The first hour was damn near silent. Felix looked like he might fall asleep at any second, so Tisper had switched seats with Alex. She was feeding him bites of jerky and Matt tried to sooth the simmering jealousy that boiled him at the sight.

He'd been glaring, unbeknownst to himself, until Felix caught him in the rear-view mirror and split a grin at sight. Matt made himself look away after that.

He loved Tis, maybe more as a friend than he thought. Maybe those feelings were only crawling back up because seeing the sidelong glances she gave Felix was putting something sick in his stomach. She had a whole damn road in front of her to look at, but every few seconds her eyes were back on the guy and she was feeding him another chunk of meat like he was a fuckin' lapdog.

"Matthew," Sadie sung from the left of him. She must'a caught his staring. "You have a girlfriend."

"I know," he said defensively. "What're you even talking about?"

He did have a girlfriend. Her name was Jessy Wilkson—a daughter of a family friend. They'd been maybe a month into the relationship, but they didn't share a lot in common. She was beautiful—too damn good for him. But she didn't know him much, save for the dinner dates and late night cuddling. She'd let him grab her boob once. Over the bra. He couldn't complain.

"Matt, just break it off with her if you aren't into it," Sadie said. "Don't make her think there's something more to it if there's not. Trust someone who's been in that place four-hundred times before. It sucks."

"I am into her," Matt said. "We just... like different things."

"Like what? You both wear camouflage sweaters and probably listen to songs about tractors while you clean your shotguns."

"That's what you think I do with my time?" Matt asked.

"Isn't it?"

"No!"

"So then what it is it about you that's so different?" Sadie asked.

Matt flushed, just a little. "She likes horses."

"Horses," Sadie guffawed. "Matt, are you telling me you're still afraid of horses?"

"I'm not afraid," Matt contested. "I just think they aren't from this world. They're—they're otherworldly. Big, lumpy alien things."

"Matt, you think—"

"I think horses are aliens," Matt said, firmly.

"And how the hell do you draw that conclusion?"

"They just know too much," Matt said.

Sadie buckled over in laughter. Matt let his gaze drift to the seat beside her, where Jaylin hunched over with his head against the glass. Few months back, he'd have everything to say about the matter. But despite how much Matt tried, Jaylin wouldn't hold a conversation with him anymore. Getting him to laugh like Sadie was impossible. He was in a different world.

Eventually, Matt could hear Jaylin's stomach growling from two seats over. Felix took to the exit and they followed Alex's phone to the nearest grocery store. The rest of them could drop through a drive through at any moment, but Jaylin and Felix needed organics.

Jaylin hopped from the wrangler of his own free will and Matt watched him curiously as he marched ahead of the others and in through the automatic doors.

"I'm gonna go grab some chips with Alex," Sadie said. "Whatcha want?"

"Somethin' spicy," Matt told her, and she gave a thumbs up, locking arms with Alex and disbanding the group to go hunt for the snack aisle.

The store was crowded, the sound of beeping scanners overlapping one another like cawing crows. Tisper trotted off with her purse over her shoulder to take a look at the organics section, and Felix trudged behind her, crossing the store with a careless kind of gait that dragged the ground like a snake.

Matt saw Jaylin's blond hair disappear around the end-cap of the bread aisle and he followed after, until he'd found himself entwined in metal racks and bottles of liquor and wine. Jaylin stalked to the middle of the aisle and shoved open a cooler door without so much as a glance at the contents inside. He chose a hefty bottle of beer from the top and tried to cut past Matt, but Matthew caught him by the bottle and wrenched it from his hands.

"Don't you think you've had enough, Jay?"

Jaylin glanced at Matt from beneath his brow, but turned back to the cooler and snatched another bottle. Matt ripped this one away too. "Let me rephrase that; you've had enough."

Jaylin looked angry now, the dark rings under his eyes somehow deepening. "Fuck off, Matt."

"Jay, you're gettin' out of control—"

"Leave me alone," Jaylin said back. "You're not my mom."

"No, but what would she think of this?"

"Don't give me that shit." Jaylin turned from him, cracking open the cooler door again to fetch a third bottle—but Matthew slammed it shut. 

