It was nearly 2 PM on a Tuesday evening when Matt finally began to unpack the luggage he'd taken to California. He heaved his dusty bag onto the bed and stared down at the rumpled shitstorm inside—his clothing ruffled and stuffed into every pocket, dirty socks intermingled with clean shirts, his cap from Meadowbrooke Grange crinkled and crushed at the top of the pile.

For several minutes, he stood there and stared mindlessly at the pile, running his fingers through his hair until it stood in some places. He'd have to wash them all—which meant leaning against the broken latch on the dryer door for forty-five minutes until the load was finished. It meant having to be within the vicinity of his father and his drinking pals from the bar downtown. It meant he couldn't escape.

He felt a sudden buzz in his back pocket and Matt reached for his phone, opening the newest text from Quentin.

He'll be here soon, it said.

No, no no no. He'd forgotten all about his appointment with the medick. He'd been dreading it so terribly, he put it out of mind at some point and hadn't thought about it in the days since.

"Shit," Matt cursed, debating whether to ignore the text and never show, or to get the hell away from the political griping in the next room over. If he had to suffer the word commies one more time, he was going to drive the Wrangler into the pig pen and hope the sows take him out.

Deciding it was better to suffer the scrutiny of a medical professional than waste another moment in this hell hole, Matt took the cap from the pile of dirty clothes and shoved it on over his head. He gave himself one last glance in the mirror, and escaped through the garage where no one could hear him leaving.

It was nearly three when he arrived at the manor and for fifteen minutes after that, he stood on the veranda, waiting for someone—anyone to open those stupid, sizable, gaudy front doors. Who in the hell needed two front doors was beyond him. When it was clear that no one would answer to the bleat of his fist, he stepped around to the side of the house, through the iron gate and into Anna's garden.

The prime of its life was beginning to ebb—the leaves on the red oak tree turning brown, the flowers crusting at the edges. Everything would die by winter and this garden would become a graveyard until Spring. A part of him wanted to stick around and take in the plant life before it was all turned to icy catacombs. He traveled through the maze of overgrown flora until he caught wind of Jaylin's voice. Matt followed the sound around the bend, until he spotted him beside the herb garden, struggling with a ladder twice his size.

He noticed Matt approaching and set the heavy thing down in the dirt. "Shit—Matt, sorry. We're kind of in a predicament. Can you help me with this?"

Matt obliged, fetching the end of the ladder from the ground. The thing was huge—tall enough to reach the second story windows. Too tall for one man to manage on his own.

"The hell are ya doin' with this, Jay?"

"It's hard to explain," Jaylin said.

They carried on, down toward the small orchard of apple trees that edged the garden—and there Quentin stood, head tilted to the skies, a hand shielding the sun from his eyes. And when Matt followed his gaze up to the peak of the tallest tree in the bunch, he found little Nadaline nearly at the tip, hugging the trunk and inching her way up the puzzle of thin, skeletal limbs.

"How the hell did she get up there?" Matt gawked. "Why haven't you called the cops or something? Y'all need a fire truck in here—one of those ladders—"

"Because..." Jaylin let out a deep, tired sigh. "She's completely undocumented. We have to forge her entire identity and that's going to take a couple weeks, even with Quen's connections. What the hell do you think cops are gonna do when they find this... non-existent kid with a mutant hand, climbing a twenty-foot tall tree, in our possession?"

Matt watched the tiny child latch onto a branch with her heaving lichund fist. "Doesn't sound great when you say it out loud."

"Beside," Jaylin huffed out a breath, surrendering the ladder off to Felix, who propped it up against the base of the tree. "This is the third time this week. We're kind of getting used to it."

"Third time—" Matt choked. "What the hell kinda kid is she, Jay?"

To his surprise, Jaylin grinned, palming the sweat from the back of his neck. "I know," he said. "She's a lot more than I expected. Usually we'd just climb up ourselves and get her, but the branches are too weak on this tree to hold our weight. She just really likes... heights."

