Chapter 79

By the time Ethan reached Greystone land, dusk had already settled low between the trees. He ran the last mile harder than he needed to. The cold air tore through his lungs, but it did nothing to scour the smell from his nose. Rot still clung somewhere in memory, tangled with spring water, soap, Kelsey's panic, Kelsey's tears, Kelsey pressed against him while he held himself together by the thinnest thread he had left.

He crossed the last ridge, shifted behind the old pines, took the spare clothes from beneath the bramble, and dressed with hands that shook more than they should have. He rubbed both palms hard over his face, then through his hair, trying to make himself look decent enough to walk into his own house.

***

He entered through the back porch into the kitchen, into the comforting smell of roasted meat, old wood, and home. Nell was at the counter, one hip against the cabinet, scrolling through her phone. Natalie sat at the table with a mug between her hands and a copy of some old magazine on the table in front of her. Jason entered the kitchen a moment after Ethan closed the door.

Nell reacted first. Her face changed so fast he felt it like a blow. The color drained from her cheeks. Her phone slipped an inch in her hand before she caught it. For a second, she simply stared at him, eyes wide and black and horrified.

Everything inside him paused. "What?" he asked.

Nell didn't answer. She took one step toward him, then stopped as if coming closer physically hurt.

"Eth," she whispered. There was something in her voice he had never heard before. Terror.

Jason's pupils widened, then constricted. His body fell into full deadly stillness. Natalie inhaled, then her head turned to face him. The mug in her hands tapped softly against the table.

Ethan almost stopped breathing. "What?" he repeated, sharper this time.

Nell swallowed. Her gaze moved over him with terrible precision. His throat. His collar. His wrists. The place under his jaw where his skin itched. Then her eyes snapped back to his.

"What on earth did you do?" The words were barely above a whisper.

Ethan's pulse kicked once, hard. "I didn't do anything."

Jason didn't even blink, but his breathing deepened. The room tightened around them. Or perhaps it was Ethan who grew larger.

Nell let out a laugh that was not a laugh at all. It came out thin, almost sick.

Natalie stood. Jason did not move, but something in his face went very still.

Ethan looked at his mother, whose face had gone pale in a way that made him feel suddenly young and very far from safe.

"You marked someone. Who?" She paused, her jaw twitching. "Please tell me it was Lara."

The words did not make any sense. For one long second, they were only sound, hanging in the air. When they finally hit, Ethan's body went cold.

"No."

Nell's mouth trembled once, then hardened. "Yes."

"No," he said again, because there had to be another answer. "I didn't do anything. I wouldn't."

"You reek of it," Jason said, his voice low in a way that forced the air itself to still.

Ethan looked at him, and the expression on Jason's face made the room tilt. Jason's eyes were fixed on him now, not as father first, but as alpha. As someone looking at a breach, a threat, a war taking shape inside his own kitchen.

"Tell me it was Lara." It wasn't a plea, but a command. Because any other answer meant blood.

Ethan opened his mouth. Closed it. His mind was spinning. Marked her? He didn't. How? When? When he held her? When his whole body screamed for him to hunt and tear and he forced it down and it burned inside him until he felt it would almost burst through his skin?

Jason's voice thundered through his thoughts. "What, in God's name, did you do?"

"I don't know!" The words tore out of him before pride could catch them.

Silence followed. Ethan felt his own breathing. Too fast. Too deep. There wasn't enough air. The room was spinning.

Nell took another step toward him, slow and careful. "You reek, Ethan." She repeated Jason's words. "Your scent has intensified twenty-fold. The whole kitchen smells like you."

Ethan flinched. "I just helped her," he said, and hated how small it sounded. "Someone put a rotten deer leg inside her car. I was trying to calm her down."

Natalie's eyes sharpened. "The bloodkin."

Ethan let a beat pass before he realized it was inevitable. "Kelsey. Yes."

Natalie closed her eyes like it pained her. "Oh, Ethan."

"No." His hands curled at his sides. "No, don't look at me like that. I didn't... I would never..."

"I know," Nell said, her eyes softening in sympathy.

That made it worse.

His mother’s fingers curled at her sides. "But you did. Obviously. What on earth were you thinking?!"

Ethan's mouth pressed tight. He was thinking about finding out who dared to torment Kelsey and threaten her, while straining to keep the instinct to hunt them down caged beneath his skin. He couldn't tear and he couldn't protect, so his body did the only thing it knew. It laid his scent on her like a shield that wasn't a shield, but a weapon.

He didn't respond because he knew that in that moment neither his mother nor his father cared about what had led him there. They wouldn't have cared about the pranks, about the mouse, or the deer leg.

