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  Aldric threw Garrick back toward the door. Garrick hit the wall and dropped to the ground a few feet from it, but he didn’t have the strength to move. His throat was completely crushed, and he couldn’t get a single breath in. Though he could feel his body repairing itself, it didn’t ease the pain.

  “Get out,” Aldric said, not even facing Garrick anymore. He turned and walked back toward his desk. “And don’t show your face in here again. You want out of my pack? Fine. But there are monsters out there far more terrifying than I, Elliott. And you had better not come crying to me when they get their hands on you.”

  Chapter 3

  Twenty-two months ago

  “We have been hanging out for a month,” Hayden urged Garrick, tugging him along. He begrudgingly walked with her. “You can’t avoid all of my friends forever.”

  “I know, I know,” he groaned. Every fiber of his being wished he could. Hayden’s friends were beyond intimidating, and – from what he’d heard – they weren’t the kindest people. One of them was Cailean, and that alone was enough to make Garrick resist spending a moment with them.

  “Come on,” she tugged harder. He almost lost his balance as she moved more quickly than him, but he tried to play it cool. Her strength kept surprising him, but he tried to hide it as much as possible. It was emasculating, but he was just more concerned that she’d find it a problem if she caught on to how much weaker he was than she. Hayden held him tightly as they walked toward the lunchroom. Over the past two months, she’d eaten with him, but she had kept trying to get him to go eat with her friends.

  “Do you realize your friends are terrifying?” Garrick inquired, trying to sound as though he was joking. She just laughed and kissed him on the cheek.

  “They’ll love you,” she whispered in his ear.

  Though he had agreed to meet them the previous day, he hadn’t meant so soon. He wasn’t prepared to set aside all the notions he had of this group. Hayden was wonderful, but her group didn’t seem quite as great. Cailean Phoenix was a self-centered jerk – he’d witnessed that first hand. Cailean was the villain in any high school drama, the arrogant bully who seemed to take pleasure in other people’s misery. Brooke Cassidy was a Cailean’s perfect counterpart. She was the girlfriend anyone would expect Cailean to have. Tall, beautiful, and probably nearly as conceited as her boyfriend.

  Garrick wasn’t sure what he was hoping for. He was scared that they wouldn’t like him because he didn’t want them to convince Hayden to break up with him. That was probably a shallow thought. The two of them really liked each other, and he knew she wouldn’t just give up on that because her friends didn’t like him. Still, he knew from secondhand experience that it wasn’t easy dating someone who didn’t like one’s friends. If nothing else, this experience made him feel worse about not liking Tyler’s girlfriend.

  On the other hand, Garrick was equally concerned that this group would like him. If they like him, and they weren’t the kind of people he wanted to associate with, what did that mean about him? He didn’t want to be the type of person who associated with people like that. Then again, Hayden was, so just being friends with them clearly didn’t corrupt her too much.

  Well, he tried to convince himself. If Hayden likes them, they can’t be that bad.

  “Hey guys,” Hayden said. “This is my boyfriend, Garrick.”

  “Hey, Garry,” Cailean greeted him with a smirk. Everything about his face appeared friendly, but his tone implied something sinister. His voice was dripping with disdain. Or maybe they can be, Garrick conceded.

  “That’s Cailean,” Hayden said. “Don’t worry; I don’t care if you like that one.”

  Garrick laughed, grateful that she was able to ease his nerves. There was something special about her. It wasn’t necessarily difficult to sense the tension there, but to know exactly what to say was more impressive. He wasn’t even completely convinced that she was joking.

  “I’m Brooke,” the other girl told Garrick. She probably hadn’t made a judgement about Garrick yet, but at least she didn’t dislike him on sight. Given everything he’d heard about her, that was surprising. It was a good sign – maybe she wasn’t quite as bad as he’d assumed. Nonetheless, he couldn’t make that judgement after one greeting, and she still had the entire lunch to decide she didn’t like him. He could already feel the nerves coming back as he sat down.

