Connected: Chapter 6 (Patreon)

Chapter 6

Abby

Kyla hung up the call with Camille, and it didn’t matter that I didn’t have werewolf super hearing, I’d heard every word from my spot on the basement couch. Camille was scared, Kyla was worried, and me… I was confused. Marion Presley was the healer I’d been sent with a small team of Council Operatives to capture because she’d been killing people. I wasn’t sure what had happened to her afterward – that was beyond my clearance – but now she was in a lab. A lab where Camille was being experimented on.

But how? The Council didn’t experiment on supernaturals. It didn’t kidnap werewolves and try to make them dangerous, so who was doing this? And how did they get Marion? Had they stolen her from the Council’s prison? Had she been sent to the prison at all?

Kyla left the table she’d been standing at in the Pack house’s basement, and wandered over to the couch to drop down at my side. This wasn’t the spot I’d have chosen to get our thinking done. It was cold, and all that was down here was the table, some bookshelves of Pack records and old books, and a cell made of thick steel bars impregnated with silver. Not the kind of environment conducive to mental breakthroughs… but even though it was the next morning and he’d calmed down some, Eli still didn’t want me here. He knew I was here, and he’d been angry when he realized Kyla hadn’t taken me home, but at least I was out of the way in the basement.

Luna was lying on a worn bed in the cell, sipping on a juice box with the straw sticking out the corner of her mouth. She’d been herself again for a while now – the serum’s effects had lasted from when she got dosed in the morning until the afternoon, but she’d passed out afterward and slept through the night. She still made frequent mental complaints about how sore and tired she was, but she was mostly back to normal.

I’d spent the night on the floor of Camille and Kyla’s bedroom, listening to Kyla worry and hope that any second someone would come through her door with a lead. Neither of us had slept much, and both she and Luna were back to trying to come up with ways to find Camille. While I would’ve loved to be brainstorming too, I couldn’t stop thinking about Marion. About how she’d ended up where she was and why. About what that meant. About her husband and how I’d shot him. The last thing I wanted to do right now was tell Kyla about it, especially if it meant risking someone else in the house hearing. Eli already didn’t trust the Council, and I could only imagine what kind of assumptions he’d make if he found out that someone who’d been in our custody was also in the lab.

Kyla turned sideways on the couch, pulling one leg up so her knee rested against my thigh and throwing an arm over the back behind my shoulders, and I was grateful for the warmth of her against my side. “Maybe you could boost our connection with magic,” she thought aloud.

I shook my head. “Even if I wasn’t still a beginner at magic, we have no idea how your connection works. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

That didn’t deter her much. She continued to think for a minute, wondering why their connection wasn’t working and bulldozing through ideas before she settled on one in particular. “What if,” she began, and I gave her a look, because it wasn’t much different from her first idea. She said it anyway. “You could boost your telepathy to try and hear her, or communicate.”

“I’m a beginner,” I emphasized. “If I messed it up, I don’t know… my head could explode.”

She blew a discouraged puff of air through her lips, dropping her head sideways against the couch. “Oh!” She perked up again. “What about a locator spell?”

“A locator spell,” I repeated. I’d never done one, but they were pretty standard, and I couldn’t imagine it being that difficult. “That’s more my skill level.”

Luna sat up with interest. “Can you do it?”

“Maybe,” I said, “but I’d have to go to my dad’s office, to look it up in his books and get supplies.” I lifted Kyla’s knee off my lap enough to get into my pocket for my cell phone, and checked the time. “If I go right now, he might not even see me, he’s got a conference call in twenty minutes. I’ll need a backpack.” Kyla picked up on the fact that I’d said ‘me’ instead of ‘we,’ so I added, “You know he’s been extra grumpy about you guys since you broke into the office.”

To save you, Kyla thought. I knew she was worried about Camille, and she wanted to be involved in every aspect of finding Camille that she could, even if that meant risking being yelled at by my dad. It wasn’t just the plea in her mind either. She gave me the most adorable head tilt and brow furrow I’d ever seen, and I’d always been shit at telling her no.

“I hate it when you do that,” I grumbled.

