The barn sat at the edge of my vision as I pulled into the gravel driveway, a solid shape against the treeline. I forced myself not to look at it for too long, as if looking could somehow trap my thoughts within its dark walls.

  I found Jack and Elise in the warm-lit kitchen, Hailey playing with Barbies on the living room floor.

  Jack sat at the table with a mug wrapped in both hands. He wore a fresh shirt, but a bandage peeked out from under the collar. Elise stood by the stove, stirring something in a pot with just a bit more focus than the task required.

  They both looked up when I came in.

  "How is he?" I asked without preamble. My voice came out hoarser than I intended.

  Jack's gaze flicked to the window that faced the barn, then back to me.

  "He got agitated when you left," he said, typical Jack, straight to the point. "Started pacing, snarling, jaw locking. Even slammed into the door once."

  My stomach twisted. It infuriated me, the way Jack described him, not as a person but as a rabid animal. I was ready to push back when Jack continued.

  "But once we explained that you only went to school," he went on, "he calmed down. He stopped trying to break out. He's been quiet ever since."

  There was more behind that, something unsaid. Hope, perhaps, that Jack was too afraid to name.

  "He understood," I said quietly. "That I would come back."

  Jack gave a small, rough exhale that might have been half a laugh.

  "Deep down," he said, "your father still has a mind. It isn't gone, it's just buried under a lot. Familiar routines help. Knowing where his pups are, that helps too."

  Pups.

  I had lived my entire life thinking it was just his odd nickname for us. The truth behind it still grated.

  "Kelsey," a small voice came from the doorway. "Is Daddy still in the barn?"

  Hailey stood there in pink socks and an oversized jumpsuit with some faded cartoon on it. Mr. Winkle dangled from one hand, his fur even more matted than usual. Her hair stuck up on one side where she had napped on the couch wrong.

  "Yes," I said.

  Her lower lip wobbled.

  "I want to see him," she said. "Today. Please. I'll be good, I promise. I just want to give him a hug."

  The urge to say yes almost knocked me over. But I knew I couldn't.

  I crouched to her level instead and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

  "Soon," I said. "We'll go together. When he's feeling a bit better. Right now his head is still messy, and he needs time."

  Her eyes filled. "But he'll come back in the house, right? When he's feeling better?"

  I swallowed against the lump in my throat.

  "Yes," I said, forcing myself to hold her gaze. "He's already trying. That's a good sign. We just have to be patient a little longer, okay?"

  She studied my face like she was trying to catch me in a lie. After a moment, she gave a sharp, quick nod.

  "Okay," she whispered.

  She leaned forward and wrapped her free arm around my neck. I hugged her back just a little too tight.

  Over her shoulder, I saw Elise watching us. Jack too.

  Their expressions were carefully neutral.

  They were doing what they knew how to do, herding a lupine mind back from the brink with instinct and rank. They understood the beast, those wild, inhuman parts that held my father hostage.

  But they didn't understand what it felt like to be the person caught between that and a life that used to include homework, movie nights, and hospital hallways.

  And no one understood what it meant to be me.

  Bloodkin. Facsimile. Scent bomb. Herald. Anchor.

  Daughter.

  The thought lodged under my ribs and stayed there.

  ***

  That night, when the house finally quieted, I lay on my bed fully clothed, watching shadows dance on the ceiling.

  Hailey had fallen asleep early and was snoring softly in the bed next to mine. The sounds from outside had thinned to regular forest background noise. No howls, yet.

  It should have been comforting. It wasn't. It was just less horrifying.

  My phone buzzed on the nightstand.

  For a second, my heart shot straight into my throat. I cursed at my own jumpiness.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  I fumbled for the phone and flipped it over.

  Nell.

  You did well today.

  I stared at the message for a full five seconds.

  Then another bubble appeared.

  Everything held.

  Another pause, longer.

  Thank you.

  The word did something to me that no compliment ever had. It felt like a general had just given me a salute at the end of a battle.

  I snorted softly, a broken laugh that didn't quite make it out of my chest.

  My thumbs hovered over the keyboard for a moment before I started typing.

  You know this isn't a solution, I wrote. This is a band-aid keeping the boat from sinking. We need to find a way to patch the hole.

  I sent it before I could overthink the weird metaphor.

  A few seconds passed. Then her response popped up.

  Working on it.

  I almost put the phone back down.

  Another message blinked in.

  Ethan asked me for your number.

  My stomach dropped and tried to climb into my throat at the same time.

  I stared at the sentence until the letters started to blur.

  Of course he did.

  I bit my bottom lip without thinking. This was a slippery slope. Back at school we had religiously maintained this ridiculous schedule where I was close enough to him to keep his head steady, yet at a relatively safe distance from other pack members. Emphasis on relatively. It was a carefully constructed rhythm of celestial bodies orbiting each other.

  And now he'd asked for my number.

  It was a wrench in the system and we all knew it.

  But I couldn't shake the feeling that there was a kind of safety in it.

  No physical presence. No scents. No pupils and breathing and invisible circles on asphalt.

  Just words.

  Somehow that felt even more intimate.

  My rational mind lined up objections.

  What if Jack or Elise ever went through my phone and realized I had ignored their warnings? What if they, and Nell's parents, found out she had facilitated this?

  Another part of me, the part that had sat in that math classroom and listened to him whisper you being here helps mine, knew this was probably inevitable anyway.

