By the time we pulled up at Coloma, darkness was falling quickly and we were cutting it close; I was already feeling the pull of the bright full moon, along with Ryder and Thea.

With Thea, I could tell her pull was different to mine and Ryder's. Thea's pull led her directly to bloodlust, whereas the pull I felt was one that led to a lack of control, often leading to that bloodlust that Thea was already feeling.

It's no wonder she chooses to be locked up, I thought... and somehow managed to keep that thought to myself.

The GMC Sierra was parked up nearby and I could hear the pack's (plus Maia's) heartbeats from within a half-burnt down hut.

I tried not to think about how much it hurt being back here again, and seeing what was my home for a long while burnt to ashes... This wasn't the first time my home had been diminished to ashes and dust — the wind swirling up mini-cyclones of the grey, charred matter.

Gently, I roused Ember, "We're here."

I don't think she was actually asleep, merely resting after the eventful evening we'd had.

Her gorgeous dark blue eyes blinked open and damn if I didn't want to kiss her on those perfect lips of hers. But her sleepy face suddenly frowned.

"I've got a bad feeling about this place," she admitted to me, "Maybe we shouldn't have come here."

Forcing myself to act, I grabbed her hand and led her towards the pack, "We didn't have much of a choice, and we probably won't end up staying for long anyway."

"Theo!" Jade ran up to me, flinging her arms around my neck, causing Ember to drop my hand and Thea to send me a look. "I'm so happy you're okay."

Awkwardly, I patted Jade on the back, before moving away from her and heading over to Jason.

"It won't be much longer until we can't resist the moon's pull," I told Jason quickly, and his face blatantly showed his instant agreement with me.

"I know; I can feel it too," he responded through gritted teeth and threw a dirty scowl up at the moon. "I know you've just been reunited with your family, and probably want to spend time with them, but I don't know whether we'll make it out of Coloma tonight."

"What about Ember, Abi, Storm, and Zack? And are we planning on letting Maia shift?"

Jason merely placed a hand on my shoulder and led me over to the others, before announcing authoritatively, "Alright, here's the plan: Theo, Ryder, Jade, Maia and I will stay here for the night — the moon's too powerful by now for us to drive anywhere — and, Mr Oakenbank, if you don't mind, you'll take Storm, Abi, Zack, Ember, and of course, Thea, to a motel somewhere and spend the night there."

<Ooh, I do like a man who takes control.> My twin sister's thoughts drifted into my head, temporarily shocking me.

<Keep your thoughts to yourself on this occasion, Thea.> I rolled my eyes at her.

"That sounds like a good plan." My dad nodded. "I need to get Thea locked up soon anyway."

"How can you stand to be locked up?" Jade asked Thea incredulously, frowning seriously.

"I actually like the cage." Thea crossed her arms and frowned right back at Jade, before shrugging. "Better than killing anybody, at least."

<Oh yeah, she's my sister alright.>

Thea heard that time, and she looked over and winked at me — almost in exactly the same way Mom would've done...

"Are you alright?" Ember came up to me, snapping me out of my semi-trance.

I blinked and nodded quickly. "Yeah."

"I'm not," she said bluntly and wrapped her arms around my waist.

Keeping my hands on her upper back, I enveloped her in my arms. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing." She stepped away from me and forced a smile. "Nothing new, anyway."

"We gotta get going, Ember," my dad told her — Storm, Abi and Zack were already in his truck.

Ember nodded, and it looked like she blinked back tears before Thea led her to the car.

"Is everything alright?" My dad asked me, one eyebrow raised.

"No, but it will be."

Wrapping his arms around me, he whispered in my ear, "Be safe, tonight, son. Remember that those hunters are still out there."

"I couldn't possibly forget."

<Have fun in the woods tonight, big bro.> Thea advised, <But not too much!>

<What do you mean?> I frowned back.

<Never mind.>

<See ya tomorrow.>

<Later.>

Then my dad drove his truck away from the ashes of Coloma, taking along with him my newfound family and the girl who had the splinters of my heart.

"Theo! You should see something!" A yell came from within one of the semi-burnt down huts.

I broke into a jog as I ran towards the hut.

It was Maia. She was lying unconscious on a makeshift bed of ferns, much like the beds my pack and I used to sleep on when we lived here...

"What's wrong with Maia?" I asked.