She smiled, knowing it’d changed my mind. “You love it.” God, she had me pegged.

“Don’t worry about me,” Luna said, with an overly casual flick of her hand, “I’ll just sit here in a prison cell and hope I won’t Change like that again.”

“I’ll send Wes down to keep you company,” Kyla told her. “Rest up, we’ll be back soon.”

Luna fell onto her back again, raising the juice box back to her lips as she tossed us a wave. “Take it easy.”

I followed Kyla up the stairs and down the hall toward the front of the house. Wes was in the library, so Kyla poked her head in and asked him if he could hang out with Luna until we got back. We were so close to making it out the front door that Kyla had her hand on the knob, but then Eli wandered out of the living room.

“Kyla,” he called, and Kyla froze.

She turned around thinking she was about to get yelled at, but Eli wasn’t as mad as he was earlier. In fact, he seemed to have resigned himself to the reality that Kyla wasn’t going to obey him, and beneath that resignation was a tiny kernel of something else. Something like respect. Well… respect and exasperation. He still didn’t trust the Council, but he was willing to give Kyla’s faith a chance. I wished I could tell him myself that it was okay. That I wasn’t my dad, and that I cared so deeply not just for Kyla, but for Camille too, and I’d never hurt them. And that meant never hurting the Pack.

“I’ll wait in the car,” I whispered.

Kyla nodded and gave me the keys, and I slipped out to wait in the black truck we’d be driving around since the Jeep was totaled. It took a few minutes, but eventually she wandered out with the backpack she’d remembered and hopped into the driver’s seat. I didn’t say anything while she pulled away from the Pack house, and even though I couldn’t turn off my ability to read minds, sometimes I didn’t want to. I was curious about her conversation with Eli, and Kyla rarely resented my ability as an invasion of privacy, even when she knew I was digging deeper than usual.

“Say it,” she said eventually, tapping her temple, “I can feel you up here.”

“Eli’s right,” I said. “If anything happens to me, my dad will blame the Pack.” It had been a concern of his all summer. Every time I was at the Pack house helping with little cases, I’d heard him think it. It was why he’d been so angry yesterday, when we’d got to the house not just with Camille missing, but with me bleeding. And then Luna turned vicious and I could’ve been bit... I guess he was worried enough that he’d finally said something. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, and if that means I can’t-”

“I need you,” Kyla interrupted, releasing a tide of mental resistance to what she knew I was going to say. That I’d sit this out if it was too great a risk to the Pack. That no matter how worried I was about Camille, and how badly I wanted to help get her back, I couldn’t live with myself if it put them in even more danger. Kyla reached for my left hand, and of all the reasons she thought that she needed me here – for support, for resources, for ideas – the one that mattered most to her was the one she couldn’t say out loud.

"I know," I said. I let her fingers slip between mine, a touch that had become so casual over the last six months it almost didn’t make my stomach flutter anymore. “And I’ll risk anything to get Camille back.” I glanced down at the rune scar on the inside of my right forearm. A scar I’d endured the same night I refused to let Camille bite me, because even if it meant saving my life, my dad’s wrath over it would’ve been too great a threat to hers. “I just want you to understand how big a risk it is. How big a risk it’s always been.”

“Come on,” she smiled, “where’s my rebellious Abs who doesn’t care what her dad thinks?”

“Replaced by the Abby who knows her dad can be dangerous if anything happens to her.”

Kyla nodded, squeezing my hand and saying seriously, “I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.” And I could hear that she meant it. That she knew it wasn’t because I was afraid of getting hurt, but because I was afraid of how that would hurt them. “How’d all this start anyway?” she asked. “I mean, I know the stuff with the phantoms made things tense, and the Council thinks we’re dangerous, but… What happened before that?”

“I know bits of the Council’s side,” I told her. “I can’t say how accurate it is.” I’d told Camille some of this stuff before too, but regardless, she hummed her interest. “The Council used to contract the Pack for dirtier jobs. All things considered, you’re efficient killers, and more trustworthy than vampires.” Kyla rolled her eyes. “Back then, the Council was split into two divisions that were caught up in some political war for power. One division thought the only way to protect humans was to eradicate non-human supernaturals. The other thought monitoring dangerous ones was good enough. Both sides were backed by factions of supernaturals.”

