. So big. So … .” Her voice trailed off, caught by tears. “I couldn’t tell what was in their eyes, whether it was sex, or power, or hate. They treated me like a doe, not a woman. It was almost scarier that way.

“I started feeling … ” Sharmalee choked back more tears. “I was flashing back. And all the training we’ve done … Fuck.” Bedclothes rustled, and Sharmalee’s voice when next she spoke was muffled, as though she’d hidden under the covers. “It was all slow-mo. I thought for sure they were going to rape me. I was so ready for it. I was processing it before it happened. Like, I was almost willing it to happen so it could be over. And for a second I thought it might go in that direction. But then they started chattering to each other, barking. I knew they were talking, but I couldn’t understand it. It was a language I’d never heard. Then they started arguing. I guess. That’s what it sounded like.

“It shook me back to presence, and I ran. I thought I could try and shift if I got some distance on them, but it was a mistake. I just got nauseous and dizzy and stumbled over myself. They caught up and were on me again. But I guess I’d run to a different part of the woods, near the sea cliffs, on the other side of the Burnout. I caught a whiff of something, and the rest of them did too. It spooked them enough that I managed to escape.”

The girls downstairs shared questioning looks, and Corwin asked the question they couldn’t.

“What was it?” she asked.

“I didn’t know at first. I was just concentrating on running, but … it’s something I’ve smelled only once before, when Archer came back.”

Lexie froze, not wanting to hear Sharmalee’s next words, but too far away to stop them: “We were in the territory of a pureblood.”