Abi stepped into the hut, and peeled the bandage off Maia's right leg, unveiling the bite that had healed.

"It's happening, isn't it?" I glanced up at Jason. "The reversal of her lycanthropy."

"Yeah," Jason confirmed with his eyebrows furrowing. "And now we know how those bastards did it."

"How?" I frowned.

"Whilst they had us," he continued, "They... extracted some of the power that I have, the power that enables me to turn a human into a werewolf."

"How...?" The question died on my lips.

Jason shook his head in defeat. "We don't know that yet. But it's clear that they're trying to reverse lycanthropy — maybe on a huge scale, who knows?

"Shit, do you think she'll shift tonight?" I threw an anxious look at the full moon, before settling my gaze on my Alpha once again.

"There's no way of telling." He responded.

"Well," Jade added, "Even if she does shift and is, like, super violent, at least we're miles from anywhere."

"True," Jason acknowledged.

A sudden prickle of pain ran through my body and Ryder juddered like he'd felt the same thing.

"What's up with the moon tonight?" Jade exclaimed as she saw her claws were already lengthening.

"Supermoon," Jason replied through gritted teeth — fangs.

Only nanoseconds apart from each other, we all started shifting — including Maia.

Like always, it was excruciatingly painful — unlike always, there was a sense of reassurance and security that I hadn't felt for a long while. It was probably because we were in Coloma, and the fact that I had my dad back, and I had a twin sister, with whom I shared telepathy.

Strangely, Maia's transformation barely looked painful; the bite mark on her leg didn't heal, but she stood, and other than the gaping wound on her leg, appeared physically okay.

In a shot, Maia was gone, howling as she ran off into the woods.

I shifted; my body hadn't finished shifting, which was weird, but it was most likely down to the supermoon.

"You good?" Jade nudged against my side.

After having finished shifting, I blinked a couple of times. "Yeah, it's just weird being back in Coloma again."

"I know." Jason breathed in a deep lungful of air. "We should probably go after Maia, and make sure she doesn't go after anyone."

"Agreed."

We all nodded and broke into a sprint, following our Alpha into the thick forest, chasing down a girl whose lycanthropy was a lie.

Even though we were running quickly, and we were getting further and further away from Coloma, my heightened senses kept reminding me of the ashes left there. The night air was warm and quiet — devoid of any human life except the five of us running rampant through the woods.

Glad there weren't any other souls around, I glanced across at Maia, who seemed fine. Even though I knew she wasn't; I was beginning to smell it as well. She didn't smell like death exactly, it was another ageing scent that I hadn't yet come across, and I couldn't figure out how to name it, either.

Ryder and Jade could probably smell it as well — I wasn't yet sure of whether Jason had regained his sense of smell, and it was a highly sensitive topic, so I was leaving it alone for as long as possible.

Mercifully, the night passed without anything going wrong. The five of us successfully hunted down a large, male elk, and the supermoon's pull lead us to tear it to shreds — despite none of us originally intending to do so. But other than that, and the fact that it could've been Maia's last night as a werewolf, it was a good night.

I guess.

By the time we shifted back, the sun was high in the sky, and when we returned back to the ashes of Coloma and checked our phones, it turned out it was approaching midday.

"Damn." Ryder shook his head. "I knew it was a long night, but I didn't know it was that long."

"I know, it's weird." Jason frowned.

Maia dropped down onto the floor, and we saw that the bite on her leg was bleeding profusely. Jason squatted down beside her and lifted her onto the makeshift bed she was lying on last night —her energy had been completely sucked from the night of the supermoon

<I freaking detest supermoons.> A voice appeared in my head, and for a millisecond I forgot about Thea, and she accused me, <You forgot about me, didn't you?>

<No... Okay, maybe. I've just been on my own for a while, ya know?>

<Yeah, I guess. How was last night for you?>

<Okay, probably easier than it was for you.>

I heard her sigh heavily, exhaustedly.

<Is Ember alright?>

<Yep, she's totally fine.>

<When are you all going to come back to Coloma?>

<Aww, why? You missin' me, big bro?> I heard my twin scoff. <Yeah, we'll be heading over pretty soon, I think; we're just having some late breakfast now. That thunder girl is acting pretty dodgy.>

<Storm?> I frowned. <Why, what's she doing?>

<She spent all last night muttering in her sleep about some boy... I could hear her, and I was locked up in the back of Dad's truck.>

<What boy?> I snapped quickly, remembering how Ember had suggested that maybe Storm couldn't be trusted either.