I paused, and Kyla nodded for me to continue.

“There was an Alpha, a couple successions before Eli, who’d been doing everything she could to stay out of it and stick with a relationship built on contracts, but that relationship was already strained. I don’t know, I guess the passive division asked the Pack for help, but the Alpha wouldn’t give it. Things got messy, really messy, and by the time one division took over, a lot of people died. Some blame the Pack for not picking a side.”

“So… which division took over? Which division are you?”

“The passive one, Kyla, geez.” I knew my dad could be an asshole, but that didn’t make the Council some malevolent entity hell-bent on killing ‘dangerous’ supernaturals.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, giving my hand another squeeze. “I just don’t understand why your dad hates us so much.”

“It’s just prejudice,” I said. “Some of them still think all you’re good for is killing.” Before Kyla could voice her mental protest, I teased to lighten the mood, “Which I know isn’t true, because Camille didn’t kill me for trying to date you.”

“She would’ve regretted it if she did,” Kyla said with a smile. “She likes you more than I do now.”

“Shut up,” I laughed, throwing her hand back into her lap.

She noticed the blush on my face, and I tried not to think about how much she liked it while she set both hands on the steering wheel. We didn’t talk about that, about our feelings, not even when we were alone. Thankfully, Kyla changed the subject. “Is practicing magic with your dad helping your relationship at all?” In response to that question, I gave an incoherent grumble. “Is that a no?”

“You know I suck at magic,” I said. “And he’s such an impatient teacher.” Not to mention that our relationship these days was almost too far gone to be fixed with simple bonding time. “He wants me to be some prodigy, like he was, but I just can’t connect to energies the same way.”

"Is it a mental thing?" she asked.

“It’s a spiritual thing,” I said. “I’m too moored to the mental, whatever the hell that means. He just yells at me to think less, but I can’t when there’re my thoughts and his tension and everybody else’s thoughts… Maybe it is mental…”

“You should try meditating,” Kyla suggested. One side of my mouth twitched with reluctance at the idea. “Seriously. Camille and I could help, if you want. If she can sit still for it, you can too.”

“Let’s get her back first. Then we’ll talk about it.”

We arrived at the Council office a few minutes later, and I grabbed the backpack Kyla had brought and led the way in. I did my best to make our entrance inconspicuous, which wasn’t too difficult with everyone hard at work, but there was no escaping the notice of Leo. The secretary at the front desk.

“Hey, Abby,” he greeted me with a smile, watching while Kyla and I skirted toward my dad’s office. “Your dad isn’t there.”

“I know,” I said, giving him the friendliest grin I could, and then immediately slipping through the office door before he could voice his protest.

I shut the door behind us and walked over to set the backpack on the desk, then strode to the massive, wall-length bookshelf behind it that had drawers from the waist down. Kyla came over to sit on the edge of the desk, observing curiously while I looked for what I needed.

“Okay,” I murmured, my hand following as my eyes scanned the spines of various books on the shelves. “I know you’re here…” There. I pulled a worn book down and turned, smiling at Kyla and setting it on the surface beside her. I flipped through the pages until I’d found the section that I wanted. “So I’ll remember the words,” I explained, pulling out my cell phone and snapping a picture of the incantation. After that, I went down the list on the second page, finding ingredients in my dad’s drawers and pulling them out to put them in the bag, but when I got to the end, I stopped. “Crap.”

“What?” Kyla asked, leaning in to squint at the writing. I pointed. “Blood of the lost,” she read aloud, and scoffed, “if we knew where she was to get some blood, we wouldn’t need the spell.”

“There’s always a catch,” I complained. “Stupid magic.”

“Will mine work?” Kyla asked.

I stared at her for a few seconds while I considered it. It wasn’t a terrible idea… It wasn’t exactly Camille’s blood in Kyla, but it was as close as we were going to get. “Maybe. We can try it."