"This is the most we've talked in months. Every time I try to get you to hang out, you bail," Matt said. "I was actually excited about this, y'know. I was hyped about having some other dude drive my car for sixteen hours straight. I was cool bein' dragged to Cali-fuckin-fornia when I'm supposed to be police training, because it meant the chance to hang out with you. But it's like you just stopped givin' a shit about us. And why?" he asked. "Because we won't get hammered with your dumb ass?"

"Take your hand off," Jaylin said, but Matthew kept it pressed to the glass.

"You're becomin' everything you use to hate, Jay. Those guys we used to make fun of together—that's you now. That's never been you. If you'd just let us help—"

"I don't need your help!" Jaylin shouted at him—shouted, so loudly it gathered the eyes of every stranger around them. A woman selected a bottle of Rosé and scuttled off.

Matt lowered his head to look Jaylin in the eye. "Yes you do," he said. "You don't want our help, Jay. But you need it. You cut off everyone—even Bronx. Six months ago you were turnin' pink at the sound of his name and when was the last time you talked to him? When was the last time you texted me or Tis, or—"

"I said move your hand."

"I get that it's cause of your mom."

"Matthew, move."

"You need to talk to someone, Jay."

"No I don't."

"This isn't healthy."

"Move!"

"Talk to me!" Matt shouted back this time. It wasn't often he cried but tears threatened his eyes. Partly from fear. From the terrifying thought that Jay was gone forever. That this was all that was left of him now.

Jaylin's eyes narrowed. He stared at Matthew with more hate than he'd ever seen come from those cornflower blues.

"She's dead," Jaylin said. "What more do you want to hear?"

He shoved Matt away from the door and reached to open it again. And maybe that was Matt's mistake—pushing Jaylin back. Shoving him hard in the chest, knocking him into the liquor racks behind him. Because the punch Jaylin threw next was so much harder than Matt thought a hit from Jaylin Maxwell could be. Hard enough to make him fade for half a second. Hard enough to make him see stars and stagger back against the cooler, knocking his head on the glass.

Matt gripped the pain in his cheek and when his blurry eyes focused, Jaylin was standing there, a face full of shock and guilt—but still somehow shimmering with anger, still full of hate. He stared at Matt like that for a long moment. Then Jaylin walked out of the aisle, shaking at the pain in his hand.

Jaylin hadn't cried at his mother's funeral. Jaylin, who cried at everything. He hadn't shed a tear.

For three hours that Sunday evening, Jaylin sat in his black suit looking hollow. Staring at no one, saying nothing as Julia Maxwell was put into the ground.

And he'd been that way ever since.

It was eight more hours to LA and the welt on Matthew's cheek grew red and fiery. They'd asked what happened, but Matthew told them it was nothing and Jaylin said not a word about it as he settled back into his seat, rested against the glass.

Matt was glad to leave it at that, but Felix was reading him through the rear-view mirror, those green eyes dipping right into him. Seeing all that shit that didn't need to be seen. Course he knew it was a punch. The bastard knew everything, didn't he?

To Matt's relief, he didn't say a word about it and he managed to relax in his seat, staring at the last text from Jessy and pondering over a reply.

They'd only been dating a month, what was he to say in response to "I miss you"? Did she even actually miss him? It seemed too superficial. The whole thing did. So Matt stared at his phone for a while longer, and in the end, he replied with nothing at all.

After four more hours of driving, Felix pulled off of the interstate for gas and coffee and they all clamored out of the wrangler to stretch their legs. The early summer sun beat down on the Oregon state just the way Matt liked. A hot sun and a cool earth. Matt wasn't sure where they were; he'd only ever been to Oregon one time before, in search of Jaylin. It felt so much the same as Washington that it hardly mattered to him at all.

While the others went inside, Matt wandered off to the thick green grass of the gas station embankment and laid his body out until he felt every muscle stretch like taffy. He could have fallen asleep there, and he would have was it not for the cold brush over the skin of his stomach where his shirt had been tugged up. He jumped and opened his eyes to Jaylin above him, a slushie in his hand. Blue—Matt's favorite flavor. Didn't matter what the actual flavor was, 'long as it was blue.