<R.. Ry... Rya—>

<Ryan.> My stomach plummeted; why on earth would Storm be talking about Ryan in her sleep?

<Yeah, that's it.>

Oh God.

Oh God, no.

No, it can't be.

<See ya soon, bro.>

"Jason." I strode over to him, dragging him to one side.

"What now?" He raised an eyebrow, signalling to Ryder not to come over.

"What if..." Anxiously chewing my lip, I began, trying to make it seem like the thought had just appeared to me. "What if Storm was — you know — what if she and Ryan...?" I couldn't find the right words to say — it was proving to be much more difficult than I'd anticipated.

"Spit it out, Theo," Jason prompted, crossing his arms firmly.

The wind blew my way, and I got the faintest whiff of Jason's chemosignals. As an Alpha, he was usually very skilled at hiding his emotions, so I was rarely able to sense his emotions — however, I was able to quickly determine just one emotion: distrust.

If I told Jason that I suspected Storm of betraying us, that could make him suspicious of me. And if there was one thing the pack didn't need right now, it was miscommunication.

"It doesn't matter." I shook my head, before going to check on Maia.

She seemed to have worsened in the past few minutes since I last saw her; her face was ash grey, she looked entirely drained and her leg was a bloodied mess. Jade was beside her, clamping a spare t-shirt around the wound — but to no avail, what once was a white t-shirt was drenched with dark crimson blood.

Swallowing, I was partly glad that this was happening now, instead of last night, when the smell of human blood would've driven us — Maia included — insane.

My ears literally pricked up when I heard the sound of a truck on gravel approaching Coloma. Leaving the hut where Maia and Jade were, I listened closer, focusing on the heartbeats — it was my dad, my sister, Ember, and Storm; clearly, Abi must've stayed with Zack at the motel they stayed in last night.

"They're on their way," I informed Jason.

"I know, Theo," he snapped; voice angry, face angry. "I've lost my sense of smell, not my sense of hearing."

My eyes widened but I said nothing; in the same way that full moons without my pack were hard, full moons without Sienna must've been hard for Jason. After all, they did meet on the night of a full moon.

My dad's truck finally pulled up, and as soon as the vehicle stopped, Ember instantly jumped out and ran over to me, flinging her arms around my neck — surprising the hell out of me.

"I missed you," she whispered, breath tickling my skin.

Sighing contentedly, I looped my arms around her, hanging loosely around the middle section of her back. "It was only one night, Ember."

"I know." Sadly, she pulled away, a serious look passing onto her face. "I need to tell you something."

Taking a hold of her wrist, I pulled her a little away from the pack, to the back of the huts, and hopefully out of earshot of Jason — after all, it's his sense of smell he's lost, not his sense of hearing — as if I'd forgotten.

"I still hate it when you grab my wrists." She frowned at me, nursing the wrist I'd grabbed.

Not in the mood for her scolding, I raised an eyebrow. "What is it?"

"Last night," she began, "I was staying in the same room as Storm — Abi and Zack were in another, your dad was in another room as well, and Thea was outside in the back of your dad's pickup. And Storm was talking in her sleep." Ember's eyes widened, and she shivered. "And it really creeped me out, like it was seriously freaky. I didn't know what to do, she was basically having a fit in her bed, thrashing around..."

Aware of how shaken Ember was, I tried a gentler tone, "Can you remember what she said?"

Up until then, Ember's eyes had been fixed on a point on my t-shirt, before they flicked up and looked into my own eyes, unveiling the terror that she'd been trying to keep concealed.

Stepping towards her, I opened my arms and enveloped her in another embrace, "It's okay now."

When Ember finally found her voice, she told me, "At the start, she was apologising to Ryan, saying that it was all her fault that he — that they got found out and that she was going to finish what they started with the hunters. Then Storm was sobbing about betraying the pack and how Jason would never forgive her, how no one would ever forgive her for what she's going to do."

My suspicions confirmed, I muttered, "Shit."

A few branches snapped under someone's foot, and a voice called to us, "Everything alright back here?"

It was Storm.

Instinctively, I moved my body in front of Ember's as Storm approached us.

Storm frowned, rolled her eyes and went back to the pack.

She could've heard us.

Without exchanging a word, Ember and I followed the traitor back to the pack.

