"Your grandfather. He's found your father."

  The words echoed, reverberating off the forest walls, pulsing within the air around me.

  A flock of sparrows burst from nearby treetops, then scattered, disappeared.

  The breeze stilled. Everything went quiet.

  It felt like someone had put a giant glass dome over the yard. The air clung to my skin, stale and sticky.

  All eyes turned toward the trees.

  Branches moved, swaying under something solid, heavy. For a second nothing happened, and then Jack stepped out of the forest.

  He was... different.

  His shirt was torn in two places, one sleeve hanging by a thread. Blood streaked his collarbone and soaked the side of his ribs, dark against his skin. Mud smeared his trousers. His hair stuck to his forehead in matted clumps. He walked like every movement hurt, but his spine was straight, his head up, his gaze sharp and assessing as it swept across the yard.

  Behind him, the undergrowth moved.

  Something big pushed through the brush. I couldn't see it clearly, only flashes between trunks, a suggestion of massive weight and darker shadow. Leaves trembled around it. A low sound rolled out, a rumble from a chest too large to be human.

  My heart climbed into my throat.

  Elise didn't move. Her face was too calm. The towel still dangled forgotten from her hand.

  "Kelsey," she said, without looking at me. "Go inside the house. Now."

  It took me a second to understand she was talking to me. When it clicked, something in me rebelled.

  "What, no, I am not just going to go inside while you have some secret wolf conversations out here," I snapped. My voice sounded thin and too high, bouncing off the quiet.

  That was when she turned.

  For as long as I had known her, Elise had reminded me of an expensive dagger kept in a golden, jewel-encrusted sheath, sharp but mostly unused. Now she turned fully toward me, and it felt like the dagger came out.

  She couldn't have grown taller, yet every line of her seemed to lengthen. Her shoulders squared. Her presence hit me like a blow. The air around her seemed to crackle. There was no warmth in her eyes, only steel.

  "Go inside," she repeated, voice flat. "Immediately."

  "Dad," I started. The word slipped out of me, raw and desperate. "Is that, is that him?" I turned my attention to the bushes. "Dad!"

  Elise blocked me so fast I didn't even see her move.

  "Do not call him," she hissed, so sharply it almost felt like a slap. "Not now."

  I stared at her, stunned. "He is my father," I said, and I could hear the hysterical edge creeping in.

  "No," she said, voice cutting. "He hasn't shifted back yet, and that means one thing. You call him now, you don't call a person. You call on fragments. Some of these fragments act faster than the mind. You don't want that. Neither does he."

  Her gaze flicked briefly to the shape in the brush. For one heartbeat, something flickered in her expression, something that looked almost like pain. Then it was gone.

  "Go inside," she said again. "Take your sister. Lock the door. Stay away from the windows."

  "I'm not going to lock him out," I whispered. "I'm not going to turn my back on him like—"

  "You're not locking him out," she said, and now there was more iron than ice in her tone. "You are guarding the two things he would die for. If he was in his right mind, he'd tell you this himself. Now move."

  My legs shook, but my feet stayed planted in the grass. I stayed where I was, nails biting into my own arms.

  "Please don't do this," I choked, tears welling in my eyes. "I've already lost Mom. Please."

  Her eyes flashed. The calm snapped, not into anger, but into something even more terrifying and dominant.

  "Kelsey Jane Blackwell," she said quietly, "you will go inside. You will hold your sister. You will stay away from the door. You will not come out until I say so. If you love your father, you will obey. Right now."

  It wasn't a request. It was a command that slid under my skin and hooked into something older than reason, something that recognized food chain and rank and old, old rules I hadn't known I was living under.

  My mouth opened. No sound came out.

  Behind Elise, Jack straightened slightly, as if bracing himself. The thing in the brush shifted, leaves shuddering, twigs snapping as weight pushed closer.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nell.

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  She hadn't moved. Her eyes were wide, tracking the shapes at the tree line. When Elise glanced her way, something silent passed between them.

  Nell dropped her chin, bare throat tilting in a brief, small incline I would have thought was nothing a week ago. Now I knew better. It was a communication. Their communication.

  This was family business, it said. Stay out of it.

  She looked at me once, and in that look there was apology and helplessness and a warning I could not quite decipher.

  Then she took a step back. And another. Slowly, she retreated toward the road, her boots almost noiseless on the damp earth.

  I swallowed, tasting ash, then turned toward the house.

  My feet felt like they were weighted with sandbags. The world around me had become oddly bright, yet drained of color.

  At the bottom of the porch steps, I paused and looked back.

  The trees loomed like a solid dark green wall. Somewhere in the shadows, the thing that was my father, yet not my father, shifted, weight pressing into undergrowth. I caught a glimpse, just for a fraction, of something low and massive, fur darker than shadow, the suggestion of a head turning.

  I couldn't make out eyes. I wasn't sure if it was because I truly couldn't see them or because something inside me refused to look.

  A thought rose, slick and cold, from a place so deep it almost did not feel like my own.

  If I see him like that, I won't be able to remember his face any other way.

  Old memories hit. Him in the hospital parking lot, breathing into his hands because the chemo smell made him gag. Him laughing in our old kitchen as Mom smeared flour on his nose. Him falling asleep on the couch with Hailey drooling on his chest, the cartoon playing on low volume.

  All of that now felt fragile, like glass that could break with a single look.

  I turned away.

  Inside, the kitchen was too small. The smell of dish soap and pancakes hung in the air like mockeries of a normal life.