He took the slushie and sat up, holding the icy drink to his cheek. Jaylin took a seat on the hillside beside him. "Sorry," he said and that was all. But it was all he needed to say. Matt slung an arm around his shoulder and shook a hand through his hair, and they sat like that until the others came out, then they all packed into the car again.

They stopped two more times on the way to LA, but Matt slept through nearly the entire ride. I was eight by the time they'd arrived at the exposition—the grand yearly werewolf conference, disguised as a private convention. Matt didn't know much about the exposition, just what Tisper had told him over the weeks she'd been in contact with Quentin.

It was a ten-day celebration between wolves all over the United States. The ten days out of the year that the East and the West put their differences aside and met to celebrate their culture. But the exposition was on rocky grounds this year. Attendance from the West was taboo in most packs, and Qamar chose the time of celebration to meet with everyone regarding Ziya and the mess she'd left behind.

Things had been quiet since the bad moon, but if Qamar wanted to meet them now of all times, and in person, just what could that mean?

And shit. What about the wolf he'd killed that night? The one that he'd stabbed with his hunting knife. Matt didn't know for sure if the thing was dead or not, but he assumed as much. There's a kind of finality to stabbing something.

His anxieties were washed away by the dazzling lights of the Opulence Rose. It was the most stunning thing he'd ever seen. A hulking beauty of a building, freckled in rows of beryl lights that lit every wall and window a glistening tungsten-blue.

In front sat a fountain—the curled body of a koi fish, spitting water in an arch towards the tall staircase that set the path for rows of revolving doors.

"This?" Sadie gaped. "This is where we're staying? Holy shit."

"The venue was bigger last year," Alex said, unimpressed.

"Never can just go out for a night in the woods," Felix grumbled. "Rich pricks."

They all gathered their things and clamored out of the wrangler and Felix handed the keys off to the valet. Then they made their way up the front steps to the six revolving doors that glistened with the inner lights of the hotel like a candle in a carousal of mirrors.

Stepping through them was like walking into the set of a movie. Red carpet ran a pelt on the black marble flooring, all the way to the checkout desk. Women lounged at the lobby bar wearing dresses so tight, they shimmered over ever curve of their adult bodies. Men dressed in suits and slacks, and chatted while they tossed back expensive drinks in glinting crystal glasses.

Matt was prepared to reach for Jay at a moment's notice and stop him from lunging for the closest drop of alcohol he could get his hands on. He didn't move though—he was standing there, gaping like the rest of them at the crystal chandelier above, the red curtains that draped over the walls and windows, like velvet icing on a wedding cake.

Felix approached the desk in a few strides and signed his name on a list with dozens of others.

"Felix Cummins," he said to the receptionist, who tapped the name into the keys on her computer.

"Okay, Mr. Cummins," she said. Her eyes fluttering to the other with a tinge of surprise. "And... guests. You're a bit late, but let me see what I've got. You'll be rooming separately?"

"Cummins," Matt snorted. "Your last name's Cummins?"

Felix tossed a middle finger behind his back and smiled to the woman at the desk. "Aye. Room each."

"Alex and I can share," Sadie said. "I hate being alone in foreign places."

Tisper stiffened, he could see it from the corner of his eye. She wanted to room with Jaylin, to keep an eye on him. But all they could give him right now was space.

The receptionist hummed. "There are one, two... six of you and I've got four rooms available."

Tisper spoke out, "I can—"

"You can room with me," a voice said from the doorway to the ballroom, her fiery red hair puddling at the breast-piece of her cocktail dress. Matt's jaw nearly unhinged at the sight of her, his teeth clacking as Sadie reached over to slap it back up into place. Damn, Izzy.

Bailey stood to her right, but Matt hardly recognized him in the suit he wore, his black locks combed back and tucked behind his ears. Without the shaggy curls in his face, Matt could pick something distinctly foreign from his features, but he couldn't decide just what it was. Maybe something Eastern, maybe not.

"Matt can stay with Bailey," Izzy crooned with a smile.

"No," the both of them said in unison—Matthew in a gasp and Bailey in a growl.

"He can have my room," Bailey said.

"And where will you sleep?" Izzy asked him.