A gunshot echoed through the valley, causing all of us (minus Maia, obviously) to be set on edge, looking around us as flocks of birds departed the surrounding trees.

"This shouldn't be happening now," Storm whispered incredulously next to me, though it seemed I was the only one that heard, as everybody else appeared oblivious.

"We've gotta get outta here," Jason spoke, and the pack sprang into action.

Jason and my dad carried Maia to the GMC Sierra, Jade following closely behind, still clinging onto that bloodied t-shirt. For a second, Storm stared incredulously at the sky, before frowning and shaking her head at me, and hurrying off to the trucks. Ember was gone as well, hastening towards my dad's truck, following suit as Ryder, Thea and my dad jumped into the truck.

And before I knew it, I was left standing alone in the middle of Coloma.

"Theo!" Jason shouted at me, "What the hell are you doing? Let's go!"

I shook my head. "There's not enough time."

"Yeah, not enough time for you to become a freaking martyr!" He yelled back.

Ember jumped out of the truck and ran back towards me, pressing her hands on either side of my face. "Theo, what are you doing?"

"You have to go," I told her, unsure of what was coming over me.

"You have to come with us," she pleaded, trying to drag me towards where the trucks were, engines running, ready to go — but I wasn't going anywhere. "The hunters are coming, and you know it. Storm must've led them here, and now all of us are in danger."

"You can't seriously expect us to be any safer with Storm." Incredulously, I pleaded with her, struggling to properly explain, "You've got to get out of here, leave me."

"Let me stay with you." Planting herself firmly in front of me, she demanded feistily, "The only person on this continent that I feel safe with is you, Theo, okay? No one else."

Despite the warming of my heart at her words, I forced myself to insist again, "Ember, just go. Leave me."

"Theodore Jonathan Oakenbank-Aquila," she said firmly, mashing up all the names that I possibly could've owned. "I am not leaving you again."

Then she passionately pressed her lips against mine, her lips sealing her promise to me. Our kiss didn't last nearly as long as I would've liked it to, as Jason honked his truck's horn.

Ember whispered, "I'll be right back." before running off to Jason to explain that we were going to stay, and not to worry about us.

Then she grabbed a couple of bags from my dad's truck, which I guess must've been either backup bags that Ember had already got ready, or just some useful kit my dad must've had ready for an emergency or something.

<Are you sure you know what you're doing?> Thea questioned, making eye contact with me from a few hundred yards away.

<I'll be fine, tell Dad that I'll see him soon, and not to worry about me – I can't explain it, I just gotta stay.>

<Whatever you say, bro.> I could hear the sigh of exasperation in her voice.

But that was the thing, I couldn't explain it; something was making me need to stay there — and Ember must've been feeling the same as well because she couldn't explain it either.

Even if the hunters were coming, and even if it meant spending the night sleeping out in the wild, I wouldn't care. I had Ember beside me, supporting me — and maybe that's all I've ever needed.

Ember walked back towards me, bags in hand, as the trucks pulled out of Coloma and onto the fire roads. As the sky darkened more, and the sun finally began to sink over the mountainous horizon, I realised that this would be the first time in a long while that I was truly alone with Ember.

I really hoped I wouldn't screw up.

I also really hoped that the hunters wouldn't come after us and kill us in our sleep.

Yeah; I've got a lot of shit going on.

Probably thinking what the hell are we doing, Ember smiled weakly at me. "Which hut are we staying in?"

"Well, we could stay in two separate ones if you want?" I suggested, aware that the huts, especially now most of them were half-burnt down, didn't have much room inside of them.

"Theo." Ember sighed lightly. "I may have agreed to staying here overnight with you, but that does not mean that I'm staying in a separate hut from you."

Frowning at her, I thought well that's not what I was expecting you to say.

"So, we'll stay in the same hut, okay?" She checked, but it wasn't really a question.

"Of course." Fumbling, I took the bags from her and led her to what looked like the least burnt-down hut.

"We should gather firewood," Ember announced, and I couldn't help but think about how the last time she was supposed to be collecting firewood, she and Ryder ended up making out.

Would the same happen to me? I mused as she started unpacking a bag. Probably not.

Things were too complicated between us for that.

We just needed to uncomplicate things.

Somehow.

Well, we've got the rest of today and all of tonight to sort things out between us, and I really hope we do...