Only a couple hours later, I jerk up in bed, my mind already fighting back the nightmare without any conscious thought from me. Obviously, my subconscious doesn't want to relive the memories any more than I do.

Absent-mindedly, I throw on my running shoes and climb out the window so as not to disturb the many other occupants of the house. I spend the next hour trying my best to outrun the images clawing at my mind. If only it were that easy.

My phone dinging with a text from my uncle is the only thing that lures me back home. Pushing the back door open, I enter the kitchen dripping in sweat and out of breath. I grab a Gatorade from the fridge and hop up onto the counter, glancing at Uncle Ben who is leaning against the island waiting for me.

"You wanted to talk to me before everyone gets up?" I say once I down half my drink, and my breath has returned to somewhere close to normal.

He shoots me a nervous look and runs a hand through his short blonde hair clueing me into just how worried he is. I brace for whatever is about to come out of his mouth.

"I'm not sure how you're going to react to this conversation," he says timidly, causing my unease to grow.

After a long pause, I wave my hand, gesturing for him to continue. No need to drag it out and build up the tension.

"I think maybe we should try to contact Dante ," he continues cautiously. My breathing falters at the mention of my biological father.

"I'm not ready for that yet," I say honestly. I don't know if I'll ever be ready.

"I get that. I do, but he and Lucien have been friends for a very long time. I think he has a right to know what's going on," he insists.

He has a point. Still, I don't want to talk to the guy. I haven't even worked up the nerve to read the letters from my parents about him yet. Contacting him feels like a betrayal to the man that raised me. I doubt my dad would see it as a betrayal after hearing their story, but I can't help how I feel about it.

Honestly, I don't know how to feel about the guy. Part of me feels sorry for him, for how things went between him and my mother. Part of me is curious about the man that half of my genes came from, but yet another part wants to bury my head in the sand and continue to ignore that he exists for as long as possible.

For someone who had spent the majority of my life begging for answers, I've come to love the comfort of denial. It had begun after the very first truth bomb destroyed my peaceful life. It's the reason I'd avoided asking questions about vampires and werewolves for so long after learning of their existence, and now it's the reason I want to avoid the topic of my biological father.

I will grasp onto the tiny bit of denial I'm able to for as long as I can. It will keep me sane as everything around me continues to change drastically. Already, nothing in my life is the same as it was two weeks ago.

"You can contact him if you feel that you need to, but I'm not. I still have a lot of stuff I need to work through in my head before I'm ready for that," I say, jumping off the counter. I'm stopped from escaping when he speaks again.

"I don't have a number for him. Lucien was always the one who contacted him when needed. I never had a need for it. Do you have any idea if he might have written it down somewhere?" He asks.

"I'm guessing it was in his phone, and the coven has that. I don't know where he might have kept it other than that," I say with a shake of my head.

"Will you look through his office for me, and see if you can find it anywhere? I'm sure he would have left how to contact him written down somewhere in case anything ever happened." He notices my hesitation because he adds, "Please, Ari. He needs to know about Lucien. Maybe he'll know how to find the coven. After all, he does have a long history with Sara."

With a sigh, I relent. If there's a chance that he might be able to help find Lucien, I can't continue to argue against it.

Before heading over to Lucien's to search his office, I run upstairs to wake Julian to take him with me. I need to talk to him about Emily anyways.

Before long, the two of us are walking across the street to Lucien's house. I pull my keys out of my pocket and unlock the front door, entering his house for the first time since that night. I brace myself for the bloody scene from my memory despite knowing Everett and Cal had cleaned the place of any evidence from that night.

I release a long breath when the door swings open, and I'm met with the normal interior of his house. Not a single trace of blood to be seen.

Walking into the dining room that he'd converted into an office, I glance around, comforted by the familiar surroundings. The walls are painted a dark charcoal grey and are covered in black shelving with tons of books packed onto each and every shelf. I drop down into the chair behind his desk while Julian veers over to a filing cabinet in the corner of the room.

"Okay. You said you needed my help looking for something. What are we looking for?" Julian says, already pulling the top drawer of the filing cabinet open.

"Anything with the name Dante on it," I respond, ignoring the way his head whips in my direction as he recognizes the name. "Uncle Ben is convinced someone needs to let him know Lucien is missing, but we don't know how to get in contact with him. Anything that has any kind of information about him might help us. Hell, I don't even know his last name, or what he looks like."

He nods and starts rifling through the open drawer in silence while I start to look through the drawers of his desk. In the shallow center drawer, I'm distracted by the sight of a silver necklace I've seen him wear a million times before. Pulling it out, I run my thumb over the path of life symbol on the round silver pendant hanging from a matching chain.

I slip the chain over my head and glance down at the pendant where it sits against my chest. I'll return it to him when I find him, but for now I need this tangible piece of him.

After digging through all the remaining drawers, I lean back in the chair, closing my eyes with a sigh. Nothing. There's nothing about Dante on any of the papers in his desk.

"Ari," I hear Julian breathe softly behind me.

Spinning in the chair to face him, I see him holding a picture frame in his hand while he kneels on the floor in front of the open bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.

