I didn’t want to be anything else anymore.
Not without Daniel.
If it hadn’t been for a sharp bark from one of the wolves behind me, I probably wouldn’t have snapped back into reality in time to stop myself from sprinting right over the edge of the ravine. With the warning, I grabbed onto the crooked branch of an old tree just as my boots slipped on the muddy cliff’s ledge. I steadied myself against the trunk and looked out over the twenty-foot drop that lay right in front of me. The ravine was about another twenty feet wide. I realized as I scanned the terrain that this was the same spot where Baby James had taken his near-fatal fall last Thanksgiving.
The warm, tingling memory of Daniel miraculously saving my little brother in this very place filled my mind—only to be tarnished by the sight of the great white wolf standing on a rocky outcropping on the other side of the ravine. His head arched back as he howled up at the three-quarter moon like he was desperate for it to answer his cries. The shrillness of his howling screams pierced my oversensitive eardrums, and I fought the urge to cover my ears.
“Daniel!” I shouted, not sure the sound of my shaky voice could penetrate his cries. I pushed myself up taller against the bowed tree trunk, clinging to it for support. My legs burned with lactic acid, and my ankle kept trying to bend in the wrong direction—threatening to buckle. If I thought it had hurt when it was first broken, that was nothing compared to the extreme stabbing that shot through my ankle, up into my body, now that the adrenaline from my run had washed out of me. “Daniel, stop!”
The white wolf’s head arched farther back, and another desperate howl ripped through the night, louder and more deranged sounding than ever. The two wolves behind me picked up Daniel’s cry and joined in with their own howls. great, just, great. Surely, the whole town would be at their windows now. I imagined bullets being locked into the chambers of more than one shotgun.
“Get!” I snapped at the two wolves that had followed me here, and stomped my good foot in their direction. “Get out of here, now!” I said, harsher than I’d meant to. The two whined and backed away with their tails low to the ground. When they were gone, I turned back to the sight of the howling white wolf.
“Daniel!” I screamed louder, my voice echoing his desperation. “Daniel, please. Dan—” A sinking feeling pulled at my stomach, and I realized that if by chance I wasn’t the only one in the woods searching for the howling wolf, I shouldn’t go shouting Daniel’s name. “Stop, please…” I left off his name, even though I hated to. Like doing so was acknowledging that he wasn’t “Daniel” anymore.
“Please stop! You have to stop this, now.” My voice caught in the back of my throat, and I clutched my hand over my mouth. I couldn’t let myself cry. “Please. Stop before you get hurt,” I whispered against my fingers.
The white wolf’s howl trailed off suddenly, and when I looked out across the ravine, I saw him staring at me. His furry head cocked with curiosity. I met his glinting eyes for a moment, and then he backed up slowly on his four paws.
“No,” I said. “Don’t leave.” I held my hand up as if to signal “stop”—the same motion I learned when training my old three-legged dog, Daisy. “Don’t run away again, please.”
The wolf took two steps forward to the edge of his side of the ravine and looked at me again with that curious tilt of his head. Did he still recognize me? Hope burned in my chest, and I stayed as still as I could so as not to frighten him away. And I swear, in the silence that engulfed the dark woods now that his howling had stopped, I thought I could hear his heart beating.
His solitary heartbeat. Not two heartbeats like every other werewolf I knew. I still didn’t know what that meant. I still didn’t know what he had become.
For a moment it looked like the Daniel wolf contemplated making the jump over the ravine to get to my side as he crouched back slightly on his hind legs.
“Come,” I motioned to him. “Please, Daniel,” I said softly. “I need you. We need each other.”
The Daniel wolf seemed to startle at the sound of his name. He dropped my gaze, and my heart felt like it fell right into the depths of the ravine as I watched him turn away from me.
“No!” I shouted, both of my hands extended as if I could reach out and grab him, stop him, as he bounded away into the trees, deeper than we’d ever ventured together in these woods before.
For half a second I contemplated trying to go after him—trying to jump the ravine, even if I didn’t have the strength to make it in one piece. Anything to be near him again. But without the support of my hands against the tree trunk to hold me up, my ankle finally gave out, and I collapsed at the base of the tree.
I pulled my knees into my chest and listened for the howls to start up again from some unreachable part of the forest, counting my own lonely heartbeats as the minutes passed and no sound followed. A sigh of overwhelming exhaustion shuddered through me—mixed with relief that the howling had stopped and remorse that I wasn’t able to get Daniel to come back to me—and for the first time since we escaped Caleb’s warehouse, I allowed myself to cry.
I let out a string of long sobs against the forest floor until a terrible voice whispered inside my head, You’re losing him. And there’s nothing you can do.
Another wail tried to escape my throat, but I swallowed it back down. “No,” I told the monster in my head. I pushed myself up and wiped the muddy tears from my face, hating myself for giving in to that weakness. “Daniel and I have been through too much, we’ve come too far, and I am not going to lose him. I won’t let that happen.”
No matter the cost.
Chapter Two
LOST BOYS
SIX MONTHS AGO
“Are you cold?” Daniel asked from behind me as I sat on a stone bench, working on a charcoal drawing for art class. His arms wrapped around my shoulders, and he pressed his chest against my back. Warmth radiated through his shirt, and my skin tingled in response under my thin sweater. I shivered, but not because I was cold. Not anymore.
“Mmm,” I said, and set my notebook on the bench.
Daniel moved his hands down and up my arms to warm them, and nuzzled his nose against my neck.
“I’ll give you an hour to quit that,” I said with a quiet laugh, even though we were pretty much the only ones who ever came to the Garden of Angels.