  Another guy was sitting at the table. Garrick hadn’t heard anything about him, so he had no idea what to expect. His presence wasn’t quite as demanding as the other two, and Garrick guessed he was more of a quiet type. Somehow, he managed to avoid the circulating rumors that typically surrounded the “cool kids.” Hopefully that meant he was a bit more down-to-earth than his friends. “I’m Chase,” he said, extending his hand for Garrick to shake.

  He seemed nice enough. There was a bit of sadness in his voice, but no bad intent. Something about him felt genuine, and that was comforting.

  “Nice to meet all of you,” Garrick said slowly, trying to feign confidence.

  “So, how’d you meet Hayden?” Brooke asked, quickly breaking the ice. He appreciated that. She obviously already knew the story – being Hayden’s best friend probably meant there wasn’t much she didn’t know. Getting him to talk about himself was a clever tactic to loosen him up, though. He knew it was a tactic, but it still worked.

  “Funny story, actually,” Garrick began. “She was moving into the house down the street.”

  They all looked at him expectantly.

  “And, uh. I helped.”

  “That’s not particularly funny,” Cailean offered.

  “It’s not really much of a story,” Chase added. At least he smiled. It made Garrick feel like he was just trying to be friendly, bringing him into the friend group.

  “I dropped a couch on my toe,” Garrick blurted out. It was more inquisitive than an actual statement, wondering if that would justify his opening.

  “Okay, see, you should have led with that,” Chase advised.

  Garrick spent the next thirty minutes eating lunch with Hayden’s friends and trying to impress them. Between Chase and Hayden, he started to feel like he was part of the group. Hayden’s joke that he didn’t have to like Cailean actually comforted him quite a bit because the other two were decent people. Cailean just spent most of the time scoffing and making snide comments. When the lunch bell rang, he practically jumped at the opportunity to leave.

  “How bad was I?” He asked Hayden a few minutes later as he walked her to class, holding her hand. He was hopeful, and he definitely had expected it to go much worse. Still, his heart was pounding as he wondered if Hayden thought the same thing. “Be honest.”

  “You weren’t nearly as awkward as I thought you’d be.” She smiled and nudged him with her shoulder and squeezed his hand as she spoke, and the tiny laugh at the end of her sentence forced a smile onto Garrick’s face as well.

  “Oh, thanks,” he feigned exasperation.

  “You were great,” she relented. “I think they liked you.”

  The two of them had reached her classroom, so they stopped a few feet away from the door. Hayden turned to face him and grabbed his other hand. She waited a few seconds, looking into his eyes and holding his hands. Hayden smiled at him with slightly parted lips as she searched his eyes. Garrick couldn’t help but wonder what was on her mind.

  “Thanks,” she finally spoke up, “it meant a lot to me that you finally met them.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry I pushed it off for so long.”

  “It’s okay,” she smiled. She waited a bit too long to respond – as if she were trying to find the right words. “The first time is usually scary. I had to wait until you were ready.”

  A part of him was convinced she wasn’t talking about meeting her friends anymore. As they gazed into each other’s eyes, her words reverberated in his head.

  Just do it, he thought. That’s definitely what she meant.

  She’d never been more beautiful
to him than in that moment, and as the halls cleared out, they stood alone. Class was going to start soon, though, so he knew his window was closing.

  Garrick leaned toward her, his heart beating out of his chest. His face was inches from hers, and he could barely make out the expecting smile on her face. He let go of her hands and wrapped his arms around her, moving his head to the side and pulling her in for a hug.

  Garrick wanted more than anything to kiss her, but he didn’t want to scare her away. He felt like there was something more between them, but what if he was just making it out to be more in his head? He wasn’t willing to risk losing what they had.

  Present

  24 days until the full moon

  “So, that happened,” Chase said slowly, breaking the tension of the silence that had surrounded them. The two had been standing in Garrick’s front yard tossing a ball back and forth for almost an hour before he’d finally spoken up. Garrick didn’t feel like there was much to talk about – at least nothing words would change.