The next moment, the door of the office opened, and my dad stopped in the doorway. Kyla immediately hopped off his desk, and I nearly dropped the bottle of herb I was holding. Shit. It’d been a while since I could read his mind because he'd found a way to keep me out, but that didn't mean I couldn't read his face. He was mad, but he didn't say anything right away as he glanced from me to Kyla, and then at the desk.

He paced over to examine the book we had out. "I told you not to try new spells without help."

"Right," I said. Okay, don't piss him off. "Um." Now is not the time to start a fight. "It's just a locator spell, and it's kind of an emergency, so I thought you'd understand."

He studied the book and the spell for a long second, and then closed it, taking it around the desk to return it to its place on the shelves. "What's the emergency?" He turned back around, rummaging through my backpack and looking at the ingredients I'd gathered.

Kyla wanted to step in and try to diffuse the irritation on my dad's face, but I gave her a subtle shake of my head. Her speaking would only make it worse. "One of the wolves was kidnapped," I told him. I wouldn't tell him it was Camille, they hated each other... "We can't find her."

He grunted an acknowledgment and pulled out one of the herbs I'd collected. He turned it over in his hand, glancing again from me to Kyla, and he was making me so nervous. He was angry, I knew he was, but the fact that he hadn't kicked Kyla out yet and started yelling at me for bringing her here seemed like a small miracle. After a tense span of seconds, he turned back to the drawers, replacing the bottle and swapping it for a different one.

"Use calamus root instead of mugwort," he said, putting the new one into my bag. "It works better. And follow the directions exactly."

Was he serious? Actually, one hundred percent serious? "Okay," I barely managed to breathe in shock, "thanks." And I definitely wasn't going to wait around for him to change his mind. I grabbed the backpack and threw it over my shoulders.

Only, he looked at Kyla and said, "Give us a minute."

As respectful as she always tried to be toward my dad, she met my eyes and deliberately thought, You okay?

I nodded even though I was preparing to get yelled at. "I'll be right out." Kyla slipped out the door, and I tried to preemptively curb my dad's anger with an apologetic smile. "I know you said not to bring-"

"I don't want to have to tell you again," he interrupted. "You didn't just bring a werewolf into this office. You brought one into my office, where I have sensitive infor-"

"It's just Kyla," I told him, familiar dull frustration tightening my throat. "And she's not here to steal information. She's here for help. Or do we not help supernaturals in need anymore?"

"The Pack made its decision about-"

"You know what?" I cut him off. "I don't care. We were leaving anyway."

"Abby!" he snarled after me when I turned, and I swiveled around again to face him. "Don't make me tell you again."

I held back the snark on the tip of my tongue. As badly as I wanted to argue with him, Camille was god knows where with an unknown amount of time, and I didn't want to waste any of it on his bullshit. "Okay, I won't bring any of them to the office ever again." That clearly didn't make the situation better, and for all either of us knew, it was a lie. I picked up a foot to turn for the door again, but stopped before leaving. My dad had already turned around to cool his temper with rearranging the bottles I'd misplaced in his drawers, so I stood there for a few silent moments to let as much of the tension clear as I could. Then said, "Dad... can I ask you something?"

He hummed his gruff consent without looking at me.

"You remember that case I worked?" I swallowed hard around the name I'd have to say out loud. Around the reminder of the life I'd taken. "Where we brought in the healer? Marion Presley?"

He stopped adjusting the bottles, stood perfectly still for a few moments, and then turned. "What about her?"

"What happened to her? After we brought her in."

His eyes narrowed with thought, and he considered the question for a while before asking, "Why do you ask?"

I shrugged. "Just... curious."

He gave another hum, thinking about it for so long that I wished I could still read him. Wished he hadn't found a way to keep me out of his head. "Transferred," he said eventually. "To End Mountain."

End Mountain? That was one of the most powerful and influential witch covens in the country. What did they need a healer for? "Why?"

"They sought retribution," he said, "she killed one of theirs."

"Do you know what they did with her?"

"No," he said.

I nodded, and I wasn't exactly sure anymore what to think. There was a possibility that End Mountain was behind the lab. They didn't like werewolves – or a lot of other supernaturals, for that matter – and they had the power, influence, and funds to make a lab like that possible. But why would they risk getting caught? The Council would have a field day with all the laws that lab was breaking, not to mention that Camille and Luna being targeted brought the potential to start a war with the Pack. Were they really that dumb? Or was it more than that, and they felt certain they'd get away with it?