"Jaylin," Quentin called, holding the ladder in place while Felix heaved himself up. "The medick is waiting inside. Go ahead and take him in, we'll handle this."

So Jaylin turned and led Matt back into the manor, through Lisa's stained glass hummingbird door. The place was quiet without the others in it—a haunted house bearing ghosts that no one seemed to mind anymore. The realest of the ghouls being Lillabeth, who bustled around the kitchen, stacking clean dishes in the cupboard. In the den, Lisa typed away on her laptop, stacks of paper spread in disarray around her.

"She's opening a second branch in Europe," Jaylin explained. "So she doesn't have to keep traveling back and forth."

"What does she do again?"

"She's an event manager. Weddings, festivals, ceremonies—she's created a whole franchise. Moon Lighting, she calls it. Like a play on words, right? Anyway, Quen and I think it's a front."

Matt snorted.

"No really, she brings in so much money, Matt. I swear she's drug laundering or something."

"Well, matriarchal coke lord or not, you seem happy here," Matt said as they took to the staircase. "I mean... you seem like—"

Jaylin gave him a look, like no matter what word he chose, it was going to be terrible and corny—and it probably would've been had he not been stopped. So instead, Matt repeated, "Happy."

Jaylin's face softened and he smiled down at the steps. "Happy's a pretty good way to describe it."

"Always knew you'd make a good mom." Matt reached over and tussled at his hair, until Jaylin shoved him into the baluster.

"It's not easy. We have to have bars put over her crib because she sneaks out of her room at night and creeps through the house like a serial killer. Two days ago, we woke up to find her hanging from the chandelier. Last night she ate all of Lisa's expensive saltwater fish from the aquarium in her room."

"Jesus, Jay—"

"But it's worth it," Jaylin said. "When she runs up to you and puts her arms out, it's like this weird, powerful moment. Like, she chose you. Of all the people in her world, you're the one she wants—and I dunno, it just feels..." Matt watched the whimsy bloom on his face as they stopped outside of Quentin's office. "Well, I guess you'll see when you have kids."

It was a gentle comment, but it sat awkwardly in Matt. Not because he never wanted kids—he did. But the thought brought him back to Jessy. Jessy, who'd acted as if he'd never left the moment he stepped home. Who never mentioned all of the unanswered texts and calls—who never asked what the hell he was doing all that time in California. Jessy, who he still wasn't sure about.

Change of topic.

"She started talkin' by now?" Matt asked.

"Not really."

"No? Hasn't even called him daddy yet?"

"Nadaline hasn't, no."

It was more the guilty kinda look on his face that made Matt pause. "What's that mean?"

"Nothing, Matt."

"He have another kid or something?"

Jaylin gave him that grin that made his nose wrinkle and reached out for the cherry-wood doors. The large, ornate things cracked open to the light of the mid-morning sun. All of Quentin's black-out curtains had been pulled apart, and it was almost like every solemn thing in the room reared away from the light. The room itself rejecting it, groveling for the darkness once again. A man leaned back against the grand piano and Matt recognized him as as one of the medick's who'd been treating Quentin's wounds.

"This is Dr. Jones," Jaylin said. "He's a surgeon from LA. A human, but he treats wolves, too."

"What exactly is he looking for?" Matt asked as he stepped inside. The scent of old books and fine wood brought him back to the day Quentin first shown them what a lichund really looked like.

"It's just a checkup," the medick said with a bearded smile. "You went through your transition period awfully fast. We want to make sure everything's alright with you." He adjusted his glasses and stepped forward with a clipboard in his arms. "But most importantly, Mr. Richards, what we want to understand is how you're alive and breathing right now."

Matt's chest tightened with a fast flush of anxiety and he looked back to Jaylin, who was already retreating through the crack in the doors.

"You probably need privacy for this," Jaylin said. "I'll be back." And then those doors sealed shut.