"What?" I ask.

"I think this is a picture of him," he says, glancing up at me.

Only hesitating slightly, I roll the chair over to him and take the frame from him, glancing at the picture, and my breath freezes in my chest.

In the center of the photo stands a teenage version of our mother with her long blonde hair blowing wildly in the wind, and a huge smile on her face. Her blue eyes shine brightly with a happiness you can literally feel just from looking at her.

My eyes slide to one side of her, and I see Lucien looking exactly like he does now, except his haircut is different, and he's clean shaven. He's dressed differently than he does now, but that's not surprising since this picture was obviously taken decades ago.

Apprehensively, I look on the other side of my mother, and like Julian, I'm confident this is Dante. He stands about as tall as Lucien. So, he must be a little over six foot. His skin is a few shades paler than my mother's, contrasting drastically with his bright emerald green eyes. He has the same wavy jet-black hair as me falling carelessly in his face. We have the same nose, the same chin. He stands close to my mother, with one arm wrapped tightly around her waist. The same happiness on my mother's face is showing clearly on his as well.

I feel my nose tingle as tears threaten to fall at the sight of their obvious happiness. Hearing their story was one thing. Seeing it staring me in the face is another entirely. I run my thumb over my mother's face, biting my lip, and trying to reign in my emotions. If only this was the vision I had of her when I close my eyes, but it's not. All I can seem to see every time my eyes close is her lifeless body lying in the living room floor.

It takes a few deep breaths and an exercise in self-control before I get myself to a place where I'm comfortable looking up at Julian to find him watching me intently.

"You find anything else?" I ask, attempting to brush past my emotional reaction to the photo in my hands.

He shakes his head but doesn't say a word, thankfully, letting me ignore what had just happened.

I roll myself back to the desk, still holding tightly to the picture frame.

"I didn't just ask you to come with me to help me look through this stuff. We need to talk," I say worriedly. I don't expect this conversation to go well. Which is why I wanted to have it here, alone.

He closes the drawer and sits with his back against the wall, stretching his long legs out in front of him and crossing his ankles.

"I went to the pack last night," I say quietly, waiting for an explosion.

He stares at me in shock. "And you didn't take me?"

"I didn't plan to take anyone, but Everett caught me sneaking out the window. He went with me."

He raises a brow at me, and one side of his lips twitch up into a small smirk. He's aware of my feelings for Everett. He'd seen us together when we all went ice skating before we found out Lawrence and Everett are brothers. "Does Lawrence know about that?"

I rub a hand along my face with a long sigh.

"Well, what happened? Did you see Emily? I'm assuming they don't have Lucien, or you would have mentioned it already," he says after realizing I don't want to talk about the previous subject.

"The alpha was genuinely surprised when I mentioned someone being taken that night. I don't think they knew anything about it. No, I didn't see Emily, but I did ask about her," I say anxiously.

He looks at me questioningly and waits for me to elaborate.

"He said that he had to get his daughter away from the danger in this town. So, they sent her to stay with relatives," I mumble. Shock and heartbreak are clear on his face as soon as the words leave my mouth.

"So... So, what you're saying is that she's... gone," he mutters, staring down at the floor in front of him.

"It might not be for good, Julian. You never know. She might be back," I say gently.

Although, I don't even believe my own words. Not really.  I don't see what could possibly change her father's mind about sending her out of town. Especially after the events of last night. Everett killed one of his pack members, and I injured a dozen others. We definitely didn't win any points with him last night.

After sitting in silence for a while, he abruptly stands up and leaves. Deciding go give him space and leave him be, I glance at the picture in my hand again. Locking the house on my way out, I head back home in search of my uncle.

I don't have to look far. He walks out the front door just as I near it. He does a double take when he sees me.

"I meant for you to look later. Aren't you supposed to be at school?" He asks, causing me to pause.

I glance at the driveway and notice River's SUV is missing. Micah and Oliver must have gone to school.

"I completely forgot about school," I say honestly. It hadn't even crossed my mind.

"Ari-..." He starts with a reprimanding glare to which I just shrug.

"Is this him?" I ask, changing the subject and holding up the picture frame.

A small smile appears on his face when he sees it. "Yeah. It is. That was at an outdoor concert. I actually took that picture," he says with a nostalgic look on his face. "We all had a lot of fun that day."

"Well, this is all we found," I say.

He nods, but looks upset.

"Did Julian go to school at least?" He asks.

"No, and I think we should leave him be today," I respond.

He looks at me questioningly, but I don't say anything else, unsure if Julian wants anyone else to know how heartbroken he is.

Once he leaves for work, I jog upstairs to my floor, happy to find it empty for the first time in over a week. My plan is to take the day to enjoy the quiet, and recharge mentally.

Entering my room, I waver on what to do with the picture frame in my hand. Ultimately, I put it on my bedside table next to the photo of my mom and dad. I'm not sure how comfortable I am to have them side by side like this, but I can't force myself to hide it in a drawer because of my mother's obvious happiness. I need to see that every day. I need to replace the unpleasant images in my head with the image of her like this.