Chapter 2
Jake stared at Noah’s mouth.
Specifically, his teeth.
There were several reasonable explanations for what he had just seen. Jake searched for one.
Dental work.
A trick of the light.
A very committed Halloween accessory in September.
None of those explanations covered the fact that Noah’s canine teeth had visibly lengthened while Jake was looking directly at them.
Jake pointed.
“Do that again.”
Noah blinked. “What?”
“The teeth thing.”
“I’m not a dog doing tricks.”
“You just told me people hunt wolves and then grew fangs.”
“They aren’t fangs.”
Jake kept pointing.
“What would you prefer I call the suddenly enormous teeth?”
Noah pressed his lips together.
“That’s what I thought.”
Students crossed the athletic field less than a hundred yards away, completely unaware that Jake Miller was standing beside the woods arguing dental terminology with a half-naked werewolf.
The normality of it offended him.
Somebody laughed near the parking lot.
A car horn sounded.
The marching band was practicing something badly in the distance.
Jake looked back at Noah.
“Werewolf.”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh, good. Because that would be ridiculous.”
Noah frowned.
“You’re taking this surprisingly well.”
“I’m not taking anything well. My brain has left the building.”
Despite everything, Noah laughed.
Jake liked the sound.
That was also a problem for later.
Jake pulled his phone from his pocket.
“I’m texting my mom.”
Noah tensed.
“To tell her I’m sick,” Jake added. “Not that I found a supernatural nudist.”
“I’m not a nudist.”
“You were doing an incredible impression.”
Noah looked down at the hoodie.
Jake typed quickly.
MOM: Aren’t you supposed to be in school?
Jake winced. His mother had apparently developed psychic powers too.
JAKE: Feel sick. Coming home.
Three dots appeared immediately.
MOM: Fever?
JAKE: Stomach.
MOM: Bathroom stomach or throwing-up stomach?
Jake looked at Noah.
“What?”
“My mother requires categories.”
He typed:
JAKE: Bathroom.
The three dots vanished.
No further questions.
Jake put the phone away.
“Works every time.”
“You lie to your mother a lot?”
“No. Which is why it works.”
They stayed out of sight along the edge of the woods until the last students disappeared into the building.
Jake’s house was twelve minutes away if they cut through two back streets.
Noah made it three minutes before Jake stopped.
“What now?” Noah asked.
“Your feet.”
Noah looked down.
They were filthy and bleeding.
“You’ve been walking like that and didn’t say anything.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“That is the kind of sentence people say right before somebody discovers they need stitches.”
“I don’t.”
“You’re very confident for a guy who woke up under a tree.”
Noah crouched and wiped mud from the side of his foot.
Jake watched a thin cut near his heel.
Then he watched it close.
Not completely.
But enough.
Jake sat down on the curb.
Noah straightened. “What are you doing?”
“Having a moment.”
“Jake.”
“I just watched your foot heal.”
Noah glanced at it.
“Oh.”
“OH?”
Noah sat beside him.
For several seconds neither spoke.
Finally Jake said, “You understand I have questions.”
“I understand.”
“Approximately nine thousand.”
“I probably can’t answer all of them.”
“Start with the one where you’re a werewolf.”
Noah rubbed both hands over his face.
“My family calls it the change.”
“That is extremely unhelpful.”
“It isn’t like the movies.”
“Do you turn into a wolf?”
“Yes.”
“Full moon?”
“Sometimes makes it harder to control.”
“Silver?”
Noah’s expression tightened.
Jake remembered the rod in the hunter’s hand.
“Oh.”
“Silver doesn’t kill us because it’s silver,” Noah said. “But there are things people can do to it.”
“Things?”
“Old things.”
“Magic?”
Noah looked uncomfortable.
Jake threw up his hands.
“You can turn into a wolf but magic is where we get embarrassed?”
Noah smiled despite himself.
Then it disappeared.
“My family has carried it for generations.”
“The wolf thing.”
“Yes.”
“Your whole family?”
“Not everyone changes. Some never do. Some change once. Some can control it.”
“And you?”
Noah stared at the pavement.
“Apparently I’m in the wakes-up-naked-in-the-woods category.”
Jake let that sit.
“That was your first time.”
Noah nodded.
Suddenly the jokes felt less funny.
Jake imagined waking alone, injured, unable to remember what he had done.
“You were scared.”
“I’m still scared.”
“Of changing?”
Noah looked toward the end of the street.
“Of who was waiting for it to happen.”
Jake’s house was a narrow two-story with faded blue siding and a porch his mother had been threatening to repaint since Jake was fourteen.
They went through the back.
Comet, Jake’s mother’s elderly beagle mix, waddled into the kitchen, saw Noah, and froze.
Noah froze too.
Jake waited for supernatural animal recognition.
Comet sneezed.
Then he walked over and sat on Noah’s foot.
Noah looked down.
Jake grinned.
“Fearsome beast.”
Noah slowly scratched behind the dog’s ears.
Comet leaned his entire body against him.
“He likes you.”
“Dogs usually do.”
“Because you’re part dog?”
Noah looked offended.
“Never say that again.”
Jake laughed so hard he had to grab the counter.
He found Noah sweatpants, socks, a T-shirt, and an old pair of sneakers.
When Noah emerged from the bathroom twenty minutes later, Jake forgot what he had been about to say.
Clean made a difference.
A huge one.
Noah’s dark hair was damp and pushed back from his forehead. The bruises remained, but without mud and leaves covering him, he looked less like someone Jake had discovered after an accident and more like—
Well.