After every uncomfortable inch of his skin was inspected by the doctor, along with his heartbeat and a sample of his blood, Dr. Jones sat across from him on the sofa, asking questions and marking answers down on his clipboard.

"Have you been eating organics?"

"Yeah," Matt said. "I live on a farm, so..."

"Good. And when was the last time you turned?"

"Uh... never, I guess. I mean, not since that first time."

The doctor paused for a strange, concerning heartbeat before putting his pen to paper again. "I'll admit, Mr. Richards, this is a unique case. Most wolves... they go through a period of transition. And then they endure a grueling first transmutation called a chrysalis. You say you didn't endure a chrysalis?"

"I—I dunno," Matt admitted. "I wasn't exactly there, doc."

"So what was the last thing you remember?"

"The woods," Matt recalled. "Jaylin. I was covered in blood. I didn't know..."

"You didn't know what?"

Matt swallowed. "Uh—what had happened I guess."

Who he was. That was what he'd wanted to say. That, for a moment after he awoke in those woods, Matt had no idea who he was. Who Felix was, who Jaylin was—Jesus, he didn't recognize his own best friend, staring him in the face. For a moment, he was just... gone.

"Well, you seem healthy. Your BPM is about 110, which is normal for your kind. Blood pressure seems a bit high, but—"

"Yeah, that's just me," Matt said, wiping the sweat from the back of his neck. He wasn't a checkup kinda guy.

"I'd like to observe you under transition sometime," the doctor said. "Just to make sure things are in order. Have you tried to turn since the incident?"

Matt shook his head. "I don't—I don't know how."

"You'll likely learn in time," Dr. Jones said. "And if not, we'll force transmutation in a controlled environment."

The thought didn't sit well in Matt. "That sounds—"

But a rap on the door cut off all thought, and when it opened, Quentin stood there with the child on his shoulders. She was laughing and holding on by the reins of his hair.

"How's he look?" Quentin asked. "Like a promising beta?"

He gave Matt a grin, but if anything, it only put another uneasy tick up his spine. He hadn't felt it in the garden—maybe because he was so preoccupied with the situation, but he felt it now. The fear, riding up his arms and the back of his neck. Putting his hair on end. It was a strange, instinctual thing and he knew it. He knew there was nothing to fear from Quentin, but it was still there—pressing and pressing a breathless kinda terror into him.

"Only a crowning can decide that, Mr. Bronx," Jones said, folding his glasses onto the neck of his shirt. "But he's a healthy specimen. Strong heart. He'll do you well."

Before Quentin could respond, Jaylin rushed to his side, reaching up to lift the child from his shoulders and prop her on his hip. "Bailey's here."

Quentin ran a hand back through the hair she'd ruined. "Excuse me," he said to them both, and in two steps, he was out of sight.

Curiously, Matt wandered out of the room and took a gander over the banister. On the floor below, Bailey stood by the front doors with that somewhat slouched, broody posture. He shoved his hands in his sweater pockets and waited until Quentin jogged down the steps to meet him.

They spoke for a long while, but tried as he might, Matt couldn't hear a word of the discussion below. In fact, he hadn't noticed an improvement to his hearing at all. He didn't have the spidey-senses that the other seemed to have. He couldn't smell blood from a mile away, or run from Seattle to Portland without breaking a sweat. He had been eating organics, but only because he was told to. Maybe a milkshake or two wouldn't kill him after all. Maybe he wasn't really even a wolf.

He certainly didn't have their ears. The conversation below was too far from his grip and from this angle, he couldn't read their lips. Quentin spoke and gestured and all the while Bailey stood there in his usual listless way. His expression remained unchanged—until something Quentin said made him lift his head.

"He's displacing him," Jaylin explained, leaning on the railing beside him. "Kicking him out of the pack."

Matt watched the look in Bailey's eyes from across the foyer. There wasn't much there to pick apart, but he caught the tense twinge in his jaw.

"Because of the den?" Matt assumed.