Bailey shrugged, but when Matt found his eyes, they weren't staring back at his own. They were looking at Jaylin, and Jaylin was glaring back with so much tension, it was like a dry static hung in the air between them.

"Maybe I'll stay with Quentin," Bailey said.

Up until this point, Matt thought he was the only one Tisper had told about Bailey's kiss in the forest that night. She'd confided in him because she couldn't keep it to herself after a bit too much wine and one too many slices of pizza.

But it seemed like at some point before Julia's passing, she had told Jaylin too. Because he surged forward towards Bailey, and Matt found himself lunging for a fistful of his shirt to reel him back again.

Jaylin had always been a bit of a fighter. Just a bit. But his scrappy attitude had it's limits, and those usually came in the form of busted knuckles and a black eye or two. Things had changed, though. Matt could tell by how hard this fist felt when it was snapping him out of consciousness. Jaylin was stronger now, for whatever reason. He might be several inches shorter than the average man, but he could lay a guy flat with that anger of his. Especially if he was throwing that fist around.

"Fine," Matt said, his arms tied around Jaylin to keep him at bay. "Fine, I'll share a room. We just—y'know, we won't talk."

"Fine," Bailey said—an exasperated flare on his face and he slunk back into the ballroom.

"I'm sure you'll get along splendidly." Izzy twisted her fingers through her ember hair and looked the group over with a laugh. "Quentin didn't tell you it was a formal event, did he?"

"No," Jaylin spoke this time. The sound of his voice was almost raw to Matt's ears. "Why is everyone dressed like that?"

Izzy shrugged and said, "It's just kind of tradition. An excuse to wear your nicest clothes and look dazzling in front of an equally dazzling audience."

"For what?" asked Matt. "Dinner? Chats at the bar?"

"We have events all ten days," Izzy said. "Tonight's the greeting dinner."

Then in the distance, floating from that vast curtain-shrowded ballroom, a melody began to play. Matt could make out the delicate strain of a violin.

"It's starting," Izzy cheered with a clap. "Leave your things, they'll take them to your rooms." She hurried forward, capturing Jaylin by the hand. "You have to see him," she said, and she tugged him toward the ballroom.

"Him?" Tisper looked from Sadie to Matthew. They both shrugged back at her.

"Oh, right," Alex said. "You guys don't know." He gave a deep sigh and handed his dufflebag off to the bellboy, who tossed it on a cart with the rest, to be taken up to the bedrooms. "Come on, then."

One by one, they took to motion, following in Alexander's shadow.

The red curtains that cut the lobby off from the ballroom hung low and slacked and Matt had to duck to slip inside. The others seemed to simply shove them from their way, so of course once he realized, he felt stupid for ducking.

The place he'd found himself in was like something from a fairytale. The room where Beauty danced with Beast before he was a hot guy. Where Cinderella snagged Prince Charming's dick from her rat-faced stepsisters. It was that kind of ballroom, with chandeliers that could kill a guy if they fell at just the right time. Golden accents that framed the ceiling and floors, paintings that probably cost a fortune, just hammered into the walls for anyone and everyone to splash their fizzy rich-people-drinks on.

And then Matt noticed the expression on Jaylin's face, every wink of anger he'd seen just seconds ago, gone now. His eyes were across the room, on the curtain that was slowly rising to reveal the music behind it.

The cords grew into powerful lashes of music that bounded from the walls and trembled the the walls and the air and the floor beneath his feet. A deep, warm hum lifted into the air, rich and abyssal, warbling beautifully with a kind of tremble that felt organic on the ears. Like the howl of hard wind through an unending corridor.

The curtain lifted higher and Matt understood now. It wasn't the music that had drawn Jaylin to the stage, but a single man, sat in the center of five—a cello between his knees, a bow in his hands, fingers shuttering tactically along the neck, trembling that music until somehow it sounded like the notes themselves were crying.

On any other occasion, Matt would roll his eyes. But it was relief he felt instead, when saw the look of whimsy on Jaylin's face. The soft, gaping expression of wonder as Jaylin gazed across the room to Quentin Bronx. He looked like a boy who'd peered into his own head, seen his own dreams. And so suddenly, he'd realized his fantasy.

For the first time since March, he looked like the old Jay.