  It's okay, you can give it to him, I wrote back. But just for the record, I'm aware that this is probably a spectacularly bad idea.

  The dots appeared almost instantly.

  It is, she replied. It's also the only way I'll get him to stop pacing around the room. And finally get some sleep myself.

  I snorted as an almost-laugh escaped me.

  Another message appeared below.

  Alright, he has it. Now we sit and pray it doesn't backfire. I trust you to hold the line.

  Great. More responsibility.

  I'll do my best, I typed. Goodnight, Nell.

  It took her longer than expected to answer.

  Goodnight.

  I dropped the phone on my stomach and lay there, staring at the ceiling until the afterimage of the little typing bubble danced in my vision.

  Minutes passed. Or maybe more. I didn't know, didn't count. At some point, the phone buzzed again. A new, unknown number lit up the screen.

  Ethan. It could only be him.

  My breath hitched. My mouth went dry.

  For a split second I considered throwing the phone out the window.

  Instead, I unlocked it.

  Just wanted to make sure you got home ok.

  I blinked, staring at the screen, reading those ordinary words written by a not-so-ordinary boy. For a moment, I pictured him typing them. Sitting on his bed, jaw tight, shoulders hunched, phone held too carefully in one hand.

  I swallowed and typed back.

  I'm ok.

  Three dots. Disappeared. Came back.

  I don't want to scare you, he wrote. Nell told me you know everything.

  My chest squeezed. I stared at the word everything.

  Yes, I answered.

  The typing dots appeared. Disappeared.

  When his next message came, the words felt heavier than they should have.

  Then you know I didn't choose this.

  Something sharp and hot pricked behind my eyes.

  Guilt, even though I knew this was not my fault. Pity. Anger at the universe. All of it tangled together.

  My thumbs moved before I could decide which feeling was in charge.

  Neither did I.

  The reply came faster this time.

  I know.

  Few letters, somehow more comforting than a whole paragraph could have been.

  I stared at the screen.

  There was so much I could have said. So many questions.

  What does it feel like? Are you afraid? Angry? Do you secretly hate me after all?

  What came out instead was the thing that had been wrapped like a rope around my stomach.

  I'm sorry this is happening to you because of me, I wrote. I would stop it if I could.

  My hands shook a little as I hit send.

  Typing bubble. Pause.

  I know, he sent back. You didn't do anything wrong.

  The relief that spread through my chest startled me.

  Not because I believed him more than I believed myself. I knew, logically, that I was not at fault. If blame existed at all, it belonged to some weird biology glitch.

  But hearing it from him, the one whose life was actively unraveling, loosened something that had been strangling my chest ever since I'd learned the truth.

  He didn't see me as the weapon pointed at his head.

  Or if he did, he didn't blame the weapon for being loaded.

  My fingers hovered.

  Have a nice run, Ethan, I typed. See you tomorrow.

  The dots appeared again and lingered long enough for my heart to go stupid. They stopped. Appeared again.

  Sleep well, Kelsey, he replied at last. Goodnight.

  He didn't say anything about the run. Not thank you, not I will.

  I stared at the last word until the screen dimmed.

  Then I locked the phone and placed it on my chest, right over the place where my heartbeat was still too fast.

  The ceiling stared back at me.

  I felt lighter.

  Not because anything was actually better. My father was still fragmented in a barn. Pack politics were still simmering under the surface. My blood was still a living nightmare for every male lupine within a ten-mile radius.

  But the knowledge that Ethan didn't hate me, that he didn't see me as the villain in his story, eased a pressure I hadn't even known was there until it loosened.

  It unsettled me how much that mattered.

  It shouldn't matter this much what a boy, any boy, thought of me. Especially one whose body apparently saw me as both food and addiction.

  The fact that it did matter said things I was not ready to unpack.

  I exhaled and shoved the thought aside for later.

  I sat up, swung my legs over the side of the bed, and stood.

  Barefoot, I crossed the room and pushed the curtain aside.

  Outside, the world was washed in shades of ink and silver. The yard was a pale blur, the old oak with the tire swing hanging from it a darker mass against a slightly less dark sky.

  Beyond it, deeper in the shadows, stood the barn, its dark shape framed by moonlight.

  Dad was in there.

  Locked. Contained. Like an animal.

  Pain tightened in my chest, sharp and clean.

  The thought of him sitting alone behind those walls, his mind cracking and knitting and cracking again with no one but his parents for occasional company, made my stomach lurch.

  They loved him, I knew that. Underneath all resentment and lupine rules, they loved him as their son and their fellow lupine.

  I loved him as my dad.

  The man who made waffles on Saturday mornings. Who tried to braid Hailey's and my hair and failed spectacularly. Who sat in a hospital waiting room with his head in his hands and told us everything would be okay, even when it clearly would not.

  He was not just a problem to contain. He wasn't some wild beast.

  He was a person in pain.

  And I could not keep leaving him out there in the dark while I sat in my room, clutching my phone like a lifeline.

  I let the curtain fall back into place.

  For a moment, I considered going to Jack and Elise and demanding they let me see him.

  Then I changed my mind.

  This was not their decision to make.

  It was mine. Not as a human, bloodkin, whatever.

  As a daughter.

  I stood there in the half-dark, fingers curled against the windowsill, watching the barn like it was watching me back.

  And I decided.

  I was done just sitting inside and waiting.

  I was going to the barn.