"Quentin said it's cause for immediate exile. That it was bad enough he went to the den, but worse that he brought you. And taking you to a biter was... unforgivable."

Matt shot a glance to Jaylin, a terrible guilt beginning to agitate his breakfast. "That's not fair. That bite's the reason I'm alive, Jay."

"I know," Jaylin said. "Which is why he's not exiled. Just... displaced."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning—" Jaylin sighed and stepped away from the veranda, bouncing Nadaline on his hip, "—that he can come back. If Quentin allows him."

Matt turned his eyes back to the discussion on the floor below. Quentin was passing a pile of items onto Bailey; a black backpack and that wrecked and shredded bomber jacket. Not an ounce of emotion glinted in Bailey's eyes when he glanced up to the veranda and looked Matt in the face. There was something about the guy that felt more beast than man. Something about those eyes that made Bailey so unapproachable. A darkness sure, but the kinda darkness that hungered for something. A starving darkness.

"What does this make him?" Matt whispered.

"A rogue. He's on his own now. Unprotected by the sanctity of the pack."

Matt felt a hand on his arm and he turned to face Jaylin. There was so much said, just with those eyes of his.

"Let me guess," Matt groaned, "you want me to follow him."

"Just for today. Just to make sure he doesn't do anything... stupid."

When Matt glanced back to the foyer, Bailey was already gone. The front doors were groaning shut behind him.

"Why do you even care, Jay? You hate the guy."

"He saved you," Jaylin said. "I don't care how he did it, but he did. You owe him, Matt. Whether you like it or not."

Matt pried the cap from his head and ran his hand back through his hair. He hadn't thought about it, but Jay was right. An eye for an eye.

Goddammit, he really didn't wanna owe that asshole an eye.

But Matthew Richards had been raised an honorable man. He knew right from wrong, and he couldn't in good faith leave Bailey to walk right into the the claws of the rogues. So he followed in his Wrangler, tailing a safe, inconspicuous distance behind.

Bailey made no stops into town, and for a long time, Matt wondered if his cop-out was really just a minor case of unintentional stalking. He followed as Bailey traveled by foot and by bus, until they'd reached the outskirts of the city. It was there Bailey stopped, outside of a tall brick building with the word St. Terrance on the front. He heaved the backpack from his shoulders and withdrew a manila envelope. The same one, it looked like, that he'd hidden in the ceiling panels at the hotel. Bailey tucked it under his arm and climbed the steps to St. Terrance.

For nearly fifteen minutes, Matt sat in his wrangler with the engine off. He eyed himself in the mirror, twisting around the frustrating lock of hair that betrayed the others and swooped down constantly over his eye. When he noticed the front door to the building swing open, he slapped up the visor mirror and slumped down in his seat.

Bailey traveled down the steps and in the direction he'd foolishly parked, so Matt did all he could to make himself invisible. Even if it meant squeezing himself halfway beneath the steering wheel and tucking the bill of his hat down over his eyes.

But his vanishing act was ineffective and a soft rap on the window made Matt nearly launch from his seat.

Bailey stood there with that usual bored way about him, watching Matt's pathetic attempt to disappear. Hesitantly, Matt reached for the button and the passenger window rolled down.

Bailey stepped closer and leaned his elbows on the open window, strumming his knuckles against the frame. "What are you doing?"

A thousand different possible excuses roved through Matt's head in that moment. A thousand possible ways to pretend this was merely coincidence. He settled on feigned surprise.

He worked up the most unexpected expression he could muster. "Heeeeyyy—"

"Get out."

"Yep." Matt flung his seatbelt off and stepped down from the Wrangler. And by the time he met Bailey on the sidewalk, the hound had a white roll of paper flicking between his fingers.

"You smoke right?" was the first thing Bailey asked.

"Only occasionally—er, I used to."

"Got a lighter?"

Matt reached into the passenger window and fetched his BIC lighter from the glovebox, tossing it to Bailey, who quickly set his joint to flame.