I didn't say anything else to my dad. It would've been pointless trying to get him to authorize Council resources to find a Pack wolf, especially if it was Camille, and Camille hadn't said anything about other prisoners – the Council wouldn't try to rescue Marion, either. So I left my dad's office to find Kyla waiting outside the door. A quick dig into her thoughts let me know she hadn't heard my questions about Marion, which was kind of a relief seeing as I wasn’t even sure what I’d say about it.

“He’s mad?” she asked.

“Not as mad as I thought he’d be,” I told her, and she followed me in the direction of the office cubicles. “Still, we should be quick.” We reached my desk, and Kyla leaned sideways against it while I began to search through the drawers of my desk. “I have a thumb drive of active and inactive records,” I said, rummaging through a drawer. “Where is it?”

There were people all over the place doing work, trafficking up the stairs or elevator to the second floor, and Kyla stood absentmindedly watching them while I searched. Only, as I found the thumb drive and held it up triumphantly, she zeroed in on one employee in particular. He was walking past my desk as casually as anyone else in the office, but Kyla’s mind registered the familiarity of his scent as one of the kidnappers who’d taken Camille. He was the one who’d picked up her arm to check for Camille’s tattoo, and then helped load Camille into the van.

My ability to read her thoughts from a distance allowed me to pick up on it, and I reacted faster than she could process the recognition, fury, and need to interrogate and fire into action. I dropped the thumb drive and grabbed her by the shoulders, whipped her around, and shoved her backwards. The moment she fell into the chair behind her, I spun it, pushing it into the desk so she was trapped. She couldn’t get the leverage to stand without upturning the entire thing and causing a scene, and her rage at my interference was enough to make me wince.

Still, I held the chair in and bent to her ear. “Not here.”

“Let me up,” she growled, so angry at me that the sentence carried a wolfish rumble. She worked her arms out from under the desk and set them at the edge, struggling internally with her desire to push back hard to free herself and her reluctance to hurt me.

I leaned farther forward and grabbed her hands, and the touch made her hesitate even more. “Trust me,” I pleaded. “You can’t attack a Council employee at the Council HQ.”

“He’s getting away,” she muttered.

“I know his name,” I said, and that got through to her. She relaxed, and when all thoughts of pursuing him left her mind, I was confident enough to let her go. “If the spell doesn’t work,” I told her, “we’ll find him and question him. Somewhere safer.”

"You could’ve led with that,” she mumbled, sliding the chair out and standing again.

“You could’ve asked,” I said. I picked up the thumb drive and tossed it into the backpack, then nodded for her to follow. “Come on.”

She followed me back to the exit, and even though she didn’t say a word, her thoughts were loud. Why was the kidnapper here, of all places? A Council employee had been present when Camille was kidnapped, and she didn’t think it looked good. She wanted to know why I knew nothing about it, and why he was here, but it wasn’t until we reached the car that her thoughts got more direct. Why was the kidnapper at Council headquarters? she asked me without words. But I didn’t know, and I was just as baffled and frustrated by the development as she was, and I ignored her to contemplate my own theories while I pulled out of the parking spot.

All my silence did was frustrate her even more. Why was the kidnapper at Council headquarters!

“I don’t know, Kyla,” I blurted. “Geez. I can’t think with you yelling at me.”

She inhaled a deep breath, taking a moment to calm herself down and then saying, "Sorry."

"It's okay," I said. She was still worked up, but I was grateful she was attempting to control it. "I'm worried about Camille too, but... one thing at a time."

She nodded, and fell silent to think to herself. She tried to think quietly so that I could do some guessing of my own, but her thoughts were all over the place, making it impossible to focus. It didn't matter anyway, she was thinking pretty much everything I would've been. Except for when she reached her final conclusion.

"Abby," she prompted.

"Don't even say it," I told her. "There's no way." She wanted to know if the Council could be behind the lab. "My dad can be a dick, but he wouldn't do that, and he wouldn't risk an all-out war with the Pack." I shook my head. "That guy has to be working for someone else. Using Council resources, like I'm doing for you."