A guy.
A very good-looking guy.
Jake became intensely interested in opening the refrigerator.
“You hungry?”
“Very.”
“How hungry?”
Noah opened the refrigerator beside him.
Jake watched him take out leftover chicken, sandwich meat, cheese, four eggs, and half a gallon of milk.
“Apparently crime-scene hungry.”
“I shifted.”
“Right. Obviously that explains eating like three linebackers.”
Noah stopped.
“Can I?”
Jake realized he was asking permission.
Not joking.
Actually asking.
“Yeah,” Jake said. “Eat whatever you want.”
Noah demolished two sandwiches while Jake scrambled eggs.
By the third sandwich, Jake had stopped pretending not to stare.
“What?”
“You’re skinny.”
“I’m not skinny.”
“You’re eating like you have a second person inside you.”
“In a way, I do.”
Jake turned from the stove.
“That was creepy.”
“It sounded better in my head.”
“Good. You’re capable of saying dumb things too.”
Noah smiled around a bite of sandwich.
For several minutes, the kitchen felt almost normal.
Then Comet growled.
Both boys stopped.
The dog was staring toward the front of the house.
Noah put his sandwich down.
Jake whispered, “What?”
Noah lifted one finger.
Listen.
Jake listened.
Nothing.
Then Noah said, “Car.”
A second later Jake heard tires on the street.
A vehicle slowed.
Noah’s face changed.
Jake went to the window.
“Don’t.”
Too late.
A black SUV rolled past the house.
Slowly.
The driver did not look toward them.
Jake watched until it reached the corner.
Then it stopped.
Noah was beside him now.
“Is that them?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s comforting.”
The SUV turned and disappeared.
Noah whispered, “They saw your hoodie.”
Jake looked down.
He was wearing a T-shirt.
Then he understood.
Noah had been wearing the hoodie in the woods.
With MILLER printed across the back.
“Fantastic,” Jake said.
Noah grabbed the borrowed sneakers.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
“No.”
“Jake.”
“You leave, they find you alone.”
“If I stay, they find you.”
“They already know my name.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to make this worse.”
Jake folded his arms.
Noah stared at him.
“What?”
“I’m deciding whether you’re brave or stupid.”
“My mother says those overlap.”
“I believe her.”
Jake stepped closer.
“Why are they hunting your family?”
Noah looked away.
“That answer takes longer.”
“We have all day. I have bathroom stomach.”
Noah laughed once.
Then his expression became distant.
“My grandmother said our people learned a long time ago that sometimes survival means leaving before everyone else understands why you’re leaving.”
Jake waited.
“She was Romani,” Noah continued. “So was her mother. And hers. People hear that and decide they already know everything about us. Fortune-tellers. Curses. Caravans. Whatever they saw in a movie.”
Jake said nothing.
“The wolf isn’t because we’re Romani,” Noah said. “It belongs to my family. One bloodline. One old story nobody can even agree on anymore.”
“Okay.”
Noah looked at him, almost surprised.
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t have questions?”
“I have nine thousand questions. You just answered one.”
Noah stared at him for a moment.
Then he nodded.
Something between them shifted.
Not magic.
Jake was pretty sure.
Trust.
By noon, they had established several facts.
One: Noah did not know where his mother was.
Two: the hunters had been following his family for at least six months.
Three: his first full transformation had happened the previous night.
Four: he remembered running.
Five: he remembered somebody screaming.
Six: he did not know whose blood had been on his hands when he woke before Jake found him.
Jake stopped pacing.
“Blood?”
“I washed it off in the creek.”
“You left that part out.”
“I was trying not to scare you.”
“You showed me fangs.”
“They’re not fangs.”
“We are not restarting that argument.”
Noah rubbed his forehead.
“I don’t think I killed anyone.”
“That sentence could use more confidence.”
“I would remember.”
“Would you?”
Noah did not answer.
Jake sat opposite him at the kitchen table.
“What do you remember?”
“Trees. Running. Someone behind me. Pain.”
“The silver thing?”
“Maybe.”
“Then?”
Noah closed his eyes.
“A wolf.”
Jake leaned forward.
“You?”
“No.”
Noah opened his eyes.
“There was another one.”
That changed everything.
Jake forgot about school.
He forgot about chemistry.
He forgot that Coach was probably composing his murder speech already.
“Another werewolf?”
Noah nodded.
“From your family?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could that be who attacked you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could it be helping you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You say that a lot.”
“Because I woke up naked under a tree, Jake.”
“Fair.”
Noah leaned back.
“The strange part is I could smell it.”
“The other wolf?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“It smelled familiar.”
Jake waited.
Noah’s gaze moved to him.
That same unsettled expression returned.
“What?” Jake asked.
Noah stood.
He came around the table.
Jake stayed seated.
“Noah?”
“Don’t move.”
“You really need to stop saying weird things before you do weird things.”
Noah leaned down.
His face came close to Jake’s neck.
Jake’s entire body became aware of the distance between them.
About two inches.
Maybe less.
Noah inhaled.
Jake’s pulse kicked.
Noah did it again.
“Okay,” Jake said quietly. “This is officially the strangest flirting I’ve ever experienced.”
Noah jerked back.
“I’m not flirting.”
“That sounded almost disappointed.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Noah stared at him.
Jake’s smile faded.
“What?”
“The wolf last night.”
“What about it?”
Noah swallowed.
“It smelled like you.”