They only cared about the marking.

And the worst part was, they were right.

Jason's jaw tightened. "Where is the girl now?"

The question struck him clean through the chest. She was on her way home, drenched in his scent. Cold spring water could wash many things away, but not this. Never this.

Ethan turned toward the door.

Nell moved first, stepping into his path. "Don't."

"I have to warn her."

"You can't go there."

"She's going home. To the Blackwells. She..."

"Yes," Nell cut him off, her voice breaking on the word. "And if you go after her now, you make it worse."

"She doesn't know."

The thought opened inside him like a pit. Kelsey didn't know. She was driving home thinking the problem was the smell of rot, thinking the lie was ugly but survivable, thinking spring water and soap had handled the worst of it. Kelsey was walking into the Blackwell house marked with him.

His body moved before thought could finish forming.

Jason crossed the room in one stride. "Ethan." The command hit hard enough that Ethan stopped. Every muscle in him shook.

Jason held his gaze. "You leave this house and go anywhere near Blackwell land tonight, and Jack will go for your throat if Gabriel does not get there first."

"I don't care."

Natalie's breath caught. Nell's eyes flashed.

"Kelsey will care," Nell snapped. "So don't do anything even more catastrophic than what you have already done."

That stopped him more effectively than Jason's command. Nell stepped closer, shaking now.

"You think running after her proves something? You think throwing yourself at the Blackwell boundary with this on you helps her? It doesn't. It makes every terrible thing they smell on her true in their eyes."

Ethan stared at her. The room seemed too small for his body. For the thing in him clawing at the walls.

"I didn't mean to," he said again, like an echo, or an apology. This time, the words were barely audible.

Nell's face crumpled for half a second. "I know." Then she dragged herself back together. "That doesn't matter enough."

Jason closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was all alpha.

"Natalie, call Jack."

Ethan's head snapped toward him. "No."

Jason did not look away from him. "He needs to hear it from us. We need to control this."

"She will be inside by now," Nell said.

Nobody answered. Because they all knew she was right.

Ethan's phone was suddenly in his hand. He did not remember pulling it out. He opened Kelsey's thread. Typed. Deleted. Typed again. Kelse, don't go inside yet.

His thumb hovered over send. If she was already inside, the message would arrive too late. If she was not, it might make her panic in the driveway and bring everyone outside. If her father saw the message, if Jack saw it, if anyone saw his name glowing on her phone while his scent burned on her skin...

His hand shook. Still, he shut his eyes and hit send anyway.

Nell reached out and took the phone from him gently.

"I didn't mean to," he whispered again.

Natalie crossed the room then and touched his cheek with one trembling hand. For a second, he almost leaned into it like a child.

"I know," she said again. "But she will pay for it first."

The sentence went through him like a blade. But instead of hurting, it set something within him ablaze. His jaw clenched, his teeth gritted. His body straightened, turned to stone. One moment he was a frightened boy, and in the next he seemed to have aged a decade, his whole facade solidified into something impenetrable and dangerous.

"She won't." The words fell hard, cold, absolute. Both Jason and Natalie glared at him. He glared back. The air in the kitchen crackled.

"No one will touch her. Not Lara, not Gary Winters, or anyone at school." He held their gazes. "And neither will you."

Jason went utterly still, the air around him thickening. "Is that a challenge, son?"

Ethan didn't back down. "Do you want it to be?"

Outside, the valley darkened. Inside, nobody moved.

A howl rose somewhere in the east.

Nell shivered, her eyes traveling to the window. The words left her in a whisper.

"It's begun."

***

The drive home felt endless. The car still smelled wrong, although now the smell had changed: diluted rot under water, disinfectant, and something I couldn't name, something that frightened me more than the rot had.

I drove with the windows down again and rehearsed the lie until it no longer sounded like language.

Something got caught under the car. I pulled over. It was old deer remains. I cleaned what I could. It was disgusting. Please don't ask me anything else.

By the time the house appeared through the trees, my hands had gone numb around the wheel. Jack's truck was in the drive. The kitchen windows glowed warm. Dad's silhouette moved past one of them.

My heart slammed hard, then skipped a beat.

"It's fine," I whispered to no one. "It's going to be fine. Pull yourself together."

I parked and got out. For one moment, standing outside the car, I almost turned around and got back in. Instead, I walked to the door.

***

Hailey was in the living room, pointing at the cartoon and explaining something to Dad, who tried very hard to look invested. Elise was climbing down the stairs carrying a laundry basket. Jack was near the sink, drying his hands on a towel.

It lasted exactly one second. One.

Hailey smiled. "Kelsey, look, I made Mr. Winkle a hat." She waved the teddy in my direction.