"Any idea who?" she asked.

"I don't have any solid guesses, but End Mountain is a possibility."

"The coven?" she asked. I nodded. "Why do you think that?"

I... maybe hadn't thought it through when I told her that... "Camille gave me a name," I answered with a sigh. "Marion Presley." Kyla nodded. "She's the healer I helped bring in, and she's in the lab too." There was a new tidal wave of ideas and accusations from her side of the car. "I know," I said, "it doesn't look good, I know. But why would the Council do this? There's no reason. And I asked my dad, he said they transferred Marion to End Mountain."

"Is it possible End Mountain has people working in the Council?"

I shrugged. "Anything is possible at this point, and I wouldn’t put it past them. That's why I grabbed the thumb drive. It has all our records, and we can cross reference to see if kidnapping and experimenting matches any prior M.O.'s."

That was all she said about it, and for my sake, she tried not to think too heavily about the Council as a suspect. We got back to the Pack house soon after, and went straight down to the basement where Luna and Wes were. First things first, I wanted to try out the locator spell. Kyla went upstairs to grab me a bowl while I pulled the ingredients out of the backpack, and once she brought it, I put some of the herbs into it while the others watched on curiously.

The last thing I did was ask for a pocket knife, which Wes had in his pocket, and after using it to shave some of the calamus root my dad recommended into the bowl, I handed it to Kyla. "I need some blood," I told her. She took it from me and held her arm over the dish, and I couldn’t watch as she made a cut in her forearm to produce a few drops. I traded the knife back for a towel so she could stop the bleeding. "Try not to think too loud..."

All three of them did their best not to be distracting while I pulled out a matchbook. The hardest part about doing magic was tuning everything else out so I could focus on the incantation, but I had every reason in the world to get this right. So I took in a deep breath to help me concentrate and set my phone down beside the bowl, and once I felt like I was in a relaxed enough state of mind, I started reading the incantation I'd photographed. I read in the calmest, most confident voice I could, just like my dad had taught me, until I reached the end of the verse. I struck the match, dropping it into the bowl with the last word I recited, and we waited.

For one long, tense minute, we waited.

Luna whispered, "What's it supposed to do?"

"I don't know," I sighed, planting my palms against the table. "Send us a guide or something?"

Wes gave a cautious smile. "I don't think it worked..."

Kyla thought it was because of her blood and maybe we needed more, and I was willing to try almost anything at this point. I nodded at her, looking away again as she grabbed the knife and stuck her arm back over the bowl, wincing through the pain when she cut deeper into the already healing wound. She even grabbed her arm with her other hand to squeeze out a steady stream of drops.

I repeated the process of calming, reciting, and lighting. I dropped a lit match into the magical concoction, and it hit the blood-stained contents and the entire thing burst into flames. The fire didn't last long at all. Only a split second later, it went out, but in those brief moments everything in the bowl had been reduced to ashes. And we were still without our guide. I let out a defeated breath, cursing my struggle with magic. Maybe if I was better at it. Maybe if I studied harder or was more patient during my dad's lessons.

Kyla didn't want me to stand there staring at my bowl of failure, so she grabbed it and handed it to Wes so he could take it upstairs. Once he'd disappeared, she asked, "So what was that employee’s name?"

Finding him was our next best option, and I inhaled a breath to tell her what his name was and the best way I thought we could find him, but out of nowhere, there was a loud snap. It hit Luna so hard and so unexpectedly that she dropped to the floor with a sharp cry, and I recognized the agony on her face. Heard the pleas of 'no' and the bursting thoughts to prepare and the shifting tide of rage rushing through her head so fast it almost made me dizzy. Somehow, she had the presence of mind to start shrugging out of her button-up shirt, but she was losing sight of herself in the pain and emotion.

"Wes!" Kyla shouted toward the stairs, reaching down to take Luna's arm, trying to help her toward that steel cage. The only place we'd all be safe from her.

The sheer agony of the next snap in her shoulder was so severe it ripped her arm out of Kyla's grasp. "It's worse," she whimpered.