"You're smoking—" Matt lowered his voice, "—pot? Here?"

"It's legal, isn't it?"

"Not in public."

Bailey chucked the lighter back at him and took one slow, deep draft of the joint. "Calm down. You're not sheriff yet."

"What is that place?" Matt felt compelled to ask, taking in the ugly gray exterior of the building with new eyes. "And what's with the envelope?"

"Why don't you tell me why you were following me first? I could smell you, you know. All the way from Bronx's place."

A young couple slipped by, waving away the stench of marijuana from their path. Matt himself worried the stink would stick to his clothes. One whiff of it from his dad and he'd be shoveling cow shit until the day he died.

"Heard about what happened. I feel kinda responsible."

Bailey shrugged to that, tapping the ashes from his joint and watching them die out on the asphalt of the sidewalk. "Starting to think packs aren't my thing anyway."

"You aren't goin' back right?" Matt asked. "Back to the den?"

"There isn't a den. Not until next Perigee."

"But you aren't going back," Matt said. "To that Ricco guy—his circle or whatever."

Bailey raised his chin and those dark eyes needled into Matt like a storm. "So that's why you followed me. And all this time, I thought maybe my ass just looked really good in these jeans."

"Jesus—no, Jay sent me."

Bailey grunted—this time, a humored sound. "Thought he was too busy playing house."

"He's a good guy, alright? Cares. Even about assholes like you."

"He cares that my blood isn't on his hands." He took another drag from the joint and once the smoke had left his lungs, he ran his tongue along his lower lip and shook his head. "I don't want dick to do with Ricco or Gannon. He can fuck off assured."

"Fine," Matt grumbled. "I answered your question, you answer mine. What was in the envelope?"

Bailey pressed his lips into a fine line and watched Matt, like he couldn't decide whether to tell him or not. Whether he could trust him... or not. After a moment of contemplation, he said, "Ten-thousand dollars."

Matt stiffened. "Wait, that was the money they were talkin' about? That was Ricco's money? You said you didn't take it—"

"Oh for fucks sake, bumpkin, I was lying."

"And it nearly got us both killed—"

"Technically you did die," Bailey jested.

"Jesus Christ." Matt wiped his hands up his face and took in a long breath of smoke-tainted air. "Fine. Now tell me what that place is. St. Terrance."

For possibly the first time, Bailey grinned—a slanted, one-sided kind of smile. "Home," was all he said. He stepped closer and tore the hat from Matt's head.

"Hey—"

But Bailey ignored him, shaking the cap out and then placing it on himself, bill backward.

"That ten grand," Bailey said, "that's a secret between you and me, yeah?"

Matt narrowed his eyes at the hound. Ten grand. Ten thousand dollars. No wonder Ricco was pissed. But... as much danger as Bailey had put him in, he'd also inadvertently saved Matt's ass. So he ran his hands back through his hatless hair and mumbled, "It's none of my business."

"That might be the smartest thing I've ever heard you say." Bailey stepped closer, hardly a whisper away now. He gave the ashes of his joint one last tap and brought it to Matt's lips. It was the closest he'd ever seen Bailey—close enough to see the yellowish bruise still on his cheek. The faintest scar on the bend of his jaw. The eyes that all this time he'd thought were black—shone green as wet earth in the flushed rays of the sun. "See you around, cowboy." He left the joint there, balanced between Matt's lips, and then Bailey turned and made off down the street, Meadowbrooke cap and all.

For the longest time, Matt watched him leave—like he couldn't understand what he'd just seen. And when he realized that paper was still burning between his lips, Matt fastened the joint between his fingers and took one long, starved drag. Then he turned his eyes to the brick building. A plaque sat on the lawn behind a bed of flowers—some grown so tall, Matt had almost not noticed the words engraved in the stone.

St. Terrance, it read. House for homeless youth.

An;

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NEVER SAID THAT MATT WAS STRAIGHT

2 more chapters left.  ♥