  I walked over to the window. I knew what he was. I knew the words like lupine, bond, bloodkin. I knew what they meant. In theory.

  But those words were ink on paper. That thing in the bushes, that massive thing with dark fur and sharp teeth and eyes that reflected moonlight, was real.

  Deep down, beneath fear and love, I knew Elise was right.

  I couldn't see him. Not like this.

  Because seeing him would kill the dad I carried in my heart forever.

  My hands found the curtains on the back door and yanked them shut. The fabric slid across the glass, cutting off the view of the yard.

  It felt like closing a lid.

  "Kelsey?" Hailey stood barefoot in the doorway, Mr. Winkle hanging from one arm, her thumb hovering dangerously close to her mouth. "What's happening? Why did Grandma turn off the TV?"

  Her voice was small and thin. It cut through the fog in my head. I forced myself to swallow.

  "Come here," I said, trying to force my voice steady. "We're going to play a new game. The one where we are brave and quiet and stay away from the windows."

  She frowned. "That sounds like a stupid game."

  "Yeah," I said. "I know. Come here anyway."

  She shuffled closer. I scooped her up and carried her into the living room, away from the back door. My hands shook so hard I almost dropped her. We sat on the floor between the couch and the coffee table as I tried to make us as small as possible.

  "What's that noise?" she whispered.

  Only then did I realize I'd been hearing it the whole time.

  Heavy breathing, outside. Too loud to be human, too rough to be the wind. It came in ragged pulls, like a draft dragging through tears in the walls.

  Then, under it, another sound slowly emerged.

  A low growl. Deep and rumbling, almost below hearing, more vibration than noise, that rattled the glass in the windowpanes.

  "Shh," I told Hailey. "It is okay. We're okay."

  I didn't know if I believed it. Everything inside me bristled.

  Then Elise's voice reached us through the walls.

  "Gabriel, you can't," she said, words clipped. "Not yet. Not while you're like this."

  The growl rose, cut itself off, broke into a choked, stuttering sound I could not place. There was something horrifically human in it. Something pleading.

  "Is that Daddy?" Hailey gasped. Her whole body jolted. "Is that him? Let me go, Kelsey, let me go, I need to, he is back, Daddy's back!"

  She twisted in my arms, sudden and wild, Mr. Winkle dropping to the floor with a soft thud. Her heels kicked against my shins as she tried to launch herself toward the hallway.

  "No," I said, grabbing her tighter. "Hailey, no, you can't go to him right now!"

  "Why?" she shrieked, the word cracking in the middle. "Why, Kelsey, why, he's back, I want my dad, let me go, Daddy, Daddy—"

  Her voice cut through the house like a flare.

  Outside, the growl snapped into something sharper. Louder. It came in a rush, like the sound of someone slamming against an invisible wall.

  "Elise," Jack's voice, muffled by distance and walls, rode over it. Low. Warning.

  "Gabriel, no!" Elise shouted, and this was the first time I'd ever heard her raise her voice. It hit like a command that made the hairs on my arms stand up. "Stop! Stop. You are not going in there!"

  Something crashed, a loud thud of a body hitting earth, followed by a sharp yank of air like someone had had the wind knocked out of them.

  Hailey writhed in my arms, sobbing now. "Daddy, Daddy! Please, Kelsey, can't you hear, he's hurting, we have to help him! Please, Kelsey, let me go!"

  "I can't," I choked, though every cell in me screamed the same thing she did. "I can't, baby, I am sorry, I'm so sorry."

  The sound changed into a rough, heart-tearing whimper. It crawled under my skin and lodged somewhere behind my ribs, like a thorn against my heart.

  I pressed my hands over Hailey's ears without thinking, as if that could protect her from the sound.

  Outside, Elise spoke again, her voice lower now, thick around the edges.

  "That's it," she murmured, the words carrying even through the walls. "That's it. Good. Breathe. Listen to me. They are here. Your pups are here. They are safe. No one is taking them from you."

  Hailey hiccuped against my shoulder, quiet sobs shaking her small body. My own eyes burned.

  "You hear me, Gabriel," Elise went on. "No one is taking them away. We're keeping them safe. But you can't go to them like this. Not until you are fully back. You know this, son. You love them too much to risk it. Think. Don't let instinct decide for you."

  Her voice wavered on the last word. She cleared her throat, sharp, as if forcing control back into place.

  "Not until you are you again," she said. "Not until it's safe."

  There was a pause. It stretched long and thin.

  Then the howl came.

  It ripped through the air like something being torn open. Long, raw, full of so much pain it made my teeth hurt. It was not the storybook wolf sound from cartoons. It cracked in the middle, rose, broke, rose again. Grief and fury and terror tangled into one sound that climbed over the house, over the trees, into the sky.

  Hailey clamped her hands over mine and sobbed harder. I didn't move. I couldn't. I sat there, frozen, that sound burning through my eardrums and into my bones.

  It felt like it would never end.

  Then, all at once, it did.

  The hollowed silence that crashed down afterward was even worse.

  My heart pounded so loudly I could feel it in my head. I didn't know if he'd run or collapsed. I only knew one thing.

  The father I knew was trapped between a body that wanted to tear down walls and a mind that was breaking from trying not to.

  My cheeks were wet, the hem of my shirt soaked. I didn't even realize I'd been crying the entire time.

  And I was sitting on a living room floor, holding my sister while she cried as well, curtains drawn, because that was what love looked like here.

  Separation.

  For survival.