It was happening so fast and I had no idea what to do. She was halfway Changed already, and Kyla left her on the floor to rush and grab the key to the cage, opening it because she decided she'd just have to throw Luna in. While she did that, my eyes darted from Luna to the exit. She was Changing between it and me, blocking my escape, and I hadn’t been around long enough to see how fast the Phase happened last time. I didn’t know if I’d make it to the door before Luna could attack, and while I trusted Kyla not to let Luna kill me, I wasn’t sure she’d be fast enough to stop a bite. A bite that would undo whatever civility remained between the Pack and the Council. A bite that made me freeze where I was with indecision.

Kyla finished throwing open the door and turned, but when she laid eyes on me, she panicked. There was a flash of terror as the only readable thought I heard from her was that it was too late. That I was too close while Luna's eyes were glazed with bloodlust. And she reacted without another thought. She threw herself forward, Phasing in midair and colliding with Luna just as she'd been widening her jaws to turn on me. Kyla's teeth closed on the scruff of Luna's neck, and they crashed together into the nearest wall while I went scrambling backward.

There was no pause before they rolled into a battling tangle of fur across the basement floor. Kyla's only thought was to keep Luna as far from me as possible. Wes flew down the stairs, gaze going from them to me before he dashed across the basement, hauling me away and stowing me in the farthest corner he could. But no matter how far I was from the scuffle, I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It was the most brutal thing I'd ever seen. Luna was always so calculated in her fights, but the serum made her all fury, teeth and claws snapping and slashing relentlessly. It didn't even matter that she wasn't in her normal state of mind, because the ease of her calculation was ingrained in muscle memory, and there was no room for Kyla to dodge or counterattack because Luna wouldn't give her the chance.

She was all over the place. Kyla sidestepped to try and make her stumble, but she followed with ravenous speed. Kyla ducked in to try and catch one of her legs to pull her off balance, and she did catch it, but as they fell, Luna's teeth were tearing at the back of Kyla's shoulder blades. Pain was nothing to her, and that made her infinitely more dangerous.

Kyla was doing her best not to hurt Luna while also trying not to get completely mauled, but no matter how skillfully she struck Luna's aim away with her muzzle, parts of her golden fur were already wet with blood. There were footsteps thundering above us as everyone else in the house reacted to the commotion, but Kyla couldn't last like this. She was fighting to protect me because it meant protecting the wolves, but I couldn't let her get ripped apart, and Wes knew she couldn't last too.

"Go!" I told him pleadingly. I couldn't stand watching another spray of Kyla's blood hit the concrete floor.

"Don't move from this spot," he ordered.

He didn't give me a chance to nod before rushing forward. Luna was too big and ferocious in wolf form for him to do much by himself, but he grabbed the largest book within his immediate reach, and the moment he had an opening, he swung. The solid cover caught Luna so hard in the side of the head that she rolled across the cement. It wasn't enough of a distraction to cut through her blinding fury – she was back on her feet in a flash – but it was enough time for Kyla to recover some control over the situation, and Luna was still focused on her.

Luna shot for her as she dashed into the cage. She sprang toward the back of it, and Luna was so single-minded about only getting something in her teeth that when Kyla kicked off the rear bars and ricocheted back to the exit, Luna didn't react fast enough. She collided with the end of the cell with so much force I felt the rattling of the bars in the ground beneath my feet. The very moment Kyla made it out, Wes slammed the door shut. Eli, David, and Julian finally reached the bottom of the stairs.

Kyla Phased back, staggering weakly to the table in the middle of the floor and letting her upper body fall onto it. Now that her fur wasn't covering her wounds, I could see just how much damage Luna had done. Her shoulders took a majority of the beating, and there were lots of smaller wounds on her arms and legs. Even though there was blood everywhere, most of them weren't deep enough to need stitches or scar too badly. The most notable were a horizontal one above her left eyebrow, which was seeping blood down the side of her face, and the deepest one across her shoulder blades.