Then the air changed, like a candle being extinguished.

Jack's hand stopped on the towel. Elise froze on the stairwell. Dad leaned forward, then went completely, utterly still.

My lie died in my throat.

Jack inhaled once. His eyes sharpened. Elise's face drained of color.

Something cracked, and I noticed the pieces of the remote falling from Dad's clenched fist. The sound was tiny. A small snap under his fingers. Pieces of plastic fell onto the carpet in silence. No one looked at them.

Dad's eyes were on me. But not on my face. He was looking at my throat. My hair. My shoulders. The places Ethan had touched me.

But I washed. I washed.

The thought came pathetic and useless.

My phone buzzed in my bag once, then stopped.

Hailey's arm stopped waving. "What's wrong?" she asked.

Elise moved immediately. She almost skipped the last couple of steps and lowered the basket to the floor.

"Hailey," she said, her voice too calm. "Go upstairs."

"But I was just..."

"Now."

Hailey looked at me, confused, then at Dad. That was when her face started to take the shape of fear. Slowly she started to crawl away from Dad. He didn't seem to notice; his whole attention was focused on me.

Jack slowly stepped into the living room. "Hailey," he said, his tone gentle yet firm.

She slid from the sofa and slowly walked over to Jack.

I could not move. Dad's gaze had not left me. His eyes had gone fully black. His lips parted.

For one second I thought he might say Ethan's name. He didn't. The sound that came out of him was not a word. It was something that had no place inside a human body. A snarl, so deep and visceral it made my whole body turn to ice.

"Dad?" I whispered.

His eyes snapped to mine then. For half a heartbeat, he was there. I saw him recognize me. Saw horror cut through the fury. Saw the desperate, impossible effort to hold himself behind his own skin. His fingers opened. The last pieces of the remote fell to the floor.

Elise caught Hailey by the shoulders and turned her toward the hallway. "Upstairs," she said again, and this time Hailey ran. The sound of her feet on the stairs broke whatever last thread held Dad in place.

He rose from the couch.

Jack took a step in my direction, half-blocking him. "Gabriel."

Dad flinched at his own name. But his body was already moving.

"No," I said. "No, Dad, no..." It came out too small.

Dad's gaze dropped once more to my throat. His face twisted into something beyond recognition.

"Gabriel," Jack said again, lower now. Command layered under the name.

Dad's shoulders shook. For one second, he pressed a hand flat against the wall as if he could hold himself there by force. For a second his eyes flashed with recognition, and then a low, trembling sound tore out of his throat. "No!"

He turned toward the back door so fast the broken pieces of the remote scattered under his foot. Jack caught his arm this time, fingers digging in, but Dad ripped free with a snarl that made every light in the kitchen seem too bright.

Elise shouted something from the hallway. I could not tell if it was his name or mine.

Dad hit the back door with one shoulder. It burst open hard enough to slam against the outside wall. Cold air tore into the kitchen.

Jack was after him immediately.

I dropped my bag and ran.

"Kelsey, no!" Elise shouted.

I made it to the doorway in time to see Dad cross the back porch in three violent strides. His body changed as he ran. Cloth split. Bone cracked. The shape of him dropped forward in a horrible, fluid collapse that was not collapse at all but transformation. Limbs lengthened. Shoulders broke outward. Dark brown fur ripped through fabric before the last of his human form vanished into something huge and fast beneath the fading light.

I could not breathe. Then my voice came back all at once.

"Dad!"

I ran down the steps after him. Jack caught me around the waist before I made it three feet. I fought him on instinct.

"Dad! No, Dad, stop!"

The wolf did not stop. He hit the tree line at full speed and disappeared into the darkening woods with the remains of his torn clothes scattered behind him in the wet grass.

I screamed after him again, and this time the word broke apart in my throat.

Behind me, Elise whispered something I did not understand. Jack's grip around me tightened, not painfully, only with enough force to keep me from throwing myself after my father into the trees.

I stared at the place where Dad had vanished and felt the world tilt for the second time in as many months.

"What..." I muttered against Jack, my eyes burning. "Why?"

Jack let a beat pass before he forced the words through clenched teeth. “Greystone marked you.”

The word banged inside my skull. Marked. Marked. Marked.

Earth seemed to disappear beneath my feet. The forest, the porch, the car, everything spun. My knees gave, and only Jack's hands kept me from crumpling.

"No. No, it's impossible. He didn't. He wouldn't." The words disappeared into the air like vapor, leaving nothing but the smell I could not smell strongly enough to understand, the look on their faces, and the terrible certainty that whatever Ethan and I had tried to hide had come home on my skin screaming louder than any truth we could have told.