  Garrick had tried to avoid any conversations about that night, but he had known it would eventually come back to him.

  “Yeah,” Garrick agreed quietly.

  “I know it’s hard to accept,” Chase offered. “It sucks, and there’s no way around that.”

  “You don’t have to try to comfort me, Chase,” Garrick sighed.

  “Someone should.”

  “It won’t help.”

  “I heard you got in a fight with Aldric,” Chase changed the subject slightly – but still to something Garrick would prefer they didn’t talk about.

  “It was his fault, Chase.”

  “Do you really think he doesn’t care?”

  “Doesn’t it seem like it?”

  “I don’t know,” Chase groaned. With perfect timing, Tyler rounded the corner, walking toward Garrick’s house. Seeing the two of them, Tyler’s eyes lit up and he held his arms in the air. Garrick tossed the ball to him from three houses away, and Tyler caught it in one hand.

  “Wow, Garrick Elliott. I don’t remember you having such a good arm,” Tyler teased as he approached.

  “I’ve been working on it,” Garrick smiled. He was genuinely happy – thankful that Tyler had arrived. It would allow him to spend a few more minutes with his friends and pretend his problems didn’t exist.

  “Hey, Tyler,” Chase greeted, pasting on a smile and trying to pretend they hadn’t been in the middle of a serious conversation.

  “What did I interrupt?” Tyler, intuitive as ever, asked.

  “Nothing,” Garrick sighed – fully aware he wouldn’t actually be able to hide anything.

  “Garrick was just ranting about the physics of throwing a ball,” Chase interjected. “Apparently it’s more about math than actually possessing any skill.”

  “I never said that,” Garrick defended.

  “I don’t know, it definitely sounds like you,” Tyler shrugged, tossing the ball to Chase.

  “I guess it does,” Garrick replied. Chase was a quick thinker, which made him a good liar. The fact that those skills were necessary was just an unhappy side-effect of the life they lived.

  The three of them tossed the ball back and forth for a few more minutes, talking about everything that came to mind aside from werewolves. Garrick laughed with his friends and, for the first time in a while, felt normal.

  Garrick sat in the coffee shop across from Tyler. Tyler had insisted that they go, probably to give him a chance to try to find out what was wrong with his best friend. It was a sort of intervention. Tyler was going to text Hayden and Chase, but Garrick basically begged him not to do so. While he knew he couldn’t tell Tyler the truth, he also felt that having them there would just make the lies worse. He didn’t want Tyler to be the only one in the group unaware of his secret.

  Garrick had barely talked to them over the past few days anyway; at least compared to how much he usually did. He saw them both every day, and he thought he had them almost convinced that he was over what had happened. Somewhere deep down, though, he couldn’t accept the idea that all of them were so nonchalant at the loss of human life. Hayden wasn’t as bad as Cailean, Brooke, and Aldric seemed, but he wondered if that was just his bias showing. They thought it was completely acceptable. Not entirely ideal, no, but something that just happened in nature. Hayden seemed to view it as a necessary evil. He couldn’t read Chase, but he seemed to be somewhere between those views.

  Garrick just had trouble accepting the ‘necessary’ part. There were other options which weren’t even being considered. He just didn’t understand why Aldric refused to talk to them aside from offering vague threats and asserting that he knew best.

  He hadn’t spoken a word to the other three since his fight with Aldric. Brooke, Cailean, and Aldric had only talked to him because he was in the pack. Without that, the only thing that tied him to Brooke was Hayden, and there was nothing between the others. He leaned back as he sipped his coffee. He tried to hold Tyler’s gaze, but he found himself too distracted.

  He felt like he had lied to Hayden. There was an inherent difference between lying and pretending to be okay, though. He was mostly just evading the appearance of moping around, but he hadn’t lied to her. He knew she’d see right through him if he tried. He didn’t even believe that she thought he’d accepted anything – she was just allowing him to process how he needed to. I’m not okay, he thought, how is she?