The one in her shoulder blades was the worst. Luna's teeth had torn almost to the bone, and the gaping slash was a raw disarray of flesh. The flow of blood from it was steady. It was hardly the first time I'd seen so much blood, not even with the smears of it on the basement floor, but it wasn't just any blood. It was Kyla's blood. She was panting and naked and weak and bleeding, and I didn't want to think about how badly this could have ended. Didn't want to think about the fact that I could've lost her, because the reality of the gore was already enough to make me sick.

Eli scanned the basement to take in the entire scene, refusing to meet my gaze because he wanted to stay in control of his fury about how close I’d been, and about the fact that I was here regardless of whether he wanted me to be. Then he asked Kyla if she was okay, and she nodded even though she wasn't. Even though she was in pain and needed someone to do something about the wounds, but it was good enough for Eli, and he finally forced himself to look at me. "Are you hurt?" I managed to mumble a response and give the slightest shake of my head. "Go get the medical kit," he instructed Wes, but as he looked again at the wound in Kyla's shoulder, he thought that he'd have to call a medical contact. Someone who could come and take care of it, because it was too deep for any of them to do it properly.

Luna was in the cage, snarling and snapping and throwing herself at the bars of it, not seeming to care one bit that the silver in them would leave her shoulders raw by the time she was herself again.

"Abby," Kyla said, as if she'd been trying to get my attention. I tore my focus away from Luna to look at her. She gestured weakly to the couch near where I was standing. "Can I have that blanket?"

I stirred to life, shoving away my horror because Kyla needed help. I grabbed the blanket that was draped over the back of the couch and carried it to her, laying it over her shoulders and finally and completely realizing that she was naked. I still wasn’t completely used to being around when they Changed, and even though the blood kept my mind from going somewhere inappropriate, my cheeks still shaded. She didn't say anything, but led the way upstairs so we were away from the threat and intimidating viciousness of Luna.

"Are you okay?" I asked when we reached the hallway, trying not to look at her even though she had the blanket wrapped around her. "Do you need to sit?"

She shook her head, holding the blanket open to glance down her body and then mentally apologizing when I immediately turned crimson. "There's too much blood. I need to rinse off."

I tossed a look toward the basement door, and then up and down the hall. Kyla was hurt, but as worried as I was about her, I'd finally calmed down enough to process Eli's frustration at how close I'd come to getting bit on his watch. Maybe he was right. "Should I leave?"

Kyla instantly thought of all the reasons she didn't want me to leave, but as Wes appeared in the hall with a box of medical supplies in his arms, she said, "I think the one on my back will still be bleeding after a shower... Can you... put something on it when I'm out?"

Wes extended the box to me, so I murmured, "Okay," while I took it from him.

Kyla led the way up to the second floor of the Pack house, opening the door of her and Camille's bedroom and gesturing for me to go in. She must've known Eli wasn't happy about what happened downstairs too, because she wanted me to wait in here so I was out of sight. "I'll be right back."

After I nodded, she closed the door and left me alone. In her and Camille's bedroom. As many times as I'd been to the Pack house, I'd never been in here alone, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel like I was invading their privacy just a little. It was one thing for me to have feelings for Kyla, for Kyla to have feelings for me, and for both her and Camille to have accepted that. But then there was Camille... and neither of them had any idea...

I shook off as much of the discomfort as I could and wandered farther in, dropping the box of medical supplies onto the bed and trying to figure out what to do with myself in the meantime. There was the bed with its dark navy sheets and white comforter, a nightstand on either side of it, a long dresser on the left side of the room next to a closet door, and a desk on the right. Kyla's guitar was propped up against the side of the desk, and a worn gray backpack I recognized as Camille's was folded over itself on the floor because of how empty it was.

She should've been getting ready to start college. Should've been buying books for her first semester instead of being trapped in some lab, getting dosed with a serum that turned her into what Luna had just become. Kyla should've been sending in her Tollbridge schedule and I should've been texting them both about how boring summer school was, waiting for Camille to tell me I should ditch and hang out with them. Instead, Camille and Luna were being used for something sinister, Kyla was wounded, and I felt less welcome here every day. But one thing was for sure: I was going to rain hell on whoever was behind this when we figured it out. Starting with the Council employee who'd played a part in kidnapping Camille.