  He couldn’t come to terms with what was happening. He tried to pretend everything was okay, but he was falling apart inside. Despite all of his grand proclamations that there was another way, he was lost, and he didn’t have much time to figure it out.

  “What’s going on, Garrick Elliott?”

  Garrick wished he could tell Tyler the truth. Aside from feeling like he was lying to his friend, Garrick just felt alone. Being without a pack now, he just needed someone on his side. He wanted to open up and explain everything that he had been through over the past two years. What he needed more than anything was a friend who wasn’t a killer; someone he could confide in without them feeling like he was throwing that accusation at them.

  “I…” He was at a loss. Maybe he could come up with a half-truth. Like what? He’d witnessed a murder. No, that could lead to far too many questions. He was having relationship issues? No, Tyler might say something to Hayden. Instead, he just looked down into the darkness of the coffee which sat in front of him and said nothing. So many thoughts swam around in his head, but he had to keep them all inside.

  “You know you can tell me anything, right? We’ve always been there for each other, but you’ve been acting incredibly peculiar recently. I can assist with whatever is troubling you, but not if you refuse to divulge any information.”

  Tyler was trying so hard to be there for Garrick, but he was clearly running out of things to say. What more could he offer if Garrick just kept shutting him out? He knew he needed a friend, and he was terrified to risk pushing Tyler too far away, but he knew there had to be a reason everyone was so scared to let anyone know. He had to stop himself from making any hasty decisions.

  “It’s just… Me getting stuck in my head again,” Garrick said. Considering himself an honest person, especially with regard to his friends, lying was always painful. If there was any possibility he didn’t have to, he wouldn’t. So, instead, he just spoke in technical truths. He didn’t have to tell Tyler the real problems plaguing his mind, but he could at least tell him they were there.

  Tyler laughed. It didn’t sound like a fake laugh – or even one of frustration – but as if there was actually something comical. It felt so out of place that Garrick didn’t really know how to process the information. He just stared blankly at his friend for a moment.

  “Do you see me as a fool?” Tyler asked, defeated. His laugh faded as quickly as it had appeared, and all that was left in his eyes was sadness.

  “Of course not,” Garrick blurted out defensively.

  “There is evidently something
wrong; it’s clear to anyone close to you. Just… Just forget it.” He seemed truly hurt. Garrick wanted to say something, but there were no words which could appease his friend. He just sat in silence and looked down toward his coffee, unable to hold Tyler’s glare. “You need someone to talk to. If not me, find someone else.”

  The words, or even the tone, weren’t particularly harsh – but the implication was. Tyler felt like Garrick didn’t trust him anymore. Garrick wished there were anything to say to prove his friend wrong, but he knew it was a lost cause. Instead, they sat in silence for a few more minutes. Tyler closed his eyes and ran his hands through his hair, flustered. Garrick just fought to stay in the moment and keep himself from getting trapped in his mind again.

  Tyler stood and left the shop without saying another word. He didn’t look angry. Garrick wasn’t even sure he looked hurt. His face was just expressionless.

  After waiting another minute, Garrick sighed and stood. He slumped to the door.

  “Bye Garrick,” the girl behind the counter called out as he walked out the door. It caught him by surprise at first, but he settled down as he realized who’d called. She’d worked there for years, so she’d started to become an acquaintance. While it probably meant that he was there far too often, it actually felt nice to be recognized. Garrick faked a smile, attempting to conceal any form of emotion, as he turned around. He definitely didn’t want more questions about that conversation.

  “See ya, Sammi,” he responded with as much cheer as he could muster.

  He stepped outside and started on his way back home. He was a few blocks away and the walk would be pleasant in the setting sun. His mom had the car again because she was working the night shift, so walking was really more of an imperative than an option. Still, there could definitely be worse days to be wandering around in the open air.